A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine

Ingrid Hjelm is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Copenhagen and former Director of the Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH) (2014–17). She is author of The Samaritans and Early Judaism (2000) and Jerusalem’s Rise to Sovereignty (2004), and, with K. Whitelam, T.L. Thompson, N.P. Lemche and Z. Muna, New Information about the History of Ancient Palestine (Arabic; 2004); with A.K. de Hemmer Gudme (eds.), Myths of Exile (2015); and, with T.L. Thompson (eds.), Changing Perspectives 6 and 7 (2016). Hamdan Taha is Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Al Istiqlal University, Palestine, former Deputy Minister for Heritage (2012–2014) and the Director General of the then newly established Department of Antiquities in Palestine (1994–2012). He has directed several excavations and restoration projects, and co-directed the joint expeditions at Tell el-Sultan, Khirbet Bal’ama, Tell el-Mafjar, Kh. el-Mafjar and Tell Balata. He worked also as a national coordinator of the World Heritage Program in Palestine. He is the author of many books, field reports and scholarly articles. Ilan Pappe is Professor of History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is author of numerous books on Palestine and the modern state of Israel, including A History of Modern Palestine (2004), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Forgotten Palestinians (2011), The Idea of Israel (2014) and The Biggest Prison on Earth (2017). Thomas L. Thompson, Professor Emeritus, worked at the University of Copenhagen from 1993 to 2009. He was Research Fellow for the Tubinger Atlas des vorderen Orients from 1969 to 1976. He has produced more than twenty books, five of which have been translated into Arabic, and 170 lesser works related to the history of Palestine and biblical literature, the best known of which are The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), The Settlement of Palestine in the Bronze Age (1979), The Early History of the Israelite People (1992), The Bible in History (1999), The Messiah Myth (2005) and Biblical Narrative and Palestine’s History (2013).

List of figures; List of contributors; Preface; List of Abbreviations; INTRODUCTION Creating Coherence and Continuity: Suggestions and Illustrations of Methods and Themes THOMAS L. THOMPSON; Part 1 HISTORIOGRAPHY; 1.1. Emic and etic historiography and tradition within various disciplines; 1. Palestinian Local Historical Narrative HAMDAN TAHA; 2. Palestinian Identity: The Question of Historiography ISSAM NASSAR; 3. History of Palestine versus History of Israel? The Minimalist - Maximalist Debate INGRID HJELM; 4. De-Theologising Medieval Palestine: Corpus, Tradition and Double-Critique JOSHUA SABIH; 5. History, Curriculum and Textbooks: Reframing Palestine in the post-Oslo period NADIA NASER-NAJJAB AND ILAN PAPPE; 1.2. The roles of memory and oral history in history writing; 6. Oral History’s Credibility, Role and Functionality MAHMOUD ISSA; 7. The Cultural and Linguistic Background of the Naming of Objects and Agricultural Installations in Palestine ISSAM HALAYQA; 8. The Production of Alternative Knowledge: Political Participation of Palestinian Women since the 1930s: A Case Study FAIHA ABDULHADI; Part 2 ETHNICITY, GEOGRAPHY AND POLITICS; 9. The Cultural Heritage between Ethnicity and Ethical Matters GHATTAS J. SAYEJ; 10. Narratives, Nucleotides, Nationhood: The Conundrum of Demographic Continuity and Discontinuity and the Quest for Historic Legitimacy MICHAEL NATHANSON; 11. Patronage and the Political Anthropology of Ancient Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages EMANUEL PFOH AND THOMAS L. THOMPSON; 12. “To Be an Israelite and a Judean as I Want You to Be". Material Culture and Ethnicity during the Iron Age HANI NUR EL-DIN; Part 3 LANDSCAPE, ARCHAEOLOGY AND MEMORY IN THE INTERFACE BETWEEN HISTORY AND TRADITION; 13. Theoretical Perspectives on Landscape and Memory, and the Case of Lubya as Lieu De Memoire BO DAHL HERMANSEN; 14. Community Archaeology in Palestine: Protection, Preservation and Promotion of Archaeological Heritage Sites in Palestine IMAN SACA; 15. The Al-Nuweima Mosque: An Archaeological Perspective on Modern History ANDREW PETERSEN; 16. Archaeology as Anthropology (Bioarcheology) ISSA SARIE; Part 4 IDEOLOGIES OF THE LAND; 17. Mapping Palestine. Biblical and Rabbinic Perspectives PHILIP DAVIES; 18. Land, People, and Empire. The Bible through Palestinian Christian Eyes MITRI RAHEB; 19. Judaism’s Response to the Invention of the Homeland SHLOMO SAND; 20. The History of Israel… But what Is this Israel?: Drawing Conclusions from Recent Research into the History of Ancient Palestine NIELS PETER LEMCHE; Index of Authors