2002

In two very different studies published during the first half of the 1990s, David Jamieson-Drake and Michael Niemann reached results remarkably similar concerning the early history of the Judean state. Jamieson-Drake's synthetic study of the archaeological artefacts and settlement patterns shows how unlikely it would be to speak about a proper state in the southern part of the central highlands of Israel/Palestine before the eighth century, when a sharp increase in settled areas becomes visible. Niemann, for his part, bases his study on an analysis of archaeological remains as well as information within the Bible itself. It is a classical study according to the best principles of the historical-critical school of Old Testament studies and should be acceptable to most scholars, though its results are controversial. Niemann also concludes that a state in the proper sense of the word did not exist in Judah during the tenth century and only gradually developed during the next 100 years or so.

What Niemann suggests is a form of patronage state, as this writer described in a lecture delivered at the German Archaeological Institute in Jerusalem in 1995. By ‘patronage state’, I mean a state organized as a personal possession around a ruling family. It does not have an extended bureaucracy, except to regulate relations between the ruling family – the patrons – and their clients, the ordinary population. That kind of state dominated the area during the Late Bronze Age, and survived as a typical form of political organization well into the Iron Age.