A Past No Longer Remembered

Chapter 4 examines the phenomenon of absence in the Hebrew Bible, or why certain early Iron Age locations do not appear in the stories told about this time period in the biblical writings. This study focuses on six locations from the early Iron Age that were of substantial significance during this era, but which are nevertheless not referred to in the Hebrew Bible. After surveying the archaeological evidence from these sites, it is maintained that the absence of these places from the biblical narrative was likely the outcome of Hebrew scribes not having access to information about these settlements, rather than an intentional act of suppressing what knowledge they had. This manner of forgetting was occasioned, it is argued here, because these particular locations had lost their cultural and political significance by the time in which past memories were being textualized by Hebrew scribes into stories of narrative prose.