Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TRIBE

Throughout Bible times, from the Hebrew patriarchs (Gen. 49:28) to the early Christian apostles (Phil. 3:5), to belong to a tribe meant being a part of a named group whose members were obliged to cooperate for a variety of practical and ideological purposes and who, in turn, enjoyed certain rights and privileges important to daily existence. Typically, tribes employ the idea of descent from a common-named ancestor as a means to link together for political and other purposes clans and families as subunits within the larger tribe (Josh. 7:16-18). To be able to claim such membership has been absolutely essential for the average person’s identity as an individual and for his or her physical survival (Num. 27:1-11) on a daily basis from ancient until modern times in the Middle East.

The Bible is replete with examples of what it meant to belong to a tribe. To be a descendant of Abraham meant being linked to the father of all humans, Adam (Gen. 5:1-32). It meant belonging to a federation of 12 tribes who shared certain historical fortunes and destinies (Gen. 49:1-33), and knowing where to go to find an acceptable spouse for one’s sons and daughters (Gen. 24:1-67). It meant having use rights to certain specific pastures, watering sources, ritual centers, and burial grounds (Gen. 13:1-8; 23:1-20; 1 Kgs. 21:1-3). It meant joining together as “sons of Jacob” to escape bondage in Egypt (Exod. 6:28–7:13; Num. 1:1–4:49); attaining a distinctive system of beliefs and ritual practices as “God’s covenant people” while wandering in the Sinai desert (Exod. 19:1–24:18); and taking possession of the Promised Land as “the tribes of Yahweh” (Deut. 3:12-22; Josh. 2:1–11:23). Most important of all, perhaps, it meant being allotted a specific plot of land within a larger tribal territory whereon to make a living in the newly conquered land (Josh. 13:1–21:45). Once allotted, such lands were to remain in the possession of clans and families in perpetuity, as illustrated in the story of Ruth.

While tribal social organization was obviously central to this early experience of the Israelites, and no doubt also to that of their neighbors, scholars have tended to see the rise of the monarchies in the southern Levant during the Early Iron Age as somehow replacing the tribe as a source of identity and economic empowerment under the reign of kings. With so many of the prophets railing against the abuses not only of the kings of Israel and Judah, but also against the kings of their neighbors — the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites — the continuing importance of tribal sentiments and loyalties is less obvious, at least as far as the biblical text is concerned. There are good reasons to suppose, however, that despite the rise of these Iron Age “supratribal polities” or “kingdoms,” the tribe continued almost unabated as a source of identity and economic empowerment among the vast majority of the populations of these kingdoms. In other words, despite the emergence of “kings” in these societies, and the reference to them as “kingdoms,” these were fundamentally tribal societies or “tribal kingdoms.” The salient features of these polities can be summarized as follows:

The peoples who founded the kingdoms of Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom were, by and large, range-tied shepherds (Num. 32:1; 2 Kgs. 3:4; Jer. 49:20) and land-tied farmers (Gen. 36:7; Num. 20:17; Ruth 2–3). Throughout their histories, the extent to which one or the other of these two pursuits was emphasized by a given household or cluster of families was determined by local climatic and landscape conditions and by changing opportunities for involvement in local and regional trade. The organizational principle which facilitated adaptive shifts in either the direction of pastoral or agricultural pursuits was tribalism — an ideology based on the idea of claimed descent from a common ancestor with possibilities for manipulation to accommodate shifts back and forth between land-tied and range-tied pursuits at the level of either individual households, groups of households, or whole communities.

The economic pursuits of most people were either centered on land-tied production of cereals and tree fruits, or on the production of meat and milk on the hoof by means of range-tied husbandry of sheep and goats. Depending on which of these pursuits were emphasized, the particulars of tribal social organization would vary. A shift in emphasis toward land-tied production through sedentarization involved ascent of village-based clans linking people to particular plots of agricultural lands. A shift in the opposite direction through nomadization typically led to greater emphasis on creation of tribal networks extending over wider regions. While households specializing more in one or the other of these pursuits coexisted in the same villages and hamlets, the proportion represented by one or the other pursuit would vary considerably from one village to the next. This proportion might also vary considerably over time within a particular household, hamlet, village, or region.

By means of manipulation of claimed ancestors, individuals and households were able to affiliate with named groups and sections within the larger tribes (Num. 13:6; 32:12). Such generative genealogy permitted individuals and households, as well as larger social units, to split, subdivide, or coalesce, depending on economic opportunities or conflicts arising within a given social unit (Gen. 36). Given sufficient external threat, it also permitted coalescing of tribes into supratribal entities to form kingdoms.

While the rise of kings involved introduction of a transient, supratribal layer of bureaucratic organization, it did not extinguish the premonarchical tribal social order (1 Kgs. 4:7-19). Instead, this order accommodated itself to the new supratribal monarchical order. Such accommodation was facilitated in part by the mechanism of generative genealogy. The persistence of the tribal order is reflected, in part, in the continued association of particular tribes with their traditional tribal territories throughout the monarchical period. It was also reflected in residential proximity of kindred and patterns of cooperation and conflict throughout the period.

Whereas in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the rise of supratribal polities in the form of centralized states led to a division of society into two realms — urban elite and rural tribesmen — no such pronounced division of society occurred in the Iron Age kingdoms of the southern Levant. While a nascent form of such division may have emerged in certain major urban centers, it was by no means on par with that found in Egypt and Mesopotamia. To the extent that it did occur, it would have been in Cisjordan more than in Transjordan during the Iron II period. This is because predation on rural tribesmen by urban elites could be done with less risk of resistance in Cisjordan due to its more favorable agricultural conditions.

During Iron II, administration of hinterland tribal territories was centered in fortified “towns” usually consisting of a cluster of administrative buildings located on the top of a hill of some sort and surrounded by ramparts and/or walls and sometimes protected by a moat and entered by gates. To varying degrees, each major town had an administrative bureaucracy consisting of a cadre of bureaucrats whose role it was to administer the economic affairs of the surrounding hinterland tribes. The existence and extent of power of such bureaucrats can be ascertained from the study of instruments of delegated power, such as stamp seals and related artifacts.

The daily lives of most members of these ancient kingdoms were caught up in activities related to the quest for food. People lived in small villages and hamlets surrounded by agricultural lands and pastures. Villages and hamlets consisted of various configurations of houses, caves, and tents, depending on the conditions of production in various geographical regions. As a general rule, the more “risky” these food production conditions were, whether due to the vicissitudes of climate, trade, or politics, the greater the fluidity of the tribal social networks and the greater the shifts in rural settlement patterns. Cycles of sedentarization and nomadization appear generally to have been more pronounced in Transjordan than in Cisjordan. In Transjordan such cycles become more pronounced as one moves southward from Ammon, to Moab, into Edom.

Power relations within each of these Iron Age tribal kingdoms are best described as being counterpoised rather than ranked within some scalar hierarchy. Thus it was possible for there to be several political centers of gravity within each kingdom, each center basing its power on a different political resource. For example, one center may be politically powerful because of its location on the junction of two or more intersecting highways (Gezer, Heshbon). Another may base its power on being a processing and distribution center for certain agricultural products (Beer-sheba?). A third may base its power on its being the home of an important religious service or shrine (Jerusalem). Such structures stand in sharp contrast to the scalar hierarchies associated with the hydraulic societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. They also are more consonant with the egalitarian ideals of tribal societies.

Consistent with the existence of hierarchical power structures would be overlapping territorial units. The boundaries separating different local- level political units would best be described as fuzzy and fluid rather than clear and fixed (Josh. 15; 19:1-9). This is because the economic activities engaged in by one group may be such that they can easily co-occur with those carried out by another. For example, one tribal segment may be primarily pastoral, another primarily agricultural. Thus both would stand to benefit from the one overlapping the other, as pasture animals belonging to one group would be allowed to graze on the stubble fields claimed by another.

While the biblical evidence could be interpreted to suggest that kings emerged already at the end of Iron I, the archaeological evidence points to Iron IIB-C as being the period when land-tied food production, sedentarization, bureaucratic control, and regional integration reached its highest peak. Iron IIA appears to have been a transitional period. The initial impetus for the coalescence of these tribal kingdoms surely includes the arrival of the Philistines in Iron IA, which forced the Israelite tribes to coalesce under a “king.” The rise of the monarchy in Israel, in turn, very likely was one of the factors which compelled first the Ammonite tribes, then the Moabite tribes, and last the Edomite tribes to coalesce under a “king.”

Bibliography. P. Bienkowski, “The Date of Sedentary Occupation in Edom,” in Early Edom and Moab (Sheffield, 1992), 92-112; I. Finkelstein, “The Great Transformation: The ‘Conquest’ of the Highlands Frontiers and the Rise of the Territorial States,” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy (Sheffield, 1994), 349-65; N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll, 1979); L. G. Herr, “Tell el-ʿUmayri and the Madaba Plains Region during the Late Bronze–Iron Age I Transition,” in Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, ed. S. Gitin, A. Mazar, and E. Stern (Jerusalem, 1998), 251-64; Ø. S. LaBianca, Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan. Hesban 1 (Berrien Springs, 1990); LaBianca and R. W. Younker, “The Kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom,” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Levy (Sheffield, 1994), 399-445; J. M. Miller, “Early Monarchy in Moab?” in Early Edom and Moab, ed. Bienkowski (Sheffield, 1992), 77-91; R. W. Younker, “Moabite Social Structure,” BA 60 (1997): 237-48.

Øystein S. LaBianca

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

TRIBE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)