The Ancient Habiru/Apiru
By
Marvin W. Huddleston
Introduction
Apologetics, defined by Webster as "the branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity",(1) has been getting help from some unusual and unexpected places lately. These sources of support come from a number of varied viewpoints. Two recent examples include a secular magazine article (2) suggesting many of the formally hotly contested "myths" of the Bible (such as the Flight from Egypt, the rule of David, and the days of Jesus) may now bear scientific archaeological evidence (and thus prove to be true). A second example was the analysis of the story of Noah's Flood as told in the Bible on MSNBC's Internet webpage (3) this past summer which supported the idea that new evidence appears to substantiate the historical accuracy of the Genesis Flood account. MSNBC published yet another such story concerning scientific evidence for an ancient great flood in its November 18th online newsmagazine.(4) Thus it seems that a study of the people known as the Habiru and their relationship to the ancient Hebrews comes during a climate of almost political correctness.
My interest in these people date back to a World Literature course I had taken during my final undergraduate work in the fall of 1998. I encountered a professor who challenged my faith in a couple of areas of my Christian Theology. We Christians are told to "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."(5) Another passage tells the Christian to "...Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."(6) This encounter proved to demonstrate a void in my apologetic preparations.
A number of questions were raised concerning the historical accuracy of the Biblical accounts. Included among these objections were the "facts" that despite the wealth of claims found in the annals of the Bible, no single trace can be found of the Israelites in Egypt, of the historicity of the great patriarchs, or of the alleged conquest of Canaan by Israel under the leadership of Joshua.
The scope of this paper will attempt to search for some of this elusive evidence. Can the Apiru and/or Habiru be linked to the early Israelites and their conquest of Canaan? Are the traditional chronologies of the Egyptian Dynasties accurate and reliable? What effect did the events in Egypt have on Israel and its conquest of Canaan? We shall look at the work of a number of scholars in our attempt to answer these and other pertinent questions.
There appears to be two basic approaches one can take for the study of these ancient peoples. One is a linguistic analysis of the words "Habiru" and "Hebrew."(7) The second is an approach that examines the political and sociological relationships at work between the major powers in question, and during the time frame and region in question, and their relationship to the Hebrew people. The latter has been chosen for the basis of this paper.
Background
One cannot divorce the relationship between the Egyptian Pharaoh's and their respective dynasties and Israel in any study of the Mesopotamian politics that existed between these two cultures. If one takes the Biblical account of the conquest of Canaan by Israel under the leadership of Joshua as historical fact, then one cannot but question what role the mighty Egyptian Empire had on such an incursion into their domain.
The region in question was under the control of the Egyptian Empire at the time of the entrance of the Israelites. However, we find a curious situation in the political climate in Egypt. The foreign policy of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten, was virtually non-existent. In addition, this Pharaoh was more interested in a Cultural Revolution in Egypt that included the elevation of the sun-disk god Aten to a place of supremacy over the traditional Egyptian deities than he was in the events in Canaan. This put Akhenaten in the curious place of theologically approaching monotheism, which was in contrast to his predecessors.
This diversion from the foreign policy of the Egyptian Empire also created a power vacuum in the region. Neighboring powers such as the Hittites, the Mitanni, Assyria and others were vying for control. This in part allowed for the incursion of the Israelites into Canaan without threat of intervention by the Egyptian Empire. Thus Joshua, who was the primary leader of the Israelite conquest according to the Bible, and the Israelites were able to carry out their mission quite successfully. Akhenaten's lack of interest in foreign policy during this period greatly aided Joshua's conquest of the region of Canaan. Had it not been for Pharaoh's diversions from matters of foreign policy toward more pressing issues at home, Joshua would have faced the power of the military might of Egypt in addition to the local forces.
But what occurred in Egypt to create this vacuum and diversion from foreign policy in the first place? Wyatt terms this occasion as the "Egyptian Watergate."(8) Wyatt postulates the theory that the decline in the Egyptian Empire was due to the events detailed in the book of Exodus in the Bible. He concludes that the loss of the majority of the Egyptian Army, the Pharaoh, and the priests of Egypt at the Red Sea, along with the previous plague's that climaxed in the loss of the firstborn of Egypt weakened the nation and threatened it's very sovereignty. These events, according to Wyatt, became a closely guarded national secret. He states "If word of what happened here became known, Egypt could lose her control over her vassal territories and that would mean financial disaster." He goes on to point out the rising contender for power in the region, the kingdom of the Hittites, was under rule by a new king, Suppiluliumas, and that if word of Egypt's situation had gotten out, they would have been "sitting ducks."
There is another plausible reason for the reluctance exhibited by Egypt and it's Pharaoh to meddle in the affairs of the Israelites in the region of Canaan. This possibility stemmed from a memory that would still have been vivid in the minds of the people of Egypt at the time in question. The remembrance in question being that nations historical memory of the consequences of Egypt's previous defiance of God's interventions in the affairs of the Israelites, their former slave labor force. Such a memory certainly may have played a role. Thus this reluctance on the part of Egypt to interfere in the activities of the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan may serve as yet another indirect source of supporting evidence to the historicity of the Biblical Narrative.
If we take the events of the Exodus and the Plague's in Egypt as historical facts, it stand's to reason that a theological shift toward an almost monotheistic religion in Egypt following those events isn't hard to imagine. This shift in the religious and political structure during the immediate as well as future time period makes good sense. The shift to the worship of the god Aten might have resulted from the perceived inability of the previous Egyptian deities to adequately oppose the God of the slaves. The new attitudes that resulted from these experiences in the lives of the Egyptians would have persisted for quite some time.
Irregardless of the causes, we find Egypt at the time of the conquest of Canaan in a state of utter turmoil. We similarly find a power vacuum in the region surrounding Canaan.
This brings us to one of the problems scholar’s face in tracing the movements of the early Israelites. This difficulty is due to the traditional chronology followed by many Egyptologists in dating the many dynasties of the Pharaoh's. Rohl has demonstrated that this chronology is at the very least suspect.(9) Ron Wyatt, quoting James Henry Breasted's work, A History of Egypt, echoes Rohl's dissatisfaction with the normal accepted chronologies. Breasted is quoted as stating "...that the basis on which the information of ancient Egyptian dynasties rests, is unreliable, yet it continues in use."(10) Not much has changed since Breasted penned those words in 1905. Secular scholarship continues the use of the traditional chronologies, and secular teachers continue to present these as accepted fact.
One has to wonder what such questionable methods, if they do indeed prove to be incorrect, have had on our understanding of the reliability and historical accuracy of the Biblical narratives.
The Habiru
Before discussing the Habiru, some groundwork must be laid. The identification of the Israelites in the Egyptian region is an item of importance. The passage concerning the construction of the store-cities of Pithom and Ramesses by the Israelites is of interest. In the first chapter of Exodus we read, "So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh."(11) The question should be addressed as to whether or not there is any historical evidence to support this claim in Exodus. Did the Egyptians use such slave labor? Circular reasoning makes it undesirable to solely rely on this passage from Scripture. It is desirable to verify such claims with outside, extra-biblical texts. One Papyrus, known as Papyrus Leiden 348, sheds light on this question. It reads, " Distribute grain rations to the soldiers and to the 'Apiru who transport stones to the great pylon of Ramesses."(12) Malamat states "We can not enter here into the 'Apiru problem and its complex relation with the Habiru and Hebrew. Suffice it to state that we concur with many scholars in assuming that the Hebrews are somewhat connected linguistically and ethnically with the 'Apiru."(13) This statement agrees quite well with the scope of this paper on the subject.
The identity of the ancient nomadic people known as the Habiru (Apiru) has been hotly debated for many years. Nadav Na'aman of the Tel Aviv University writes, "The question of whether or not the Habiru should be equated with the Hebrews ('ibrim) has now been discussed for almost a century, but a scholarly consensus has not been reached." These people are known chiefly from the Amarna Letters (15), as well as other sources such as Sumerian documents discussed below. These people obviously caused no small amount of turmoil among the neighboring cities and towns in the regions where they were active.
According to Rohl, these tablets number over three hundred and eighty (16), and were letters written by various city state rulers as well as the powerful "Great Kings" of the northern kingdoms primarily to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. The kings and rulers wrote to Pharaoh in the Akkadian language (cuneiform), the tablets were translated upon arrival in Egypt for Pharaoh and his advisors, and stored in Pharaoh's "House of Correspondence," only to be discovered three thousand years later.
The wide divergence of source material referencing the Apiru (or Habiru) in the cuneiform texts from different regions of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor itself causes some difficulty in identifying these people with the Hebrew. The wide geographic and dating range of the material sheds some light on any attempt to identify the term solely with the Hebrews. Obviously, from the available evidence, one cannot be dogmatic in their identification of these people as the Hebrews. Nevertheless, the concept that this term excludes the Hebrews cannot be solidly defended either.
In his work on the Israelites, Isserlin discusses the Habiru/Apiru question and notes "...the term refers to a much wider class of 'displaced' people found from Mesopotamia to Egypt during the second millennium BC. Some took service as laborers or mercenaries, others became brigands; and runaway peasants might swell their ranks -- the term was not mainly an ethnic one. Some connection with the Hebrews of the Bible cannot be ruled out completely."(17)
The Armana Letters themselves fail to give much detail about the Habiru. William Albright gives one of the best examples of a description of the Habiru from a Sumarian document that supposedly dates from about 2000 BC that gives reference to the Apiru. This document describes these people, "...As for their men and women - Their men go where they please. Their women carry spindle and spinning bowl, Their encampments are wherever they pitch them, the decrees of Shulgi, my king, they do not obey."(18)
Others describe these people as "uprooted, stateless individuals who became seasonal agricultural workers, mercenaries, slaves, or bandits, depending upon circumstances."(19)
One thing is certain: The Habiru/Apiru included nomadic people who were employed as mercenaries in the region of the conquest.(20)
Compare these descriptions with an interesting passage found in I Samuel 13, which reads in part, "Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, "Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!"(21) (Italics mine). This passage seems to differentiate between the terms Israel and Hebrew. Rohl takes this position and further identifies these Hebrews as the Habiru of Palestine.(22)
The importance of these facts cannot be overstressed in our present study, for these agree well with the description found in the Biblical Narrative. Quoting Rohl, " Here, then, is quite a extraordinary situation. Biblical scholars have come to the conclusion that the Hebrews under David are exact (but later) reflection of the historical Amarna Habiru...the Amarna Habiru do not simply bear a striking resemblance to David's Hebrew's, they are David's Hebrews!"(23) He goes on to stress, "In the New Chronology, the Habiru of Palestine mentioned in the Amarna Letters are recognized as the Hebrews (Heb. Ibrim) of I and II Samuel. In particular, they are to be identified with the followers of David during the period of the latter's exile from Israelite court in the reign of Saul, and David's first seven years as king of Bebron prior to the capture of Jerusalem."(24)
Conclusions
It must be stated that while the term Apiru/Habiru cannot be taken as solely referring to the early Israelites, it likewise cannot be totally ruled out. The evidence clearly opens the obvious conclusion that the Apiru of Egypt at least included the early Israelites. The reason one fails to find "evidence" of the Israelites in Egypt can only be attributed to a failure to understand the terminology involved. Any scholar searching for the Israelites in Egypt must understand the ethnic groups of the region and how they were described by the Egyptians themselves.
Likewise, the claims that evidence cannot be found of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites faces the same problem. The evidence seems to support the idea that the term Habiru, while not inclusively referring to the Hebrews (especially David's band of men while he was in Exile under Saul), certainly at least included them.
In a similar note, we have demonstrated that the traditional chronology of Egypt and Canaan during the periods in question is at the very least suspect. New work on the chronology of the Egyptian Dynasties and the Pharaoh's has had and will continue to have a marked impact on our understanding of the peoples enslaved in Egypt during the period just prior to the Exodus. These new chronologies continue to chip away from the difficulty scholar's have faced in the past in identifying the Israelites with their major exploits as told in the Bible. The more knowledge we gain through the sciences of Archaeology and Egyptology the closer we find ourselves to the historical truths as recorded in the Bible.