Conquest, and Not a Promise: Nationalism in Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Philosophy and the Antiquity of the Jewish People

Yehezkel Kaufmann is renowned for his dating of the Book of Joshua and parts of Judges to the period they describe, viewing them as evidence of historical reality. At the same time, he strongly rejected David Ben-Gurion’s claim regarding the antiquity of the ‘Hebrews’ as a people existing in Canaan since the patriarchal period, even though this idea could have provided an ethnographic basis and geopolitical justification for Kaufmann’s own assertion regarding the historicity of the conquest narratives. Kaufmann presented textual arguments for both claims, that is, the dating of the conquest narrative to its actual historical period and the rejection of the identification of Israel as an ancient Hebrew people. However, some of his arguments did not withstand critical scrutiny. This article suggests that Kaufmann’s research conclusions were influenced by his philosophical and political positions, shaped in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and during its early decades. His writings, especially Exile and Estrangement and his essays on society and politics, reflect a complex stance regarding the role of nationalism and the Jewish people as a nation, intertwined with the question of their right to the Land of Israel. Although Kaufmann longed for a national and ethnic restoration of the Jewish people in their ancestral land, using the terms ‘proprietary rights’ and ‘natural national rights’, he avoided romantic notions of a racial or primordial bond between the people of Israel and the land.