General Conclusion

Summary

The notion of social and economic crisis through which social-scientific exegesis reads key biblical texts and reconstitutes the conditions in ancient Israel has been found wanting. Tax pressure indeed forced farmers to produce more. Impressed work forced them to work when there was little to do in the fields. Loans had to be paid back with high interest rates. Yet, these extra burdens are not sufficient to provoke a crisis. It is the absence rather than the presence of taxes, corvée and credit that reveals a depressed economy. However exploitative economic relations are, they constitute a web of relations in which solidarity goes hand in hand with exploitation. In spite of high interest rates, farmers were better protected against climatic and political uncertainties when merchants and patrons were present to offer loans than when they had to rely only on kinship solidarity.

There was no structural crisis from the eighth century bce onwards. The inhabitants of Yehud coped with the various circumstantial crises they faced but it is clear that they survived them or there would be no Bible today, at least not one produced long ago in the Palestinian central range. General conditions made life possible if not enviable; the iconic prophets disguised as heroes of social justice fade away into irrelevance.