Desert Religion

Although almost all Bedouin have followed Islam since early in its history, those who remained nomadic in the deserts of the Middle East found the religion barely accessible to them as an ongoing spiritual and psychological support, owing to their distance from Islamic religious instruction and institutions. For such support, they relied instead on primordial, often animistic, practices that had not changed much from the religious behavior of their pre-Islamic ancestors, and which could still be witnessed among pre-modern Bedouin down to the late 20th century. This chapter identifies the similarities between these ancient pre-Islamic religious practices and those of the biblical Israelites, focusing specifically on their common attitudes toward sacrifice, the sacredness of blood, the role of ethics, and respect for taboos, oaths, and vows.

Desert Society

Dwelling in dispersion and far from any governmental law enforcement agencies that could provide them security, nomadic desert dwellers needed ways to protect themselves from violations such as murder, assault, insult, and theft. They achieved this security mainly by forming groups based on blood kin, or people of common descent, people whom they believed would honor claims of common loyalty and cooperation when problems with others arose. Each group they organized had a specific security function. The tribal structure of the Israelites as randomly noted in the Bible bears several similarities to that of the Bedouin. This chapter explores these similarities as well as their impact on the status and roles of the genders and on the institution of matrimony in both societies.

Desert Oral Traditions

The Bedouin oral literary product—proverbs, genealogies, tribal stories, and poetry—shares many likenesses with these genres as they appear in the Hebrew Bible. This commonality pertains, even though some Bedouin oral traditions survived until the late twentieth century CE, when they were still heard recited, while the biblical traditions existed orally only until their ancient transcription in the Bible. This chapter brings examples from the various genres of oral tradition in both societies, comparing them in form, content, background, and initiative, and offering insights into their use in the biblical texts. Bedouin poetry also sheds light on the Bible’s oldest poems, “The Song of the Sea” and “The Song of Deborah.”

Bedouin Israelites in the Hebrew Bible

This chapter explores the question of what the abundance of Bedouin culture in the Bible tells us about the possibility that the ancient Israelites who were depicted there as nomads were indeed that. It thus addresses two issues. First is how the biblical authors acquired their rich Bedouin-like materials: through plain observation or through transmitted traditions from a nomadic past? The chapter thus studies Pharaoh Merneptah’s citation of a tribe called Israel in the land of Canaan, in 1208 BCE, suggesting that Israelite nomads, whom the Bible does not mention, lived there before the Israelites liberated by Moses could have arrived there. The second issue is: what impelled the biblical authors to infuse these materials into a theological opus concerning the relationship between the Israelites and their god, Yahweh?

Bedouin Culture in the Biblical Home

In describing its main early characters as nomads, the Hebrew Bible provides us with features of their material culture and social behaviour that correspond closely to facets of pre-modern Bedouin life in the same areas: the Negev, Sinai, and the hills and deserts of eastern Canaan. These parallels are particularly evident when seen against the reasons that engendered them, explaining, for example, why the early Israelites dwelled in tents during their migrations and thatched booths at the end of summer, ate unleavened bread, quail, and manna, gave names to desert places, utilized stars in the desert sky and desert plants, and extended hospitality to travellers. The patriarch Abraham’s reception of the angels disguised as men who had come to announce the forthcoming motherhood of his barren wife, Sarah, for example, recalls Bedouin hospitality in all its detail.

Desert Laws

To compensate for the traditional lack of centralized authority in the desert, Bedouin society developed a conventionalized legal system that included an individual’s right to use private might to deter and rectify violations perpetrated against him or his clan, whether homicide, the violation of women, or many lesser offenses. In keeping with the biblical portrayal of the earliest Israelites as desert-dwelling nomads, some of the laws ascribed to them are consistent with those of the nomadic Bedouin. This chapter identifies these laws, which mainly reflect the same absence of governmental law enforcement that always obliged Middle Eastern nomads to fend for themselves. To further appreciate the similarities between Bedouin and biblical law, this chapter explores the rationale and workings of the institutions of vengeance, the protection of the weak, and the peaceful resolution of conflict.

Bedouin and Israelites in the Desert

This chapter confirms the veracity of the biblical portrayal of the Israelites as nomads in the deserts and semi-arid areas of Canaan by examining the climatic conditions in these areas and comparing how both pre-modern Bedouin and the depicted early Israelites adjusted to them in their economic life. The low level of rainfall, its yearly irregularity, its monthly inconsistency, and its spotty, geographical dispersion, account for the fact that pre-modern Bedouin as well as the depicted ancient Israelites lived mainly as raisers of livestock rather than as farmers, each with the same type of water-preserving animals and the need to migrate with them from one spot of pasture to another. Similarities in the management of flocks by both communities are detailed, as are their common attempts at agriculture when conditions allowed.

Introduction: Finding the Bible through the Bedouin

IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1970, I WAS living in the heart of the Negev desert at a fledgling educational institution called Midreshet Sde-Boker, from where I conducted ethnographic research into Bedouin culture—the culture of nomadic dwellers in the desert. One Sunday as I sat in my study preparing a lecture that I was to present to a conference the following Friday, a Bedouin friend, Swaylim Abu Bilayya, of the nearby Azazma Sarahin tribe knocked on my door....