Journey Through The Negev

Preface

This narrative describes a journey through Israel's Negev desert, one of the world's most desolate and punishing terrains. In part, it recounts a physical ordeal. In part, it chronicles a spiritual pilgrimage of self-discovery. In part, it relates an intellectual quest to understand why the first enduring concept of One God, that of the Hebrew Bible, evolved in that place.

Why did that concept take form and gain permanence in such desolation and not in the seemingly more welcoming setting of an urban civilization? Yes, Moses was raised in the luxury of the Egyptian Court. There, plausibly within then living memory, the Pharaoh Akhenaten had transformed the sun god Re into a supreme being. However, the concept of that being faded with Akhenaten's death. For the peoples that Moses led, the experience of One God was forged in the desert.

The events at Sinai, whether literal or figurative, were but the first recorded adoption of One God. Two millennia later, the Prophet Mohammed carried that message anew to the world. As were the words given at Sinai, those words too were forged in the desert.

The great river valleys of Egypt, Babylonia, India, and China supported far richer material cultures than could the barrenness of the desert. They afforded comfort and, for their elites, the leisure to pursue ideas. Yet, notwithstanding flirtations with the concept of a single deity, neither the ancient Egyptians nor the Babylonians adopted One God. Only with His resurgence through the rise of Islam did the inhabitants of those regions embrace Him. And while Islam gained a foothold in India and China, most of those peoples retained their previous religious faiths.

To explore why monotheism is so tied to the desert, I chose to journey through the Negev (with a side journey through the Sinai), literally to follow in the footsteps of the Patriarchs. I traveled in early August, the most trying time of the year. In so doing, I determined to experience as closely as possible the physical life that the Patriarchs led and through that to discover its spiritual revelations.

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Shaped like an inverted isosceles triangle, the Negev encompasses the southern two-thirds of Israel. In the north, the base of the triangle forms a rough line of about 70 miles that reaches from the Mediterranean Sea through the city of Be'er Sheva to the southern tip of the Dead Sea. On the east and west, the sides of the triangle extend more than a 120 miles, south and south-south-east, respectively, to where they almost converge on the Gulf of Aqaba at the southern tip of Israel.

Geologically, the Negev forms the eastern-most part of the Sinai plateau, the terrible wilderness through which the tribes of Israel wandered during their 40 years of Exodus. Its eastern edge is defined by the Arava - the great valley which extends the length of Israel from the Dead Sea south, and which marks its boundary with Jordan. The Negev's western edge is defined by the Egyptian border, an area of barren desiccation. In Be'er Sheva, rainfall averages eight inches a year. At the Gulf of Aqaba, it averages little more than one inch. In Aqaba, two years without rain are not uncommon. Its climate today is unchanged from that of the Biblical period.

The landscape ranges from monotonous rubble strewn limestone plains to dramatically sculpted wadis. These are the dry stream and river beds, eroded over the millennia by the fleeting but torrential rains which may fall a few times each winter, if at all

Wadis are much like the canyons or arroyos of the American southwest and are formed by the same erosion process. They may be dramatic fissures as narrow as three or four feet across with vertical walls rising 50 to 100 feet. They may be virtually flat valleys three or four miles wide. They may take shape gradually, as do the foothills of America's Appalachian Mountains. They may form abruptly below the face of a dry waterfall 200 feet or more high.

In some places, gully-like wadis slice through the terrain like giant notches. In other places, the wadi floors are flat, appearing at first glance like abandoned concrete roads. They are formed by the limestone strata common to parts of the Negev. With each winter run-off, the surging waters undercut the uppermost strata, eroding the wadi in horizontal sections.

The centrality of the Negev to the Biblical story is reflected throughout the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers.

When Abraham (then still named Abram) left Haran, he passed through Canaan and "journeyed by stages toward the Negev" (Genesis 12:9). When he cast out Hagar, his concubine, and Ishmael, her son, mother and child wandered in the wilderness of Be'er Sheva (Genesis 21:15), eventually settling in the wilderness of Paran (Genesis 21:21-22). The servants of Abraham and those of Abimelech, King of Gerar, quarreled over water at Be'er Sheva (Genesis 21:25). Abraham, after attempting to offer Isaac, his son, as a sacrifice in the land of Moriah, returned to Be'er Sheva (Genesis 22:19). And it was in the Negev that Isaac settled and later married Rebekah (Genesis 24: 62,67).

The wilderness of Paran, the largest wadi of the Negev, is a broad valley that drains a vast area of the Sinai Plateau. In its lower reaches, the collected run-off seeps into the soil, providing moisture for pasturage - critical for sustaining the herds and flocks of nomadic peoples.

Biblical references indicate that Paran played a pivotal role not only during the time of the Patriarchs, but that of the Exodus, as well. "... [T]he Israelites set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai [and] the cloud came to rest in the wilderness of Paran" (Numbers 10:12). "... [T]he people set out from Hazeroth and encamped in the wilderness of Paran" (Numbers 12:16). "At the end of forty days [the spies] returned from scouting the land [of Canaan and] went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran..." (Numbers 13:25-26).

Between 1995 and 2000, I mounted five journeys through the Negev, together spending eight weeks traversing its ancient trails. For most of that time, I traveled accompanied by only my guide, Shai Gonorov, and two pack camels. The pages which follow describe my third - and most remarkable - journey, that of August 1997. We explored some of the least traveled areas of the southern Negev, some of which had not seen a human track for months, and possibly years. During that journey, I confronted death twice - first by fever and second by wild dogs. These experiences were pivotal in my struggle to understand why and how a belief in one God may have evolved. Because of them, death took on a very personal quality, a presence, which seemed often with us.

The events that I describe are based on my journal notes, more than 1,400 photographs, dialogues between Shai and myself, and published sources that shed more light on the areas through which we passed and the history that they had witnessed. These latter include my descriptions of the Turkish military campaigns of World War I, the Nabatean Empire, the geology and climate of the Negev, the motivations of the English Arabists, the myth and reality of King Solomon's Mines, and the meaning and symbolism of the haj, among others. I have listed these sources in the bibliography.

This story is a personal narrative rather than an academic treatise. For this reason, I have tried to avoid the detached style of academic discourse and omitted source footnotes.

To complete the story, I have incorporated several incidents from other journeys: my encounter with the prostitute, which took place in 1995, my writing on the veranda of the King David Hotel, which took place in 1996, and the discussions with Shai on the morality of the tribes, which took place during each of our journeys, but particularly that of 1999. With the exception of such literary license, the following pages record my journey of 1997.

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In English, the nomads of the Arab world are called "Bedouin." They refer to themselves as Bedu, which in Arabic means "tribes." Bedu is derived from the more ancient Arabic Badawi, which means "desert dweller" or "one who is related to a Bediyah, or desert." Following the convention of most English Arabists, I have used the term Bedu.

References to the Bedu almost always reflect the perspective of Shai, who has lived among them and studied their ways. The Bedu, themselves, have completely abandoned the southern Negev where we journeyed and, within Israel, their nomadic life. A few who once lived in the Negev migrated to the more spacious areas of the Sinai, where despite the discouragement of the Egyptian government, they continue to roam. Many have migrated to villages near Be'er Sheva, where access to Israel's national water pipeline guarantees a permanent water source for their flocks. A handful have settled in Eilat, where they have entered the urban economy.

I have retained many of the Arabic and Hebrew words and phrases which Shai and I used to provide a flavor of our conversations. The Arabic phrase, Ensha'Allah, "May it be the will of God," is the most common. When first introducing such words and phrases, I have provided translations and have included them in the glossary as well.

Introducing simple and understandable transliterations has proven more of a challenge than I had imagined. Hebrew and, especially, Arabic have guttural and aspirated sounds with no parallels in English. To my knowledge, there are no universally accepted standards for transliterating either.

The Arabic word haj - the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca - might also be spelled hadj or hajj. Indeed, the later two transliterations may provide a more faithful approximation of the Arabic pronunciation. Nonetheless, I have used the former version for its simplicity. In Hebrew, the letters b and v may be used interchangeably, as may the letters f and p. This is especially common in Biblical translations. Thus, Negev may also be spelled Negeb and Arava may be spelled Aravah, Araba, or Arabah. Be'er Sheva is commonly spelled Beersheba, and Paran while usually spelled with a P is pronounced as if Ph and may be spelled with an F.

I have discussed transliterations with Israelis who are fluent in English. As is not uncommon in Middle Eastern discourse, two Israeli's have, at least, three opinions. In the case of transliterations, the opinions appear to depend on which university in the English-speaking world they attended and/or whether their family immigrated to Israel from Eastern Europe, the Arabic speaking world, or "Anglo-Saxon" (English speaking) countries. Typically, none agreed on specific transliterations. All maintained that even their preferred choices were only the "least worst" among unsatisfactory alternatives. At this point, the virtue of consistency became paramount. Frequently, I adopted a spelling that appeared most current in American usage (e.g. Negev) or one that is more or less consistently used in Israeli transliterations to English (e.g. Eilat).

As a final note, in referring to historical periods, I have adopted the designations used by The Biblical Archeology Review - "BCE" (Before the Common Era), which is equivalent to "BC," and "CE" (Common Era) which is equivalent to the more traditional "AD."

May the pages that follow enable my readers to share, in some way, the experiences of my journey - physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Ensha'Allah