“Imagine There’s no Peoples”. A Claim against the Identity Approach in Phoenician Studies through Comparison with the Israelite Field

Abstract

At a time dominated by the rhetoric of identity and in a region, the Levant, where political and cultural bor- ders seem insurmountable, this paper aims to create a parallelism between two study traditions: Phoenician and Israelite studies. The main point of contact between the two disciplines is that, in both of them, questions of identity emerge as pivotal issues in the interpretation of many kinds of sources (language, religion, material culture, etc.). This paper proposes a theoretical framework in which research focusing on the definition and localisation of ethnic identities gives way to research which is interested more in the Levant as a whole, and in communities rather than peoples. Accord- ing to the anthropologist J.-L. Amselle, it is time to dismiss the “ethnographic reason”, which creates or emphasises discontinuity, minimises continuity and, thus, multiplies ethnicities and academic disciplines. After all, if there is one vocation that is proper to Phoenician studies, it should be found in its inner urge to look beyond geographic, chrono- logical and cultural borders.