Scripture and Modern Israeli Literature 281ucts,” or “inventions,” even “imagined communities.” Israeli identity has
not escaped this critique. Indeed, one might well apply this assessment to
the history of what was recently called Israel’s “Biblemania.” Th is mania
gained momentum, according to Anita Shapira, aft er the establishment of
the State of Israel, when Prime Minister David Ben Gurion “elevated the
Bible to the chief intellectual focus of the young state.”2
I would suggest, however, that this “elevation” was not a new inven-
tion. One can readily argue that the Bible has enjoyed this elevated status
throughout Jewish intellectual history, despite the competition from later
postbiblical sources. In the Jewish tradition as a whole, Robert Alter has
observed, the Hebrew Bible had been “doubly” canonized — as a religious,
that is, doctrinal, theological, or ethical model, as well as a literary (and lin-
guistic) model.3 Th e fi rst aspect follows the “thoroughly unambiguous defi -
nition” of the canon as a list of books accepted as “genuine and inspired.”4
Th e second aspect derives from the literary dimension of the Bible, namely,
its “brilliant literary artistry,” its “imaginative imagery,” or its “luminous
poetic achievements.”5 Moreover, Alter avers, the Hebrew Bible is the great
enabler of expression; it is “the great compendium of cultural references for
its Hebrew readers, who are presumed to have a word-by-word familiarity
with it: images, motifs, narrative situations are there to be called up by a
writer with a fl ick of a phrase.”6
In light of this historical continuity, the attempt to co-opt the Bible in
the service of nascent Jewish nationalism is not surprising, nor can it be
considered as mere “construction.” On the contrary, it may illustrate the
approach suggested by Anthony D. Smith and his cohorts.7 For Smith,
national identity represents a community’s response to its down-to-earth
emotional needs to connect with its ethnic myths, symbols, and memo-
ries.8 Th e Hebrew Bible has apparently answered these needs throughout
most of Jewish history, even if in diff erent fashions.
Indeed, the people of Israel, in their bimillennial attempt to connect with
their doubly canonized Bible, seem to have utilized, just like other commu-
nities, all three measures Smith attributes to such national eff orts — reitera-
tion, continuity, and appropriation. A new measure entered this process,
moreover, in the modern era: secularization. Although of long standing,
this element has only recently come to the forefront of academic discus-
sion. One can even detect some bewilderment in contemporary scholars’
attempts to pin down and defi ne the nature of this recent leg of the process.
Alter, for one, suggests that while for the medieval poets the two canonical
aspects dwelled peacefully together, modern Hebrew writers have elevated