The first urban revolution of ancient Israel

Juval Portugali

Chapter 5 in The Second Urban Revolution, 2025, pp 121-163 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter concludes the first part of the book on the first urban revolution, with a proposition claim that the emergence of the Israelite people and identity was associated with an urban revolution that transformed them from a semi-nomadic tribal society to an urban society. It does so from the theoretical perspective of complexity and cognition, firstly by means of an agent-based urban simulation model that simulates a self-organized process by which the spatial interaction between the parts of a system composed of two socio-spatial cultural entities gives rise to the “birth” of a new socio-spatial cultural entity out of the dynamics – a process also termed also “spatial dialectics.” Secondly, it relates this abstract analysis to the archaeological-historical data and discourse that evolved around this process in the past. This link between the model and data involves a discussion concerning the question of “what is a tribe?” and the way the mythical story about the tribe's origin is created. Thirdly, the notions of actual and conceptual cognitive maps are introduced and then related to the biblical terms that refer to tribal and urban settlement forms in order to demonstrate the thesis that the emergence of the Israelite people and identity was associated with an urban revolution that transformed them from a semi-nomadic tribal society to an urban society.

Keywords: Urban simulation models; Spatial dialectic; Cognitive maps; Tribes; City states (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035350117
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