According to Gottwald, although the ordinary people of Canaan includ- ing the Apiru felt the increasingly steady convergence of consciousness on the desirability and possibility of weakening the Egyptian imperial grip, they however do not show a corresponding convergence of con- sciousness on the desirability and possibility of reorganising their socio- economic and political existence on non feudal lines, so as to replace the status-quo. The resistance during the rest of the Amarna era, from about 2000 to 1200 BCE, did not reach the point of common intention toward overthrowing the socio-economic and political set-up of the city-states. They were in real terms isolated hence orchestrated uncoordinated resis- tance tactics to the prevailing scenario. Also, from the numerous texts available, the most distinguishing generic trait of the Apiru turns out to be socio-political rather than ethnic or economic, although there are economic features that follow systematically from the dominant socio- political factors. The term Apiru then had several connotations ranging from, robber, fugitive, refugee, rebels, who prey upon and threaten the dominant order, since they were specialised in guerrilla-like tactics. In simple, the term was pejorative, implying one or an outlaw group per-
ceived as threatening a person or the existing socio-political order.49
Thus, Apiru cannot be classified as a homogeneous ethnic group in one location. They were scattered all over the ancient Near East.
With the waning Egyptian imperial hold on Canaanite city-states around 1310 B.C, the Apiru groups were afforded an opportunity to organise a revolution to unshackle the rest of the population from the exploitative city-state socio-economic system. While there is no concrete evidence suggesting the Apiru-peasant cooperation, Gottwald thinks that we may not be totally wrong to conjecture about the possibility of these Apiru bands providing nuclei for an anti-feudal social order in those regions of Palestine where Egyptian and city-state power had receded in the post- Amarna era. The Bible seems to confirm this assumption. The composi- tion of the group that followed David (1 Sam 22:1) and other rebel lead-
ers show how easy it was to gather discontented people in Canaan,50
49
Cf. Gottwald, ‘Were the Early Israelites Pastoral Nomads?’, pp. 247-250; Gottwald, The
Tribes of Yahweh, pp. 398-406.
50
thereby suggesting the possibility of Habiru/Apiru-peasant collaboration, in the struggle against Canaanite city-state exploitation.
It is easy to explain the relationship between the Apiru groups and the peasant populations of Canaan when we understand the manner in which the peasants responded to demands by the city-states. Contrary to the previously held idea of complete withdrawal from the society of all the oppressed groups, according to Gottwald, to escape taxation in kind and curve, peasants would rebel; remaining in place if possible, thus just dodging the system and fleeing if necessary. To make up for the loss of human and natural resources, the city-states would have to increase the burden they placed upon those who remained under their control or those caught-up. On the other hand, this in turn would increase the flow of fugitives, joining the rebels in the inaccessible places. An enlarged flow of newcomers to the existing Apiru bands would swell to a point where the assimilation of newcomers was no longer possible. New out- law communities would begin to form, composed of nuclei of refugees from the same city or village. Organisationally, these new groups would be relying on their own resourcefulness. However, Apiru groups of longer standing provided them with counsel and adaptive models of
social, military and economic organisation.51
It must be emphasised that by this time, all these Apiru/Habiru groups were united in their anti-feudalism stance but were not well organised with a clear agenda on how to decisively deal with feudalism. Only with early Israel did the diffuse anti-feudal sentiment of Canaan become a highly charged cultural, socio-economic, and military-political revolution. That is, according to Gottwald, egalitarian social revolutionary con- sciousness as distinct from ruling-class appropriation of aspects of egali- tarian sentiment first received full literate expression in the whole an- cient Near East with early Israel. That in itself is of great significance, as the underclasses of Canaan who joined in early Israel decided that writ- ing was too valuable a tool to be left to the ruling class. Without any further elaboration, Gottwald suggests that they seized upon the alpha- betic script as a simple instrument of expression that could serve an egalitarian community instead of aiding ruling elite to control and ma-
51
Cf. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh, p. 407; Gottwald, ‘The Hypothesis of the Revolution- ary Origins of Ancient Israel: A Response to Hauser and Thompson’, p. 46.
nipulate the populace.52 This may be the origin of protest prophetic voices against exploitation that find expression is some sections of the Bible. These voices include, the manumission laws.