ABSTRACT
This essay illustrates a number of themes and methods, which have been shown to have great potential in supporting coherence and continuity in a historical narrative of a history of Palestine over millennia. Opening with a chart, sketching and illustrating many such methods and themes, which are to be interrelated in each of the projected volumes of the PaHH project, this chapter takes up six examples of interrelated methods and themes to illustrate concretely how they support the primary commitments of our history. Significant themes and methods illustrated are (1) settlement patterns and the economic potentials of archaeological landscapes; (2) the distinctive independence of sub-regions in a continuous historical narrative; (3) Palestine’s role as land-bridge between Asia, Africa and Arabia, and the multi-cultural character of Palestine’s history; (4) Palestine’s Mediterranean economy and its enduring polity of patronage; (5) Palestine’s intellectual history and the development of religion from ancient Near Eastern polytheisms to the supersessionist monotheism of Samaritanism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and (6) continuity and discontinuity of ethnic identities in Palestine’s historical narrative.
