Israel's Past : : Studies on History and Religion in Ancient Israel and Judah / / Bob Becking.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Ebook Package English 2021
• VerfasserIn: Becking, Bob,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft , 535
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XX, 250 p.)

How should one write a history of Ancient Israel? In the last few decades, a lively discussion has taken place on the historiography of ancient Israel. Minimalists such as Philip Davies, Thomas Thompson, and Niels Peter Lemche challenged the usefulness of the Hebrew Bible as a source for constructing Israel's past. Maximalists like Baruch Halpern and William Dever argued instead that the data from the Hebrew Bible should be trusted until otherwise proven. Others – among whom we can name Hans Barstad, Rainer Albertz, and Lester Grabbe – took a third road. The essays in this volume follow that third road by applying insights from the field of philosophy of history. A dozen case studies from David to the earliest Samaritans demonstrate how difficult it is to write a history of ancient Israel without falling in the abyss of an ideology in one direction or another. The matrix designed by Manfred Weippert to look at the past through five windows (landscape, climate, archaeology, epigraphy and only at the end the Hebrew Bible) turned out to be more helpful. The conclusion of this research is that there are some stable pillars in the swamp of the past, but it comes with the warning that the space between these pillars is large and cannot easily be filled.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- List of Original Publications -- Introduction -- David between Ideology and Evidence -- Assyrian Evidence for Iconic Polytheism in Ancient Israel? -- How to Encounter an Historical Problem? “722–720” as a Case Study -- West Semites at Tell Šēḥ Ḥamad: Evidence for the Israelite Exile? -- Phoenician Snakes and a Prophetic Parallelism: An Implication for Zephaniah 1,9 of a Recent Discovery in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts -- Sennacherib and Jerusalem: New Perspectives -- Means of Revelation in the Book of Jeremiah -- A Fragmented History of the Exile -- Global Warming and the Babylonian Exile -- The Return of the Deity from Exile: Iconic or Aniconic? -- Is There a Samaritan Identity in the Earliest Documents? -- More than one God? Three Models of Construing the Relations between Yhwh and the Other Gods -- A Troubler of “Ancient Israel”: Philip Davies as Heir of Faustus of Mileve -- Bibliography -- Index of Ancient Sources -- Modern authors