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History of Israel (Biblical Studies)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The history of Israel has become a highly contentious issue. Through much of the 20th century, most histories were written by removing God from the Bible and combining what was left with archaeological finds interpreted in line with the Bible. Beginning in the 1980s, several factors caused a radical shift. Archaeology was suggesting more and more strongly that the main biblical accounts of the conquest in the book of Joshua were fundamentally problematic. Many methods from the social sciences were introduced to biblical studies. Questions from ancient and general historiography were brought to bear on the Bible, and issues of whether the Bible was story or history, and questions from Hayden White and the narrative turn—namely the extent to which the historical texts as narrative texts fundamentally obscure our ability to use them as historical sources—were introduced. Some scholars insist the Bible can never be used as a source for the history it purports to narrate, and others suggest, to various degrees, that it remains an important historical source.
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  5. On Writing the History of Israel
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  7. Bright 1956, though dated, represents important reflections of the influential “Albright school” on the writing of history. The other works reflect attempts to sort out the underpinnings of recent changes in biblical historical writing; Grabbe 1997 collects essays by scholars in the field, Barr 2000 reflects on the influence of ideology, while Kofoed 2005, Moore 2006, and Banks 2006 are monographs surveying the historiographical assumptions of various recent historians.
  8.  
  9. Banks, Diane. Writing the History of Israel. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 438. New York: T & T Clark, 2006.
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  11. A survey of general historiographic methods from the mid-19th through the beginning of the 21st century, with an examination of how biblical scholars from the time of Wellhausen were influenced by general historiographic approaches that prevailed when they were writing. Its survey of general historiography is stronger than the analysis of biblical historiography.
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  13. Barr, James. History and Ideology in the Old Testament: Biblical Studies at the End of the Millennium. The Hensley Henson Lectures for 1997 Delivered to the University of Oxford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  15. An investigation by a major British (and later American) scholar of ideology in the Bible and how changing ideologies have affected biblical scholarship concerning history and other areas.
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  17. Bright, John. Early Israel in Recent History Writing: A Study in Method. Studies in Biblical Theology 19. Chicago: Allenson, 1956.
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  19. Bright was the major American historian of ancient Israel in the 20th century. Though conservative by current standards, this book is an important comparison and evaluation of the historical schools of Alt (see Essay Collections) and Noth (see Histories of Israel through 1987) in Germany, and Kaufmann (see Religious History) in Israel.
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  21. Grabbe, Lester L., ed. Can a “History of Israel” Be Written?European Seminar on Historical Methodology, Dublin, July 1996. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplementary Series 245. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.
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  23. This is the initial volume of papers from the European Seminar on Historical Methodology, raising the most general questions about the writing of Israelite history, especially concerning the nature of biblical texts, correlating the biblical text with other sources, and the extent to which writing the history of Israel is unique.
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  25. Kofoed, Jens Bruun. Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
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  27. A detailed, lively study of recent studies of biblical history writing, and some suggestions for how history may be recovered from the Bible even if its traditions are much later than the events they putatively describe. Less theoretical than Banks 2006 and Moore 2006.
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  29. Moore, Megan Bishop. Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of Ancient Israel. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 435. New York: T & T Clark, 2006.
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  31. A revised dissertation written under John H. Hayes at Emory University that looks at the philosophical underpinnings of biblical historians from the mid-20th century through the recent minimalist-maximalist controversies. Evaluates scholars using general historiographic literature concerning issues such as the narrative turn, the possibility of objectivity, and the nature of historical evidence.
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  33. Essay Collections
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  35. In some cases, collections have been published of (selected or complete) essays of seminal scholars of biblical history, such as Alt 1967, de Vaux 1971, Malamat 2004, Na’aman 2005, or Becking 2007; or essays have been published concerning different aspects of biblical texts and history to honor such scholars, including Amit, et al. 2006; and sometimes essays from especially fruitful conferences, such as Williamson 2007, Brooke and Römer 2007, and Kirkpatrick and Golz 2008, reflecting different scholars, are published.
  36.  
  37. Alt, Albrecht. Essays on Old Testament History and Religion. Translated by R. A. Wilson. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.
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  39. Alt was the foremost figure of German biblical history in the early to mid-20th century, and was much less reliant on the biblical picture than his American counterpart, W. F. Albright. These varied essays, though dated, offer a sense of Alt’s brilliance, erudition, and methodology, which continues to influence biblical historical scholarship. Originally in German: Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 3 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1953–1959).
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  41. Amit, Yairah, Ehud Ben Zvi, Israel Finkelstein, and Oded Lipschits, eds. Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
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  43. A broad set of essays from an international group of major scholars, honoring one of the most significant biblical historians.
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  45. Becking, Bob. From David to Gedaliah: The Book of Kings as Story and History. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 228. Fribourg, Switzerland: Academic Press Fribourg, 2007.
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  47. Ten essays that show sensitivity to how a biblical historian may use several problematic texts from Kings in reconstructing the history of ancient Israel.
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  49. Brooke, George J., and Thomas Römer, eds. Ancient and Modern Scriptural Historiography. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 207. Leuven, The Netherlands: Leuven University Press, 2007.
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  51. An interesting collection of papers in French and English on method, the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.
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  53. Kirkpatrick, Patricia G., and Timothy D. Goltz, eds. The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 489. New York: T & T Clark, 2008.
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  55. Collected essays, illustrating various methodologies in the study of the Hebrew Bible through early Christian texts.
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  57. Malamat, Abraham. The History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.
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  59. Malamat was a major figure at the Hebrew University, specializing in the (early) First Temple period, bringing much evidence from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Mari to bear on biblical texts, institutions, and history.
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  61. Na’aman, Nadav. Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction. Collected Essays 1. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
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  63. An extremely wide-ranging collection of essays by one of Israel’s foremost historians of the biblical period, who is equally at home in Biblical Hebrew, Akkadian, and archaeological research, and offers sophisticated, well-argued studies that are models of clarity and common sense. The other volumes in this series are Canaan in the Second Millennium bce, Collected Essays 2 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005) and Ancient Israel’s History and Historiography: The First Temple Period, Collected Essays 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006).
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  65. de Vaux, Roland. The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Translated by Damian McHugh. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
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  67. Very sober essays, mostly dealing with historical issues, written by the leading French scholar of the 20th century, who was equally well-versed in archaeology and biblical scholarship.
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  69. Williamson, H. G. M., ed. Understanding the History of Ancient Israel. Proceedings of the British Academy 143. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007.
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  71. Proceeding of a conference of major figures that focused on comparative perspectives and problems in reconstructing the history of the 9th century BCE.
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  73. Primary Sources
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  75. Primary sources of two types are helpful in reconstructing the history of Israel: those from outside the land of Israel that mention Israel or bear on Israelite history, and those from inside Israel and its immediate surroundings. General Ancient Texts Bearing on Biblical History describes collections of the first type, and Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the History of Israel describes the second.
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  77. General Ancient Texts Bearing on Biblical History
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  79. Pritchard 1969 was until recently the standard comprehensive text; it remains useful and oft cited, though Hallo and Younger 1997–2002 is more recent, as are the volumes in the ongoing series Writings from the Ancient World. Cogan 2008, which contains an especially useful commentary, focuses on Mesopotamian inscriptions.
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  81. Cogan, Mordechai. The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel. Jerusalem: Carta, 2008.
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  83. A translation and discussion of forty-seven Mesopotamian historical texts from Shalmaneser III to Cyrus the Great, with extensive bibliography and photographs. Contains important, clear discussions of how each inscription may bear on the Bible.
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  85. Hallo, William W., and K. Lawson Younger, eds. The Context of Scripture. 3 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997–2002.
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  87. An updated edition of texts of all sorts related to the Bible, with extensive, up-to-date bibliographies and notes (indexes in volume 3). Unfortunately, some crucial texts found in Pritchard 1969 are lacking. A list that cross-references the primary texts found in these two tools is the COS/ANET Index.
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  89. Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
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  91. Though somewhat dated in terms of translations and the selection of texts, still a standard reference tool for ancient Near Eastern texts of all types (including historical texts) related to the Bible. Translated by first-class scholars; contains few notes, but has excellent indexes.
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  93. Writings from the Ancient World. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1990–.
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  95. Single volumes, each covering a crucial text or genre (such as letters, poetry, and law) from a particular country or group (such as Egypt, Assyria, and the Hittites), with the original-language text and facing translation. Typically includes helpful introductions and bibliographies.
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  97. Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the History of Israel
  98.  
  99. A variety of Northwest Semitic inscriptions found in Israel and the surrounding area have been used to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel, though many scholars debate exactly how such inscriptions might be used. These include the Arad, Lachish, and Samaria ostraca, the Moabite Mesha inscription, and the Tel Dan inscription, which may contain a mention of the Davidic dynasty. Scholars continue to worry about the possibility of modern forgeries of ancient inscriptions, which have been produced recently. (Mesopotamian inscriptions and the Egyptian Merneptah inscription are described in General Ancient Texts Bearing on Biblical History, The Origin of Israel, and The Conquest/Settlement.) Gibson 1971–1982 is a broad collection, while Dobbs-Allsopp 2005 and Ahituv 2008 mainly concern Hebrew inscriptions. Athas 2003, Hagelia 2006, and Hagelia 2009 are on the Tel-Dan inscription; Dearman 1989 and Thompson 2007 are on Mesha, and Cross 2003 and Eph’al 2003 are on the forged Jehoash inscription.
  100.  
  101. Ahituv, Shmuel. Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period. Jerusalem: Carta: 2008.
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  103. In the same series as, and similar to, Cogan 2008 (cited under General Ancient Texts Bearing on Biblical History). Contains excellent photos, line drawings, transcriptions, vocalized transcriptions, and detailed commentary on most inscriptions.
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  105. Athas, George. The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 360. Copenhagen International Seminar 12. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.
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  107. A detailed analysis of the inscription, which may mention David, concluding with a fifty-page discussion of historical implications.
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  109. Cross, Frank Moore. “Notes on the Forged Plaque Recording Repairs to the Temple.” Israel Exploration Journal 53 (2003): 119–122.
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  111. A leading American epigrapher shows that a Hebrew inscription touted as coming from 9th century BCE, and confirming the Bible, is actually based on the Bible, and therefore a forgery. A companion to Eph’al 2003. More recently, see “The So-Called ‘Jehoash Inscription’.”
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  113. Dearman, Andrew, ed. Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab. Archaeology and Biblical Studies 2. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
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  115. Important collection of essays on all aspects of the Mesha inscription and its implications, including one by Dearman titled “Historical Reconstruction and the Mesha Inscription” (pp. 155–210).
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  117. Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow, and R. E. Whitaker, eds. Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
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  119. An excellent and complete collection of inscriptions, with relevant bibliography and comments on readings. Inscriptions, unfortunately, are presented in transliteration only, and lack photos.
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  121. Eph’al, Israel. “The ‘Jehoash Inscription’: A Forgery.” Israel Exploration Journal 53 (2003): 124–128.
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  123. A leading Israeli historian shows that a Hebrew inscription touted as coming from 9th century BCE, and confirming the Bible, is actually based on the Bible, and therefore a forgery. A companion to Cross 2003.
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  125. Gibson, John C. L. Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. Vols. 1–3. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971–1982.
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  127. Selection of important inscriptions in Hebrew, Moabite, Aramaic, and Phoenician, with short notes and good indexes and illustrations. Uses Hebrew font rather than transliteration.
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  129. Hagelia, Hallvard. The Tel Dan Inscription: A Critical Investigation of Recent Research on Its Palaeography and Philology. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 22. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University Library, 2006.
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  131. A detailed philological discussion, with an important section titled “Comparison of Content,” which deals with connections to other inscriptions.
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  133. Hagelia, Hallvard. The Dan Debate: The Tel Dan Inscription in Recent Research. Recent Research in Biblical Studies 4. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009.
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  135. An excellent study, which much bibliography, by one of the major scholars of the inscriptions (see Hagelia 2006). Includes chapters on the relation of the inscription to the Bible, implications of history, and more general reflections on the Bible, archaeology, and history.
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  137. Thompson, Thomas L. “Mesha and Questions of Historicity.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 21 (2007): 241–260.
  138. DOI: 10.1080/09018320801896617Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. A revisionist perspective on the inscription, claiming that it is of no historical use.
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  141. History and Theology
  142.  
  143. Many biblical scholars, past and present, combine academic scholarship with strong religious belief. This presents significant problems to some scholars who study the history of Israel, as the history of the Israel as suggested by extrabiblical sources differs from that presented in the authoritative biblical text. Long 1994 and Millard, et al. 1994 present conservative solutions, Lemche 2008 more progressive ones; Barr 1999 surveys a range of answers, and Bakker 2000 looks at the issue from the perspective of a systematic theologian.
  144.  
  145. Bakker, Nico T. History as a Theological Issue. Theological Seminar Series 2. Translated by Martin Kessler. Leiden, The Netherlands: Deo, 2000.
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  147. Unlike the other books in this section, this was composed by a systematic theologian, and is very heavy on theological literature and light on secondary studies on the Bible.
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  149. Barr, James. The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999.
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  151. See especially pp. 345–361 (“Story and Biblical Theology”), although the entire book is full of insights concerning the theological role of history.
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  153. Lemche, Niels Peter. The Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical Survey. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008.
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  155. A leading figure of the Copenhagen school offers a detailed historical survey of the problem.
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  157. Long, V. Philips. The Art of Biblical History. Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation 5. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.
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  159. An exploration from a conservative Christian perspective of the conflict between belief and critical theories concerning Israelite history.
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  161. Millard, A. R., James Hoffmeier, and David W. Baker, eds. Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994.
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  163. A set of articles representing a conservative approach to dealing with the problems that were raised in the late 20th century concerning the ahistorical nature of many biblical texts.
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  165. Geography
  166.  
  167. History is influenced by both time and place. It is impossible to properly understand the history of Israel without having some sense of its geography, both physical and political. This may be accomplished through scholarly monographs, ranging from Smith 1966 and Abel 1933–1938 through the more recent Baly 1974, Aharoni 1979, and Orni and Efrat 1980, and through atlases, both scholarly, such as Rainey and Notely 2006, and more popular, including Aharoni 2002 and Rainey and Notley 2007. Dorsey 1991 deals with ancient roads.
  168.  
  169. Abel, F. -M. Géographie de la Palestine. 2 vols. Paris: Lecoffre, 1933–1938.
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  171. A learned classic that remains useful. Volume 1 covers physical geography; Volume 2 covers political geography.
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  173. Aharoni, Yohanan. The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography. Translated by A. F. Rainey. 2d ed. London: Burns and Oates, 1979.
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  175. Recent but slightly dated historical geography, written by one of the leading Israeli archaeologists of the 20th century.
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  177. Aharoni, Yohanan et al. The Carta Bible Atlas. Fourth Edition with Index to Persons. Jerusalem: Carta, 2002.
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  179. Covers both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, offering many two-color maps that are especially helpful in explaining battles.
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  181. Baly, Denis. The Geography of the Bible. Rev. ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1974.
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  183. A clear, well-illustrated volume that includes an index of biblical passages.
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  185. Dorsey, David A. The Roads and Highways of Ancient Israel. ASOR Library of Biblical and Near Eastern Archaeology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
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  187. Everything you always wanted to know about ancient Israelite roads, based on excavations, the Bible, and other ancient texts. Includes maps, general observations, and discussion of road terms.
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  189. Orni, Efraim, and Elisha Efrat. Geography of Israel. 4th ed. Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1980.
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  191. Although not strictly on the biblical period, and covering modern Israel as well, it offers useful information about basic geological and geographical features.
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  193. Rainey, Anson F., and R. Steven Notley. The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World. Jerusalem: Carta, 2006.
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  195. Covering both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament; a feast for the eyes, combining pictures, colorful maps, and scholarly text.
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  197. Rainey, Anson F., and R. Steven Notley. Carta’s New Century Handbook and Atlas of the Bible. Jerusalem: Carta, 2007.
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  199. A smaller format, more affordable, abridged version of Rainey and Notley 2006.
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  201. Smith, George Adam. The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. The Fontana Library, Theology and Philosophy. London: Collins, 1966.
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  203. The classic study of the historical geography of Israel—outdated in terms of methods, but the basic geography of Israel has not changed since it was written. Originally published in 1894.
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  205. Social History
  206.  
  207. Most biblical historical works recognize the importance of social history, but are more interested in political and religious history. Biblical scholarship is starting to catch up to general historical trends, and is beginning to understand the importance of social history and the manner in which it interacts with other types of history. Though dated and somewhat problematic in structure, de Vaux 1997 has not been superseded, though Clements 1989 and Davies and Rogerson 2005 offer important updates. McNutt 1999 and Golden 2009 are good introductions, and Kessler 2008 is a reliable textbook. Perdue, et al. 1997 offers excellent perspectives on changing family structures, and Meyers 1991 focuses on the changing status of Israelite women.
  208.  
  209. Clements, R. E, ed. The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives; Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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  211. The first serious collection examining social institutions, showing significant awareness of their historical development.
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  213. Davies, Philip R., and John Rogerson. The Old Testament World. 2d ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005.
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  215. Well illustrated; a basic introduction by two Sheffield scholars to the biblical world. Very helpful introduction for people with little background trying to read the Bible for the first time.
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  217. Golden, Jonathan M. Ancient Canaan and Israel: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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  219. A survey of areas such as economics, social organization, politics, and material culture, with each subject examined historically from the Chalcolithic through the Iron 2 era.
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  221. Kessler, Rainer. The Social History of Ancient Israel: An Introduction. Translated by Linda M. Maloney. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2008.
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  223. A leading German social historian offers a clear history from the beginning of ancient Israel through the Hellenistic age. Well documented, and containing a helpful glossary.
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  225. McNutt, Paula M. Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1999.
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  227. A social history of Israel from its beginnings through the Persian Period.
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  229. Meyers, Carol. Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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  231. Focusing on a new interpretation of Genesis 3:16, an examination of how social and historical factors are responsible for the various depictions of women found in the Bible.
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  233. Perdue, Leo G., Joseph Blenkinsopp, John J. Collins, and Carol Meyers, eds. Families in Ancient Israel. The Family, Religion, and Culture. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997.
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  235. An excellent set of essays, according to historical periods, by major scholars, on different aspects of the family and family life.
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  237. de Vaux, Roland. Ancient Israel. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997.
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  239. Although dated, and the author’s fundamental distinction between social and religious is problematic, provides excellent historical syntheses on many topics.
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  241. Religious History
  242.  
  243. Even though politics and religion are closely intertwined, most histories discuss religion within the framework of political history rather than vice versa. The works below concentrate on the development of the history of religion, while taking into consideration various geopolitical developments. The starting point for all studies of history of religion is Wellhausen 1994 (cited under History vs. Ideology; first published in 1878), which is disputed by Kaufmann 1960. Miller 2000 is a good introduction; Albertz 1994 and Zevit 2001 are much more comprehensive, while Cross 1973 and Miller, et al. 1987 discuss major topics in Israelite religion. Frymer-Kensky 1992 offers an insightful discussion of the broad implications of biblical religion’s rejection of goddesses.
  244.  
  245. Albertz, Rainer. A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Translated by John Bowden. 2 vols. Old Testament Library. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994.
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  247. A true history of religion, arranged chronologically from “before the state” through the Maccabees. Makes extensive use of sociological theory, and is especially interested in personal piety, family piety, and official religion. Extensive notes, and excellent indexes at the end of Volume 2.
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  249. Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
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  251. Cross served as the central professor of biblical studies at Harvard for several decades, and this book has had a major influence on American scholarship on such issues as the development of the Israelite God from Canaanite deities, the development of the priesthood, and the development of the book of Kings.
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  253. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press, 1992.
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  255. A thoughtful and readable introduction to biblical religion, with an emphasis on the implications of the absence of female deities in official biblical religion.
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  257. Kaufmann, Yehezkel. The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
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  259. An important polemic against Wellhausen, who offered a model of the devolution of Israelite religion into the dry legalism of Judaism. Kaufmann reorders the sources of Wellhausen, and offers a more dynamic and positive picture of all aspects of biblical religion. His reconstruction is especially favored by some Jewish scholars.
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  261. Miller, Patrick D. The Religion of Ancient Israel. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000.
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  263. A student of Cross, Miller covers the major topics of Israelite religion, following in the tradition of his teacher in this richly documented book. Although arranged topically rather than historically, the author shows strong interest, like his teacher, in the historical development of religion.
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  265. Miller, Patrick D., Jr., Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride. Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987.
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  267. An important set of essays by students of Cross and other major scholars on a wide variety of topics in the history of Israelite religion, studied from a historical perspective.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Zevit, Ziony. The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. New York: Continuum, 2001.
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  271. A massive, scholarly, historically sensitive reconstruction of Israelite religions, using biblical and archaeological evidence. In contrast to Wellhausen’s approach, the author emphasizes that many different manifestations of religion coexisted simultaneously.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Biblical History Writing in Its Ancient Context
  274.  
  275. Although ancient Near Eastern works have been brought to bear on the Bible since the time of their discovery and decipherment, they typically were used to confirm the Bible or to illustrate its uniqueness. Albrekson 1967 broke with that trend, by showing that the idea of a “God Who Acts” is a broad ancient–Near Eastern idea that does not set Israel apart from its neighbors; this is updated for Mesopotamia in Saggs 1978. Van Seters 1983 remains the most comprehensive survey of Israel’s environment with respect to history writing, while Parker 1997 is an excellent, more recent study of Israel in its narrower, Northwest Semitic context.
  276.  
  277. Albrektson, Bertil. History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel. Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 1. Lund, Sweden: CWK Gleerup: 1967.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. A survey of the idea of divine involvement in human history in the ancient Near East.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Parker, Simon B. Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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  283. An excellent monograph, illustrating both similarities and differences between the Bible and the nonbiblical texts to which it is closely related. His concluding comments on how different most biblical texts are from contemporaneous related texts—thus the danger of using these texts in a straightforward fashion to write history—are especially important.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Saggs, H. W. F. “The Divine in History.” In The Encounter with the Divine in Mesopotamia and Israel. By Saggs, H. W. F., 64–92. Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion 12. London: Athlone, 1978.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. A leading scholar of Assyriology emphasizes the similarities between key concepts in the Bible and Mesopotamia.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Van Seters, John. In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.
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  291. Thought somewhat dated, the most recent survey of history writing from the ancient Near East and Greece, which the author uses to help understand the origin and nature of history writing the in Bible. Van Seters’s ideas about the Bible remain idiosyncratic and controversial.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Chronology and Genealogy
  294.  
  295. Chronology is often considered the backbone of history, yet establishing a chronology for the biblical period is one of the most vexing problems of biblical scholarship. Basic problems include determining where this chronology should begin—that is, who is the earliest historical figure in the Bible—and how this history should be periodized. More specific problems include the problems of contradictory chronologies in the Bible, contradictions between biblical and extrabiblical sources, and uncertainty concerning issues such as when the new year began, differences between Israelite and Judean calendrical systems, and the extent to which coregencies existed. Hughes 1990 contains the best description of the schematic nature of most chronological systems found in the Bible. Thiele 1983remains a conservative standard, while Galil 1996 and Tetley 2005 are more recent, very detailed, more progressive treatments. Tadmor 1979 and Hayes and Hooker 1988 offer readable summaries of the main issues and problems; Cogan 1992 is a more detailed synopsis. Genealogies are often an important source for biblical chronology; an important comparative approach to these is developed in Wilson 1977.
  296.  
  297. Cogan, Mordecai. “Chronology: The Hebrew Bible.” In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1. Edited by David Noel Freedman, 1002–1011. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
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  299. A clear, concise, and up-to-date presentation of the problems.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Galil, Gershon. The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 9. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1996.
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  303. A carefully argued work, full of detailed analysis of extensive data and documents, charts, and useful appendices. The introduction offers a clear survey of the basic issues involved and the approaches of previous scholars, as well as showing a deep familiarity with ancient Near Eastern texts.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Hayes, John H., and Paul K. Hooker. A New Chronology for the Kings of Israel and Judah and Its Implications for Biblical History and Literature. Atlanta: John Knox, 1988.
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  307. A clear, short, popular introduction to the issues involved in creating a chronology of the biblical period, beginning after the reign of Solomon.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Hughes, Jeremy. Secrets of the Times: Myth and History in Biblical Chronology. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 66. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990.
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  311. Unlike the other volumes in this section, Hughes is as interested in explaining the schematic nature of various biblical chronologies—their mythic function—as in explaining how the biblical and other evidence might be combined to create a “real” chronology of ancient Israel.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Tadmor H. “The Chronology of the First Temple Period: A Presentation and Evaluation of the Sources.” In The World History of the Jewish People. Vol. 4, The Age of the Monarchies. Part 1, Political History. Edited by Abraham Malamat, 44–60. Jerusalem: Massada, 1979.
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  315. A clear and concise discussion, by a leading historian of the ancient Near East, of the problems and solutions for establishing a basic chronology.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Tetley, M. Christine. The Reconstructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
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  319. Following a comprehensive introduction to the basic issues involved in determining biblical chronology, an attempt using extensive diagrams to reconstruct chronology. Less comprehensive than Galil, and less engaged directly with ancient Near Eastern texts.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Thiele, Edwin R. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983.
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  323. A classic, though conservative, attempt at establishing a biblical chronology. Overutilizes coregencies (the suggestion that two kings reigned simultaneously) to solve biblical inconsistencies.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Wilson, Robert R. Genealogy and History in the Biblical World. Yale Near Eastern Researches 7. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.
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  327. This book changed the way that biblical scholars look at genealogies. Previously, they were often taken as factual; after this book, which uses rich comparative evidence, biblical scholars understood that genealogies have a variety of social functions, and often should not be taken literally.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. History vs. Ideology
  330.  
  331. The importance of Wellhausen 1994 (first published in 1878), both in its historical context, and even now, cannot be overestimated—this is the most important work in biblical scholarship, and among its many contributions is its highlighting of the ideology of the authors of biblical sources. A new interest in the biblical texts as ideology began with Garbini 1988, and many scholars have become aware that biblical texts are not straightforward narratives, but are written from ideological perspectives, as summarized by Amit 1999. The question that remains is the extent to which such ideologies may be stripped away or compensated for so that the real history behind the texts may be recovered.
  332.  
  333. Amit, Yairah. History and Ideology: An Introduction to Historiography in the Hebrew Bible. Translated by Yael Lotan. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press. 1999.
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  335. A clear and important survey of the ideologies that lie behind various biblical sources, such as Judges, Deuteronomy, the Priestly author, and the Chronicler.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Garbini, Giovanni. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Crossroad, 1988.
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  339. Garbini is an important Italian scholar, and this work covers a broad swath of biblical texts and history.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Translated by J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
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  343. The most important secondary work of biblical scholarship, first published in German in 1878. Though dated in many respects, and partaking in the period’s theological assumptions, including anti-Judaism, it remains brilliant and relevant. Wellhausen analyzes a variety of biblical sources, outlining their biases and ideologies, as preparation for a history of Israel that he never wrote.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. History or Memory?
  346.  
  347. The term “collective memory” dates from the 20th century. From the middle of the 20th century, mainstream historians began distinguishing between history, in the sense of what actually happened, and memory—namely, the way a society constructively recalls or re-creates what happened. The history-memory distinction was introduced to the study of biblical scholarship in Yerushalmi 1982, and has become popular very recently, appearing in Hendel 2005, on early Israel, and more broadly, in Knoppers and Ristau 2009, Davies 2008, and Brenner and Polak 2009. Assmann 2006, a leading Egyptologist, offers important general insights into the importance of studying cultural memory.
  348.  
  349. Assmann, Jan. Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies. Translated by Rodney Livingstone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. A wide-ranging set of essays by a leading scholar of ancient religion, with an important introduction: “What is ‘Cultural Memory’?”.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Brenner, Athalya, and Frank H. Polak, eds. Performing Memory in Biblical Narrative and Beyond. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009.
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  355. An important collection of essays showing different constructive ways the idea of memory may be used in exploring biblical texts.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Davies, Philip R. Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History—Ancient and Modern. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008.
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  359. A popular work, which emphasizes that the Bible is memory rather than straightforward history. It outlines basic problems in recreating the history of ancient Israel, and polemicizes against those who continue to insist that the Bible may be used in a straightforward fashion to recreate the history it purports to tell. (See The Sheffield-Copenhagen School.)
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Hendel, Ronald. Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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  363. A set of essays focusing on the early history of ancient Israel, all emphasizing how these stories are connected to Israel’s self perception and creation of its identity.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Knoppers, Gary N., and Kenneth A. Ristau, eds. Community Identity in Judean Historiography: Biblical and Comparative Perspectives. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009.
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  367. Somewhat uneven collection of essays by a variety of scholars, all emphasizing the importance of historical texts of various types in creating community identity.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982.
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  371. The initial chapter, “Biblical and Rabbinic Foundations” (pp. 5–26), is brimming with insights on the nature of biblical historical texts as memory, and on how they form the foundation of memory as a crucial category in later Jewish historiography. A discussion of the impact of this book after twenty-five years appeared in Jewish Quarterly Review 97 (Fall 2007): 487–543.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. The Sheffield-Copenhagen School
  374.  
  375. Beginning in the early 1980s, a number of scholars affiliated with the University of Sheffield and especially the University of Copenhagen began to challenge the reigning consensus concerning the use of the Bible for reconstructing the history of ancient Israel. The main proponents of this school are Philip R. Davies, Niels Peter Lemche, and Thomas L. Thompson. Though they are often lumped together as revisionists, minimalists or negative fundamentalists, there are significant differences between their positions that have been critiqued by several scholars, most vociferously, by William Dever. The Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, begun in 1987, publishes many papers associated with the ideas of this scholarly school, and many books associated with the Copenhagen-school debate are found elsewhere in this bibliography. The first book-length survey is Davies 1992, which was the focus of an important exchange of Provan 1995, Thompson 1995, and Davies 1995. Whitelam 1996 is especially controversial, Lemche 1998 and Thompson 1999 offer major credos of the school, while Levine 2001 and Dever 2001 proffer significant critiques.
  376.  
  377. Davies, Philip R. In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 148. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992.
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  379. Davies develops, defends, and expounds the key distinction between “ancient Israel,” a real people who came into being at a particular time in a particular place, and “biblical Israel,” a group depicted in a variety of different ways in the Hebrew Bible, emphasizing the distinction between these two entities.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Davies, Philip R. “Method and Madness: Some Remarks on Doing History with the Bible.” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 699–705.
  382. DOI: 10.2307/3266482Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. A heated exchange with Provan in the professional journal with the widest circulation concerning the methods and approach of the Copenhagen-Sheffield school. This is Davies’s response to Provan’s critique (Provan 1995) of Davies 1992. Thompson 1995 also responds in the same issue.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know, and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001.
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  387. An acerbic polemic against the Copenhagen school, accusing them of postmodern excesses, and of misunderstanding archaeological evidence. This study suggests that the Bible is a more useful source for the history of Israel than this school suggests.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Lemche, Niels Peter. The Israelites in History and Tradition. Library of Ancient Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998.
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  391. A careful examination of the sources for ancient Israel from ancient Near Eastern documents, archaeology, and the Bible, where Lemche distinguishes between two Israels—one depicted positively, the other negatively. Played a significant role in the developing debate on discerning ethnicity.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Levine, Lee I., and Amihay Mazar. Ha-pulmus ʿal ha-ʾemet ha-historit ba-Mikra. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2001.
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  395. (The controversy over the historicity of the Bible). Collected essays by varied Israeli scholars, highlighting fundamental problems of the Copenhagen school; critiques range from mild to caustic and include issues such as archaeology and linguistics.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Provan, Iain W. “Ideology, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 585–606.
  398. DOI: 10.2307/3266476Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. A heated exchange with Davies 1995 in the professional journal with the widest circulation concerning the methods and approach of the Copenhagen-Sheffield school. This is Provan’s critique of Davies 1992.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Thompson, Thomas L. “A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 683–698.
  402. DOI: 10.2307/3266481Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. This is Thompson’s response regarding the exchange between Provan and Davies (Davies 1992, Provan 1995, and Davies 1995).
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Thompson, Thomas L. The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
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  407. A defense of the claim that “myth” is the best term to use for the Hebrew Bible, which the author shows to be very distinct from the real history of Israel, and an explanation of how and why the biblical stories arose at a very late period.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Whitelam, Keith W. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. London: Routledge, 1996.
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  411. A polemical attempt, using many of the methods of the social sciences, to reclaim the history of Palestine, distinguishing it from the biblical narrative. Some view this book as anti-Zionist.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Archaeology and Biblical History
  414.  
  415. Until recently, the discipline that examined the connection between the Bible and archaeology was called biblical archaeology, and it was often most interested in proving the Bible true; this is epitomized by Albright 1949. As discussed in Davis 2004, the last decades have seen a significant shift, as the archaeology of the land of Israel has become more independent of the Bible. Some scholars continue to integrate biblical and archaeological evidence, though this is now done in a more nuanced fashion, understanding that both types of evidence are complex and open to interpretation. Mazar 1990, and the subsequent works by Stern 2001 and Ben-Tor 1992, offer broad, scholarly surveys that extend beyond the biblical period. Finkelstein and Silberman 2001 is a popular introduction. A very conservative approach toward the Bible and archaeology, outside of mainstream biblical scholarship, is found in Kitchen 2003. Vaughn and Killebrew 2003 focuses on archaeological issues pertinent to Jerusalem.
  416.  
  417. Albright, William Foxwell. The Archaeology of Palestine. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1949.
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  419. Of historical interest only, this offers a sense of how Albright, the dean of biblical studies for the middle of the 20th century, understood biblical archaeology. An important work, given Albright’s influence on biblical studies and archaeology until recently.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Ben-Tor, Amnon, ed. The Archaeology of Ancient Israel. Translated by R. Greenberg. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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  423. Written by experts, and profusely illustrated, much of this book covers the prebiblical period, and it does not extend beyond the Iron Age.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Davis, Thomas W. Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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  427. A readable introduction to the transition from “biblical archaeology,” a movement to use archaeology to prove the veracity of the Bible, to “archaeology of the biblical period,” in which the study of artifacts is independent of the biblical text, and may cast doubt on its veracity, and which examines broad issues concerning life during the biblical period.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free Press, 2001.
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  431. A lively and popular (and slightly idiosyncratic) introduction to the connections between archaeological finds and the biblical text. A good first introduction to the main issues and methods, though it uses a newer, controversial chronology.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Kitchen, K. A. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.
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  435. A very conservative defense of the historicity of the biblical account, including a strong attack on the methods and results of the Copenhagen school.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Mazar, Amihai. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. An important and comprehensive synthesis by an Israeli scholar, one of the senior figures in the field. Extensive photographs.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Stern, Ephraim. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. Vol 2, The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732–332 B.C.E.. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 2001.
  442. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. Overlaps with, and then continues, the survey of Mazar 1990.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Vaughn, Andrew G., and Ann E. Killebrew, eds. Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series, 18. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
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  447. Varied essays on the Judean capital over time, from an archaeological and historical perspective.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Essay Collections
  450.  
  451. Finkelstein and Mazar 2007 presents an important debate about chronology that has major implications for ancient Israelite history, while Gitin, et al. 2006, Maier and de Miroschedji 2006, and Schloen 2009 are important, very recent collections of essays on a wide range of topics concerning archaeology and the Bible.
  452.  
  453. Finkelstein, Israel, and Amihai Mazar. Papers presented at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, Detroit, October 2005. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Edited by Brian B. Schmidt. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Israel. 2007.
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  455. An important set of essays on major issues concerning early Israel, where the archaeological evidence has been subject to serious debate between Finkelstein and Mazar, especially concerning issues of chronology and the use of the Bible.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Gitin, Seymour, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel, eds. Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
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  459. A recent festschrift for one of the most influential American archaeologists of Israel, offering a clear sense of contemporary archaeology, and the intersection of text and artifact.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Maeir, Aren M., and Pierre de Miroschedji, eds. “I will speak the riddle of ancient times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. 2 vols. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
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  463. A recent festschrift for one of the most influential Israeli archaeologists, who teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It offers a clear sense of contemporary archaeology, and the intersection of text and artifact.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Schloen, J. David, ed. Exploring the Longue Durée: Essays in Honor of Lawrence E. Stager. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009.
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  467. A recent festschrift, comprising fifty articles from biblical scholars and archaeologists, honoring one of the most influential American archaeologists, who teaches at Harvard. It offers a clear sense of contemporary archaeology, and the intersection of text and artifact.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Archaeological Encyclopedias
  470.  
  471. In addition to works that treat the archaeology of Israel as a whole, Stern 1993–2008 and Meyers 1997 are two recent reliable encyclopedias that may be consulted on particular places and topics.
  472.  
  473. Meyers, Eric M., ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. 5 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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  475. A longer and broader encyclopedia than Stern 1993–2008, covering the entire Near East and having a broader-based list of contributors; also less Bible-centric than Stern 1993–2008. Volume 5 contains useful chronologies, maps, lists of contributors, and an index.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Stern, Ephraim, ed. The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. 5 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993–2008.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. An excellent, well-illustrated resource, concentrating on sites, though containing some general thematic articles. Most articles are by Israeli scholars.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Reconstructing the History of Israel
  482.  
  483. How should a history of Israel be written? What is the nature of the Bible as a historical text, especially given its biases? How should the various types of evidence for reconstructing ancient Israel be combined? Miller 1976 is an older but useful handbook on such issues; Matthews 2007 is a recent, accessible survey; and Grabbe 2007 represents a more detailed scholarly work. Important collections of essays are Davies and Gunn 1987, Edelman 1991, and Long 1999. Satterthwaite and McConville 2007 represents a conservative approach; Halpern 1988 and Brettler 1995 are two different middle-of-the-road approaches, while the The Sheffield-Copenhagen School uses an approach that is very skeptical about using the Bible at all for reconstructing the history it purports to tell.
  484.  
  485. Brettler, Marc Zvi. The Creation of History in Ancient Israel. London: Routledge, 1995.
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  487. An exploration, through case examples, of various reasons historical texts were composed. Includes a discussion of ideology, typology, and reworked texts, and of implications for the modern historian.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Davies, Philip R., and David M. Gunn. “A History of Ancient Israel and Judah: A Discussion of Miller-Hayes (1986).” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 39 (1987): 30–63.
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  491. An enlightening set of reviews of this 1986 history, which opened a can of worms by explicitly putting forward its methodological assumptions and by diverging from the biblical picture at key points. It was thus easy to reflect on its problems, from both more conservative and liberal perspectives.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Edelman, Diana Vikander, ed. The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact, and Israel’s Past. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 127. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.
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  495. An early, short but important collection from a range of major scholars discussing problems of writing biblical history.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Grabbe, Lester L. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? London: T & T Clark, 2007.
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  499. After a brief methodological introduction, aGrabbe surveys, period by period, issues and problems concerning reconstructing the history of Israel. A sober, well-written and balanced book, with clear, important conclusions about what modern historians can and cannot reconstruct given the nature of our current material.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Halpern, Baruch. The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.
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  503. A major study of the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy through Kings), reaching the conclusion that the Deuteronomistic Historian exhibited antiquarian interests and thus should be considered a historian.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Long, V. Philips, ed. Israel’s Past in Present Research: Essays on Ancient Israelite Historiography. Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 7. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999.
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  507. A comprehensive, wide-ranging collection of essays on a range of issues related to using the Bible as a source for ancient Israelite history, reflecting in particular the changes that transpired in biblical studies in the 1980s and 1990s.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Matthews, Victor H. Studying the Ancient Israelites: A Guide to Sources and Methods. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.
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  511. A comprehensive and accessible, though somewhat conservative, introduction to the areas of historical geography, archaeology, literary study of the Bible, and social scientific approaches to biblical texts, and how they might be combined to recreate the history of ancient Israel.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Miller, J. Maxwell The Old Testament and the Historian. Guides to Biblical Scholarship. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976.
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  515. Intended as a short, basic college or seminary text; an easy-to-follow guide to the problems of writing biblical history, by one of the major practitioners in the field.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Satterthwaite, Philip E., and Gordon McConville. Exploring the Old Testament. Vol. 2, A Guide to the Historical Books. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007.
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  519. After a brief and conservative discussion of the nature of the Bible as history, much of the book retells the story of the biblical historical books from Joshua through Chronicles, noting some of the problems with modern scholars reconstructions. Very traditional in perspective.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Histories of Israel
  522.  
  523. Biblical scholarship has created a genre of books called histories of Israel—these have a distinguished pedigree of several centuries. The The Sheffield-Copenhagen School has changed the way the history of Israel is reconstructed: Before this group became influential, most historical reconstructions took the biblical text at face value and wrote biblical histories by paraphrasing the biblical text and adding some evidence from archaeology. Most recent histories are less dependent on the Bible.
  524.  
  525. Histories of Israel through 1987
  526.  
  527. These histories are highly dependent on the biblical account. The two major histories representing mid-20th-century scholarship are Noth 1983, representing the German school, which allows archaeological evidence to doubt the veracity of the Bible in places, and Bright 1981, representing the more conservative American Albright school. The book series World History of the Jewish People presents the perspective of Israeli and Jewish scholars on the history of Israel, and Donner 1984–1986 is a middle-of-the-road German reconstruction. The collection Hayes and Miller 1990 is uneven but important, representing the vanguard of changing opinions.
  528.  
  529. Bright, John. A History of Israel. 3d ed. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981.
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  531. The last edition revised by Bright, representing the American Albright school, which was much more conservative than the German school on matters of historical reconstruction. For example, this book offers, quite implausibly, the theory that Sennacherib invaded Judah twice, defending the historicity of much of 2 Kings 18–20, which others see as late and legendary. A fourth edition was published in 2000.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Donner, Herbert. Geschichte des Volkes Israel und seiner Nachbarn in Grundzügen. 3 vols. Göttingen, West Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1984–1986.
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  535. A standard, middle-of-the-road reconstruction reflecting a continuation of the German school of Alt (see Essay Collections) and Noth (see Noth 1983 ).
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Hayes, John H., and J. Maxwell Miller, eds. Israelite and Judaean History. Philadelphia: Trinity, 1990.
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  539. An important, scholarly work by various historians of the biblical period. Divided into chronological periods, and somewhat uneven, it highlights theoretical issues more than typical histories.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Noth, Martin. The History of Israel. Translated by Stanley Godman. London, SCM, 1983.
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  543. A classic exposition of mid-20th-century historical scholarship from Germany. It expresses ideas of German scholarship of that period, including on the amphyctiony and the peaceful settlement of Canaan. First published in German in 1950: Geschichte Israels (Göttingen, West Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht).
  544. Find this resource:
  545. World History of the Jewish People. Vols. 1–4. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964–1979.
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  547. The first volumes of a never-completed series, comprising the titles At the Dawn of Civilization; Patriarchs; Judges; The Age of Monarchies, Part 1: Political History; and The Age of Monarchies, Part 2: Culture and Society. Though quite dated, includes very detailed discussions of many topics, mostly by Jewish and Israeli scholars.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Histories of Israel after 1988
  550.  
  551. Most of these histories take into account the newer observations of the Sheffield-Copenhagen School, and are, in general, more willing to deviate from the biblical account. Provan 2003 is a modern conservative reconstruction; Coogan 1998, Shanks 1999, and Miller and Hayes 2006 are middle of the road; Lemche 1988, Liverani 2007, and Noll 2001 are most progressive, and the collection Lemche, et al. 1992 is uneven.
  552.  
  553. Ahlstöm, Gösta W. The History of Ancient Palestine from the Paleolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest. Edited by Diana Edelman. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 146. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993.
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  555. A posthumously published, very long and detailed history by the University of Chicago iconoclast. Extremely erudite but uneven. A large section deals with pre-Israelite history.
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  557. Coogan, Michael D., ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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  559. A well-illustrated compiled volume, easier to read than many histories, covering both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Often utilizes newer social-scientific approaches.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Lemche, Niels Peter. Ancient Israel: A New History of Israelite Society. The Biblical Seminar. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988.
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  563. The first history from the Copenhagen school, which rebalances the use of extrabiblical and biblical sources, often relying on the former more than the latter in reconstructing history.
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  565. Lemche, Niels Peter, William G. Dever, Leslie J. Hoppe, and Robert P. Carrol. “Israel, History of.” In The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 3. Edited by David Noel Freedman, 526–576. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992.
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  567. Unfortunately, a quite uneven set of articles in the major Bible encyclopedia, written by too many people with diverse perspectives.
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  569. Liverani, Mario. Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Translated by Chiara Peri and Philip R. Davies. London: Equinox, 2007.
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  571. A significant new type of history by a major scholar of Mesopotamia. Like works of the Copenhagen school, it sharply distinguishes between what really happened and what the Bible says, and is the first comprehensive history divided into two parts: “A Normal History” and “An Invented History.”
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. 2d ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
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  575. A well-balanced and readable history by two first-rate scholars. Its excellent charts, illustrations, maps, and excerpts from relevant extrabiblical texts make it very useful.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Noll, K. L. Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
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  579. Intended as a classroom textbook, a relatively short and accessible history that deals with many theoretical issues and is broad in its coverage.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Provan, Iaian, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003.
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  583. As the title suggests, a more traditional history, which takes many sections of the Bible as historical. Written by three conservative scholars, it is clear and well-documented, and offers an excellent example of how some modern scholars continue to use the Bible as a major source for the history of Israel.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Shanks, Hershel, ed. Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple. Rev. ed. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1999.
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  587. A short, popular history, originally published in 1988, but somewhat updated. Very readable, but equally uneven in terms of methodology and sophistication. The first and final two chapters are especially strong.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Historical Periods of Ancient Israel
  590.  
  591. In addition to broad histories of Israel, there are many monographs and collections on specific time periods, many of which present different problems due to the nature of the extrabiblical written and archaeological evidence. History does not periodize itself—people periodize history (see Eviatar Zerubavel, The Fine Line [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). The following periods are commonly used in biblical studies, and reflect a combination of internal and external political events.
  592.  
  593. Early Israel
  594.  
  595. Although each period that the Bible records through the rise of the monarchy has its own historical problems, they all have certain problems in common, namely the paucity of outside literary evidence, and extensive debate on how the archaeological evidence should be interpreted. de Vaux 1978 is a major treatment of these issues by the leading French Catholic scholar of the mid-20th century, while Lemche 1998 represents the more recent Copenhagen-school perspective on these issues.
  596.  
  597. de Vaux, Roland. The Early History of Israel. Translated by David Smith. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978.
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  599. A broad and incisive exploration, covering prebiblical times through the period of the judges. Though his approach now seems a bit naive, full of useful and thoughtful observations.
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  601. Lemche, Niels Peter. Prelude to Israel’s Past: Background and Beginnings of Israelite History and Identity. Translated E. F. Maniscalco. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998.
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  603. After a brief summary of the biblical account and its problems as history, an account of the “real” history of the period during which these stories transpired. Many of the conclusions here are based on Lemche 1985 (cited under The Conquest/Settlement).
  604. Find this resource:
  605. The Ancestral Period
  606.  
  607. There is now a belief among many biblical scholars that the stories about the male and female “ancestors” in what was formerly called the Patriarchal Age reflect much later periods of composition—and in some cases, setting—and cannot be used to reconstruct the history of the eras that they depict. This consensus was brought about by the influential books Thompson 2002 and Van Seters 1975. They showed, independently of each other, that many of the institutions found in these narratives that scholars connected to the Bronze Age are equally (or more) at home in the Iron Age. Millard and Wiseman 1983 presents early challenges to Thompson and Van Seters.
  608.  
  609. Millard, A. R., and D. J. Wiseman, eds. Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983.
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  611. A collections of essay from a conservative perspective reacting to Thompson and Van Seters.
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  613. Mullen, E. Theodore. Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations: A New Approach to the Formation of the Pentateuch. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1974.
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  615. Though largely ignored, an important book, suggesting that the ancestral stories and other narratives in Genesis and Exodus developed late, in the Persian period, as a way of expressing and creating ethnic solidarity.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Thompson, Thomas L. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002.
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  619. A detailed and hard to read but seminal work that marks the beginning of the Copenhagen school. Thompson studies various proofs that scholars had previously offered for the authenticity of the patriarchal narratives, and suggests instead that their coloring reflects the Iron Age, not the Bronze Age. First published in 1974.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Van Seters, John. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.
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  623. The first half is similar to Thompson 2002, though easier to read; the second looks at the development of the traditions concerning Abraham, and begins to develop Van Seters’s theory of an exilic Yahwist.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Egypt and the Exodus
  626.  
  627. The sojourn in Egypt, exodus, and wandering in the wilderness are treated by many biblical texts as the formative period of Israel. Donald B. Redford, a noted Egyptologist, has played a major role in showing that the biblical account does not agree with contemporaneous Egyptian material (Redford 1970, Redford 1992), while Hoffmeier 1997 and Hoffmeier 2005 insist otherwise.
  628.  
  629. Hoffmeier, James K. Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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  631. Represents an evangelical perspective, defending the basic historicity of the biblical account on the basis of Egyptian evidence. Tends to confuse verisimilitude with proof.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Hoffmeier, James K. Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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  635. A continuation of Hoffmeier 1997, with a similar approach and similar problems.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Redford, Donald B. A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Genesis 37–50). Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 20. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1970.
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  639. A groundbreaking study, showing that this story does not accurately reflect the Egypt of the time of the events depicted in the story, contrary to the view prevalent at the time.
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  641. Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
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  643. A detailed exposition of the many conflicts between the biblical account and what we know from Egyptian sources, suggesting that, contrary to the biblical account, ancient Israel may have originated instead in a group known in Egyptian as Shasu.
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  645. The Origin of Israel
  646.  
  647. Given that biblical scholars do not accept the historicity of the ancestral stories or of the exodus, when and how did Israel begin? The earliest epigraphic mention of a people called Israel living in the eastern Mediterranean is in the Egyptian Merneptah Stele, dated to the late 13th century. But there is no clear consensus of how, when, and where this people came into being. The biblical model of a violent, complete conquest is now set aside, with works such as Alt 1967 suggesting a peaceful infiltration, and others, such as Mendenhall 1973 and Gottwald 1999, suggesting that (much of) Israel originated in the land of Israel itself. Creative use of social scientific models, such as in Coote and Whitelam 1987, especially concerning defining ethnicity, as in Dever 2003, has played a major role in this discussion. Comparison of the summaries in Meek 1950, Shanks, et al. 1992, and Davies 2007 reflects how much the understanding of origins has changed over the last sixty years. Faust 2006 illustrates how recent anthropological models may be used constructively to solve some problems of origin.
  648.  
  649. Alt, Albrecht. “The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine.” In Essays on Old Testament History and Religion. By Albrecht Alt, 173–221.Translated by R. A. Wilson. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.
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  651. First published in German in 1925; one of the most influential essays on the origin of Israel. Argues for a settlement rather than conquest model, an important starting point for some current explorations. See also “The Formation of the Israelite State in Palestine” (originally published in 1930) in the same collection.
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  653. Coote, Robert B., and Keith W. Whitelam. The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective. Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 5. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1987.
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  655. Two scholars who specialize in social-scientific methods and the Bible offer an important evaluation and extension of the theories of Mendenhall and Gottwald. The Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series offers several other important books on this topic.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Davies, Philip R. The Origins of Biblical Israel. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 485. New York: T & T Clark, 2007.
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  659. A representative of the Sheffield-Copenhagen school offers a lively depiction of the biblical Israels described in the Bible. Unlike many of the books described in this section, the focus of Davies is on biblical texts and collective memory, rather than archaeology.
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites, and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003.
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  663. After surveying problems with accepting the biblical account at face value, a leading archaeologist notes markers that distinguish proto-Israelites from Canaanites in the land of Israel.
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  665. Faust, Avraham. Israel’s Ethnogensis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion, and Resistance. London: Equinox, 2006.
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  667. An important synthesis by an Israeli scholar, using the latest methods of anthropology in discussing ethnicity and the difference between ethnicity and identity. Sees Israel as arising from seminomads.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Gottwald, Norman K. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 bce. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999.
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  671. A very hefty tome that uses sociological methodology, including Marxist perspectives, to suggest that Israel originated as a peasant rebellion among groups of Canaanites and was formed as an egalitarian countersociety.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Meek, Theophile James. Hebrew Origins. Rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1950.
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  675. An important mid-20th-century survey of various origins: Israel as a people, Hebrew law, the Hebrew God, priesthood, prophecy, and monotheism. Though now very dated, it is responsible and well written, and offers a sense of how the field has changed since the book’s publication.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Mendenhall, George E. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
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  679. A provocative book, building on a seminal article, “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine,” in Biblical Archaeologist 25.3 (September 1962): 66–87, that suggests the kernel for Israel was a small group that left Egypt, congealed around a covenant, settled in Israel, and gained followers.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Shanks, Hershel, William G. Dever, Baruch Halpern, and P. Kyle McCarter Jr., eds. The Rise of Ancient Israel. Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992.
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  683. A popular but responsible book by major scholars surveying the problems of the origin of Israel.
  684. Find this resource:
  685. The Conquest/Settlement
  686.  
  687. By the end of the 20th century, most scholars had shifted from a model of the conquest of Canaan, as depicted in the Bible, to one of peaceful settlement, or even the origin of Israel in a peasant revolt within Canaan (see The Origin of Israel); much of this is summarized in McDermott 1998. In this section, scholars discuss problems related to the conquest and settlement. Weippert 1971, Lemche 1985, Thompson 1992, Ahituv and Oren 1998, Grabbe 2008, and Hess, et al. 2008 discuss archaeological perspectives, the last of which is from a more conservative perspective, while Weinfeld 1993 and Auld 1998 discuss, from different perspectives, the problems of the relevant biblical texts.
  688.  
  689. Ahituv, Shmuel, and Eliezer D. Oren, eds. The Origin of Early Israel—Current Debate: Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives; Irene Levi-Sala Seminar, 1997. Beersheba, Israel: Ben-Guryon University of the Negev Press, 1998.
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  691. Three major papers on the topic from a range of scholars, with a discussion by other scholars. Offers a strong variety of opinions concerning issues and methods used to determine the origin of Israel.
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  693. Auld, A. Graeme. Joshua Retold: Synoptic Perspectives. Old Testament Studies. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998.
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  695. A collection of essays by a thoughtful and iconoclastic major scholar of biblical historical texts, outlining many of the textual problems that scholars should engage before using texts in Joshua to reconstruct history.
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  697. Grabbe, Lester L., ed. Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 B.C.E.). Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 491. New York: T & T Clark, 2008.
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  699. Collected essays representing various views concerning this transition, which is closely connected to the conquest and the rise of Israel. Includes important essays on the Philistines and on the chronological debates concerning this period.
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  701. Hess, Richard S., Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Paul J. Ray Jr., eds. Critical Issues in Early Israelite History. Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplements 3. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.
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  703. A more conservative, evangelical approach to the newer textual and archaeological studies concerning the conquest/settlement.
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  705. Lemche, Niels Peter. Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 37. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1985.
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  707. One of the first works to emphasize that the biblical material is almost useless for reconstructing this period, and that the wide variety of archaeological material should be used independently of the biblical text.
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  709. McDermott, John J. What Are They Saying about the Formation of Israel? New York: Paulist Press, 1998.
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  711. A very readable summary of different positions concerning the conquest and the origin of Israel.
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  713. Thompson, Thomas L. Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources. Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill 1992.
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  715. A dense, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary investigation of previous theories concerning the settlement and conquest from a major figure of the Copenhagen school, arguing that Israel is a late entity.
  716. Find this resource:
  717. Weinfeld, Moshe. The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land of Canaan by the Israelites. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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  719. Weinfeld, who was an important biblical scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, examines the diverse and manifold biblical traditions connected to the possession of the land.
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  721. Weippert, Manfred. The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in Palestine: A Critical Survey of Recent Scholarly Debate. Studies in Biblical Theology, 2d ser., 21. Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1971.
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  723. A detailed survey, by a major German archaeologist and historian, of the main theories concerning the settlement or conquest, reaching the conclusion that the settlement theory of Alt best accounts for the extant evidence.
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  725. The Period of the Judges
  726.  
  727. Most scholars believe that the nature of the book of Judges makes it extremely difficult to use in reconstructing the history of the period, and some even doubt that an institution of individuals called “judges” existed in ancient Israel. German scholars suggested that an amphictyony—a group of tribes centered around a wandering sanctuary—existed in this period, but this was shown to be unlikely by Mayes 1974 and others, and newer social-scientific models were used to describe this period, especially in Frick 1985 and McNutt 1990. Finkelstein and Na’aman 1994 surveys the archaeological evidence, while Ackerman 1998 and Moberly 2005 offer new perspectives on the book of Judges that suggest significant problems in using it to reconstruct a period of judges.
  728.  
  729. Ackerman, Susan. Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
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  731. An important reminder that there were women in ancient Israel. An examination of the women of Judges, who are unusually prominent, from a history-of-religions perspective. Though not directly dealing with the history of the period, its conclusions highlight the problems of using Judges to reconstruct early history, in contrast to some scholars who believe that the important position of women in the book reflects the historical reality of women gaining power in transitional periods.
  732. Find this resource:
  733. Finkelstein, Israel, and Nadav Na’aman, eds. From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1994.
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  735. Important essays from a variety of scholars, mostly archaeologists, examining the evidence of the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age, and the evidence for the fundamental transformation of settlement patterns in Israel then.
  736. Find this resource:
  737. Frick, Frank S. The Formation of the State in Ancient Israel: A Survey of Models and Theories. Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 4. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1985.
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  739. An important study using comparative anthropological methods, describing early Israel as a chiefdom.
  740. Find this resource:
  741. Mayes, A. D. H. Israel in the Period of the Judges. Studies in Biblical Theology, 2d ser., 29. Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1974.
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  743. An attempt, mostly on the basis of the earliest traditions found in Judges (especially Judges 5—the Song of Deborah), to reconstruct the history of the period, and a discussion that shows that the German model of an amphictyony as the major religious institution of this period is not compelling.
  744. Find this resource:
  745. McNutt, Paula M. The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in Ancient Society. Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 8. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1990.
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  747. An exploration of the role of iron in the creation of Israel in the Iron Age, using comparative evidence from Africa concerning the development of chiefdoms.
  748. Find this resource:
  749. Mobley, Gregory. The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
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  751. An alternative treatment of the book of Judges, using methods of folklore to show how the stories embedded in the book create a notion of a premonarchic heroic age, suggesting that they cannot be used to reconstruct the events or heroes it describes.
  752. Find this resource:
  753. The United Monarchy
  754.  
  755. This is the period when David and Solomon, and according to some, Saul, ruled over all Israel. These kings are never mentioned in ancient Near Eastern literature outside of the Bible, and a significant debate is now raging over whether or not they are historical figures, and if they are, how the biblical sources should be used to reconstruct them and the history of this period, and whether or not a united monarchy really existed. Handy 1997 reflects changing ideas at the end of the 20th century about how to reconstruct the period. Some, such as Edelman 1991 and Halpern 2001, mine the biblical stories carefully, often reading against the grain, while Van Seters 2009 sees these stories as very late and not useful for the historian of this period. Finkelstein and Silberman 2006 is a popular attempt to combine archaeological and textual perspectives, Dietrich 2007 is an encyclopedic work, a bit to the right of the current American center, while the essays in Tappy and McCarter 2008 tend to be conservative, claiming significant literacy (and a state that supported it) already in the 10th century BCE. Clines and Eskenazi 1991 is an important reminder that there were women as well as men in this period, and Auld 1994 is an important but controversial study of the biblical sources for this period (for additional discussion, see Athas 2003, Hagelia 2006, and Hagelia 2009 on the Tel Dan inscription in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the History of Israel.)
  756.  
  757. Auld, A. Graeme. Kings without Privilege: David and Moses in the Story of the Bible’s Kings. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994.
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  759. Before this work, the standard model understood Chronicles, by and large, as a late reworking of Samuel-Kings. Auld instead argues that Chronicles and Samuel-Kings worked from a common source, which he reconstructs. The jury is still out. This has major implications for how different parts of the Bible should be used by the modern historian.
  760. Find this resource:
  761. Clines, David J. A., and Tamara C. Eskenazi, eds. Telling Queen Michal’s Story: An Experiment in Comparative Interpretation. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 119. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.
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  763. An interesting collection of material of different types that bears on Michal, serving as an important reminder that women too flourished in this period, though the Bible rarely records their deeds.
  764. Find this resource:
  765. Dietrich, Walter. The Early Monarchy in Israel: The Tenth Century B.C.E. Biblical Encyclopedia 3. Translated by Joachim Vette. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.
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  767. A leading German scholar utilizes extensive bibliography to discuss the period of the first three kings, whom he believes to be historical figures, though he makes careful distinctions between the biblical accounts and the historical reconstructions. Concludes with theological reflections.
  768. Find this resource:
  769. Edelman, Diana Vikander. King Saul in the Historiography of Judah. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 121. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.
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  771. A chapter-by-chapter analysis of the Saul material in Samuel, with an emphasis on how it developed and how it may be used for the re-creation of history.
  772. Find this resource:
  773. Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: Free Press, 2006.
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  775. Written by a leading archaeologist (Finkelstein) and a popularizer (Silberman), an extremely readable book attempting to see how the stories about David and Solomon grew in and after the biblical period. Pages 275–281 are an important appendix about Finkelstein’s redating of the so-called Solomonic gates.
  776. Find this resource:
  777. Halpern, Baruch. David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001.
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  779. An important but hard-to-follow attempt, using textual and archaeological tools, to recover the real David who stands behind the complex picture now found in the Bible. Offers an interesting contrast in methods and conclusions to the more readable book by Steven L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
  780. Find this resource:
  781. Handy, Lowell K., ed. The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 11. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997.
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  783. A representative collection of different views concerning reconstructing Solomon and his age, incorporating a wide variety of approaches.
  784. Find this resource:
  785. Tappy, Ron E., and P. Kyle McCarter Jr., eds. Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan: The Tel Zayit Abecedary in Context. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.
  786. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  787. An uneven and not entirely convincing collection of essays that attempt to draw the conclusion from a 10th-century abecedary that literacy was widespread in the early monarchic period.
  788. Find this resource:
  789. Van Seters, John. The Biblical Saga of King David. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009.
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  791. In typical Van Seters fashion, a detailed questioning of the consensus model about the development of the David traditions, suggesting that they are much later than most scholars believe.
  792. Find this resource:
  793. The Divided Monarchy
  794.  
  795. According to the biblical record, after the death of Solomon, which some chronologies would put at approximately 920 BCE, a split developed between Judah, to the south, and the Northern Kingdom, often confusingly called Israel, to the north. This lasted for approximately two hundred years, until the Assyrians exiled the Northern Kingdom in approximately 720. As we move further into this period, it is possible to supplement the biblical accounts with ancient Near Eastern records. Knoppers 1993–1994 and Day 2004 cover this entire period and beyond, while Thompson 1982 and Becking 1992 focus on the last part of the 8th century; Dutcher-Walls 1996, Grabbe 2007, and Lamb 2007 discuss particular rulers or dynasties.
  796.  
  797. Becking, Bob. The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study. Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1992.
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  799. A model study looking at the end of the Northern Kingdom, showing the utility of critical use of biblical, Mesopotamian, and archaeological evidence to reconstruct an important event.
  800. Find this resource:
  801. Day, John, ed. In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 406. London: T & T Clark, 2004.
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  803. An extremely important and extensive collection of essays that extends both before and after the Divided Monarchy, asking how much is known in a variety of areas concerning preexilic Israel. In part pushing back at the scholars associated with the Copenhagen school who suggest that almost all biblical traditions are late.
  804. Find this resource:
  805. Dutcher-Walls, Patricia. Narrative Art, Political Rhetoric: The Case of Athaliah and Joash. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 209. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996.
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  807. A detailed analysis, from narrative, rhetorical, ideological, and sociological perspectives, of one of the few stories in which women are portrayed as playing a prominent role.
  808. Find this resource:
  809. Grabbe, Lester L., ed. Ahab Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty. European Seminar in Historical Methodology 6. London: T & T Clark, 2007.
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  811. A typical European Seminar in Historical Methodology volume, in this case containing a wide range of essays looking at the Omride dynasty, on which we have a wide range of conflicting biblical and extrabiblical evidence.
  812. Find this resource:
  813. Knoppers, Gary N. Two Nations under God: The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies. 2 vols. Harvard Semitic Monographs 52–53. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993–1994.
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  815. An important analysis of the accounts of the traditions that stand behind several kings in the Deuteronomistic history, allowing the historian to decide how these accounts may be used.
  816. Find this resource:
  817. Lamb, David T. Righteous Jehu and His Evil Heirs: The Deuteronomist’s Negative Perspective on Dynastic Succession. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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  819. An important illustration of how the Deuteronomist is fundamentally shaped by ideological concerns, and thus the danger in treating Kings as a straightforward historical source.
  820. Find this resource:
  821. Thompson, Michael E. W. Situation and Theology: Old Testament Interpretation of the Syro-Ephramite War. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1982.
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  823. A variety of sources, biblical and extrabiblical, describe the attempt of the Northern Kingdom to convince Judah to join its rebellion against Assyria. Thompson describes how various biblical accounts cannot be used in a straightforward fashion to reconstruct this event, since they are interpretations of it.
  824. Find this resource:
  825. From the Exile of the North to the Exile of Judah
  826.  
  827. This is a transitional period, as Judah moved from becoming a vassal of Assyria to a vassal of Babylon after the defeat of Assyria by the Babylonians in the late 7th century. Lipschits 2003 and Lipschits 2005 look at the later part of the period (and beyond); Childs 1967, Ussishkin 1982, and Grabbe 2003 offer different perspectives on Sennacherib’s incursion of 701; Cogan 1974 explores the influence of Assyrian religion on Judah; and Vaughn 1999, Sweeney 2001, Barrick 2002, and Grabbe 2005 focus mainly on the reforming kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, and the historicity of their reforms.
  828.  
  829. Barrick, W. Boyd. The King and the Cemeteries: Toward a New Understanding of Josiah’s Reform. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 88. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002.
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  831. A detailed analysis of Josiah’s reform, as presented in Kings and Chronicles, concluding that some aspects of these accounts suggest that the reform occurred.
  832. Find this resource:
  833. Childs, Brevard S. Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis. Studies in Biblical Theology, 2d ser., 3. London: SCM, 1967.
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  835. A brilliant book by a very important 20th-century scholar, illustrating how the traditions concerning the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem developed. An exemplary methodological study illustrating how texts need to be collected and analyzed before they are used by the historian.
  836. Find this resource:
  837. Cogan, Morton. Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 19. Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1974.
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  839. Uses biblical and Assyrian evidence to reconstruct the history and practices of the time. Along with J. W. McKay’s Religion in Judah under the Assyrians, 732–609 BC (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1973), this book shows that, contrary to popular belief, the Assyrians did not impose their beliefs on their vassals.
  840. Find this resource:
  841. Grabbe, Lester L., ed. Like a Bird in a Cage: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. 363 Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.
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  843. A comprehensive discussion from a variety of angles about the extensive and disparate data for this event, which is important for the history of Judah, and for understanding how to reconstruct history when we have “too much” data. Also has important implications for understanding the typical situation, in which we have little more than the biblical text.
  844. Find this resource:
  845. Grabbe, Lester L., ed. Good Kings and Bad Kings. European Seminar in Historical Methodology 5. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2005.
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  847. A set of essays in the European Seminar in Historical Methodology series exploring the reigns of Josiah and Manasseh, who are depicted stereotypically as the best and worst kings of Judah, respectively, with special attention to the historicity of the events described, including Josiah’s reform.
  848. Find this resource:
  849. Lipschits, Oded. The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
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  851. An extensive and comprehensive examination, using biblical, Babylonian, and archaeological sources, that looks at the last days of Judah and beyond into the exilic period.
  852. Find this resource:
  853. Lipschits, Oded, and Joseph Blenkinsopp, eds. Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
  854. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  855. A collection of essays on religious, military, and archaeological aspects of Judah under Babylonian domination. See also Lipschits 2005.
  856. Find this resource:
  857. Sweeney, Marvin A. King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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  859. Josiah, with his reform of cultic practices of c. 622 BCE, plays an especially important role in the history of Israel. A complete analysis of Josiah in Kings and in prophetic literature, suggesting that Josiah really was a reforming king, even though he is idealized in some texts.
  860. Find this resource:
  861. Ussishkin, David. The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, 1982.
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  863. A large-format, lavishly illustrated book encompassing all aspects of the siege of 701 BCE. Contains very helpful fold-out photos and line drawings of the British Museum Lachish reliefs.
  864. Find this resource:
  865. Vaughn, Andrew G. Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler’s Account of Hezekiah. Archaeology and Biblical Studies 4. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999.
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  867. Chronicles, which is usually seen as highly ideological in its additions, and thus of little historical value, presents much material about Hezekiah that is not found in Kings. Vaughn, using archaeological evidence, suggests that some of the Chronicler’s evidence is based on a reliable source.
  868. Find this resource:
  869. The Exilic Period
  870.  
  871. This formative period is complicated chronologically, since there were several times in the early 6th century BCE when Judeans were exiled to Babylon and elsewhere, while, as modern scholarship has emphasized, some stayed in Judea. Similarly, after the edict of Cyrus in 538, most of the exiled Judeans stayed in Babylon. Thus, this period has fuzzy beginning and end points, and encompasses many countries and perspectives, as emphasized by Middlemas 2007; scholars are recognizing now that it is crucial not to accept the predominant biblical picture of the exile as an unmitigated disaster, in which almost all were exiled and lived miserable lives in Babylon, as normative. Ackroyd 1968 offers a less comprehensive summary, and Albertz 2003 a more comprehensive one; Barstad 1996 focuses on those left behind in the land of Israel; much of Grabbe 1998 focuses on the idea of exile, rather than on the exilic period itself; and Smith 1989 uses comparative sociology to explore the changes fostered by the exile.
  872.  
  873. Ackroyd, Peter R. Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought of the Sixth Century BC. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968.
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  875. A standard and clear summary of the understanding of this period by a leading British scholar.
  876. Find this resource:
  877. Albertz, Rainer. Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. Translated by David Green. Studies in Biblical Literature 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
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  879. A comprehensive study by a major German scholar who is especially interested in the intersection of social and religious history. More than half of the book concerns which biblical literature was composed in the period—a highly problematic and controversial issue.
  880. Find this resource:
  881. Barstad, Hans M. The Myth of the Empty Land: A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah during the “Exilic” Period. Symbolae Osloenses Fascicle Supplement 28. Oslo, Norway: Scandanavian University Press, 1996.
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  883. An influential study, arguing persuasively that the majority of Judeans were not exiled in the early 6th century and that the numerous people who remained behind played an important role in shaping the Bible and Judaism.
  884. Find this resource:
  885. Grabbe, Lester L, ed. Leading Captivity Captive: “The Exile” as History and Ideology. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 278. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
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  887. A significant reconceptualization of the exile by a variety of biblical scholars. Explores such issues as whether we should speak of an exile or a deportation, and the extent to which Judea was emptied of its population by the Babylonians.
  888. Find this resource:
  889. Middlemas, Jill. The Templeless Age: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the “Exile.” Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007.
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  891. An important and accessible survey, with comprehensive bibliography, of the different responses found in the variety of exilic literature to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.
  892. Find this resource:
  893. Smith, Daniel L. The Religion of the Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile. Bloomington, IN: Meyer-Stone, 1989.
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  895. A fruitful exploration of the different responses to exile found in several key texts of different genres using analogies of landless groups from other eras.
  896. Find this resource:
  897. Yehud Under Persian Rule—and Beyond
  898.  
  899. Cyrus the Great, the emperor of Persia, entered the gates of Babylon in 539, and soon thereafter allowed the Judeans to return to Judah, now the Persian province of Yehud. According to much contemporary scholarship, this period saw the production of much of biblical literature, though there are still considerable debates on this matter. In 332, Alexander the Great conquered Yehud from the Persians, initiating the Hellenistic period. A small number of scholars consider this period as well to have included significant literary production of the Bible, while others consider Daniel and Ecclesiastes to be the main writings of this period. It is thus unclear what the end point of biblical history should be and how extensively the Greek period should be treated. Bickerman 1962 is an older, important summary of the period, while Grabbe 2004 is more extensive and current. Important collections of essays include Davies and Finkelstein 1984, Lipschits and Oeming 2006, and Japhet 2006. New approaches are explored in Berquist 2007. Smith 1987 investigates what the author anachronistically calls “religious parties” of the period, while Hoglund 1992 and Edelman 2005 focus on the missions of Ezra and Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the Second Temple, offering some revisionist perspectives.
  900.  
  901. Berquist, Jon L., ed. Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period. Semeia Studies 50. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.
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  903. Collection of essays that use literary and social-scientific approaches to study particular texts and issues from this period, casting light on the broader period and the newest methods for biblical study.
  904. Find this resource:
  905. Bickerman, Elias. From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundation of Post-Biblical Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1962.
  906. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  907. Though dated, a readable and insightful book, offering historical background and analysis of the latter biblical books.
  908. Find this resource:
  909. Davies, W. D., and Louis Finkelstein, eds. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 1, Introduction: The Persian Period. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
  910. DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521218801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  911. The first volume of a very important project. Contains excellent, varied essays that fit together to give a rich picture of the period, though unfortunately, due to editorial problems, some were already outdated when they were published.
  912. Find this resource:
  913. Edelman, Diana. The Origins of the “Second” Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem. London: Equinox, 2005.
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  915. A comprehensively argued work suggesting that the Temple was rebuilt in the 5th century, not the late 6th century as typically asserted.
  916. Find this resource:
  917. Grabbe, Lester L. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 1, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah. London: T & T Clark, 2004.
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  919. The beginning of a comprehensive study of the period, which begins by outlining sources and then offers broad social, religious, and historical syntheses. Extremely important. The finished work will replace the author’s two-volume Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992). The second volume (2008) is called The Early Hellenistic Period (335–175 BCE).
  920. Find this resource:
  921. Hoglund, Kenneth G. Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 125. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992.
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  923. An important attempt, using extensive textual and archaeological evidence, to contextualize and explain the purpose of Ezra and Nehemiah’s journeys to Yehud.
  924. Find this resource:
  925. Japhet, Sara. From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
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  927. A collection of varied and important studies from one of the most important interpreters of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles, addressing historical and other issues. Offers an important perspective from Jerusalem on many contested issues.
  928. Find this resource:
  929. Lipschits, Oded, and Manfred Oeming, eds. Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
  930. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  931. Collected essays from a wide variety of scholars, many of them significant, addressing biblical, archaeological, and historical issues. For information on the rise of sectarianism and the transition from the Persian to the Hellenistic Period, see Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century bce (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007).
  932. Find this resource:
  933. Smith, Morton. Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament. 2d ed. London: SCM, 1987.
  934. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  935. An important, though somewhat simplified, description of the socio-religious groups (“parties”) in the late biblical period by an important scholar of early Judaism.
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