According to Stanley Rosenbaum, the Bible resembles what a family would retrieve after a tornado hits a trailer park -- some of the family's own possessions mixed with those of others, overlapping, contradicting, and disordered. Understanding Israelite History is a revolutionary attempt to fill in the many gaps left in the historical record. Rosenbaum begins by demonstrating that Israel's religion was not a clean, divinely inspired break with humanity's past, but derives from the long sweep of events that began when Homo sapiens first acquired language. Strata of earlier religions are still visible beneath the surface of Israelite monotheism. Early Israel was not "one man's family", however dysfunctional. It was a collection of individuals and groups, mainly outcasts or lower social elements, who coalesced into a nation and developed -- though they did not always follow -- a religion of ethical monotheism and principles of democratic government and social justice that still today move and inspire more than half the world's population. Like all religions, Israel's was shaped by the language, in this case Hebrew, in which it is expressed. Expressing monotheism in a language that is essentially dualistic conduced to the suppression of the female elements of earlier religions which had nurtured Israel's religion, and consequently, to a lack of appreciation for the part played by women in Israel's religious life. This skewed view of Israel's religion and its history that the Bible contains is a result of its having been collected, edited and in part written by Judeans, southern survivors, and heirs of David's kingdom who were moved to record it in the wake of the destruction ofJerusalem in 586 BCE.

Gain a richer understanding of God's plan for Israel.

Did the Hebrew mind work differently from those of people in the Western tradition of civilization? This long-discredited question still lingers in biblical studies. Theologies of the Mind in Biblical Israel approaches the topic of the Israelite mind from a new direction, exploring how the biblical texts themselves, especially Proverbs and Deuteronomy, describe the working of the mind. It demonstrates that the much-discussed role of memory in the Bible is just one part of a general understanding that in the realm of 'knowledge' God and humanity are rivals.

To understand the complexity of modern Israel, you have to first understand the history. This is a nation that has been exiled not once, not twice, but three times... and each time has returned to re-inhabit their homeland. This is unique. How and why has this happened? This book encourages an audience who thinks Israel is an irrelevant issue to think again and understand what God has done and is doing through this small nation. This Bible is, after all, a Jewish book. Jesus was Jewish. Our destiny is tied up in both.

Understanding Biblical Theology clarifies the catch-all term “biblical theology,” a movement that tries to remove the often-held dichotomy between biblical studies for the Church and as an academic pursuit. This book examines the five major schools of thought regarding biblical theology and handles each in turn, defining and giving a brief developmental history for each one, and exploring each method through the lens of one contemporary scholar who champions it. Using a spectrum between history and theology, each of five “types” of biblical theology are identified as either “more theological” or “more historical” in concern and practice: Biblical Theology as Historical Description (James Barr) Biblical Theology as History of Redemption (D. A. Carson) Biblical Theology as Worldview-Story (N. T. Wright) Biblical Theology as Canonical Approach (Brevard Childs) Biblical Theology as Theological Construction (Francis Watson). A conclusion suggests how any student of the Bible can learn from these approaches.

Christian teaching and modern sensibilities both eschew "nationalism" as an extreme, fanatical form of patriotism, an excessive or disordered form of an otherwise healthy and proper national identity. But what if the problem of nationalism is something much more fundamental? What if nationalism is actually the process leading to national identity in the first place? And what happens when this process entails selectively appropriating and reinterpreting the Christian tradition for the sake of the envisioned nation? This book takes up these questions within the context of American Christian nationalism. Here, the process of interweaving the Christian narrative with American history and myth is examined in depth through a thorough engagement with scholarship on nationalism and within a framework shaped by contemporary theopolitical studies and the biblical narrative. The study aims to discern how the Christian Scriptures and theological tradition have been used by Christians themselves to further what amounts to an alternative gospel. In so doing this book charts a path for the church to evaluate itself honestly in light of Christ's lordship, repent, and learn to tell its story more truly.

In this first volume of a trilogy, Daniel J. Elazar addresses political uses of the idea of covenant, the tradition that has adhered to that idea, and the political arrangements that flow from it, Among the topics covered are covenant as a political concept, the Bible as a political commentary, the post-biblical tradition, medieval covenant theory, and Jewish political culture.

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an innovative overview of ancient Israelite culture and history, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. Distinguished scholars provide original contributions that explore the tradition in all its complexity, multiplicity and diversity. A methodologically sophisticated overview of ancient Israelite culture that provides insights into political and social history, culture, and methodology Explores what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah, but also investigates how we know what we know Presents fresh insights, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields Delves into ‘religion as lived,’ an approach that asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experience Each essay is an original contribution to the subject

Taking advantage of critical methodology for history-writing and the use of anthropological insights and ethnographic data from the modern Middle East, this study aims at providing new understandings on the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine and the socio-political dynamics at work in the Levant during antiquity. The book begins with a discussion of matters of historiography and history-writing, both in ancient and modern times, and an evaluation on the incidence of the modern theological discourse in relation to history and history-writing. Chapter 2 evaluates the methodology used by biblical scholars for gaining knowledge on ancient Israelite society. Pfoh argues that such attempts often apply socio-scientific models on biblical narratives without external evidence of the reconstructed past, producing a virtual past reality which cannot be confirmed concretely. Chapter 3 deals with the archaeological remains usually held as clear evidence of Israelite statehood in the tenth century BCE. The main criticism is directed towards archaeological interpretations of the data which are led by the biblical narratives of the books of Judges and Samuel, resulting in a harmonic blend of ancient literature and modern anthropological models on state-formation. Chapter 4 continues with the discussion on how anthropological models should be employed for history-writing. Socio-political concepts, such as chiefdom society or state formation should not be imposed on the contents of ancient literary sources (i.e., the Bible) but used instead to analyse our primary sources (the archaeological and epigraphic records), in order to create a socio-historical account. The final chapter attempts to provide an historical explanation regarding the emergence of Israel in ancient Palestine without relying on the Bible but only on archaeology, epigraphy and anthropological insights. This Israel is not the biblical one. This is the Israel from history, the one that the modern historian aims at recovering from the study of ancient epigraphic and archaeological remains. The arguments presented challenge the idea that the biblical writers were recording historical events as we understand this practice nowadays and that we can use the biblical records for creating critical histories of Israel in ancient Palestine. It also questions the existence of undisputable traces of statehood in the archaeological record from the Iron Age, as the biblical images about a United Monarchy might lead us to believe. Thus, drawing on ethnographic insights, we may gain a better knowledge on how ancient Levantine societies functioned, providing us with a context for understanding the emergence of historical Israel as a major highland patronate, with a socio-political life of almost two centuries. It is during the later periods of ancient Palestines history, the Persian and the Graeco-Roman, that we find the proper context into which biblical Israel is created, beginning a literary life of more than two millennia.

Biblical scholars agree that priesthood(s) played a critical role in the social, historical, cultural, and religious lives of the ancient Israelites. This study seeks to clarify the role of one such priesthood, the Zadokites. Traditional scholarship assumes the dominance of a Zadokite priesthood from a united monarchy until the time of the Hasmoneans. The thesis of this study is that references to the "sons of Zadok" in ancient texts reflect the sectarian nature of the Second Temple period. The extent to which modern scholarship has magnified the Zadokites as the dominant priestly institution from the monarchy into the Second Temple period cannot be substantiated. Rather, the Second Temple period serves as the terminus for all literary references to the Zadokites and provides a socio-historical context which allows for the development of a plausible reconstruction explaining their appearance in the ancient texts. This comprehensive study of the Zadokites provides a study of historiography that traces the growth of scholarly notions concerning the Zadokites. The study examines historiographic issues related to the development of these conceptualizations. Literary analysis indicates the role and status of the Zadokites in available textual evidence. A socio-historical reconstruction forms the theoretical basis and attempts to answer such questions such as: Who placed the Zadokites in these texts? Why were the Zadokites included in these texts? The Zadokites will be situated in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The study provides a foundation for studies of priesthood(s) in ancient Israel.