The Land Before The Kingdom Of Israel A History Of The Southern Levant And The People Who Populated It

In The “God of Israel” in History and Tradition, Michael Stahl examines the historical and ideological significances of the formulaic title “god of Israel” (’elohe yisra’el) in the Hebrew Bible using critical theory on social power and identity.

In this companion volume to his bestselling Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Lester L. Grabbe provides the background history of the main ancient Near Eastern peoples and empires: Babylonia, Assyria, Urartu, Hittites, Amorites, Egyptians. Grabbe's focus is on Palestine/Canaan and covers the early second millennium, including the Middle Bronze Age and the Second Intermediate Period and Hyksos rule of Egypt. Grabbe also addresses the question of a 'patriarchal period'. The main focus of the book is on the second half of the second millennium: Late Bronze and early Iron Age, the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Amarna letters, the Sea Peoples, the question of 'the exodus', the early settlements in the hill country of Palestine, and the first mention of Israel in the Merenptah inscription. Archaeology and the contribution of the social sciences both feature heavily, as does inscriptional and iconographic material. As such this volume provides a fascinating portrayal of ancient Israel and this definitive work by one of the world's leading biblical historians will be of interest to all students and scholars of biblical history.

"The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East offers a comprehensive and fully illustrated survey of the history of Egypt and Western Asia (Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran) in five volumes, from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander of Great. The authors represent a highly international mix of leading academics whose expertise brings alive the people, places and times of the remote past. The emphasis lies firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities under investigation. The individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, giving special attention to the most recent archaeological finds and how they have impacted our interpretation. The first volume covers the long period from the mid-tenth millennium to the late third millennium BC and presents the history of the Near East in ten chapters "From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad". Key topics include the domestication of animals and plants, the first permanent settlements, the subjugation and appropriation of the natural environment, the emergence of complex states and belief systems, the invention of the earliest writing systems and the wide-ranging trade networks that linked diverse population groups across deserts, mountains and oceans"--

Designed as a supplementary resource for students who have an interest in the ancient Near East and biblical history, this volume provides a basic introduction to the historical, archaeological, and socio-contextual aspects of ancient Israel during its early foundation period through the endof the monarchy in Judah. Victor Matthews integrates extra-biblical information on the physical realities of geo- and super-power politics, international and interregional movement of peoples, and the evolutionary process of complex states in the ancient Near East with information from biblicalnarratives in order to explore the development of ancient Israelites' identity, cultural traditions, and interactions with other major cultures. In particular, he examines aspects of everyday life in both village culture and urban settings as a key to the development of social, legal, and religioustraditions and practices. The History of Bronze and Iron Age Israel features an easy to navigate format, non-technical language, and a series of informative insets that highlights important methodological concepts and comparative material.

This book examines the relationship between mobility, lived religiosities, and conceptions of divine personhood as they are preserved in textual corpora and material culture from Israel, Judah, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. By integrating evidence of the form and function of religiosities in contexts of mobility and migration, this volume reconstructs mobility-informed aspects of civic and household religiosities in Israel and its world. Readers will find a robust theoretical framework for studying cultures of mobility and religiosities in the ancient past, as well as a fresh understanding of the scope and texture of mobility-informed religious identities that composed broader Yahwistic religious heritage. Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World will be of use to both specialists and informed readers interested in the history of mobilities and migrations in the ancient Near East, as well as those interested in the development of Yahwism in its biblical and extra-biblical forms.

This special issue publishes most of the contributions of a three-day workshop of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe" held on July 2019 at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. It seeks to explore and contextualize the configuration of the varied desert cultic practices from the southern Levant and northern Arabia during the Late Bronze/Iron Ages that may have contributed to the emergence of the Yahwistic cult. By this it raises also crucial questions on the early history of the Israelite and Judean religions in the first millennium BCE. Recent archaeological excavations in the Negev, southern Transjordan and Hejaz and new interpretations of old epigraphic and iconographic evidence are rapidly changing the biblical-based paradigm of the interactions between the desert cults and the Iron Age Levantine religions. Cultural contacts and the entanglement of religious networks are paramount for the understanding of this early history. Recent archaeological, iconographic and epigraphic studies of the Southern Levant contribute to the question of the emergence and early development of a Yahwistic religion. The issue adopts an interdisciplinary approach, assessing textual, archaeological, as well as epigraphic and iconographic data.

This groundbreaking volume presents a new translation of the text and detailed interpretation of almost every word or phrase in the book of Judges, drawing from archaeology and iconography, textual versions, biblical parallels, and extrabiblical texts, many never noted before. Archaeology also serves to show how a story of the Iron II period employed visible ruins to narrate supposedly early events from the so-called "period of the Judges." The synchronic analysis for each unit sketches its characters and main themes, as well as other literary dynamics. The diachronic, redactional analysis shows the shifting settings of units as well as their development, commonly due to their inner-textual reception and reinterpretation. The result is a remarkably fresh historical-critical treatment of 1:1-10:5.