The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Topic Area ◽  
Samuel 1 ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
2 Samuel

The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible offers thirty-six essays on the so-called “Historical Books”: Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, and 1–2 Chronicles. The essays are organized around four nodes: contexts, content, approaches, and reception. Each essay takes up two questions: (1) what does the topic/area/issue have to do with the Historical Books? and (2) how does this topic/area/issue help readers better interpret the Historical Books? The essays engage traditional theories and newer updates to the same, and also engage the textual traditions themselves which are what give rise to compositional analyses. Many essays model approaches that move in entirely different ways altogether, however, whether those are by attending to synchronic, literary, theoretical, or reception aspects of the texts at hand. The contributions range from text-critical issues to ancient historiography, state formation and development, ancient Near Eastern contexts, society and economy, political theory, violence studies, orality, feminism, postcolonialism, and trauma theory—among others. Taken together, these essays well represent the variety of options available when it comes to gathering, assessing, and interpreting these particular biblical books.

A Reversal of Fortunes: Daniel among the Scholars

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Amy C. Merrill Willis
Keyword(s):  
Significant Shift ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
Book Of Daniel ◽  
Areas Of Interest

Scholarship on the book of Daniel has undergone a significant shift since the publication of K. Koch’s groundbreaking work, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, in 1972. Despite significant achievements in understanding the historical-critical issues of the book, scholarship viewed Daniel’s apocalyptic visions as embarrassing. The renaissance in Daniel studies that began in the 1970s has since produced a robust conversation and newer theory-driven insights around well-established areas of interest. These include Daniel’s textual traditions and compositional history, the function of its genres, the social settings of its writers, and Daniel’s near eastern literary and cultural milieu. New areas of interest identified in the landmark study of J.J. Collins and P.W. Flint (2001; 2002), namely the history of reception and political theologizing, have also gained ground. Daniel’s reversal of fortunes is due to new methodologies as well as a fundamental paradigm shift in interpretation; this change has seen Daniel scholarship move away from the search for Daniel’s historical meaning, narrowly construed, and toward the quest to understand what Daniel does to and for its readers.

Did David Murder Saul's Successors in 2 Samuel 21:1-14 and Does It Matter?

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Deken
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Law ◽  
2 Samuel

A semantic reading of this text alters the structure of the episode as a whole to reveal a story-within-a-story: the death of the seven Saulides and the expiation performed by Rizpah. The purpose of this sub-plot is to point to the perpetrator of the initial crime causing a famine, by presenting an analogous circumstance. By analogy we are directed to the conclusion that David is responsible for the famine after engineering the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. David’s exploitation of the differences between Ancient Near Eastern and Israelite law resulting in seven dead claimants to the throne of Israel, suggests that the episode has been compiled as a rejection of kingship; the centralization of worship, and the promulgation of the law-code. Fundamental to all these, is the rejection of the popular sovereign practice of murdering any potential successors to the throne.

On Agricultural Imagery in Biblical Descriptions of Catastrophes

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-14
Author(s):  
Nili Samet
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Mass Killing ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Ancient Israel

This article examines the use of agricultural imagery in biblical literature to embody the destructive force of war and other mass catastrophes. Activities such as vintage, harvest, threshing, and wine-pressing serve as metaphors for the actions of slaughtering, demolition and mass killing. The paper discusses the Ancient Near Eastern origins of the imagery under discussion, and presents the relevant examples from the Hebrew Bible, tracing the development of this absorbing metaphor, and analyzing the different meanings attached to it in different contexts. It shows that the use of destructive agricultural imagery first emerges in ancient Israel as an instance of popular phraseology. In turn, the imagery is employed as a common prophetic motif. The prophetic books examined demonstrate how each prophet appropriates earlier uses of the imagery in prophetic discourse and adapts the agricultural metaphors to suit specific rhetorical needs.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. xx-4
Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle ◽  
Brent A. Strawn
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Topic Area ◽  
Critical Nodes ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Modern Sense

This brief chapter introduces the Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible. It notes the secondary and constructed nature of the category “Historical Books” (which is not native to the Hebrew Bible) and how this category might be potentially misleading as to the content and genre of these books, many of which are devoid of historiographic intent in anything like the modern sense. With these caveats entered, the introduction next explains how the essays in the book touch on four critical nodes: context (sources, history, texts), content (themes, concepts, issues), approaches (composition, synthesis, theory), and reception (literature, traditions, figures). Further, each essayist was asked to speak to how the topic/area/issue addressed in the essay relates to the Historical Books, as well as how the topic/area/issue helps one better interpret the Historical Books. In conclusion, this introduction notes the diversity that marks recent research in these books.

Near Eastern Practice of Law in Deuteronomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Religious Vision ◽  
Legal Remedies ◽  
System P ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
Deuteronomic Code

This chapter examines the implications of documentary evidence on Near Eastern legal practice for understanding legal material in the biblical book of Deuteronomy. The chapter extends to Deuteronomy B. Wells’s approach to biblical law by observing similar legal issues, similar legal reasoning, and similar legal remedies shared by the Deuteronomic Code and cuneiform records of ancient Near Eastern legal practice. These data suggest that Deuteronomy was produced by scribes who were directly familiar with legal practice or who utilized textual traditions in turn directly rooted in legal practice. Deuteronomy presents legal practice in a systematic way, probing its underlying principles. At the same time, the data examined here also suggest that the Deuteronomic Code was not merely descriptive of legal practice. For example, in the law about fugitives, the Deuteronomic Code presents a vision of Israel’s international status that did not precisely match historical reality. As a literary work, Deuteronomy embodied a political and religious vision of Israel, including its legal system.

Politics and Kingship in the Historical Books, with Attention to the Role of Political Theory in Interpretation

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-200
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Parsons Miller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Abstract Ideas ◽  
Theological Message

This chapter explores the thesis that the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible address abstract ideas about politics, government, and law. Taking issue with critics who view the Bible’s spiritual and theological message as incommensurable with political philosophy, the chapter argues that the stories of politics and kingship in the Hebrew Bible’s historical books set forth set forth an impressive political theory that rivals, in some respects, the work of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The key is to bring out the general ideas behind the specific narrative elements. The chapter illustrates this thesis by examining the Hebrew Bible’s treatment of a number of classic problems of political theory: anarchy, obligation and sovereignty, distributive justice, and the comparative analysis of political organizations.

Hannah at Pentecost

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-258
Author(s):  
Reed Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Samuel 1 ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Biblical Allusion ◽  
1 Samuel ◽  
Book Of Acts ◽  
Old Greek

This essay argues that Hannah’s story in 1 Samuel 1–2 is an example of a ‘spirit phenomenon’ in the Hebrew Bible. The story displays an uncanny sensitivity to Hannah’s psychological state, which is consistent with how spirit language is used as self-language in biblical literature. Hannah describes herself as a ‘woman of hard spirit’ (1 Sam. 1.15) and engages in a kind of trance, which is disruptive enough to draw the attention of Eli. Through inner-biblical allusion and intentional alterations in the Old Greek and Dead Sea Scroll versions of 1 Samuel, Hannah comes to be associated with other prophetic women in biblical literature. Several Second Temple Jewish interpreters read Hannah as a prophetess and as a practitioner of spirit ecstasy, culminating in Philo’s association of Hannah with Bacchic possession and in Hannah’s experience at Shiloh serving as a model for Pentecost in the book of Acts.

scholarly journals Praise by animals in the Hebrew Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-513
Author(s):  
Peter Joshua Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Biblical Texts

Among ancient Near Eastern societies was a widespread and particularly intriguing belief that animals were able to worship and praise deities. This study shows the Hebrew Bible evidences the idea that animals were capable of praising God too and proceeds to observe and document the presence of numerous examples of this in specific biblical texts. Through understanding the place of animals in the Hebrew Bible, and their perceived activity in the ancient Near East, this study suggests animals are distinct agents of praise in their own right in the biblical texts.

scholarly journals King Saul�s mustering of all Israel (1 Sm 11:6�7): An idealised leadership

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeong Bong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
1 Samuel

1 Samuel 11:6�7 report the beginning of Saul�s public life and demonstrate his leadership over Israel. However, the verses do not clearly indicate his role in the specific events related in verses 1�11. This article clarifies Saul�s idealised kingly leadership by examining some of the literary-critical issues of 1 Samuel 11:1�11 in their broader context. Saul�s leadership was then considered against its larger ancient Near Eastern context. The article aimed to show that both Saul�s religious authority and also his political ability were welcomed in his emerging kingship.

The Beneficent Sky God: Cultural History in the Qur’an

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Arts And Sciences

This chapter considers the Qur'an's interpretation of the origins of civilization. When the Arabs conquered the Near East, they shared with their subjects (mainly Jews and Christians) the notion that civilization had arisen as a consequence of Adam's fall. But in contrast to the Hebrew Bible, the Qur'an portrays the rise of civilization positively and makes God its prime mover, much like the gods of ancient Near Eastern myths. There are at least two reasons for this difference. First, Muhammad draws on noncanonical biblical scripture and storytelling that link God, angels, and chosen human interlocutors to the development of beneficial arts and sciences. Second, Muhammad draws on some version of these texts (perhaps oral) to prove his argument that God is the source of all civilization, an argument influenced by late-antique thought on divine providence. He makes this argument to justify either proselytizing among or conquest of non-Muslims, who have forgotten the source of civilization and thus deserve to lose it.

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