Susan Niditch – The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel

Автор: Susan Niditch
Название книги: The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Древний мир и Античность
Страницы: 566
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

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

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers a multifaceted entry into ancient Israelite culture.
The orientation of the Companion is rooted in several approaches: the history
of religion with its interests in worldviews, symbol systems, paradigms, and the benefits
of comparative, cross-cultural study; the study of religion as lived, an approach that
asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people, the material culture that they shape
and experience, and the relationships between individuals and tradition; and cultural
studies, with its emphasis on interdisciplinarywork and methodological questions about
our own assumptions as scholars.
The essays of the Companion are presented in three parts, but each of the chapters
relates to others in the volume to reveal a range of perspectives, emphases, and ways
of reading that point both to areas of consensus and lively debate within a framework
of shared questions and concerns. A first group of articles explores how we know what
we know. Authors describe and apply major tools and approaches employed by scholars
to contextualize ancient Israel and Judah and to explore the Hebrew Bible, the great
anthology of literature integral to issues in Israelite history and culture. Throughout,
readers are urged to approach the sources of our knowledge with suspicion, aware of the
benefits and limitations of methodological approaches deployed in the study of ancient
Israel.
In chapter 1, Elizabeth Bloch-Smith skillfully introduces readers to the modern field
of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, its techniques and goals, and its implications for
the study of ancient Israel. She reviews the history of the field, drawing an important
distinction between “biblical” and “ancient Israel.” Bloch-Smith emphasizes the critical
importance of material culture for a full appreciation of Israelite religion, literature,
and society even while pointing to the limitations of this evidence and the challenges
of interpretation. She judiciously describes developments and debates among scholars
concerning chronology and other critical issues, providing a thoughtful counterpoint
to other essays in this volume such as that of Avraham Faust.
Grappling with issues in ethnography, worldview, and literary form, Song-Mi Suzie
Park discusses the peoples surrounding ancient Israel who are described in the Hebrew
Bible as playing critical roles in Israelite foundation tales. Park not only reviews what
is known and not known about the historical locations, ethnic identity, and cultural
orientations of the Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, and others but also explores what
terms such as Canaanite and Amorite variously mean in Israelite tradition. She asks
how the ancient biblical authors portray neighboring peoples and what these portrayals
say about Israelites’ own sense of cultural self-definition contoured either in contrast
with or in relation to other groups. In the process, she not only delves into the nature
of ancient historiography but also provides an excellent case study in the genesis of
cultural memory.
An important part of this memory relates to Egypt. John R. Huddlestun asks about
the significance of biblical references to Egypt for understanding Israelite history and
cultural identity. Huddlestun discusses periods and situations in which cultural contact
between ancient Egypt and Israel might have been possible, pointing to historical
and literary implications, but he is duly cautious about direct literary borrowings and
links. Throughout, he pays excellent attention to the comparative method, offering a
thoughtful review and critique of thework of previous scholarship, exploringwhat this
work and conclusions drawn from it reveal about the field of biblical studies and the
cultural orientations of its contributors. In an essay that shares some interests with
those of Park, Faust, and Stavrakopoulou, Huddlestun has us consider what the biblical
portrayals of Egypt and Egyptians say about biblical writers, their worldviews and
contexts.
In a wide-ranging essay, StevenWeitzman also explores scholarly approaches to the
contexts of biblical literature and the significance of certain recurring methodological
assumptions. Weitzman is particularly sensitive to the difficulties in matching ancient
texts with social, political, and intellectual history – the ambiguities and complexities,
the constructions, interpretations, and receptions to which questions about text and
context are subject. In particular, he assesses the contributions of ancient Near Eastern
comparative studies and archaeology, discussing the New Historicism, postmodernism
in various guises, minimalism, and the ways in which attention to collective memory
relates to the very nature of tradition as received and worldview in context. His essay
reads well in tandem with those of Bloch-Smith, Park, Faust, and Niditch.
Susan Niditch explores the ways in which categories introduced by folklorist Alan
Dundes, “texture” (style and use of language), “text” (content), and “context” (social
and literary), inform genres within folk groups. She points to interdisciplinary borders
where folklore meets biblical form-criticism and contemporary material culture meets
ancient Near Eastern archaeology.Adiscussion of oral andwritten literature is followed
by a set of biblical case studies that underscore the various ways in which awareness of
folklore, the field and the international corpus of material studied, deepens and enriches
our understanding of ancient Israelite cultures. Her observations concerning oral tradition
serve as a counterpoint to those of David M. Carr who seeks to understand how
the compositions of the Hebrew Bible emerged and were preserved as written works
In a sophisticated essay that rejects simplistic views of biblical sources, David M. Carr
offers a model for the formation of the Hebrew Bible, seeking to account for doublets,
contradictions, and awkwardness in the received, preserved written tradition. Drawing
his examples from various ancient Near Eastern and biblicalworks and focusing on Genesis
1–11, Carr posits the use of specific scribal techniques, such as joining, blending,
expanding, and counterwriting. His case studies lead Carr to review and assess the state
of source criticism and to carefully draw some wider conclusions about the formation
of the Pentateuch and its “multivoiced” quality. Carr’s work is well read in tandem with
that of Raymond F. Person, Jr who points to an oral-traditional dynamic in the process
of written composition.
Composition also raises questions about the very words chosen by authors, the syntax
and style of their language, and a host of other linguistic criteria. Ohad Cohen introduces
readers to theways inwhich experts in linguistics offer suggestions for the dating,
authorship, and context of various biblical compositions. After describing the sort of criteria
considered by scholars in the study of ancient Hebrew, Cohen provides useful case
studies to explore the ways in which these criteria might be used to situate pieces and
portions of biblical literature.
The culture of ancient Israel and Judah is, as emphasized throughout this volume,
part of a larger Levantine world, both in regard to the content and nature of the evidence
and in regard to the very writing system that has allowed for the preservation of
literary evidence. Introducing readers to the variations and developments that occur in
writing systems with specific reference to the ancient Near East, Christopher A. Rollston
provides an array of key texts, examines the genres of literature produced or preserved
in writing, and explores their political, historical, and cultural significance. Rollston discusses
the methodological challenges and implications of epigraphic work, pointing to
scholarly debates about the chronology and meaning of individual inscriptions. Rollston
not only allows readers to think in material terms about the nature of writing in
the ancientworld towhich Israel belonged, but also aboutwho has access to this skill at
various levels of expertise.
All of the questions about form and function, context and comparison that occupy
authors in Part I of the Companion remain relevant in Part II dealing with political history.
Developments in scholarly approaches will be especially striking to thosewhowere
introduced to the history of ancient Israel viaworks of the mid-twentieth centurywhen
venerable scholars such as John Bright could virtually visualize Abraham and his family
as they traveled the steppe, donkeys in tow. Instead, Avraham Faust approaches this
early period by examining theways inwhich evidence of material culture reveals means
of defining one’s own group over against neighboring groups. In the process, he provides
an overview of directions and variations in the field of archaeology as it has influenced
biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies and hotly debated questions concerning
Israelite origins. Faust examines critically what is meant by ethnicity and offers a
chronology and a cultural map for the historical emergence of Israel as a people and a
formof self-definition. Hiswork reprises some of the themes explored by Park in her socioliterary
approach. Similarly, Brad E. Kelle explores the complex intersection between
legend, history, propaganda, and historiography in discussing the period of the early
kings as described in the Hebrew Scriptures and as elucidated by extrabiblical evidence,
archaeological, epigraphic, and literary. He points to various “reading frames” employed
by modern interpreters and to the possible social contexts,worldviews, and motivations
that may have informed thework of ancient composers, all of which relate to particular
and often contrasting views of an early monarchy. Also employing biblical, archaeological,
and extrabiblical written sources, J. J. M. Roberts points to the challenges of historical
reconstruction and the inner tensions and contradictions in available material,
asking how we know what we know and why the information is preserved by various
sources in a particular way. His work, like that of Brad E. Kelle, thus not only provides a
valuable background essay for the study of Israelite and Judean history, but also a useful
model in historical methodology.
Similarly, Charles E. Carter grapples with various and contrasting reconstructions of
the neo-Babylonian and Persian periods with special interest in theways inwhich scholars
employ and assess archaeological data. He too points to the challenges faced by historians,
and offers judicious suggestions for the demography of Persian-period Judea. He
points to ways in which details concerning the size and distribution of population and
other information, gleaned from concrete evidence of material culture, relate to biblical
authors’ portrayals of exile, return, and daily life experienced under colonialist control
in Israel, Judah, and the Diaspora. His essay beautifully relates conceptually to chapters
by Smith, Collins, Lewis, and Eskenazi while grappling with many of the issues in
archaeology and interpretation discussed by Bloch-Smith, Schloen, and Faust. Finally,
Matthew J. Goff describes the political and cultural history of the Hellenistic period,
exploring key events and turning points, issues relating to Israel and Diaspora, to the
Maccabean revolt, and to manifestations of an apocalyptic worldview. He explores how
extant literature reflects and helped to shape varieties of Jewish identity, and he allows
for creativity and complexity in Jewish encounters with Hellenistic settings and ideas.
Part III of the Companion delves into critical themes in ancient Israelite cultures.Readers
will notice theways inwhich contributors creatively drawupon the various methodologies
explored by earlier essays, often applying an interdisciplinary and comparative
approach to the theme they present. Essays by NealWalls and Mark S. Smith deal with
representations of God and the gods.
Neal Walls describes the rich mythological matrix to which belong representations
of deities in the ancient Levant. His work in comparative religion and comparative literature
underscores not only similarities in language, imagery, and narrative medium
employed by Israelite and neighboring authors to express essentials of worldview but
also points to important variations between the literary inventions of various contributors,
revealing their unique and culturally specific orientations. The essay thus joins that
of Park to explore ways in which groups define the self and the other through creative
media, in this case through stories about the gods. Walls points not only to a range of
views expressed by Yahwists concerning the gods and the God of Israel, but also traces
developments over time. Attuned to ways in which the literary evidence reveals both
shared traditions and lively diversity in critical aspects of culture and belief, this essay
anticipates studies by Greenstein and Lewis dealingwith verbal and visual art and beautifully
transitions to issues in monotheism discussed by Mark S. Smith.