Biblical Israel: History and Historiography to 586 BCE

References (39)

1. Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton, eds., Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah (London: T&T Clark, 2010).
2. K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: A Textbook on History and Religion [2 nd ed.] (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 10-11.
3. Geoff Emberling, "Ethnicity in Complex Societies: Archaeological Perspectives," Journal of Archaeological Research 5.4 (1997): 295-344; Naose MacSweeney, "Beyond Ethnicity: The Overlooked Diversity of Group Identity," Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22 (2009): 101-126.
4. of the contextual basis of expressions of ethnic identity. He stresses that within any group, understandings of identity can have highly variable modes of self-presentation. This can be in marked contrast to an external view, in which the group is seen as a homogeneous unit by an outside observer. 38 A case in point: more nuanced perspectives on Israelite identity might resolve ongoing debates over whether the late tenth-century site of Khirbet Qeiyafa was Israelite or not. 39 In all periods, Israel, like other social groups, was what political scientist Benedict Anderson has designated an "imagined community" embedded in a mesh of memory, tradition, and sometimes- contentious power-relationships, whose nature can shift according to time and circumstance. 40
5. Ron Hendel's Remembering Abraham contemplates precisely these issues. 41 By the Persian period-the era in which the Bible was approaching its final form-the different socio-religious perspectives reflected in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, Jonah, and Ruth make it clear that various groups were contesting the right to be called Israel, so potent had the name become. Contention over "Israel" continued not only in Samaritan and Christian claims to be the "true Israel," but in contemporary debates in the State of Israel.
6. Aren M. Maeir, review of Avraham Faust, The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012) in Review of Biblical Literature (09/2013): https://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/8631_9464.pdf.
7. Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel, and Martin Klingbeil, "An Ending and a Beginning," Biblical Archaeology Review 39.6 (2013): 44-51; and Nadav Na'aman, "Was Khirbet Qeiyafa a Judahite City? The Case against It," Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 17 (2017): 1-40.
8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [rev. ed.] (London: Verso, 2016).
9. Ronald Hendel, Remembering Abraham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
10. Benjamin Porter, Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013): 90-96, 143.
11. Lidar Sapir-Hen, Meirav Meiri, and Israel Finkelstein, "Iron Age Pigs: New Evidence on their Origin and Role in Forming Identity Boundaries," Radiocarbon, 57.2 (2015): 307-315; and the popular version: Lidar Sapir-Hen, "Pigs as an Ethnic Marker? You Are What You Eat," Biblical Archaeology Review 42.6 (2016): 41-43, 70.
12. Meirav Meiri, Philipp W. Stockhammer, Nimrod Marom, Guy Bar-Oz, Lidar Sapir-Hen et al., "Eastern Mediterranean Mobility in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages: Inferences from Ancient DNA of Pigs and Cattle," Scientific Reports 7, 701, April 6, 2017, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-00701-y (accessed Jan. 25, 2018).
13. Lidar Sapir-Hen, Guy Bar-Oz, Yuval Gadot, and Israel Finkelstein, "Pig Husbandry in Iron Age Israel and Judah New Insights Regarding the Origin of the 'Taboo,'" Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 129.1 (2013): 1; see also Aren M. Maeir, Louise A. Hitchcock, and Liora Kolska Horwitz, "On the Constitution and Transformation of Philistine Identity," Oxford Journal of Archaeology 32.1 (2013): 5-6.]
14. Ann Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005): 22.
15. Nadav Na'aman, "The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition," Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011): 39-69.
16. Lori Rowlett, Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series 226; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). In fact, one of the newest areas of historical inquiry these days addresses the meaning of Israel vis-à-vis Judah and aims at disentangling the history and tradition of Israel, the northern kingdom, from the Judah-centric rhetoric of the biblical text. Daniel Fleming is one of the scholars who is trying to tease out strands of northern Israelite traditions by source analysis based on political grounds. He identifies distinctly different power structures that obtained in Israel over against those of Judah and comes to the intriguing conclusion that "All primary phases of the Bible's account of the past before David originate in Israel (the north) and reflect Israel's political perspective." 51 My own work has focused on restoring the Israelite identity of the northern territories after 722 from the all-but inescapable negative impression-thanks to the Judah-curated account of the conquest of Samaria in 2 Kings 17-that "northerners post 722 were at best corrupt Yahwists on the way to becoming Samaritans." 52 On the contrary, there are good indications that traditional Iron Age Israelite religious practices and self-definition survived after 722's defeat to a remarkable degree, and they were still a vital tradition in the Persian period when Judeans returned from exile to rebuild the temple. 53
17. Daniel E. Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah's Bible: History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 28.
18. Mary Joan Winn Leith, "Religious Continuity in Samaria/Israel: Numismatic Evidence," in A "Religious Revolution" in Yehûd? The Material Culture of the Persian Period as a Test Case, eds. Christian Frevel, Katharina Pyschny, and Izak Cornelius; Orbis biblicus et orientalis 267 (Fribourg: Academic Press / Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014): 268-269: 275.
19. Gary R. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). The "Ten Lost Tribes" tradition does not appear until after the end of the Second Temple period; see Pamela Barmash, "At the Nexus of History and Memory: The Ten Lost Tribes," AJS Review 29 (2005): 207-236.
20. This brief historiographical survey has brought us back to where I began: the end of the First Temple period. I have indicated here and there how important the study and recovery of the Bible's development in the Second Temple period has become to our understanding of what the Bible has to say about pre-exilic Israel, but this is topic to which a later chapter of this volume is dedicated. Introductory Bibliography: First Temple Period Albertz, Rainer and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014.
21. Bodine, Joshua J. "Gates, Dates, and Debates: A Review of Megiddo's Monumental Gate and the Debates over Archaeology and Chronology in Iron Age Palestine," Studia Antiqua 8.1 (2010): 5-23.
22. Cogan, Mordechai. The Raging Torrent: Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel. 2 nd ed. Jerusalem: Carta, 2015.
23. Collins, John J. The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.
24. Coogan, Michael D., ed. The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
25. Dever, William G. Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2017.
26. Ehrlich, Carl S., ed. From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011.
27. Grabbe, Lester L. Ancient Israel What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Rev. ed. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017.
28. Greener, Aaron. "What are Clay Female Figures Doing in Judah during the Biblical Period?," The Torah.com, August 16, 2016: http://thetorah.com/what-are-clay-female-figurines-doing- in-judah-during-the-biblical-period/ (accessed Jan. 23, 2018).
29. Hendel, Ronald. Remembering Abraham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
30. Killebrew, Ann E. Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
31. King, Philip J. and Lawrence E. Stager. Life in Biblical Israel. Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
32. Knoppers, Gary R. Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
33. McKenzie, Steven L. King David: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. McKenzie, Steven L. and John Kaltner, eds. New Meanings for Ancient Texts: Recent Approaches to Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013.
34. Meyers, Carol. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
35. Miller, J. M. and J. H. Hayes. A History of Israel and Judah. 2 nd ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
36. Rollston, Christopher. "Scribal Curriculum During the First Temple Period: Epigraphic Hebrew and Biblical Evidence," in Contextualizing Israel's Sacred Writings: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production. Edited by Brian B. Schmidt, 71-102. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015.
37. Schneider, Thomas and William H. C. Propp, eds. Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015).
38. Smith, Mark S. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback edition, 2003.
39. Stavrakopoulou, Francesca and John Barton, eds. Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah. London: T&T Clark, 2010.