In Search of Ancient Israel (1992 Davies), book
In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (1992) is a book by Philip R. Davies.
Abstract
The appearance in 1992 of 'In Search of Ancient Israel' generated a still raging controversy about the historical reality of what biblical scholars call 'Ancient Israel'. But its argument not only takes in the problematic relationship between Iron Age Palestinian archaeology and the biblical 'Israel' but also outlines the processes that created the literature of the Hebrew bible-the ideological matrix, the scribal milieu, and the cultural adoption of a national literary archive as religious scripture as part of the process of creating 'Judaisms'. While challenging the whole spectrum of scholarly consensus about the origins of 'Israel' and its scriptures, it is written more in the style of a textbook for students than a monograph for scholars because, its author believes, it offers an agenda for the next generation of biblical scholars. (Google Books)
Editions and translations
Published in Sheffield, England (JSOT Press, 1992). Reprinted several times in Sheffield, England (JSOT Press, 1993 and Sheffield Academic Press, 1995-2003), Edinburgh (T&T Clark, 2004), London and New York, NY (Continuum, 2006).
Table of contents
- 1. Preliminaries
- 2. Searching for 'Ancient Israel'
- 3. Defining the Biblical Israel
- 4. A Search for Historical Israel
- 5. The Social Context of the Biblical Israel
- 6. Who Wrote the Biblical Literature, and Where?
- 7. How was the Biblical Literature Written, and Why?
- 8. From Literature to Scripture
- 9. The Emergence of Israel