The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel

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

Autorentext
Susan Niditch is Samuel Green Professor of Religion at Amherst College. Her research and teaching interests include the study of ancient Israelite literature from the perspectives of the comparative and interdisciplinary fields of folklore and oral studies; biblical ethics with special interests in war, gender, and the body; the reception history of the Bible; and study of the rich symbolic media of biblical ritual texts. Recent publications include Judges: A Commentary (2008)and My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel (2008). Her current project deals with personal religion and late biblical literature.

Klappentext
The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an unparalleled exploration of the political, social and cultural world of ancient Israel. Methodologically sophisticated, it provides an overview of ancient Israelite culture, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. These include 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 examines the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experience; and cultural studies with its interdisciplinary emphases and methodological questions about the academic assumptions that scholars make. The Companion has been divided into three sections, throughout which a distinguished and international group of scholars have delivered a series of fresh contributions: the first section deals in innovative ways with the methodological assumptions and techniques that allow for the study of ancient Israel; the second provides an overview of social and political history, and the third section focuses on critical aspects of culture. The essays not only explore what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah but also asks how we know what we know, in a style that is makes it of real interest to scholars but also fully accessible to non-experts.

Inhalt
Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgments xv Editor's Introduction 1 Part I Methodology: Questions, Concepts, Approaches, and Tools 9 A Contextualizing Israelite Culture 1 Archaeology:What It Can Teach Us 13 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith 2 Israel in Its Neighboring Context 28 Song-Mi Suzie Park 3 Ancient Egypt and Israel: History, Culture, and the Biblical Text 47 John R. Huddlestun 4 Text and Context in Biblical Studies: A Brief History of a Troubled Relationship 67 Steven Weitzman B Hebrew Bible and Tracking Israelite History and Culture 5 Folklore and Israelite Tradition: Appreciation and Application 87 Susan Niditch 6 The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: Sources, Compositional Layers, and Other Revisions 103 David M. Carr 7 Linguistics and the Dating of Biblical Literature 118 Ohad Cohen 8 Epigraphy:Writing Culture in the Iron Age Levant 131 Christopher A. Rollston Part II Political History 151 A Origins 9 The Emergence of Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis 155 Avraham Faust B Monarchic Period 10 The Early Monarchy and the Stories of Saul, David, and Solomon 177 Brad E. Kelle 11 The Divided Monarchy 197 J. J.M. Roberts C Postmonarchic Period: In the Land and Diaspora 12 (Re)Defining "Israel": The Legacy of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods 215 Charles E. Carter 13 The Hellenistic Period 241 Matthew J. Goff Part III Themes in Israelite Culture 257 A God and Gods 14 The Gods of Israel in Comparative Ancient Near Eastern Context 261 Neal Walls 15 Monotheism and the Redefinition of Divinity in Ancient Israel 278 Mark S. Smith B Mediation: Gods and Humans 16 Priests and Ritual 297 S. A. Geller 17 Prophecy 317 Robert R.Wilson 18 Apocalypticism 333 John J. Collins C Social Interaction 19 Religion at Home: The Materiality of Practice 347 Francesca Stavrakopoulou 20 Education and the Transmission of Tradition 366 Raymond F. Person, Jr 21 Kinship, Community, and Society 379 T. M. Lemos 22 Law and Legal Literature 396 Bernard M. Levinson and Tina M. Sherman 23 Women's Lives 415 Carol Meyers 24 Economy and Society in Iron Age Israel and Judah: An Archaeological Perspective 433 J. David Schloen D Artistic Expression 25 Verbal Art and Literary Sensibilities in Ancient Near Eastern Context 457 Edward L. Greenstein 26 The Flowering of Literature in the Persian Period: The Writings/Ketuvim 476 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi 27 Hellenistic Period Literature in the Land of Israel 493 Benjamin G.Wright III 28 Art and Iconography: Representing Yahwistic Divinity 510 Theodore J. Lewis Index 535