Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T09:49:33.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The Hebrew Bible and the Early History of Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Marc Zvi Brettler
Edited by
Judith R. Baskin  and
Kenneth Seeskin
Judith R. Baskin
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Kenneth Seeskin
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois
Get access

Summary

The belief that the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) constitutes revealed scripture is a key feature of Judaism. This Bible has a long and complicated history. It was not written by a single author as a single book, the way modern books are, but reflects ancient Israelite or Jewish literature written over a one-thousand-year period by a small civilization that existed on the margins of the great ancient empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Greece. The people of ancient Israel lived mostly agrarian lives in small villages and struggled with the vagaries of climate and war; they did not live in a cultural vacuum but interacted with and were influenced by their neighbors. Along the way, they created the same kinds of cultural artifacts as the surrounding cultures: domestic goods, royal art and architecture, legends about the origins and the great deeds of their leaders, myths about the world around them, regulations for worship, rules to foster a cohesive social framework, and prayers to express their fears and hopes. Some of these bits and pieces evolved, and over time they were combined into what we know as the Bible.

Recovering the early history of the Bible and the society that created it is very difficult since the process that produced the Bible cannot be recovered with certainty. Extant sources are not sufficient to permit reconstruction of the entire history of the people who produced the Bible and were influenced by it.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture , pp. 6 - 33
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albertz, Rainer A. 1994. A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. 2 vols. Old Testament Library. London: SCM.Google Scholar
Alter, Robert. 1985. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Barton, John. 1996. Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study. 2nd ed. London: Darton, Longman and Todd.Google Scholar
Bellis, Alice Ogden. 1995. Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes: Women's Stories in the Hebrew Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.Google Scholar
Berlin, Adele, and Brettler, Marc Zvi, eds. 2004. The Jewish Study Bible. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brettler, Marc Zvi. 1995. The Creation of History in Ancient Israel. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brettler, Marc Zvi. 2005. How to Read the Bible. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.Google Scholar
Day, John, ed. 1998. King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar. JSOTSup 270. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.
Dever, William G. 2001. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Dever, William G. 2005. Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Eissfeldt, Otto. 1965. The Old Testament: An Introduction, trans. Ackroyd, Peter. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Fishbane, Michael. 1985. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Friedman, Richard E. 1997. Who Wrote the Bible?San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.Google Scholar
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. 1992. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Geller, Stephen A. 1996. Sacred Enigmas: Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hallo, William W., and Lawson Younger, K., Jr., eds. 1997–2002. The Context of Scripture. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill.
Haran, Menahem. 1978. Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into the Character of Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hayes, John H., ed. 1974. Old Testament Form Criticism. Trinity University Monograph Series in Religion 2. San Antonio: Trinity University Press.
King, Philip J., and Stager, Lawrence E.. 1995. Life in Ancient Israel. Library of Ancient Israel. Minneapolis: Fortress.Google Scholar
Knohl, Israel. 2001. The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.Google Scholar
Kugel, James. 1981. The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhrt, Amélie. 1995. The Ancient Near East: C. 3000–330 B.C. Routledge History of the Ancient World. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Levinson, Bernard. 1997. Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Liverani, Mario. 2005. Israel's History and the History of Israel. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
McDonald, , Martin, Lee, and Sanders, James A., eds. 2002. The Canon Debate. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.
Miller, James Maxwell, and Hayes, John H.. 2006. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Westminster John Knox.Google Scholar
Newsom, Carol A., and Ringe, Sharon H.. 1992. The Women's Bible Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox.Google Scholar
Nissinen, Marti, ed. 2000. Prophecy in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives. Symposium Series 13. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000.
Pritchard, James B., ed. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Smith, Mark S. 2002. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Wellhausen, Julius. 1885. Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.Google Scholar
Wilson, Robert R. 1980. Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×