In the books of Joshua and Judges, God’s gift of land to Israel takes center stage. The first book recounts Israel’s conquest and division of the land under the leadership of Moses’ successor, Joshua. Judges highlights governance in the land by a succession of twelve leaders. Connected by a recurring cycle – Israel’s disobedience to Yahweh, foreign oppression, repentance, and deliverance – the Judges stories narrate the end of one era in Israel’s history and serve as introduction to the next.

Alongside these Primary History accounts, we will consider archaeological evidence for a significant population increase in Canaan during Iron Age I and look at three theories that attempt to explain the appearance of new populations in the region at that time. In addition to observing the nature of religion during Israel’s early history in the land, we will address the difficult subject of the land today. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readers all have varying responses. Joshua and Judges should not and need not be used in the debate, but they remind us how very ancient is the issue of land.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis – and of the Old Testament – constitute the Primeval History. This carefully arranged collection of traditions detail God’s good creation of the cosmos, the nature of humanity in the created order of the universe, and God’s relationship with humans. In this chapter, we will explore various genres such as cosmogony, theogony, myth, and history, all of which will help to demonstrate ways in which Israel’s Primeval History resembled the traditions of its ancient neighbors and ways in which Israel’s form and content were unique.

Importantly, Genesis 1–11 prepare the reader for the rest of the Bible. They also function as an explanation for Israelite readers of why things are the way they are. Furthermore, they introduce themes that will be important throughout the remainder of the Old Testament: the concept of creation, the unchallenged sovereignty of God, the central importance of humanity, and the first mention of covenant.

The three major sections of Genesis 12–50 focus on the ancestral narratives of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. We know little of the historical details, although archaeological data suggests a plausible context for these stories in the Middle Bronze Age. We will see that the narratives themselves hint at even earlier traditions, suggestive of oral traditions preserved and woven into the texts. In these narratives we will also encounter the social structure of kinship-based tribal societies. The “father’s house” and the larger clan formed the subunits of the geographically based organization of the tribe.

This portion of Genesis narrates Yahweh’s provision of hope for the divine–human relationship so tragically marred by human rebellion (Genesis 1–11). Moreover, God chooses an individual, Abraham, to partner in a covenant. This covenant, shaped by God’s promises of land, descendants, and worldwide blessing, is the lasting hallmark of Israelite religion. Abraham’s descendants include not only those named in the Old Testament but those in the three monotheistic religions for which Abraham is acknowledged as the “father of faith.”

We will now focus our attention on the final book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy. We will discover that, even as the book recounts what has come before for the sake of Israel poised to enter the promised land, it does so in a new setting, in an innovative literary format, and with distinctive emphases that speak to generations present and yet to come.

Deuteronomy consists of four collections of speeches given by Moses, set off by literary superscriptions. Scholars have determined that the book is organized in the form of an ancient international treaty. Following a historical prologue, the speeches reiterate and affirm Torah instruction, institute a covenant renewal that links blessings with covenant fidelity, and detail provisions for Israel after Moses’ death (recounted in the final chapter of the book). Deuteronomy is distinctive in the Pentateuch for its focus on the centralization of Israel’s religious cult at the place where Yahweh will cause his name to dwell, the great statement of faith known as the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the first explicit statements of monotheism in the Old Testament.

All historiography or history writing is done with a purpose, and the purpose of Israel as expressed in the Old Testament was clearly religious and theological. The Israelites sought to record their relationship with God in the past – to relate their unique understanding of God, his universe, and his relationship to Israel. Additionally significant is the fact that Israel was among the first nations in the ancient world to write history.

This chapter will take us into the library of ancient Israel to get a better look at how the books of the Old Testament narrate history and how these books have been organized. Specifically, we will investigate the sources that appear to have been interwoven to create the so-called Primary History. These sources are characterized by their distinctive ways of referring to God and by their themes and literary techniques. We will observe that the Old Testament presents the Primary History in such a way as to provide a framework for understanding the historical contexts of all the rest of the Old Testament books.

This chapter explores the navigational space utilized by poets and novelists who are bent on an appealing production that can earn them the right as new hosts of precursors’ themes and expressions and thus to be thought of as writers of distinctive merit. While philologists and literary critics are on the watch to uncover infringements, the new intertext is often a dense textual engagement driven by a desire for something desired by another. This principle means that there are works that set a standard for the host who would like to own or surpass them. A struggle creates a combative arena where players devise innovations and inventions that strive to escape the strict applications of the canon. This chapter introduces the major tenth-century critics and their perspective on language and its transformation from the uncouth to the refined, as shown in poetry and poetics, where a grounding for a large intertext rests on precursors’s texts that serve now as palimpsests, an almost unrecognized basal source.

In Extra Help you will see how easy it is to understand the subjunctive mood using the pattern we have followed so far for the verb. In Extra Material, we will think about the aspect of the subjunctive mood.

In this chapter, you meet no new grammatical principles, but the rules you have met will save you a great deal of effort. In the Extra Material, we’ll examine the significance of aspect in the ‘other moods’, beginning with general principles and how they apply to the infinitive.

Ancient Israel existed in real time and space. In time, we will recall that ancient Israel was preceded by thousands of years of world history, including, for example, the first writing of the Sumerians (third millennium bce), the Babylonian Empire, and the renowned history of ancient Egypt. In space, Israel was part of Syria–Palestine. Together with Egypt and Mesopotamia, Israel constituted a vast swath of arable land known as the “Fertile Crescent.” Syria–Palestine was thus a vital land bridge between three continents and, likewise, highly vulnerable to surrounding power struggles. The latter meant frequent invasions and domination by a succession of world empires.

The primary purpose of Israel’s story contained in the pages of the Old Testament is to explore its relationship with God. Yahweh initiated an intimate relationship with a man named Abraham, which was defined by a covenant and by promises of descendants and land. The ensuing history covers an era that left its own mark on world history, in no small part due to Israel’s legacy. The age between 800 and 200 bce(the Axial Age) witnessed the appearance of ethical religion and rational philosophy in human civilization. Israel gave the world the Old Testament and the concept of monotheism emerging in its pages.

Extra Help with the basics of the alphabet. Extra Material introduces us to the basics of accents.

A survey of the evidence for textile production and trade shows extensive market activities, supported by state enforcement of agreements. The most intrusive form of state intervention was the imposition of a monthly quota to be delivered by weavers, accounting for up to half of their production volume. This may have represented the transformation of an existing quota arrangement attested in New Kingdom Egypt. However, the cash-based Ptolemaic system, in which weavers were compensated and could substitute cash payments for their deliveries, had a different dynamic. The stable demand offered by the quotas offset some of the risk of production for the market by the weavers. This arrangement made the state into an oversized market player, but the textiles it collected were not sold through retail concessions but put to practical use or exported. In addition, weavers and other occupations were subject to taxation in cash, the state levied customs and sales taxes, and it derived revenues from flax cultivation and sheep husbandry, likewise without exercising exclusive control and using private contractors. Attempts at local monopolies were rather undertaken by professional associations.