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-cb9f654ff-r5d9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-06T03:01:44.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

Jacob L. Wright
Jacob L. Wright
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Get access

Summary

Interpretation of the Bible has continued, without interruption, for more than two millennia, yet our understanding of its origins and teachings has dramatically expanded in recent times thanks to remarkable discoveries. Over the past century, methods of archeological research have reached impressive levels of sophistication, and excavation teams working at scores of sites throughout the Middle East continue to unearth all kinds of evidence for the communities that produced the Bible – their ways of life, their mechanisms for coping with crises, and the historical events that shaped their destinies.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Why the Bible Began
An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins
 , pp. 1 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Further Reading

Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, 1991 (1983).Google Scholar
Berti, Monica and Naether, Franziska, “The Digital Rosetta Stone Project,” https://rosetta-stone.dh.uni-leipzig.de/rs/team/Google Scholar
Cornell, Collin, “What happened to Kemosh,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 128, 2016, pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darmosch, David, The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, Holt, 2007.Google Scholar
Friedman, Richard Elliott, Who Wrote the Bible, Simon & Schuster, 1987.Google Scholar
Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Harvard University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism, Macmillan, 1944.Google Scholar
Kubie, Nora Benjamin, Road to Nineveh: The Adventures and Excavations of Sir Austen Henry Layard, Doubleday, 1964.Google Scholar
Kurtz, Paul Michael, Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan: The Religion of Israel in Protestant Germany, 1871–1918, Mohr Siebeck, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehman, Reinhard G., Friedrich Delitzsch und der Babel-Bibel-Streit, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994.Google Scholar
Lepore, Jill, This America: The Case for the Nation, Liveright, 2019.Google Scholar
Morgenstern, Mira, Conceiving a Nation: The Development of Political Discourse in the Hebrew Bible, Pennsylvania State Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Smith, Anthony, The Antiquity of Nations, Polity, 2004.Google Scholar
Smith, George, Assyrian Discoveries: An Account of Explorations and Discoveries on the Site of Nineveh, during 1873 and 1874, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1875.Google Scholar
Strathern, Paul, Napoleon in Egypt, Bantam, 2008.Google Scholar
Taylor, Jonathan, “The Ashurbanipal Library Project,” http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/asbp/Google Scholar
Wellhausen, Julius, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, De Gruyter, 2004 (1894).Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@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.

  • Introduction
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.002
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.

  • Introduction
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.002
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.

  • Introduction
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.002
Available formats
×