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-nr592 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-07T17:34:36.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Part I - The Rise and Fall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

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

Summary

Our point of departure for this book is the question why we have a Bible. We will attend to the who, the what, the when, and the where. But our larger concern is why it all began – and why it began in places that were off the beaten path rather than at the centers of ancient civilization. Our answer to that question will involve two primary factors: 1) political division and 2) military defeat. Without the relationship between a pair of closely related kingdoms, and without their devastating destruction and downfall, we would not have a Bible. In the chapters of Part I that follow, we explore where these two kingdoms emerged, whether they were ever united, what they achieved, and how they perished.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Why the Bible Began
An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins
 , pp. 17 - 134
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

Allen, James P., Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Blenkinsopp, Joseph, Abraham: The Story of a Life, Eerdmans, 2015.Google Scholar
Gates, Charles, Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome, Routledge, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glassner, Jean-Jacques, The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (trans. Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van de Meiroop), Johns Hopkins Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Kratz, Reinhard Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah (trans. Paul Michael Kurtz), Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Rainey, Anson F., The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World, Carta, 2005.Google Scholar
Redford, Donald B., Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schneider, Tammi, Sarah: Mother of Nations, Bloomsbury, 2004.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Cline, Eric and O’Connor, David, Thutmose III: A New Biography, University of Michigan Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Cohen, Raymond and Westbrook, Raymond, eds., Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Drower, Margaret S., Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Free Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Goren, Yuval; Finkelstein, Israel; and Na’aman, Nadav, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Tel Aviv University, 2004.Google Scholar
Hasel, Michael G., Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant, 1300–1185 B.C., Brill, 1998.Google Scholar
Kamionkowski, Tamar “Will the Real Miriam Please Stand Up?” TheTorah.com, 2015, https://www.thetorah.com/article/will-the-real-miriam-please-stand-upGoogle Scholar
Moore, Megan Bishop and Kelle, Brad E., Biblical History and Israel’s Past, Eerdmans, 2011.Google Scholar
Moran, William L., The Amarna Letters, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redford, Donald B., Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Tervanotko, Hanna K., Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Joseph, “We Were Slaves to the Hyksos in Egypt,” TheTorah.com, 2021, https://thetorah.com/article/we-were-slaves-to-the-hyksos-in-egypt.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Ackerman, Susan, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel, Yale University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Borowski, Oded, Daily Life in Biblical Times, SBL Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Cline, Eric H., 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, Princeton University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Davis, Miriam, Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land, Left Coast Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Dever, William G., Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, Eerdmans, 2003.Google Scholar
Farber, Zev, Images of Joshua in the Bible and Their Reception, De Gruyter, 2016.Google Scholar
Faust, Avraham, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance, Equinox, 2006.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Israel Exploration Society, 1988.Google Scholar
Kenyon, Kathleen M., Digging Up Jericho, Praeger, 1957.Google Scholar
Killebrew, Ann, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300–1100 BCE, Society for Biblical Literature, 2005.Google Scholar
Koch, Ido, Colonial Encounters in Southwest Canaan during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, Brill, 2021.Google Scholar
Wright, Jacob L., War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible, Cambridge University Press, 2020 (open access) – includes several chapters on Deborah and her song.Google Scholar
Yasur-Landau, Assaf; Cline, Eric; and Rowan, Yourke M. (eds.), The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Edelman, Diana Vikander, King Saul in the Historiography of Judah, Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Carl S. and White, Marsha C., Saul in Story and Tradition, Mohr Siebeck, 2006.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Yosef; Ganor, Saar; and Hasel, Michael G., In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City, Thames & Hudson, 2018.Google Scholar
Krause, Joachim J.; Sergi, Omer; and Weingart, Kristin (eds.), Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of the Monarchy in Israel, SBL Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Leonard-Fleckman, Mahri, The House of David: Between Political Formation and Literary Revision, Fortress, 2016.Google Scholar
Na’aman, Nadav, “Was Khirbet Qeiyafa a Judahite City? The Case against It,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 17, 2017 (open access).Google Scholar
Rollston, Christopher A., Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age, Society of Biblical Literature, 2010.Google Scholar
Sanders, Seth L., The Invention of Hebrew, University of Illinois Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Vayntrub, Jacqueline, “‘Observe Due Measure’: The Gezer Inscription and Dividing a Trip around the Sun,” in Hutton, Jeremy M. and Rubin, Aaron D. (eds.), Epigraphy, Philology, and the Hebrew Bible, SBL Publications, 2015 (open access).Google Scholar
Wilson, Kevin A., The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine, Mohr Siebeck, 2005.Google Scholar
Wright, Jacob L., David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory, Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Beach, Eleanor Ferris, The Jezebel Letters: Religion and Politics in Ninth-Century Israel, Fortress, 2005.Google Scholar
Bean, Adam L. and Rollston, Christopher A., “Ataroth and the Inscribed Altar: Who Won the War between Moab and Israel?” TheTorah.com, 2020 (open access).Google Scholar
Dutcher-Walls, Patricia, Jezebel: Portrait of a Queen, Liturgical Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, Israel, The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Society of Biblical Literature, 2013 (open access).Google Scholar
Fleming, Daniel, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History of a Divine Name, Cambridge University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadley, Judith M., The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess, Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Lipschits, Oded, “The Origin and Date of the Volute Capitals from the Levant,” in Finkelstein, Israel and Na’aman, Nadav (eds.), Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin, Winona Lake, 2011.Google Scholar
Olyan, Saul, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, Society of Biblical Literature, 1988.Google Scholar
Parker, Simon B., Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions, Oxford University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Routledge, Bruce, Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Römer, Thomas, The Invention of God, Harvard University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Smith, Mark, S., The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed., Eerdmans Publishing, 2002.Google Scholar
Smoak, Jeremy and Schniedewind, William, “Religion at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” Religions 10 (2019): 1–18 (open access).Google Scholar
Tobolowsky, Andrew, The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities across Time and Space, Cambridge University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Further Reading

Athas, George, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Introduction, Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Biran, Avraham and Naveh, Joseph, “The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment,” Israel Exploration Journal 45 (1995): 1–18.Google Scholar
Dalley, Stephanie, “Foreign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II,” Iraq 47 (1985): 31–48.Google Scholar
Elayi, Josette, Tiglath-Pileser III, Founder of the Assyrian Empire, SBL Press, 2022.Google Scholar
Ghantous, Hadi, The Elisha-Hazael Paradigm and the Kingdom of Israel: The Politics of God in Ancient Syria-Palestine, Routledge, 2014.Google Scholar
Hagelia, Hallvard, The Dan Debate: The Tel Dan Inscription in Recent Research, Sheffield Phoenix, 2009.Google Scholar
Hasagawa, Shuichi; Levin, Christoph; and Radner, Karen (eds.), The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel, De Gruyter, 2019.Google Scholar
Kleiman, Assaf, “King Hazael of Aram-Damascus Subjugates Israel, 9th Century B.C.E,” TheTorah.com (2022), https://thetorah.com/article/king-hazael-of-aram-damascus-subjugates-israel-9th-century-bce.Google Scholar
Koch, Ido, “Assyrian Deportation and Resettlement: The Story of Samaria,” TheTorah.com, 2019, www.thetorah.com/article/assyrian-deportation-and-resettlement-the-story-of-samaria.Google Scholar
Leonard-Fleckman, Mahri, The House of David: Between Political Formation and Literary Revision, Fortress, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandell, Alice and Smoak, Jeremy D., “Reading Beyond Literacy, Writing Beyond Epigraphy: Multimodality and the Monumental Inscriptions at Ekron and Dan, MAARAV 22 (2018): 79–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nam, Roger, Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings, Brill, 2012.Google Scholar
Oded, Bustenay, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Reichert, 1979.Google Scholar
Robker, Jonathan Miles, The Jehu Revolution: A Royal Tradition of the Northern Kingdom and Its Ramifications, De Gruyter, 2012.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Elayi, Josette, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, SBL Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Farber, Zev I. and Wright, Jacob L. (eds.), Archaeology and History of Eighth-Century Judah, SBL Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Fleming, Daniel E., The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Grabbe, Lester L. (ed.), Like a Bird in a Cage: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce, Bloomsbury, 2003.Google Scholar
Kahn, Dan’el, Sennacherib’s Campaign against Judah: A Source Analysis of Isaiah 36–37, Cambridge University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Lipschits, Oded, Age of Empires: The History and Administration of Judah in the 8th–2nd Centuries BCE in Light of the Storage-Jar Stamp Impressions, Penn State University Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Luckenbill, Daniel David, The Annals of Sennacherib, Oriental Institute Publications, 1924.Google Scholar
Matty, Nazek Khalid, Sennacherib’s Campaign against Judah and Jerusalem in 701 B.C.: A Historical Reconstruction, De Gruyter, 2016.Google Scholar
Park, Song-Mi Suzie, Hezekiah and the Dialogue of Memory, Fortress Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Russell, Stephen C., The King and the Land: A Geography of Royal Power in the Biblical World, Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Schniedewind, William, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Ussishkin, David, Biblical Lachish: A Tale of Construction, Destruction, Excavation and Restoration, Israel Exploration Society, 2014.Google Scholar
Young, Robert Andrew, Hezekiah in History and Tradition, Brill, 2012.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Albertz, Rainer, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E., Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.Google Scholar
Barstad, Hans M., The Myth of the Empty Land: A Study in the History and Archaeology of Judah during the “Exilic” Period, Scandinavian University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Birdsong, Shelley L., The Last King(s) of Judah, Mohr Siebeck, 2017.Google Scholar
Crouch, C. L., Israel and Judah Redefined: Migration, Trauma, and Empire in the Sixth Century bce, Cambridge University Press, 2021.Google Scholar
Faust, Avraham, Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation, Society of Biblical Literature, 2012.Google Scholar
Frame, Grant, Babylonia 689–627 B.C.: A Political History, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te İstanbul, 1992.Google Scholar
Grayson, A. K., Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Eisenbrauns, 2000.Google Scholar
Itkin, Eli, “Post-Destruction Squatter Phases in the Iron Age IIB–C Southern Levant,” BASOR 388 (2022): 51–72.Google Scholar
Lipschits, Oded, The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah Under Babylonian Rule, Eisenbrauns, 2005.Google Scholar
Monroe, Lauren A. S., Josiah’s Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text, Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Na’aman, Nadav, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction, Eisenbrauns, 2005.Google Scholar
Schipper, Bernd U., A Concise History of Ancient Israel: From the Beginnings through the Hellenistic Era, Eisenbrauns, 2019.Google Scholar
Schoors, Antoon, The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E., Society of Biblical Literature, 2013.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.

  • The Rise and Fall
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.003
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.

  • The Rise and Fall
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.003
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.

  • The Rise and Fall
  • Jacob L. Wright, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: Why the Bible Began
  • Online publication: 13 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859240.003
Available formats
×