Memories of Ancient Israel

[Originally published on March 6 and updated today with the blurb, cover photo, and link]

That’s the title of a forthcoming book by Philip Davies to be published later this year by Westminster John Knox.  Eisenbrauns is carrying it and here’s the blurb:

Recent years have seen an explosion of writing on the history of Israel, prompted largely by definitive archaeological surveys and attempts to write a genuine archaeological history of ancient Israel and Judah. The scholarly world has also witnessed an intense confrontation between so-called minimalists and maximalists over the correct approach to the historicity of the Bible. Memories of Ancient Israel looks at the issues at stake in doing biblical historythe ideologies involved, the changing role of archaeology, and the influence of cultural contexts, both ancient and modern. Davies suggests a different way of defining the problem of reliability and historicity by employing the theory of cultural memory. In doing so, he provides a better explanation of how ancient societies constructed their past but also a penetrating insight into the ideological underpinnings of today’s scholarly debates.

The table of contents follows:

1. Bible, History and ‘Biblical History’
Biblical History?
The Biblical Historian
Bible
History
‘The Bible as History’
Summary

PART ONE: RESOURCES

2. Bible I: Chronology, Facts and Causality
Chronology
The monarchs of Israel and Judah
Before the monarchs, and after
Facts
Causality
Summary

3. Bible II: Israel
First and Second Histories
Fluctuating Biblical Israels
Which Israel belongs in a Modern History?
Summary and Implications

4. Archaeology: Use and Abuse
The Rise and Fall of ‘Biblical Archaeology’
Post-‘Biblical Archaeology’
Example: the Problem of the ‘United Monarchy’
Survey, Demography, Ecology
Judah and Jerusalem in the 8th-7th Centuries
The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Period: Jerusalem to
Mizpah and Back
Ethnicity
Summary

5. Epigraphic Sources
Inscriptions and chronology
Documentary texts
Monumental inscriptions
Inscriptions relating to Biblical History
The Merneptah Stele
Shalmaneser III and Sennacherib
Judah and the Neo-Babylonians
The Mesha Inscription
The Tel Dan Stele
The Siloam Inscription
Forgeries
Summary
Conclusion to Part One

PART TWO: STRATEGIES
6. Cultural Memory
On Remembering History
The Bible as Judean Cultural Memory
Cultural Memory in Practice: Ezra and Nehemiah
Summary

7. Knowledge, Judgment, Belief
Verification
Correlating literature and archaeology
Reliability
Probability
Belief
‘What Did the Biblical Writers Know’?
Summary

8. A Tale of Two Histories
The Minimalist Option
The Maximalist Option
Biblical History in Recent Debate
The Minimal Thesis
The Maximal Thesis
Jens Bruun Kofoed
Iain Provan, Tremper Longman and V.
Phillips Long
Kenneth Kitchen
Summary and Implications

PART THREE: REFLECTIONS
9. History, Memory and Theology

More Reasons To Refuse to Take Politicians Seriously

Lobbyists. ‘We won’t take money from lobbyists’ said Obama. Meanwhile, ABC News is just reporting the amazing presence of lobbyists schmoozing with Democrats at their convention.

Despite a campaign that attacked corporate and special interest lobbyists as evil and banned their money and participation, Sen. Barack Obama has done little, if anything, about their pervasive, free-spending presence at the Democratic convention in Denver, ethics watchdog groups say.

Well there’s the wry twist- ‘ethics’ is a word unknown to politicians, and lobbyists for that matter. The report continues with this pearl:

… lobbyists are once again spending millions of dollars here on gourmet food, top-shelf liquor and private lavish parties for Democratic elected officials who seem more than happy to play the role of world-class freeloaders.

Yup that’s the American political system in action. Looks like Mr Change is more of the same as we’ve had for decades.  Read the whole thing and then, pray, do tell how our Representatives could demonstrate their hubris any more clearly.

Chris Tilling’s Slide To Perdition

Alas poor Chris, I knew him well. And then one day he was approached by the ‘emergent’ cult of Driscollites and – tragically – he fell into their gnarled, withered, sin encrusted, wicked, perverse, depraved, ostentatious, self absorbed, Bentley-istic, Wrightianist hands. And endorsed their work!!!!

Oh the shame. Oh the misery. Oh the horror. Chris’s slide to perdition has been rapid. Indeed, faster than the Bishop of Durham’s fingers on a keyboard and even more productive of the sort of wicked distortion of the faith than Origen and Tertullian combined…

‘And Jim wept’.

And More Historical Jesus

There’s a bit of Historical Jesus news over on Cláudia Andréa Prata Ferreira’s blog. Take a look, all you Portugese readers (and I know you’re out there. I use tracking…)

Must be Historical Jesus Day.

I Don’t Know How I Missed This One

But Etienne Nodet (a fine person and a fun one at that) has just published (in May, in English) a new volume on the Historical Jesus. Eisenbrauns has (have for our British friends) it. Continuum has the book details which are as follows:

Beginning with the Gospel accounts of the infancy of Jesus, this book opens up the main features of the life of Jesus in a reading that oscillates between the questioning of the historical reference and the penetrating understanding of their verbal expression.

UPDATE: I’ve fixed the link. I apologize. You know who I blame? Not myself of course, but Spinti. It’s his fault.

Original Sin

It’s a topic that has bedeviled theologians since Augustine’s skewed interpretation of Psalm 51.  What is original sin, what does it mean, and if it truly exists, what can be done about it?   Zwingli addresses all of those questions in a publication, and a long one at that, published on the 25th of August, 1526, titled De peccato originali declaratio ad Urbanum Rhegium.    As the learned editor of the critical edition of Zwingli’s Works puts it

Es ist allgemeiner Grundsatz: der Arzt, um heilen zu können, hat vor allem die Kenntnis der Krankheit nötig- nur Gott kennt das Herz der Menschenkinder, also kann nur durch Gott die humana mens restituiert werden. Johannes der Täufer nennt Christus das Lamm, das die Sünde der Welt wegnimmt.

Who The Devil Is Kara DioGuardi?

She’s the newly ordained fourth judge for the upcoming season of American Idol, that’s who she is. Why???? Oh Idol… just when I was beginning to look forward to you again, you behave so wickedly and, like a child, throw a wad of salt into a bowl of sugar.

[n.b.- so I like reality tv. So what? It's better than Dungeons and Dragons and other geeky pastimes. Plus, reality tv is ripe for theological observation. So there.]

Lessons on Indoctrination

The New York Times has an interesting essay on one science teacher’s quest to indoctrinate his students in the doctrine of evolution. His method might serve as a model for those seeking to achieve the same goal. It answers the time worn question- “how can science persuade religion to abide by its rules of engagement?” Evolutionists everywhere will want to pay heed to it.

Discontentment: The Theology of Dissatisfaction

Drew Smith’s essay in Ethics Daily is worth a read. ‘Until God’s Redemption is Complete, We Must be Discontent‘. That is certainly true. As Drew pointedly remarks

We must embrace a degree of discontent that keeps us from becoming complacent and too comfortable about ourselves, the world and the delay of God’s justice and redemption. Three important and interrelated areas should express our discontent as those who seek to follow Christ. … First, we ought to be discontent about our failure to be who Christ calls us to be. … Second, we must always be discontent with the evil and injustice that remains in our world. … The third area is directly connected to the first two. We must remain discontent about the delay of Christ’s return and the full redemption of all of creation.

Yes, yes, three times yes. Contentment far too often becomes complacency. And while Drew is right that we ought to be content in Christ, we also must realize that contentment cannot be allowed to slide down the slope of self satisfaction. The key is to be content in Christ- not it circumstances or self.

Sam Balentine’s ‘Job’ Reviewed

I mention this because Sam was one of my Profs in Seminary and he’s a gifted writer.  If you don’t believe it, pick up a copy of his earlier Leviticus Commentary.  He even makes that book interesting!  At any rate, there’s a glowing review of his recent (though now not new) commentary on Job in the Christian Century.  The reviewer effuses-

It is a classic against which other commentaries will be measured for a long time.

I’m not sure it’s a ‘classic’ yet- since it hasn’t been around all that long and the word ‘classic’ is far too loosely used these days for my tastes.  But it may well be one day, that’s for sure.

Here he is with Jane Barr at the SBL Regional Meeting in Atlanta, ‘08