The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge

Robert S. Kawashima (Author)

9780253062123

Paperback / softback, published 5 July 2022

366 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.522 kg

Many biblicists have compared ancient literatures to illuminate the Bible, but Robert Kawashima is arguably the main modern scholar to use the Hebrew Bible as a foundational text for comparative literature itself. From his groundbreaking first book, on how and why the Hebrew Bible presents the ancient Mediterranean's first extended works of imaginative prose, to regular publications in journals, he avoids simply applying preexisting interpretive techniques. Instead, his Archaeologyof Ancient Israelite Knowledge proposes a new kind of comparative history of ancient literature and, astonishingly, often succeeds.

The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge reconstructs in carefully researched detail the worldview of the ancient Israelites writers responsible for the Hebrew Bible. What was the role of God in their lives? How did they see the relationship between God, nature, and themselves? Contrary to prevailing scholarly understanding, Robert Kawashima argues that the ancient Israelites saw God in a radically different way than the peoples around them. God no longer interconnected everything—humans, nature—but became seen as sharply separated from nature.

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. The Early History of "God"
3. The House of God
4. The Discovery of the Self in Israelite Literature
5. Alienation and the Tragic Adventure of Biblical History
6. From Autochton to Alien
7. The Dawn of Apocalypticism
Bibliography
Index