The Legacy of Israel in Judah's Bible
History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition

This book offers a new way for biblical scholars and archaeologists to envision how the Bible's story relates to history.

Daniel E. Fleming (Author)

9781107669994, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 July 2012

408 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

'Fleming offers the reader an important discussion of methodology, insightful historical reconstructions, and arguments for the 'genuineness' of early biblical traditions. His approach ultimately represents what Richard Hess calls 'critical orthodoxy' in that both the biblical account and critical methodology are given equal footing. Fleming's mediation of differing interests in reconstructing an ancient Israel will likely spur on countless debates …' Tad Blacketer, Stone-Campbell Journal

The Legacy of Israel in Judah's Bible undertakes a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Bible's primary narrative in Genesis through Kings as it relates to history. It divides the core textual traditions along political lines that reveal deeply contrasting assumptions, an approach that places biblical controversies in dialogue with anthropologically informed archaeology. Starting from close study of selected biblical texts, the work moves toward historical issues that may be illuminated by both this material and a larger range of textual evidence. The result is a synthesis that breaks away from conventional lines of debate in matters relating to ancient Israel and the Bible, setting an agenda for future engagement of these fields with wider study of antiquity.

Part I. Israel and Judah: 1. Why Israel?
2. Israel without Judah
Part II. Israelite Content in the Bible: 3. Writing from Judah
4. An association of peoples in the land (the book of Judges)
5. The family of Jacob
6. Collective Israel and its kings
7. Moses and the conquest of eastern Israel
8. Joshua and Ai
9. Benjamin
10. Israelite writers on early Israel
Part III. Collaborative Politics: 11. Collaborative politics
12. Outside the Near East
13. The Amorite backdrop to ancient Israel
14. Israel's Aramean contemporaries
Part IV. Israel in History: 15. The power of a name: ethnicity and political identity
16. Before Israel
17. Israel and Canaan in the 13th–10th centuries
18. Israel and its kings
19. Genuine (versus invented) tradition.

Subject Areas: Judaism [HRJ], Old Testaments [HRCF1]