From epic to canon : history and literature in ancient Israel
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
From epic to canon : history and literature in ancient Israel
Johns Hopkins University press, 1998
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The author has devoted his life to understanding the textual legacies of the ancient Israelites, from archaic Hebrew poetry to the Bible, and was among the first scholars to collect and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this work, he discusses specific issues which illuminate central questions about the Hebrew Bible and those who created and preserved it. He challenges the persistent attempt to read Protestant theological polemic against law into ancient Israel. Cross uncovers the continuities between the institutions of kinship and of covenant, which he describes as "extended kinship". He examines the social structures of ancient Israel and reveals that beneath its later social and cultural accretions, the concept of convenant - as opposed to codified law - was a vital part of Israel's earliest institutions. He then draws parallels between the expression of kinship and covenant among the Israelites and that practised by other ancient societies, as well as in primitive societies.
Drawing on the Daliyeh Papyri, excavations on the ancient city of Gerizim in the remains of the Samaritan temple, and a host of lesser archaeological finds elsewhere, Cross also reconstructs a history of the era of the Judaean Restoration which he intends as more complete than those in the past. He closes his work suggesting that a radical rewriting of the text and canon of the Hebrew Bible has become necessary in the light of new information gleaned from the Dead Sea Scrolls he has studied, and argues that at the very least, the new data requires a wholly fresh critical approach to the Hebrew Bible.
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