Overview

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an innovative overview of ancient Israelite culture and history, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. Distinguished scholars provide original contributions that explore the tradition in all its complexity, multiplicity and diversity. A methodologically sophisticated overview of ancient Israelite culture that provides insights into  political and social history, culture, and methodology Explores what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah, but also investigates how we know what we know Presents fresh insights, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields Delves into ‘religion as lived,’ an approach that asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experience Each essay is an original contribution to the subject

Full Product Details

Author:   Susan Niditch (Amherst College, USA)
Publisher:   John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Imprint:   Wiley-Blackwell
Dimensions:   Width: 17.00cm , Height: 3.10cm , Length: 24.10cm
Weight:   0.885kg
ISBN:  

9781119139997

ISBN 10:   1119139996
Pages:   576
Publication Date:   25 August 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgments xv Editor’s Introduction 1 Part I Methodology: Questions, Concepts, Approaches, and Tools 9 A Contextualizing Israelite Culture 1 Archaeology:What It Can Teach Us 13 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith 2 Israel in Its Neighboring Context 28 Song-Mi Suzie Park 3 Ancient Egypt and Israel: History, Culture, and the Biblical Text 47 John R. Huddlestun 4 Text and Context in Biblical Studies: A Brief History of a Troubled Relationship 67 Steven Weitzman B Hebrew Bible and Tracking Israelite History and Culture 5 Folklore and Israelite Tradition: Appreciation and Application 87 Susan Niditch 6 The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: Sources, Compositional Layers, and Other Revisions 103 David M. Carr 7 Linguistics and the Dating of Biblical Literature 118 Ohad Cohen 8 Epigraphy:Writing Culture in the Iron Age Levant 131 Christopher A. Rollston Part II Political History 151 A Origins 9 The Emergence of Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis 155 Avraham Faust B Monarchic Period 10 The Early Monarchy and the Stories of Saul, David, and Solomon 177 Brad E. Kelle 11 The Divided Monarchy 197 J. J.M. Roberts C Postmonarchic Period: In the Land and Diaspora 12 (Re)Defining “Israel”: The Legacy of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods 215 Charles E. Carter 13 The Hellenistic Period 241 Matthew J. Goff Part III Themes in Israelite Culture 257 A God and Gods 14 The Gods of Israel in Comparative Ancient Near Eastern Context 261 Neal Walls 15 Monotheism and the Redefinition of Divinity in Ancient Israel 278 Mark S. Smith B Mediation: Gods and Humans 16 Priests and Ritual 297 S. A. Geller 17 Prophecy 317 Robert R.Wilson 18 Apocalypticism 333 John J. Collins C Social Interaction 19 Religion at Home: The Materiality of Practice 347 Francesca Stavrakopoulou 20 Education and the Transmission of Tradition 366 Raymond F. Person, Jr 21 Kinship, Community, and Society 379 T. M. Lemos 22 Law and Legal Literature 396 Bernard M. Levinson and Tina M. Sherman 23 Women’s Lives 415 Carol Meyers 24 Economy and Society in Iron Age Israel and Judah: An Archaeological Perspective 433 J. David Schloen D Artistic Expression 25 Verbal Art and Literary Sensibilities in Ancient Near Eastern Context 457 Edward L. Greenstein 26 The Flowering of Literature in the Persian Period: The Writings/Ketuvim 476 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi 27 Hellenistic Period Literature in the Land of Israel 493 Benjamin G.Wright III 28 Art and Iconography: Representing Yahwistic Divinity 510 Theodore J. Lewis Index 535

Reviews

""I would, however, recommend this book to university libraries catering for courses in ancient history, historical theology, archaeology or Middle Eastern studies, as a balanced and scholarly guide to the current state of knowledge."" —Martin Guha, Reference Reviews, Volume 30, Number 7, 2016

Author Information

Susan Niditch is Samuel Green Professor of Religion at Amherst College. Her research and teaching interests include the study of ancient Israelite literature from the interdisciplinary perspectives of the fields of folklore and oral studies; biblical ethics with special attention to war, gender, and the body; the reception history of the Bible; and the material religion of biblical worlds. Her most recent book is The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods.

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