Studies in Antiquity
David and Before:
A New Approach
E Bruce Brooks
The rise of the Kingdom was the great event in the history of the ancient Hebrews, and its fall was their great catastrophe. It meant the failure of the promise of God to David, and it also meant the end of the worldly aspirations of the people of Judah. The often contradictory Biblical texts are here approached as reflecting this tension between the sacred and the secular, and the continual evolution of each. Space is given to both the power centers, Canaan and Judah, and their theological as well as their commercial differences. Classical text analysis (detecting additions and interpolations, and determining the directionality of related passages) is supplemented by a new method of stylistic analysis.
These studies range from Hammurabi to the age of the Maccabees, and follow the multilocal Elohim belief to its gradual replacement by a Temple-based Yahweh cult, and note the Midianite origin of the Yahweh cult itself. They note the long persistence of the older Canaanite religion in Temple observances, and the legal changes which the process of centralization produced. The Septuagint Greek translation is often preferred to the customary, but later, Masoretic Hebrew text. The book ends with the perplexities of the post-Exilic period, the point at which the modern age begins - a world which is still in the process of discovery in our time.
Front Matter
Cover
Orientation, 11
Origin Myths, 31
From the North, 47
From the South, 73
The Laws and The Kingship, 95
Into the Land, 123
The United Kingdom, 143
The Divided Kingdoms, 171
Prophets of Exile, 195
After the Return, 225
The Parting of the Ways, 245
End Matter, 265
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