audiobook Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah by From Francesca Stavrakopoulou in History

Review

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. A must-have bookBy Sheila MichaelsAll the contributors write well and clearly. If you wish to understand current thinking in Biblical Studies; religious studies; gender the history of the area; then this is a book you must read.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Five stars for scholarship; three stars for my enjoyment of the bookBy Ralph BlumenauThere is much scholarly material in this collection of papers on the sociology of religion in Israel and Judah; which happens not to be a particular interest of mine; and my review deals only with those results of recent biblical scholarship; some of it fairly recent and some much older; which upturn a number of preconceptions derived from the Bible and still held by many of the laity and by some orthodox believers. In a Postscript one of the editors acknowledges that most of these preconceptions were challenged by Julius Wellhausen as long ago as 1883 and by other writers since. (I am thinking particularly of Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible?” of 1987). So; for all the citations of more recent authorities and for all the work done by the contributors themselves to this volume; I do not have the impression that this is a particularly ground-breaking book in respect of the areas which interest me.Research has shown that:1. Israel came into existence WITHIN Canaan and was not the result of immigration into Canaan from Egypt.2. Initially the beliefs of the Israelites were not so radically different from those of Canaan: they were polytheistic; YHWH was associated with the goddess Asherath.3. Deuteronomist material is to be found not only in the Book of Deuteronomy but scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible; shaping or re-shaping the narrative to make it conform to the agenda of the Deuternomist scribes. Many of the beliefs they ascribe to the Israelites were official beliefs and did not reflect the beliefs of the general population. That is fairly obvious from the Biblical account of the battles fought between the upholders of the official beliefs against the supporters of Baal and other gods. But the official beliefs may not have reflected even the beliefs of many members of the official classes; so that the distinction between official and popular religion is not all that sharp. That; too; would seem fairly obvious from the Biblical texts; in which some kings are chastised for worshipping false gods. The contributors take issue with the “derogatory”; condescending and westernizing attitude some scholars show towards the “popular” (“primitive”) religion. The “popular” religions; often involving fertility cults; were likely to be stronger in the countryside than in the cities; and it was in the cities that we would find the scribes who championed the official religion: “since high literacy itself is an urban phenomenon; the Hebrew Bible represents an urban perspective on almost everything.”4. One paper underlines the surely well-known scholarly consensus thatthe Deuternomic source was composed in Judah before and after the Babylonian captivity; and has an agenda consistently to denigrate therival Kingdom of Israel; finding that kingdom especially guilty of worshiping other gods; even though it also accuses some of the Kings of Judah (Ahaz; Manasseh) of the same sin.5. One essay has it that kings of Israel and Judah were regarded as divinities; as were kings in neighbouring areas. Horns were part of divine images; the essay says (p.72) that Moses descended from Mount Sinai with horns on his head; meaning that he had been transformed into a god. (So much for the notion that the Hebrew word karan meant shining - as in the AV; the NEB; the Jerusalem Bible; and the JPS Tanach. According to this essay Jerome had not made a mistake when he translated karan into Latin as cornuta - i.e. horned!) And it quotes Psalm 132.17 which says “I shall cause a horn to sprout for David”.Local gods were often portrayed as horned bulls; but even King Jeroboam of Israel; who was a worshipper of YHWH; set up golden calves in the temples at Dan and at Bethel. (It has been suggested that when the Bible talks about calves it really means small bulls or that when the scribes described them as calves; it was a derogatory; belittling term for a bull.)This is really a book for scholarly specialists; which I am not. Much of it is quite hard going; the style is stodgy; colourless and wordily academic with a lot of technical vocabulary.15 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Not light reading; but a very important bookBy BethThe casual reader may find this book tough going because it makes extensive use of the vocabulary of archeology; anthropology; sociology; linquistics; theology and history; and includes numerous citations from leading works in all of those fields. That well-informed interdisciplinary approach; however; makes it possible for the authors and editors of this book to offer the reader an unparalleled synthesis of a vast amount of recent data. Taken as a whole; this book makes major strides towards putting to rest for once and for all such hackneyed dogmatic intellectual sloppiness as the idea that there was a uniform "popular religion" and/or a uniform "official religion" across the Levant at any given time; or the notion that worship of any deity can ever exist in an historical or cultural or geographic vacuum (as some theologians might prefer to imagine). Generally (and refreshingly); the authors whose works are contained in this volume stand firmly in a middle ground between treating the bible as sacrosanct and disregarding it all togther. In particular; I found the esaay by Herbert Niehr (Chapter 3) to be one of the best; most insightful; discussions of the "Canaanite"/ "Israelite" biblical dichotomy that I have read anywhere. This is a scholarly book in the best sense of the word.