This book, the second of two volumes, offers a comprehensive history of Israelite religion. It is a part of the Old Testament Library series. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

This book, the second of two volumes, offers a comprehensive history of Israelite religion. It is a part of the Old Testament Library series. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

This book, the first of two volumes, offers a comprehensive history of Israelite religion. It is a part of the Old Testament Library series. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

The period of Israel's Babylonian exile is one of the most enthralling eras of biblical history. During this time Israel went through its deepest crisis, and the foundation was laid for its most profound renewal. The crisis provoked the creation of a wealth of literary works such as laments, prophetic books, and historical works, all of which Albertz analyzes in detail through the methods of social history, composition criticism, and redaction criticism. In addition, Albertz draws on extrabiblical and archaeological evidence to illuminate the historical and social changes that affected the various exilic groups. Thirty-five years after Peter Ackroyd's classic Exile and Restoration, Albertz offers a new generation of biblical scholars and students an equally important appraisal of recent scholarship on this period as well as his own innovative and insightful proposals about the social and literary developments that took place and the theological contribution that was made. Includes chronological table, map of the ancient Near East, and passage index. - Publisher.

The history and religion of Israel are inseparable and yet stand in sharp contrast to each other. The history of Israel is in one sense only a minor feature in the broad complex of ancient Near Eastern history. With the possible exception of the reigns of David and Solomon, Israel never attained imperial status.

In this much-anticipated textbook, three respected biblical scholars have written a history of ancient Israel that takes the biblical text seriously as an historical document. While also considering nonbiblical sources and being attentive to what disciplines like archaeology, anthropology, and sociology suggest about the past, the authors do so within the context and paradigm of the Old Testament canon, which is held as the primary document for reconstructing Israel's history. In Part One, the authors set the volume in context and review past and current scholarly debate about learning Israel's history, negating arguments against using the Bible as the central source. In Part Two, they seek to retell the history itself with an eye to all the factors explored in Part One.

The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Concise History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of Israel and Judah from the late second millennium BCE to the beginning of the Roman period. Considering archaeological material as well as biblical and extrabiblical texts, Schipper argues that the history of “Israel” in the preexilic period took place mostly in the hinterland of the Levant and should be understood in the context of the Neo-Assyrian expansion. He demonstrates that events in the exilic and postexilic periods also played out differently than they are recounted in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In contrast to previous scholarship, which focused heavily on Israel’s origins and the monarchic period, Schipper’s history gives equal attention to the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, providing confirmation that a wide variety of forms of YHWH religion existed in the Persian period and persisted into the Hellenistic age. Original and innovative, this brief history provides a new outline of the historical development of ancient Israel that will appeal to students, scholars, and lay readers who desire a concise overview.

In this work, a part of the Old Testament Library series, Horst Preuss provides a comprehensive analysis of the theology of the Old Testament. He focuses on a detailed assessment of Israel's responses to God's acts of election and covenant with them as a people. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

A collection of essays that examines the Hebrew Bible using the methodology of Rolf P. Knierim of the Institute for Antiquity & Christianity in Claremont, CA.

Niels Peter Lemche focuses on the way Israelites understood themselves at different points in history--before, within, and after the monarchy. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Israel's rich history. Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines--such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary criticism--to illuminate the everyday realities and social subtleties these ancient cultures experienced. This series employs sophisticated methods resulting in original contributions that depict the reality of the people behind the Hebrew Bible and interprets these insights for a wide variety of readers.