Most of the essays in this volume stem from the special sessions of the Historiography Seminar of the Canadian Society for Biblical Studies, held in the late spring of 2007 (University of Saskatchewan). The papers in these focused sessions dealt with issues of self-identification, community identity, and ethnicity in Judahite and Yehudite historiography. The scholars present addressed a range of issues, such as the understanding, presentation, and delimitation of “Israel” in various biblical texts, the relationship of Israelites to Judahites in Judean historical writings, the definition of Israel over against other peoples, and the possible reasons why the ethnoreligious community (“Israel”) was the focus of Judahite/Yehudite historiography. Papers approached these matters from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary vantage points. For example, some pursued an inner-biblical perspective (pentateuchal sources/writings, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah), while others pursued a cross-cultural comparative perspective (ancient Near Eastern, ancient Greek and Hellenistic historiographies, Western and non-Western historiographic traditions). Still others attempted to relate the material remains to the question of community identity in northern Israel, monarchic Judah, and postmonarchic Yehud.

The first volume in the Historiography and Identity sub-series examines the many ways historiographical works shaped identities in ancient and medieval societies, providing a basis for understanding the successive developments in Western historiography.00The six-volume sub-series 'Historiography and Identity' unites a wide variety of case studies from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, from the Latin West to the emerging polities in Northern and Eastern Europe, and also incorporates a Eurasian perspective which includes the Islamic World and China. The series aims to develop a critical methodology that harnesses the potential of identity studies to enhance our understanding of the construction and impact of historiography.00This first volume in the 'Historiography and Identity' sub-series examines the many ways in which historiographical works shaped identities in ancient and medieval societies by focusing on the historians of ancient Greece and the late Roman Empire. It presents in-depth studies about how history writing could create a sense of community, thereby shedding light on the links between authorial strategies, processes of identification, and cultural memory. The contributions explore the importance of regional, ethnic, cultural, and imperial identities to the process of history writing, embedding the works in the changing political landscape. --

This introduction to contemporary historical theory and practice shows how issues of identity have shaped how we write history. Stefan Berger charts how a new self-reflexivity about what is involved in the process of writing history entered the historical profession and the part that historians have played in debates about the past and its meaningfulness for the present. He introduces key trends in the theory of history such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructivism, narrativism and the linguistic turn and reveals, in turn, the ways in which they have transformed how historians have written history over the last four decades. The book ranges widely from more traditional forms of history writing, such as political, social, economic, labour and cultural history, to the emergence of more recent fields, including gender history, historical anthropology, the history of memory, visual history, the history of material culture, and comparative, transnational and global history.

It is commonly accepted in various disciplines and contexts that history writing often (if not always!) contribute to the process of identity (re)formation. Using the past in order to find a renewed identity in new (socio-political and socio-religious) circumstances, is something that we also witness in Hebrew Bible historiographies. The so-called Deuteronomistic History, as well as the works of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, are often read from the perspective of a community trying to find a new identity in changed circumstances. In the Historical Books section at the 2008 Auckland SBL International Meeting, this perspective was investigated further. The papers presented included theoretical reflections on the relationship between historiography and identity (re)formation, as well as illustrations from Hebrew Bible historiographies (of the Exilic and Second Temple periods). These papers, together with a few responses to the papers, are offered here to a wider scholarly audience. Contributors include Jon Berquist, Mark Brett, Louis Jonker, Mark Leuchter, Christine Mitchell, Klaas Spronk, Gerrie Snyman, Ray Person, Armin Siedlecki, and Jacob Wright.

This volume describes real and mental regions as the historical undertone that destined a changing Europe during the last millennium. Over the centuries, historiography - in many different forms - became an important vehicle by which to create, articulate, and express the existence, awareness, and characteristics of Europe's regions. Be it the histories of noble families that were important stakeholders in a region, urban histories describing the developing urban networks through which regions could function, dynastic histories emphasizing the relationship between ruler and region, or hagiographies describing holy men and women and their veneration as focal points within regions - all of them represented and reflected identities within an understood spatial and or mental sphere. Historiography can therefore help us to understand the way in which regions were seen from within and from without, and to understand the patterns and dynamics of regional cohesion. Moreover, it sheds light on the dialectic between nation and region, and on the relationship between the regional sphere and the wider (inter)national sphere. The authors of this volume look at individual European regions from different points of view, using historiography as a lens. They analyse the ways in which history as a construct has played a role in establishing regional identity, providing examples of the ways in which recording, interpreting, and recounting the history of regions through the ages has been instrumental in shaping these regions. The first section of the volume explores regional identity in medieval and early modern historiography; the second shows how, in the age of the invention and triumph of the European nation-state (the long nineteenth century), historiography of a new kind was applied for a deliberate creation of regional identity, or at least reflected the need for a historical confirmation of identities.

Historical writing has shaped identities in various ways and to different extents. This volume explores this multiplicity by looking at case studies from Europe, Byzantium, the Islamic World, and China around the turn of the first millennium. The chapters in this volume address official histories and polemical critique, traditional genres and experimental forms, ancient traditions and emerging territories, empires and barbarians. The authors do not take the identities highlighted in the texts for granted, but examine the complex strategies of identification that they employ. This volume thus explores how historiographical works in diverse contexts construct and shape identities, as well as legitimate political claims and communicate 'visions of community'.

Nathan Lovell proposes that 1 and 2 Kings might be read as a work of written history, produced with the explicit purpose of shaping the communal identity of its first readers in the Babylonian exile. By drawing on sociological approaches to the role historiography plays in the construction of political identity, Lovell argues the book of Kings is intended to reconstruct a sense of Israelite identity in the context of these losses, and that the book of Kings moves beyond providing a reason for the exile in Israel's history, and beyond even connecting its exilic audience to that history. The book recalls the past in order to demonstrate what it means to be Israel in the (exilic) present, and to encourage hope for the Israelite nation in the future. After developing a reading strategy for 1–2 Kings that treats the book as a coherent narrative, Lovell examines the construction of Israelite identity within Kings under the headings of covenant, nationhood, land, and rule. In each case he suggests that the narrative of the book creates room for a genuine but temporary expression of Israelite identity in exile: genuine to show that it remains possible for Israel to be Yahweh's people during the exile, but temporary to encourage hope for a future restoration.

This introduction to contemporary historical theory and practice shows how issues of identity have shaped how we write history. Stefan Berger charts how a new self-reflexivity about what is involved in the process of writing history entered the historical profession and the part that historians have played in debates about the past and its meaningfulness for the present. He introduces key trends in the theory of history such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructivism, narrativism and the linguistic turn and reveals, in turn, the ways in which they have transformed how historians have written history over the last four decades. The book ranges widely from more traditional forms of history writing, such as political, social, economic, labour and cultural history, to the emergence of more recent fields, including gender history, historical anthropology, the history of memory, visual history, the history of material culture, and comparative, transnational and global history.