BOOK REVIEW Early Israel: Cultic Praxis, God, and the Sôd Hypothesis (2023; Routledge) by Alex Shalom Kohav

In two recent articles Iain Provan has argued that those who question the reality of ‘early Israel’ do not have adequate epistemological grounds for their reasoning. Provan is particularly interested in preserving much of the testimony of the Hebrew Bible, if only because, without it, there is virtually no evidence left. Here I argue a different position, largely from a comparative framework. Given the remarkable lack of archaeological and external support for biblical history, I wonder why we should give the Hebrew Bible—or any source that is sui generis and largely uncorroborated—the benefit of any doubts. In other times and other places such sources have lost much of the credibility given them by earlier generations; why not here? The historiographical and epistemological situation is ripe for open debate. In any zetetic process, it is now the turn of those who prefer to use biblical evidence for orientation to justify this with more than variations of a refrain. In the meantime, postulating reconstructions of this period and place can be little more than gamesmanship.

Book Review| October 01 1989 Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy, Niels Peter Lemche and Frederick H. Cryer. Robert B. Coote Robert B. Coote Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (1989) 108 (3): 502–504. https://doi.org/10.2307/3267118 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robert B. Coote; Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the Monarchy. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 January 1989; 108 (3): 502–504. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3267118 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Yahwist's Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel. Theodore Hiebert.John Van SetersJohn Van Seters Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research Volume 306May 1997 A journal of the American Schools of Oriental Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/1357552 Views: 7Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research (1921-2021), which is continued by the Bulletin of the American Schools of Overseas Research (2022-present). Copyright 1997 The American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Most study of the definition of early Israel, from an archaeological perspective, is based on outdated views on the relationship between material culture and group identity, ignoring recent social theory on the relationship between the archaeological finds and group identity. This has led to simplistic assumptions on defining and identifying the materials correlates – and the group identities – relevant for understanding the formation and development of early Israel. While critical of much of the research, and aware of the limitations of the ability to interpret the archaeological remains, I suggest some paths how to move forward in defining – what is and what is not – early Israel, stressing the need to focus on a bottom-up approach, commencing with the study of small-scale communities of practice.

George Emery Mendenhall: An Appreciation The Editors I. THE FEDERATION AND THE EARLY MONARCHY Two Models for the Origins of Ancient Israel: Social Revolution or Frontier Development - Norman K. Gottwald The Sack of Israel - John L. McKenzie Succession and Genealogy in the Davidic Dynasty - James W. Flanagan II. COVENANT AND LAW Enforcing the Covenant: The Mechanisms of Judicial Authority in Early Israel - Robert R. Wilson Covenant in Narratives from Late OT Times - Dennis J. McCarthy, S. J. In Praise of the Israelite Mispaha: Legal Themes in the Book of Ruth - Baruch A. Levine III. PROPHECY AND POETRY The Social Role of Amos' Message - Herbert B. Huffmon Prophetic Eschatological Visions and the Kingdom of God - Walter Harrelson The Divine King and the Human Community in Isaiah's Vision of the Future - J. J. M. Roberts Imperial Dream: Text and Sense of Mic 5:4b-5 - Delbert R. Hillers Discourse on Prophetic Discourse - David Noel Freedman Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Verse: The Prosody of the Psalm of Jonah - Frank M. Cross IV. ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY The Use of Ethnography in an Archaeological Research Design - Albert E. Glock Social Stratification and Cultural Continuity at Alalakh - Alberto R. W. Green What is a Temple? A Preliminary Typology - John M. Lundquist 'Your Father Was an Amorit' (Ezek 16:3, 45): An Essay on the Amorite Problem in OT Traditions - J. Tracy Luke Heshbon: The First Casualty in the Israelite Quest for the Kingdom of God - Lawrence T. Geraty V. BIBLICAL IDEOLOGY Magic, Monotheism, and the Sin of Moses - Jacob Milgrom Qoheleth and the Reformation of Wisdom - Frank A. Spina From Holy War to Holy Martyrdom - William H. Brownlee George Emery Mendenhall, A Bibliography - M. O'Connor INDEXES Author Index Scripture Index

In this article, we look into the possibility of assimilation of Canaanites into a group of Israelites whose origins lie in Egypt. We examine the topic from a comparative perspective of studies of ethnicity. First, we make a review of the current status of the scholarship about the origins of Israel. We then review how studies of ethnicity have been applied to Old Testament studies. After this, we look at definitions and basic features of ethnicity from the standpoint of ethnic studies. We then apply these insights to determine basic features of ethnicity and ethnic boundaries in early Israel. Subsequently, we look into evidence which suggests that assimilation from local peoples to an Exodus group may well have taken place in early Israel.

The Exodus–Conquest ideology was probably introduced in early Israel by southern newcomers identified as the Ephraimites. However, an alternative theology in early Israel appears here through an analysis of the Song of Deborah, the plot exposed in the Book of Exodus, and the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel. Here defined as Integrative Yahwism, this alternative combines the approach of YHWH as a distant deity (super-god) with his closeness to the Israelites and his public acknowledgement. Conflicts between these two trends are visible in the Bible, especially concerning the question of the divine intervention in history. The parallels between the Elohist source and Integrative Yahwism, as well as the Yahwist source and Exodus–Conquest ideology, acknowledge the perpetuation of this theological duality for centuries in ancient Israel.

Previous articleNext article FreeRecent Theological LiteratureThe Book of the Twelve Prophets Commonly Called the Minor Prophets. Vol. I. Amos, Hosea, and Micah, with an Introduction and a Sketch of Prophecy in Early Israel. George Adam Smith William R. HarperWilliam R. Harper Search for more articles by this author PDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 1, Number 2Apr., 1897 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/476608 Views: 51 Journal History This article was published in The American Journal of Theology (1897-1920), which is continued by The Journal of Religion (1921-present). Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The prefix “proto”, originally from the Greek, carries several meanings, including first, earliest, original and primitive. A “prototype” is the first or original type, and “proto” may indicate something in the way of becoming. In this article we offer a critical review of the history and uses of the term “proto-Israelites” in biblical and archaeological studies since 1943. The prehistory of ‘early Israel’ has shrunk from the Early Bronze to the Iron Age, but the use of “proto-Israel” has grown since the 1990s, tied to issues of historicity and ethnicity. “Proto-Israelite” is a misleading term. It enables scholars to re-find a united, ethnic Israel, by projecting it onto the past in disguise, as “proto-Israel”. There are no “proto-people” that carry “proto-ethnicity”. The use of “proto-Israelites” serves modern ideologies. We suggest more neutral terms, which do not beg the question whether an Israelite ethnic community existed, or can be identified in material remains of the Iron Age I.

This article is an anthropological history of the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony in the Yishuv and Israel of the 1940s and the 1950s, when this ceremony radically grew in terms of the space, time, and economic resources devoted to it, as well as expanded to include girls. To explain that shift, I suggest distinguishing classic rites of initiation from the system of life-cycle ceremonies typical of modern consumer culture, which emphasizes the transition between temporal markers rather than social statuses and imposes no task on the birthday celebrant. The article reconstructs the process by which, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony came to function more as an elaborate birthday party than as a rite of initiation. The historical reconstruction demonstrates how, during the late Mandate period and early years of statehood, a new grassroots Israeli culture emerged, shaped by the accommodation of Western consumer culture to Jewish traditions rather than by Zionist ideology or established religion.

God and Man in Early Israel

Early Israel in Canaan

This article is an anthropological history of the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony in the Yishuv and Israel of the 1940s and the 1950s, when this ceremony radically grew in terms of the space, time, and economic resources devoted to it, as well as expanded to include girls. To explain that shift, I suggest distinguishing classic rites of initiation from the system of life-cycle ceremonies typical of modern consumer culture, which emphasizes the transition between temporal markers rather than social statuses and imposes no task on the birthday celebrant. The article reconstructs the process by which, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony came to function more as an elaborate birthday party than as a rite of initiation. The historical reconstruction demonstrates how, during the late Mandate period and early years of statehood, a new grassroots Israeli culture emerged, shaped by the accommodation of Western consumer culture to Jewish traditions rather than by Zionist ideology or established religion.

My participation in this project concerning the Bible and radiocarbon dating is largely that of an observer since I am not an authority on 14 C dating, and my work on Syro-Palestinian chronology until recently has had to do mostly with the Bronze Age. I have now become involved in Iron Age chronology, however, since it is a crucial aspect of my current research on the question of the socalled ‘United Monarchy’ and state-formation processes in early Israel (Dever 1997, 2004). Why Chronology Matters First, we need not make any apologies for what some might consider an obsession with chronology, especially our desire for closely fixed absolute dates. Chronology is ‘the backbone of history’, the time-line. It is the thread upon which individual events are strung like beads, so as to create a connected, believable series of happenings that constitute what we would call ‘narrative history’, the most fundamental level of history-writing. Yet without relative dates—and absolute dates when possible—all our reconstructions of the past remain unordered , and they can only create the impression of chaos. Yet the apparent chaos is an illusion. History, if not purposeful, is at least orderly; and culture is patterned. That, and only that, is what makes a perception of the ‘meaning of events’ (the whole point of the historical enterprise) possible—but only once we have a reliable chronology, that is, a concept of evolution , and a framework for explaining cultural change.

Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS 115 Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources, by Thomas L. Thompson. Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1992. 489 pp. n.p.1. Thomas Thompson has written a remarkable book. There have been a great number of books published over the past ten years dealing with the emergence ofAncient Israel, including N. P. Lemche, Early Israel (Leiden, 1985), R. B. Coote and K. W. Whitelam, The Emergence ofEarly Israel in Historical Perspective (Sheffield, 1987), G. Garbini, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (London, 1988), W. G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research (Seattle, 1990), and the posthumously published magnu,m opus by Gosta Ahlstrom on ,The History ofAncientPalestine , from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander's Conquest (Sheffield, 1993). Thompson draws upon and evaluates all of these works (he even had access to the manuscript of Ahlstrom's book), but he has also written a book distinctively his own, quite unlike any other study of Ancient Israel published to date. All of the books listed here make extensive use of archaeological evidence , but that by Dever is the only one written by a field archaeologist, by a producer of archaeological evidence, not just a consumer. This is an important point, for it is the wealth of new archaeological evidence published within the past twenty-five years that has transformed every9ne's understanding of the history of Ancient Israel. With this has developed a much more sophisticated methodology for evaluating this evidence. Gone for good is the rather simple-minded approach associated with W. F. Albright and the Ameri~anSchool ofBiblical Archaeology, an approach that often degenerated into trying to prove that "the Bible was right after all." But what is going to replace the "Conquest Hypothesis" and who is in the best position to provide the necessary synthesis of the written and archaeological sources? Dever would argue that only the field archaeologist is able to evaluate the complex, often unpublished archaeological evidence, now more and more likely to be survey evidence. Lemche and Thompson would maintain that trainin'g in the evaluation of literary traditions must take precedence, Of all the new literature on Ancient Israel known to me the study by Thompson is the most interesting. It certainly is going to be the most controversial. Thompson is a' radical scholar. He is also an uncompromis- 116 SHOFAR Spring 1994 Vol. 12, No.3 ing scholar, prepared to follow his argument to its logical conclusion regardless of cost. Very few scholars are truly going to like the Early History of the Israelite People; no one can afford to ignore the work. AcceptingThompson's interpretation is going to make necessary a dramatic revision in our understanding of biblical history and biblical archaeology. In a short review I cannot possible evaluate Thompson's arguments. At best I can give some idea of the general thrust of his ideas. In approaching this dense, closely written book the reader would be well advised to begin with chapter nine, the final chapter, where Thompson summarizes his arguments and reveals the grand design implicit in all the previous chapters. This might take away some of the ·fun in reading the book, but it will make that reading a more comprehensible experience. Thompson proposes that the Israel of the biblical tradition can be traced back no earlier than the Persian period, the time of Cyrus the Great and the book of Ezra. Before then the kingdom of Samaria, in the northern part of Palestine, had a limited existence before being obliterated by Assyria in the late eighth century BCE, whereas Judah, in the south, and its capital Jerusalem, flourished during the seventh century only to be wiped out by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians in the early sixth. Those who returned from exile in Babylonia were greeted with less than enthusiasm by those who had remained in the land (cf. Ezra 4-6), but the intellectuals who returned, imbued with the new ideas of the Persian Renaissance, were able to impose upon the people of Palestine their 'conception of an Israel united under the worship of Yahweh. All oral traditions and memories of what had gone before were worked together in...