The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (review)

Abstract

London and York: Continuum, 2001. 821 pp. $150.00.The Religions of Ancient Israel is an attempt to use a philosophical paradigm to understand nature of religions practiced in Israel in antiquity. In delineating religions of Ancient Israel, both within a specified time-frame (synchronic) and in sequenced time-frames (diachronic), Zevit relies mainly, but not exclusively, on artifactual and epigraphic data and appropriate biblical texts.Before introducing his philosophical approach, Zevit begins by defining what he means by Humanities, comparing and contrasting them with Natural and Social Sciences (pp. 4-5). His lack of basic understanding regarding nature of Natural Sciences, an albeit small and unfortunate glitch in factuality, does not detract from overall importance of his stated goals and research effort. Zevit properly indicates that in all three components of Liberal Arts, different models may be constructed with same data (p. 6), and that focus on different paradigms defines Biblical as an entire field of (p. 9).Zevit presents four paradigms for research and understanding of material, giving a brief analysis and critique of each as well as of scholarship within it. However, The Religions of Ancient Israel does not present itself as using a compendium of all of paradigms; rather, it takes as its basis Zevit's second paradigm, which he believes characterizes modern historiography (p. 39). Zevit's first paradigm is typified by assumption of some reality, which is accessible to researcher. When scholars study data, they do so by a sieving process that results in an empirical of facts which is subsequently both analyzed and synthesized (p. 30). Zevit's second paradigm, which he construes as an extension of his first (p. 39), predicates an accessible historical reality that does not hinge on historian's opinion. Moreover, factule [sic] resultant on study of data is itself affected by nature of their contents; and, concomitantly, since documents are not limited to author's original intent, effect itself also becomes a factule. Zevit believes that incompleteness of resulting collection of evidentiary facts limits but does not obviate historians ability to make accurate statements. Significantly, more varied methodologies accessible to twentieth-century historians, in contrast to those who preceded them, made them aware of interconnections between synchronic and diachronic venues into human culture (pp. 39-40). Zevit then supplements this with a third, minimalist and postmodern paradigm, which he seems not to understand, and improperly rejects (pp. 57-68); and, he then suggests that a fourth paradigm, influenced by New Historicism and Cultural Studies seems to be forming although it has not yet emerged (p. 69). Once he has established nature of paradigms, particularly those that he accepts as valid, Zevit presents data for various topics that he will ultimately use to define religions of Ancient Israel.The next section of work, comprising four chapters, follows pattern of a well-presented archaeological report, but it is not limited to data from one site. Rather, Zevit culls out and marshals supportive evidence from major digs as well as some that are secondary; and, as is traditional in all but a final archaeological report, he draws only limited conclusions from each. Zevit first addresses various locales of worship. Although he notes that the clearest incontrovertible examples of cult sites relative to religion [sic] of Israelites comes from excavations at sites belonging to Israel's Iron Age Neighbors (p. 124), he primarily deals with cult sites that are Israelite. In particular, he looks at data from Ai, Arad, Beer Sheba, a site near northern border of Manasseh, Tel Dan, Mt. …