History Of Early Israel Research Articles

The Desert’s Role in the Formation of Early Israel and the Origin of Yhwh


 The origin of ancient Israel has been questioned and intensively discussed for almost two centuries by many researchers, from two main schools of thought. One believes the early Israelites came from outside the Land of Cana‘an and conquered it, while the other believes they rose from within Cana‘an, forming a new polity and culture. Scholars are likewise divided whether the Israelite God, Yhwh, originated from the Near Eastern cultural environment or from the desert. A multitude of studies has been dedicated to these two themes, usually separately. This article attempts to examine the connection between the two through several themes: desert roots in the culture of ancient Israel, the origin of Yhwh, Asiatics in Sinai and the Negev, desert tribes and the copper industry, the location of biblical Paran, Nabataean data from Sinai which illuminate biblical issues, and others. By including materials which were previously underutilized or overlooked, these themes may be integrated to form a reasonable scenario of a chapter in the history of early Israel.

The mentally ill and how they were perceived in young Israel.

The article constitutes a widely researched account of mental patients and their perceptions in the early history of Israel, especially its second decade. It focuses on a single generation, which experienced the traumas of war in Europe, followed by insecurity in Israel's struggle for independence. The article claims that in the 1960s many suffered from depression, reflected in a record number of patients in mental hospitals and mentally sick people, mostly of European origin. This study describes Israeli society in the 1960s as disturbed, immersed in nightmarish dreams and close to madness; it also discusses the genetic and neurological vulnerabilities which induced the psychosis and the social response that converted it into a chronic illness.

Orientalist reflections in early Israeli law: (new) perspectives on the issue of polygamy

This paper examines several cases of bigamy in the early history of Israel as a junction of confronting legal, religious and ethno-cultural considerations. It will discuss these challenging test cases in which the Supreme Court deliberated over the question during the formative decade of the 1950s as a meeting point of social dimensions: both among Jews of Eastern origin, and also among – and in a comparative perspective – Arab-Muslims. To the Court, both of these groups presented reflections of the East, and this paper will suggest a new reading of the Court’s decisions.The bigamy dilemma has occupied the former rulers of the land: both the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate for Palestine. History dramatically changed during the early 1950s, as the new State of Israel brought together the Arab communities and an enormous public of new Jewish immigrants, mostly strangers to the Western legal-political tradition that the Zionist founding fathers struggled to establish during the first half of the twentieth century. Given this background, the law (and the Court) sometimes served as an institution and as a stage in which these new legal system and different traditions confronted each other. In compare to other meeting points between East and West and the world of law, the phenomenon of bigamy stands – as this paper argues – at a unique place of its own as the Israeli legal system was literally under construction.

Arab Jews in Israel: the struggle for identity and socioeconomic justice

This article is based on a study in Arabic by author that formed the final chapter of the book Yahud al-bilad al-‘arabiyyah (The Jews of the Arab Countries) by the late Palestinian historian Khairiyyah Qasimiyyah. It examines the problem of identity among Jews of Arab origin in Israel and the resurgent use of the term ‘Arab Jew’ used by Jewish academics and activists in Israel. It also considers the issues of discrimination and socioeconomic injustice against the Arab Jewish community since the early history of Israel. Finally, it discusses the potential for joint action by Arab Jews and Palestinians for the cause of social justice and pluralism in Israel.

The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17. Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt.

<i>The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17</i>. Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt.

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN and AMIHAI MAZAR, edited by BRIAN B. SCHMIDT, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17).

ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN and AMIHAI MAZAR, edited by BRIAN B. SCHMIDT, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17).

The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

The Military History of Ancient Israel

The Military History of Ancient Israel. By Richard A. Gabriel. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. ISBN 0-275-97798-6. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 334. $79.95. The publication of Richard Gabriel's latest book provides an excellent opportunity for addressing some thorny issues in the field of the military history of the Bible. Gabriel has written a military narrative for the conquest of ancient Israel by the successors of Moses with an eye to logistics, tactics, manpower, fortifications, command and control, weapons and weapons manufacture, troop leadership, and military strategy. He is correct in saying that this is the first such book to appear in English. Only Jacob Liver's book, The Military History of the Land of Israel in Biblical Times, is comparable, but that work has yet to be translated from the Hebrew. On the surface, Gabriel's book will be convincing to military historians, but only those motivated by religious belief or who are completely unaware of the last half century of scholarship on the subject. There is no more complex issue in Near Eastern studies than who the Israelites were, how they got into Canaan, and by what means they came to dominate the area. The great French biblical historian Roland de Vaux, in his book, The Early History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster [End Page 197] Press, 1978), described the emergence of Israel in Palestine as "the most difficult problem in the whole history of Israel" (p. 475) and he was not exaggerating. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to assume that the biblical texts present history accurately. This view has come to be known as the Conquest Model. The last half-century, however, has witnessed an intense dialogue—even polemic—on the topic as two other major reconstructions of the evidence have vied for center stage. As early as the 1920s, there was already a group of scholars in Germany who rejected the Conquest Model. Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth put forward what came to be known as the "Peaceful Infiltration Model" as an alternative to the largely American fundamentalist approach. The German school discarded the stories in Joshua entirely and concentrated on modern ethnographic studies of Middle Eastern pastoral nomads who wandered over long distances but eventually put down roots as peasants or townspeople. They compared this modern phenomenon to the biblical tradition of Israel's ancestors described in Genesis as wandering, tent-dwelling shepherds. In this view, the Israelites did not fight their way in through the Sinai, but rather were part of a natural process of settling down in one place that has been going on in this region for millennia. In this view, the Israelites did not need military reconnaissance; they were simply shepherds looking for better pasture. Finally, in 1962, George Mendenhall of the University of Michigan, a student of the famous biblical archaeologist and historian William Foxwell Albright, published an article which rejected both the "Conquest" and "Peaceful Infiltration" models ("The Biblical Conquest of Palestine," Biblical Archaeology 25, no. 1 [1962]: 66-87). Mendenhall believed that Israel did not win against its neighbors because of better military weapons or superior military organization. He believed that Israelite victory came as a result of a religiously motivated internal revolution. His theory was based solely on an analysis of internal social developments in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age. The conflict was thus not between the nomads and the settled population but between the rural population and the rulers of the city-states. Mendenhall believed that there was a peasant revolt, united in its worship of the God YHWH. The new religious movement placed its faith in a single God who established egalitarian laws of social conduct and who communicated directly to each member of the community. The hold of the kings over the community was therefore effectively broken by the spread of the new faith. The Israelite conquest was accomplished without invasion or immigration...

GENESIS XLVI 8-27

This list is presented as the names of those accompanying 'Jacob into Egypt but it displays genealogical features and gives two different totals for the numbers involved. Commentators have found difficulty in proposing a complete overall solution to the problems posed by the passage. Such a complete overall solution is suggested with far-reaching implications for the early history of Israel and a proper understanding of Israel's true character and constitution.

A Search for the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah

Translated by J. Edward Crowley. This radical reconstruction of the origins of Judaism starts by observing that Josephus's sources on the early history of Israel do not agree with the Bible and that the oldest rabbinic traditions show no sign of a biblical foundation. Another interesting question is raised by the Samaritan claim, at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, that they had only recently received the Sabbath from the Jews. From such details, Nodet creates a comprehensive line of argument that reveals two major sources of Judaism, as symbolized in the subtitle of his work: Joshua was the one who established locally in writing a statute and a law at the Shechem assembly, while the Mishnah was the ultimate metamorphosis of traditions brought from Babylon and combined with Judaean influences.

Remember Marcellus's Warning

The Mythic Past Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. Thomas L. Thompson. Basic (Perseus), New York, 1999. 432 pp. $30, C$44.95, £18.50. ISBN 0-465-00622-1. Paper, $17.50, C$25.95, £10.95. ISBN 0-465-00649-3. From his survey of recent decades of studies on archaeological, agricultural, economic, and linguistic aspects of early Palestine history, Thompson concludes that the Old Testament provides no historical evidence for the early history of Israel. Our reviewer strongly disagrees.

Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel's Nuclear Project (1948-1954)

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR PROJECT STARTED IN earnest in 1955. The year was marked by two developments, one domestic and the other international, that proved fateful for the initiation of the project. On the domestic scene, David Ben-Gurion, who always believed in the atomic vision, returned to power, first as minister of defense and a few months later as prime minister. On the international scene, President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative, announced a year earlier, created a sense that a great era for nuclear energy was on the horizon. In August 1955, the same month that Ben-Gurion was re-elected as prime minister, the first international conference on atomic energy convened in Geneva. It was the biggest scientific extravaganza ever held, entirely devoted to promoting the nuclear revolution. Professor David Ernst Bergmann, the chairman of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), wrote an enthusiastic top-secret report to Ben-Gurion urging him to beef up the groundwork for the desired project. The next two years, 1956-1957, were devoted to just that: debating alternatives, searching for overseas partners, recruiting new personnel, and regrouping organizationally. It turned out that these activities coincided with the coalescence of the FrenchIsraeli alliance. The Dimona projectconceived and sought-after in 1956, put together in 1957, and initiated in 1958 -was the product of those efforts. This was the dawn of Israel's nuclear history There was, however, a special period before the beginning. This was the five-year period 1949-1953, when the faith that Israel would have a national nuclear project in the not-too-distant future, and the confidence that such a project was not beyond its scientific and technological reach, was planted and nurtured. I call it before the beginning, because no project

Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel's Nuclear Project

Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel's Nuclear Project

History and Traditions of Early Israel: Studies Presented to Eduard Nielsen, May 8th 1993

This book is published as a Festschrift on the occasion of the 70th birthday of professor Eduard Nielsen (Copenhagen). In accordance with the main themes of Eduard Nielsen's scholarly works the articles concentrate on the history of early Israel, i.e. Israel before the classical prophets in the 8th century B.C., and on literary traditions referring to this phase of Israelite history. The articles are concerned with topics in the Books of the Pentateuch, with the epoch of King David, as well as with archaeology, Canaanite traditions etc. Eduard Nielsen's bibliography is included at the end of the book.

REVIEWS

Books Reviewed in this Article: Paradoxes: A Study in Form and Predication. By James Cargile. A Dictionary of Philosophy. Feminism and Philosophy. Edited by M. Vetterling‐Braggin, FA. Elliston and J. English. God and the Secular. By Robin Attfield. What does the Old Testament say about God? By Claus Westermann. The God of the Philosophers. By Anthony Kenny. Rediscovering the Bible. By Lucas Grollenberg. The Early History of Israel: I. From the Beginnings to the Exodus and Covenant of Sinai; II. From the Entry into Canaan to the Period of the Judges. By R. de Vaux, O.P., translated by David Smith. Studies in the Patriarchal Narratives. By William McKane. Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet. An Interpretation of Isaiah Chapter 53. By R.N. Whybray. Festal Drama in Deutero‐Isaiah. By John Eaton. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch. A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments. By Michael A. Knibb, in Consultation with Edward Ullendorff. Vol. 1, Text and Apparatus. The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels. By Frank Zimmermann. A Hidden Revolution. The Pharisees’Search for the Kingdom Within. By Ellis Rivkin. Theologia Crucis ‐ Signum Crucis: Festschrift für Erich Dinkler. Edited by Carl Andresen and Günter Klein. Die Theologie des Makarios/Symeon. By Hermann Dörries. Ekklesiologie der Neuzeit. Grundlegung bei Melchior Cano and Entwicklung bis zum 2. Vatikanischen Konzil. By Elmar Klinger. Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England. By Arnold Pritchard. Anthony Munday: The English Roman Life. Edited by P.J. Ayres. The Venerable English College Rome. By Michael Williams. The Bible: Its Criticism, Interpretation and Use in 16th and 17th Century England. By Dean Fréiday. John Bunyan. By Lynn Veach Sadler. Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1790s to the 1840s. By W.H. Oliver. The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Biblical Inspiration and On Infallibility. Edited by J. Derek Holmes. The Ideas of Newman: Christianity and Human Religiosity. By Lee H. Yearley. Theology on Dover Beach. By Nicholas Lash. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. By Elizabeth L. Eisenstein.

The Early History of Israel

The Early History of Israel

Book Review: The Early History of Israel

Book Review: The Early History of Israel

Book Review: The Early History of Israel

Book Review: The Early History of Israel

Book Review: Gibeon and Israel: The Role of Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel

Book Review: Gibeon and Israel: The Role of Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel

Gibeon and Israel. The Role of Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel. By Joseph Blenkinsopp (The Society for Old Testament Study, Monograph Series 2). Cambridge University Press, 1972. Pp. 152. £3·60.

Gibeon and Israel. The Role of Gibeon and the Gibeonites in the Political and Religious History of Early Israel. By Joseph Blenkinsopp (The Society for Old Testament Study, Monograph Series 2). Cambridge University Press, 1972. Pp. 152. £3·60.