Creation of History in Ancient Israel

Summary: Much of the Old Testament narrates what it claims to be the history of Israel. However, a close reading of the biblical text in conjunction with other literary and archaeological evidence indicates that the 'history' provided by the Old Testament is frequently inaccurate or untrue.Marc Zvi Brettler explores ways of reading the biblical texts if they are not to be read as history. Through indepth analysis of texts fro...m the Book of Chronicles , Genesis , Deuteronomy , Judges and Samuel , Brettler shows how the biblical historians were influenced by four key factors: typology, interpretation of earlier texts, satire and ideology. The Creation of History in Ancient Israel demonstrates how the historian, by taking account of this model of history writing, can start to piece together the history of ancient Israel using the Hebrew Bible as a source. [read more]