Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge is a brilliant book, filled with insights and beautifully written, about the conceptual world of the Hebrew Bible."—Ronald Hendel, University of California, Berkeley
"The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge constitutes an important intervention in Hebrew Bible scholarship, but also in comparative literature and the study of ancient myth."—Austin Busch, State University of New York, Brockport
"It is hard to think of any scholar I would rather read than Robert Kawashima. His work unfailingly reminds us of the way in which sustained and intelligent analysis can rearrange what we think we know. The present book synthesizes an extraordinary amount of learning and textual engagement in order to trace – with precision and rigor – the biblical "rupture in thought" which allowed for the emergence of the metaphysical dualism lying behind distinctions between God and world, mind and body, and myth and history. Really, this is a stunningly original work of scholarship with profound and far-reaching implications."—Tod Linafelt, Georgetown University
"Kawashima invites us to consider the revolutionary conception of God in the Hebrew Bible by drawing insightful comparisons with Mesopotamian and Greek configurations. The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge is a work of erudite and original scholarship."—Ilana Pardes, Author of The Song of Songs: A Biography
"Many biblicists have compared ancient literatures to illuminate the Bible, but Robert Kawashima is arguably the main modern scholar to use the Hebrew Bible as a foundational text for comparative literature itself. From his groundbreaking first book, on how and why the Hebrew Bible presents the ancient Mediterranean's first extended works of imaginative prose, to regular publications in journals, he avoids simply applying preexisting interpretive techniques. Instead, his Archaeologyof Ancient Israelite Knowledge proposes a new kind of comparative history of ancient literature and, astonishingly, often succeeds."—Seth Sanders- University of California, Journal of Religion
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. The Early History of "God"
3. The House of God
4. The Discovery of the Self in Israelite Literature
5. Alienation and the Tragic Adventure of Biblical History
6. From Autochton to Alien
7. The Dawn of Apocalypticism
Bibliography
Index
