Search

Every year, Professor Maxwell Miller, a distinguished archaeologist and Old Testament scholar, conducts a selected group on a tour of Israel and Jordan. This guidebook was originally prepared for their private use and has gone through several editions in that form. It is designed primarily for first-time visitors and provides a survey of the geography and history of Palestine, supported with maps, archaeological plans and chronological outlines; there are also a large number of photographs. While the emphasis is on biblical times and places, it takes into account the whole sweep of Middle Eastern history including, for example, the Crusades and the events leading to the current Arab-Israeli conflict. There are three parts. Part I is a general orientation, providing historical and geographical information. Part II focusses on the actual place which tourists normally visit - or should visit - in the Holy Land and gives information about each site, including simplified road maps, site plans and excerpts from ancient documents. Part III is packed with details - a compact and valuable reference work. The guide is essential reading for those fortunate enough to visit the Holy Land; and those unable to can still learn a good deal from a reading in armchair or classroom. J. Maxwell Miller is Associate Professor of Old Testament in the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta.

S early as the turn of the century, Abraham Kuenen' and Rudolf Kittel2 argued that certain of the Elisha legends belong in the context of the Jehu dynasty rather than at the end of the Omride period where they now appear in the deuteronomic history. More recently Alfred Jepsen3 and C. F. Whitley4 have advanced the same argument concerning the two battle accounts of I Kings 20. Specifically, Jepsen and Whitley believe that the king of Israel who fought these two battles was Joash rather than Ahab and that the Ben-hadad whose attacks he withstood was none other than the king of Syria called by the same name in II Kings 13 3 and 24-25.5 Whitley has gone even further to explain that the deuteronomist purposely transferred most of the Elisha legends and these two battle accounts from their original context to the Omride period in order to support his theocratic view of history.6 The present writer agrees that many of the events reflected in the narratives which now appear in the context of the Omride period actually occurred at a later time in Israel's history, yet doubts that any of them can be dated as late as Joash's reign and feels that a more adequate explanation is necessary as to how they came to be misplaced. The purpose of this paper is to analyze further the narratives in question in search of their proper historical context and to advance an alternate proposal as to how they came to be transferred to the Omride period.