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Burton Mack's 1996 article "On Redescribing Christian Origins" was a classic of the discipline. In my view, one of its most enduring contributions is its recognition that the centrality of the New Testament's view of Christian Origins survives despite a growing recognition that, technically, it ought to be sidelined – that it is protected by a "ring of fire." Further, he argued that the perseverance of this centrality was a major factor inhibiting the influence of New Testament studies on other disciplines. In this essay, I argue that the centrality of the Hebrew Bible's vision of Israelite origins as a starting point for contemporary debates, even among those who regard it as a fiction, is characterized by a similar avoidance of certain necessary recognitions and is inhibiting to a similar degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article weighs in on new debates about the affiliation of the tribe of Benjamin between Israel and Judah in the early monarchy. It points to two underappreciated aspects of the Hebrew Bible's account of tribal realities in the books of Kings: the anonymity of the ten tribes attributed to Israel in 1 Kgs 11–12, and how unusual the absence of a complete and detailed account of tribal arrangements in Kings is in the context of a Primary History as a whole. It argues that both of these realities reflect a deliberate effort to obscure Benjamin's northern origins and that, in fact, it is impossible to come up with a plausible list of ten Israelite tribes without Benjamin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dieser Artikel greift aktuelle Argumentationen auf, die für einen späten südlichen Ursprung des bekannten 12-Stämmekonzeptes plädieren, das wiederum aus einer kleineren israelitischen Version entstanden sein soll. Dabei wird auf verschiedene Beispiele im Richterbuch, im Samuelbuch und in den Königebüchern eingegangen, die diese Entwicklung anscheinend reflektieren. Diese Texte, die nördliche und südliche Traditionen zusammenführen, Bezugnahmen auf nördliche Figuren und auf nördliche Geographie oft in das Stämmekonzept einbetten, während dies nicht für die südlichen Traditionen gilt. Dies legt eine Unterscheidung des Quellenmaterials in dem jeweiligen Falle mit Rücksicht auf dieses Konzept nahe. This article builds on recent arguments in favor of the late and southern origins of the familiar twelve tribe concept – from a smaller northern Israelite version – by pointing out instances in the books of Judges Samuel and Kings where this development might be reflected. Here, at sites of aggregation between northern and southern traditions, references to northern figures and geography are very often couched in a tribal paradigm while references to southern entities are not. This suggests a difference in the source materials, in each case, with respect to this paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys developments in the study of the histories of ancient Israel and Judah with a focus on the last ten years. Over that period there has been an increased focus on extrabiblical evidence, over biblical text, as the primary means of constructing comprehensive histories, and a revival of interest in post-modern and linguistic-turn theories with respect to establishing what kinds of histories should be written. This study offers a general discussion of the last decade’s trends; an inquiry into the possibility that Judahite authors only assumed an Israelite identity after the fall of Israel; and an era-by-era investigation of particular developments in how scholars think about the various traditional periods of Israelite and Judahite history. The latter inquiry spans the pre-monarchical period to the Persian period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biblical account of Samuel’s career prior to the careers of Saul and David contains an unexamined oddity. In 1Sam 7:13 and 7:15 the reader is told explicitly that the Philistines never again threatened Israel during the life of Samuel and that Samuel remained Israel’s judge for all of his days. Both of these claims are, however, relatively quickly revealed to be untruths: in one of the accounts of Saul’s rise to power it is the Philistine threat that impels Israel to ask for a king, and while Samuel retires in 1Sam 12, he lives on until 1Sam 25:1. This article argues that the bulk of 1Sam 1–7 originally described the career of Samuel the Judge, a figure like Samson, who was not supposed to have a role in the rise of monarchy in Israel. In this narrative, the claims in 1Sam 7:13 and 15 were explicitly true, and were meant to conclude this history of Samuel’s life [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fact that an unusual number of supernatural events occur at threshing floors in biblical literature has long been a subject of scholarly interest but seldom of comprehensive inquiry. This has recently changed with a publication arguing that the complex of threshing floor phenomena is explained by biblical conceptions of the relationship between YHWH and the site. In this article I will argue instead that it is the nature of the floor itself and its varied uses on multiple levels of society which created associations and layers of meaning that explain the association of threshing floors with decision and communication. The Yahwistic explanation for these associations favored by biblical authors is a response originating in a biased source, rather than a statement of a universal reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that the history of the study of myth in the Hebrew Bible has been, and continues to be, shaped in negative ways by an essentially Romantic Nationalist understanding of the relationship between a people and their traditions. I then argue that more appropriate ways of modeling the construction of the Bible's myths, combined with new investigations into the historical development of biblical traditions themselves, reveals a surprising continuity between the myth-making activity of biblical authors and editors and that of all those who retell and adapt biblical traditions in extrabiblical materials. I conclude that the existence of large-scale continuities between the adaptation of biblical traditions in different periods allows for a new kind of comparative investigation. By studying the use of biblical traditions in biblical literature, extrabiblical literature, and art, on approximately equal terms, we can gain new insights about the construction of biblical myths themselves, while connecting the study of the Hebrew Bible far more closely to the study of other bodies of tradition, elsewhere and later on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]