The Invention of Hebrew is the first book to approach the Bible in
light of recent epigraphic discoveries on the extreme antiquity of
the alphabet and its use as a deliberate and meaningful choice.
Hebrew was more than just a way of transmitting information; it was
a vehicle of political symbolism and self-representation. Seth L.
Sanders connects the Bible's distinctive linguistic form--writing
down a local spoken language--to a cultural desire to speak
directly to people, summoning them to join a new community that the
text itself helped call into being. Addressing the people of Israel
through a vernacular literature, Hebrew texts reimagined their
audience as a public. By comparing Biblical documents with related
ancient texts in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Babylonian, this book shows
Hebrew's distinctiveness as a self-conscious political language.
Illuminating the enduring stakes of Biblical writing, Sanders
demonstrates how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power
previously unknown in written literature: "the people" as the
protagonist of religion and politics.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!