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The volume brings together forty years of agenda-setting
scholarship in Israelite and Judean history. The historical essays
gathered here were among the first to raise serious questions about
the "patriarchal age", the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of
Canaan, and the temple of Solomon. The literary essays on the
Pentateuch challenged both the classical Documentary Hypothesis and
the more recent modifications that support the notion of an
extensive Deuteronomistic redaction of the Pentateuch. The final
set of essays examines biblical notions of patriarchal religion,
myths of human origin, and the legendary origins of Passover within
a broad comparative context.
"It is a humbling experience to read this book and see the range of
materials this scholar has interacted with, the big questions he
has pursued doggedly during his outstanding career, and how he has
followed his instincts and not shied away from controversy. The
breadth and range of his knowledge and his understanding is truly
inspiring." - Review of Biblical Literature This volume contains a
collection of articles written over a 40 year period, from 1964
onwards. They are revisionist in character and address major issues
in the understanding of Israelite and Judean history, the
literary-critical analysis of the Pentateuch and historical books,
and the nature of biblical religion. The historical studies were
among the first to raise serious questions with the prevailing
understanding of the patriarchal age, the accounts of the exodus
from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan, and the temple of Solomon.
The literary studies of the Pentateuch challenged both the
classical Documentary Hypothesis, especially the early dating of J,
and the more recent modifications that support the notion of an
extensive Deuteronomistic redaction of the Pentateuch. Articles on
biblical historiography focus on a late dating of the Court History
of David, the nature of the Deuteronomistic history, and the role
of creative imitation in the composition of biblical narrative. The
final section on Israelite religion and culture views biblical
notions about patriarchal religion, myths of human origin, and the
legendary origins of Passover, within a broad comparative context.
These articles have had a significant impact in the field of
biblical studies.
The foundation for all scholarly study in biblical law is the shared assumption that the Covenant Code, as contained in Exodus 20:23-22:33 is the oldest code of laws in the Hebrew Bible, and that all other laws are later revisions of that code. In A Law Book for the Diaspora, John Van Seters strikes at that foundation. He argues that those laws in the Covenant Code that are similar to Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code are in fact later than both of these, dependent on them as sources, and therefore cannot be taken as the foundation of Hebrew Law. A persuasive presentation of a controversial thesis, A Law Book for the Diaspora will have a dramatic and far-reaching impact on the study of Hebrew Law. No student of the Hebrew Bible can afford to ignore it.
This book will provide a better understanding of the unity and
integrity of Exodus--Numbers in the context of other writings and
the general history of the exilic period.
In this fascinating study, John Van Seters makes a compelling
case for a new reading of Genesis. According to Van Seters, the
book of Genesis represents the prologue to a major literary work,
conceived and constructed by a single writer--an intellectual and
historian. Van Seters argues that the author was a true historian
who wrote history in the tradition of the ancient antiquarian.
In this magisterial overview of the Pentateuch John Van Seters
reviews the various historical-critical attempts to read it that
arise from notions about the social evolution of Israel's religion
and culture. Is the Pentateuch an accumulation of folk traditions,
a work of ancient historiography, a document legitimizing religious
reform? In dialogue with competing views, Van Seters advocates a
compositional model that recognizes the social and historical
diversity of the literary strata. Van Seters argues that a
proto-Pentateuchal author created a comprehensive history from
Genesis to Numbers that was written as a prologue to the
Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) in the exilic
period and later expanded by a Priestly writer to make it the
foundational document of the Jerusalem temple community. This
social-science commentary on the Pentateuch is renowned as one of
the most influential volumes on this group of texts. For the new
edition Van Seters has revised several sections of the text,
updating and integrating new bibliographical items, and refining
the text where necessary. A reflective preface summarizes these
changes and developments for the reader's convenience.
The biblical story of King David has been interpreted in many
different ways, arising from the variety of methods used in and the
intended objectives of the studies: Does the narrative contain
insight into and information about the early history of the Judean
monarchy, or is it merely a legendary tale about a distant past?
Can we identify the story's literary genre, it sociohistorical
setting, and the intention of its author(s)? Is an appreciation for
the wonderful literary qualities of the story compatible with a
literary-critical investigation of the narrative's compositional
and text-critical history? Van Seters reviews past scholarship on
the David story and in the course of doing so unravels the history
of these questions and then presents an extended appraisal of the
debate about the social and historical context of the biblical
story. From this critical foundation, Van Seters proceeds to
offering a detailed literary analysis of the story of David from
his rise to power under Saul to his ultimate succession by Solomon.
This book on the Yahwist comes at the end of a long career of
research on the Pentateuch in general and the Yahwist in
particular. Van Seters's interest in the Yahwist was stimulated by
the 1964 presidential address of the Society of Biblical
Literature, given by Professor Fredrick Winnett, "Rethinking the
Foundations," which focused on the Yahwist in Genesis. This
interest followed a path of work on issues surrounding the Yahwist
that culminated in three volumes, Prologue to History: The Yahwist
as Historian in Genesis (1992), The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as
Historian in Exodus-Numbers (1994), and A Law Book for the
Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (2003). Over
the last few years, it has become clear to Van Seters that readers
of the three volumes on the Yahwist, which total more than 1,000
pages, easily lose sight of the Yahwist's work as a whole and the
way in which it provides a historical prologue and framework for D
and the DtrH. In this book, Van Seters seeks to provide a summary
sketch of the J history and to make clear how the Priestly corpus
has been composed as a supplement to the Yahwist with a radically
different form and point of view that has obscured the Yahwist's
historical narrative and theological perspective. Part one lays out
in simple terms the basic form, structure, and theological
perspective of the Yahwist's history, where it has been interrupted
by the inclusions of P, and how it is integrated into DtrH. The
essays in part two are intended to bring the scholarly discussion
of Van Seters's earlier books on the Yahwist more up to date, and
their order corresponds roughly to the order of the narrative in
the first part of the book. Some of these articles have been
published previously, but others are new and quite recent,
including "The Yahwist as Historian.
There is a generally accepted notion in biblical scholarship that
the Bible as we know it today is the product of editing from its
earliest stages of composition through to its final, definitive and
"canonical" textual form. So persistent has been this idea since
the rise of critical study in the seventeenth century and so
pervasive has it become in all aspects of biblical study that there
is virtually no reflection on the validity of this idea" (from the
Introduction). Van Seters proceeds to survey the history of the
idea of editing, from its origins in the pre-Hellenistic Greek
world, through Classical and Medieval times, into the modern era.
He discusses and evaluates the implications of the common
acceptance of "editing" and "editors/redactors" and concludes that
this strand of scholarship has led to serious misdirection of
research in modern times.
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