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Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart

      RSV Revised Standard Version

      SAT Die Schriften des Alten Testament

      SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

      SBT Studies in Biblical Theology

      SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

      ThBü Theologische Bücherei

      TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung

      TUMSR Trinity University Monographs Series in Religion

      VT Vetus Testamentum

      VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplements

      War Josephus, Jewish War

      WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament

      ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

      ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

1. See Kelle and Moore, “Introduction,” in Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past.

2. See, for example, the comprehensive history volume originally published in 1986: Miller and Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah.

3. See Moore and Kelle, Biblical History and Israel’s Past.

4. This characteristic of Hayes’s scholarship finds its fullest expression in his work as general editor on a major reception history resource. See Hayes, ed., Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation.

5. Hayes and Miller, eds., Israelite and Judaean History.

6. For the continuation of this kind of survey up to the present, see Moore and Kelle, Biblical History and Israel’s Past.

7. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham; Van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition.

8. Along with the Hayes and Kuan article, discussions of the final years of the northern kingdom commonly cite the following among others: Na’aman, “The Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC)”; Becking, The Fall of Samaria; Younger, “The Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Research”; Tetley, “The Date of Samaria’s Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquests.” See also Kelle, “Hoshea, Sargon, and the Final Destruction of Samaria”; and Kelle, “What’s in a Name?” Most recently, see Park, “A New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samaria.”

9. E.g., Hayes and Irvine, Isaiah, the Eighth Century Prophet; and Hayes, Amos.

10. See Hayes, ed., Old Testament Form Criticism.

11. See, for example, Sweeney and Ben Zvi, eds., The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-first Century.

12. Hayes, Amos.

13. See also Gitay, Prophecy and Persuasion; Shaw, The Speeches of Micah; Kelle, Hosea 2.

14. Hayes, If You Don’t Like the Possum, Enjoy the Sweet Potatoes; Hayes, Abanda: A Novel.

      1

      The History of the Study of Israelite and Judean History

      The Earliest Treatments of Israelite and Judean History

      The writing of history as a narrative about past events is a very ancient undertaking. Its roots, so far as Western historiography is concerned, are anchored in the cultures of Israel and Greece.

      History, as a genre or literary type, is found in much of the Hebrew Scriptures where events are understood in a theological or, to use Collingwood’s terminology,1 “theocratic” perspective. In spite of this perspective, much of the narrative material in these Scriptures is historiographical in intent in so far as it attempts a narrative account of past events. To suggest, as is frequently done, that Israel was the creator of historical writing2 probably goes beyond the evidence. Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hittite inscriptions, annals, chronicles, narratives, and art in many ways approach genuine historical thought and writing3 and tend to moderate extravagant claims about the originality and priority of Israelite historical writing. In addition, the origins and character of historical writing in Israel, especially with regard to the materials in the Pentateuch remain a much debated and unsettled issue.4 Since the Hebrew Scriptures have been and remain the primary sources for reconstructing the history of Israel and Judah, questions regarding the nature, character, and antiquity of these traditions will be discussed in various places in the following chapters.5

      The first discussions of Israelite and Judean history, apart from the biblical traditions, stem from the Hellenistic Age and were the products of both Jewish and non-Jewish authors. In the early Greco-Roman period, Jewish–Roman relations and Jewish apologetic concerns engendered several treatments of Jewish history and life. From the second to the fifth century CE, with the emergence and dominance of rabbinic Judaism and the growth and state recognition of Christianity, concern with and interpretation of earlier Israelite and Judean history passed into the hands of Christian historians and theologians whose assumptions and descriptions set a pattern that remained basically unchallenged throughout the Middle Ages. These three phases of the discussion are the concern of this section.

      Much of the literature dealing with Israelite and Judean history from the Hellenistic Age either did not discuss the subject in any great detail or, more probably, has been irretrievably lost. Except for the biblical book of Daniel and the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, only the fragments of this Hellenistic literature preserved in the works of Josephus, in Eusebius’s Praeparatio Euangelica, and in a few other Greco-Roman writers survive.6 Nonetheless, it is highly probable that most Hellenistic universal historians included a section on the history of the Jews in their works.

      Among pagan authors, discussions of the origin of the Jews and the figures of Abraham and Moses dominate. Both favorable and slanderous treatments appear. Hecataeus of Abdera (about 300 BCE), in his work on the culture, history, politics, and religion of ancient Egypt, discussed the origins of the Jews in terms of their expulsion from Egypt at divine urging and their subsequent colonization of Judea. Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.183–204) quotes from a work by Hecataeus which was wholly concerned with the Jews, although Josephus’s passage only contains miscellaneous material about Jewish matters during the early Hellenistic Age. Hecataeus’s treatment of the Jews and their history was generally favorable and, while praising Moses as a cult founder and lawgiver, he shows little, if any, direct knowledge of the Jews and their sacred writings. Hecataeus’s description of Moses and subsequent Jewish history that tended to telescope everything around Moses was highly influential upon practically all Hellenistic and even Greco-Jewish writers.7

      Over against the material in Hecataeus (and Theophrastus, Megas-thenes, and Clearchus), which took a favorable attitude towards the Jews, one finds widespread use of a version of the exodus and the career of Moses that heaps calumny upon the Jews. Utilizing an old story form that

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