Detailed historical and archaeological essays give insight into the many people groups who interacted with and influenced ancient Israel.

In contrast to the Torah/Pentateuch, the Deuteronomistic History is not recognised by Jewish or Christian tradition as a separate collection and the term itself is an invention of modern biblical scholarship. In this detailed investigation of the Deuteronomistic History, Thomas Romer provides students and scholars of the Old Testament with a complete guide to this important subject. Romer briefly outlines the content of biblical books relevant to the study of Deuteronomistic History - Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges and Samuel-Kings. He then defines the concept of Deuteronomistic History, surveying the evolution and history of the debate with particular emphasis on the work of Martin Noth. Romer then provides a sociological, historical and literary approach to the books from Deuteronomy to Kings. He examines questions such as: Why and how did Deuteronomism rise as a 'school' under Assyrian hegemony? What role did propaganda play in the composition of these books? What happened on an ideological and sociological level during the Exile and Persian period? Is the so-called Deuteronomistic literature properly understood as crisis literature? And what influence did the Deuteronomistic History have on the identity of the Second Temple period.

This revised edition of "A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC" integrates new research from the rapidly developing field of ancient Near Eastern history and greatly expands the guide to further reading from the first edition. The book presents a clear, concise history of the extraordinary multicultural civilizations of the ancient Near East, their political and military events, and their cultures and societies. Beginning with the emergence of writing around 3000 BC, the narrative ranges from the origins of the first cities in Mesopotamia, through the growth of the Babylonian and Hittite kingdoms, to the Assyrian and Persian empires. It ends with the transformation of the ancient Near East by the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Biblical archaeology has long been a discipline in crisis. "Biblical minimalists," who believe that the Bible contains little of actual historical fact, today are challenging those who accept the historicity of Scripture. In this volume Jewish and evangelical Christian archaeologists, historians, and biblical scholars confront the minimalist critique and offer positive alternatives. Bringing a needed scientific approach to biblical archaeology, the contributors construct a new paradigm that reads the Bible critically but sympathetically. Their work covers the full range of subjects relevant to understanding the context of the Bible, including proper approaches to scriptural interpretation, recent archaeological evidence, and new studies of Near Eastern texts and inscriptions.

Israel: Ancient Kingdom or Late Invention? is a collection of essays responding to the radical claims that Israel and its history actually began following the Babylonian exile, and that the history of Israel we read about in the Bible is a fictionalized account. Contributors are leading Bible and archaeology scholars who bring extra-biblical evidence to bear for the historicity of the Old Testament and provide case studies of new work being done in the field of archaeology and Old Testament studies.

In this much-anticipated textbook, Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman have written a history of ancient Israel that takes the biblical text seriously as an historical document. While also considering non-biblical sources and being attentive to what disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology and sociology suggest about the past, they do so within the context and paradigm of the Old Testament canon, which is held as the primary document for reconstructing Israel's history.

This classic textbook, widely used for over two decades, constructs a history of ancient Israel and Judah through a thorough investigation of epigraphical, archaeological, and biblical sources. Approaching biblical history as history, Miller and Hayes examine the political and economic factors that give context to the Israelite monarchy's actions and the biblical writers' accounts. Now updated with the latest research and critical discoveries, including the Tell Dan Inscription, and considering the lively debate surrounding the reliability of biblical accounts, Miller and Hayes's judicious and even handed portrayal gives detailed attention to the nature, strengths, and limitations of various forms of evidence for understanding Israel's origins and early history. The new edition also includes thirty-four new maps, helpful notes, and numerous charts and photographs.

Grounded in the latest archaeological developments, Matthews's superb new reference provides a cogent and condensed discussion of the ancestral, conquest, settlement, monarchy, exilic, and postexilic periods of ancient Israel. His concise narrative encompasses historical geography, ancient Near Eastern cultural data, and up-to-date research as well as charts and insets that reinforce main points and events.

One of Italy's foremost experts on antiquity addresses a new issue surrounding the birth of Israel and its historic reality. Many a tale has been told of ancient Israel, but all tales are alike in their quotation of the biblical story in its narrative scheme, despite its historic unreliability. This book completely rewrites the history of Israel through the evaluation of textual and literary critiques as well as archaeological and epigraphic findings. Conceived along the lines of modern historical methodology, it traces the textual material to the times of its creation, reconstructs the temporal evolution of political and religious ideologies, and firmly inserts the history of Israel into its ancient-oriental context.

In this fascinating book noted Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever attacks the minimalist position head-on, showing how modern archaeology brilliantly illuminates both life in ancient Palestine and the sacred scriptures as we have them today. Assembling a wealth of archaeological evidence, Dever builds the clearest, most complete yet of the "real Israel that existed during the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (1200-600 B.C.).

Dever's exceptional reconstruction of this key period point up the minimalists' abuse of archaeology and reveals the weakness of their revisionist histories. Dever shows that ancient Israel, far from being an "invention," is a reality to be "discovered. Equally important, his recovery of a reliable core history of ancient Israel provides a firm foundation from which to appreciate the aesthetic value and lofty moral aspirations of the Hebrew Bible.

Family in the Bible provides a timely consideration of what the biblical writers had to say about the family and how their views ought to inform a contemporary Christian theology of the family and society in general. The chapters span the biblical canon and give voice to the depth of perspective and diversity of opinion to be found in the varied cultural traditions described in the Bible. What emerges is a sense of the importance of the family in the societies of the biblical world and how that vision might be adapted today.

Zion, city of our God gathers studies by an international team of scholars that help portray the full significance of Jerusalem in the First Temple period of the Old Testament. John M. Monson explores Jerusalem's temple of Solomon in its original ancient Near Eastern context. Richard S. Hess looks at one of the most important events in the Bible's record of pre-exilic Jerusalem - Sennacherib's attack on the city. Martin J. Selman and Gary N. Knoppers outline the theological significance of Jerusalem in the books of Chronicles, providing as well a summary statement on the key role of the city in the entire Old Testament. Thomas Renz examines the Zion tradition as it underwent its greatest challenge, the fall of Jerusalem. Philip E. Satterthwaite and Knut M. Heim describe Jerusalem's place in the poetry of the Hebrew Bible, giving special attention, respectively, to the Songs of Ascents and Lamentations. Lastly, Rebecca Doyle discusses what Ugaritic, Old Testament, and other texts tell us about the cult of Molek and the worship of this god in Jerusalem.

This readable, scholarly volume gives you invaluable information about the background, content, and message of the Old Testament, as well as the latest interpretative options. This second edition features a new chapter on archaeology and the Old Testament by Robert E. Cooley, and other key chapters have been updated and expanded by leading scholars in the field of biblical studies: Leslie C. Allen, John E. Hartley, Robert L. Hubbard Jr., William B. Nelson Jr., Nancy Heidebrecht, and John E. McKenna. Also, updated endnotes and bibliographies, plus additional charts, illustrations, maps, and a new chapter on archaeology make this a phenomenal resource.

This second edition integrates and interacts with recent developments in Old Testament scholarship. It is thoroughly evangelical in its perspective, emphasizes "special introduction", the study of individual books, interacts in an irenic spirit with the historical-critical method, features points of research history and representative scholars rather than an exhaustive treatment of past scholarship, deals with the meaning of each book, not in isolation but in a canonical context, and probes the meaning of each book in the setting of its culture. This intermediate introduction includes callouts, charts, and graphs, and is written with an eye on understanding the nature of Old Testament historiography, and three key issues: historical background, literary analysis, and theological message.