The King and the Land: A Geography of Royal Power in the Biblical World

ISBN-13: 9780199361885 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 302 str.

Stephen C. Russell

Opis

The King and the Land offers an innovative history of space and power in the biblical world. Stephen C. Russell shows how the monarchies in ancient Israel and Judah asserted their power over strategically important spaces such as privately-held lands, religious buildings, collectively-governed towns, and urban water systems. Among the case studies examined are Solomon's use of foreign architecture, David's dedication of land to Yahweh, Jehu's decommissioning of Baal's temple, Absalom's navigation of the collective politics of Levantine towns, and Hezekiah's reshaping of the tunnels that supplied Jerusalem with water.

By treating the full range of archaeological and textual evidence available for the Iron Age Levant, this book sets Israelite and Judahite royal and tribal politics within broader patterns of ancient Near Eastern spatial power. The book's historical investigation also enables fresh literary readings of the individual texts that anchor its thesis.

Recenzje

The gains of the book...are considerable for those who read with sufficient patience. They will read more knowingly about royal power in the Bible. And beyond the scope of the book itself, the tension between centralized economic-political leverage and a community-based social realty is immediately pertinent to our interpretive situation in the United States. The book will help us read more knowingly the Bible as an arena in which social power is intensely contested and our own circumstance of public power that faces acute crisis.

O autorze

Stephen C. Russell is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at John Jay College, CUNY.