The historiography of Ancient Israel is much debated. The various approaches are never void of ideology and some reckon more with the available evidence than others. This volume consists of a set of case-studies that reveal the difficulties that arise when trying to write a history as honestly as possible. This implies that both the archaeology of Ancient Palestine - the finds and their interrogation - as well as the Philosophy of History - their models and their implications - are discussed. The outcome is a variety of approaches that inform the reader of current views on the history of...

Although Obadiah is the smallest book in the Hebrew Bible, its readers are confronted with a variety of challenges-linguistic, historical and hermeneutical. In the present volume the Book of Obadiah is approached from a variety of angles and reading strategies. These approaches sometimes concur, but often contradict one another. Bob Becking discusses various grammatical and linguistic problems of the Hebrew text in translating the book for a post-secular audience. Historical questions are the province of Nadav Na'aman. What were the 'events' with which the text seems to cope?...

Although Obadiah is the smallest book in the Hebrew Bible, its readers are confronted with a variety of challenges-linguistic, historical and hermeneutical. In the present volume the Book of Obadiah is approached from a variety of angles and reading strategies. These approaches sometimes concur, but often contradict one another. Bob Becking discusses various grammatical and linguistic problems of the Hebrew text in translating the book for a post-secular audience. Historical questions are the province of Nadav Na'aman. What were the 'events' with which the text seems to cope?...

The final text of the Book of Micah provokes a series of questions: - Can the Book be read as a coherent composition or is it the result of a complex redaction history? - Was Micah a prophet of doom whose literary heritage was later softened by the inclusion of oracles of salvation? The essays in this book center around these questions. Some of them are of a more general character, while others analyze specific passages. Some articles discuss the Book of Micah by looking at specific themes (prophecy; religious polemics; metaphors). The others are concerned with the proclamation of a...