Understanding Biblical Israel: A Reexamination of the Origins of Monotheism

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Mercer University Press, 2002 - 338 oldal
According to Stanley Rosenbaum, the Bible resembles what a family would retrieve after a tornado hits a trailer park -- some of the family's own possessions mixed with those of others, overlapping, contradicting, and disordered. Understanding Israelite History is a revolutionary attempt to fill in the many gaps left in the historical record.

Rosenbaum begins by demonstrating that Israel's religion was not a clean, divinely inspired break with humanity's past, but derives from the long sweep of events that began when Homo sapiens first acquired language. Strata of earlier religions are still visible beneath the surface of Israelite monotheism.

Early Israel was not "one man's family", however dysfunctional. It was a collection of individuals and groups, mainly outcasts or lower social elements, who coalesced into a nation and developed -- though they did not always follow -- a religion of ethical monotheism and principles of democratic government and social justice that still today move and inspire more than half the world's population.

Like all religions, Israel's was shaped by the language, in this case Hebrew, in which it is expressed. Expressing monotheism in a language that is essentially dualistic conduced to the suppression of the female elements of earlier religions which had nurtured Israel's religion, and consequently, to a lack of appreciation for the part played by women in Israel's religious life. This skewed view of Israel's religion and its history that the Bible contains is a result of its having been collected, edited and in part written by Judeans, southern survivors, and heirs of David's kingdom who were moved to record it in the wake of the destruction ofJerusalem in 586 BCE.

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Kiválasztott oldalak

Tartalomjegyzék

7 Moses and Maybe Monotheism
173
8 Who Was that Levi I Saw You with Last Night?
178
9 An Evolving God?
179
10 Et Tu Joshua?
181
11 Whats in a name?
183
12 System Collapse
191
Of David and Jonathan Saul and Solomon
195
2 Who are those guys?
197

Physical Geography Mental Landscape
27
the Human Mental Landscape
32
3 A Place Called Home
37
4 Tendrils of Trade
40
5 The Social Consequences of Trade
45
Semitic Language Hebrew Thought
49
2 The Emergence of Hebrew
52
3 Why Is A the First Letter?
53
4 Language and Speech
56
5 Hebrew Dialect
60
6 Words and the Word
62
How to Read the Bible
64
PreIsraelite Religion Pieces of Eight
67
2 Ars gratia artis?
68
3 Sensory Data
70
4 What Ties Us Together
73
5 You Are My Sunshine
75
6 Once in a Blue Moon
78
7 Who Was That Lady?
81
8 Rocky Mountain High
82
9 Fish Story
83
10 Disasters and Lucky Stars
85
11 Pieces of Eight
88
12 The Bull from Everywhere the Serpent from Nowhere
90
13 Religious Evolution
93
14 A Twilight of the Gods
96
Numbers and Numerology
98
Numerical Ruminations
101
3 Wait It Gets Worse
104
Posttraumatic Hebrew Historiography
107
2 Theological Triumphalism
109
3 What Goes Around Comes Around
113
4 Rationalizing the Destruction
118
5 Whose Bible Is It Anyway?
122
The View from Downstream
125
An Etiological Appreciation
129
3 The Rise of Cities
134
4 Israels Selfunderstanding
137
5 What Is Remembered
138
6 Patriarchs
140
7 Matriarchs
146
8 Cousins in the Hood
150
9Isaac
151
10 There Are Wheels within Wheels Mr Ezekiel
153
11 Double Trouble
154
MosesExodusJoshua
159
2 Moses Who?
160
3 Egyptians Hyksos and Habiru
164
4 The Exodus?
165
5 Which Way Did They Go?
167
6 Whither Sinai?
172
3 Son of my pain
201
4 Good King Saul
203
5 Bedfellows Make Strange Politics
207
Wise Yes Smart Maybe Not
211
7 Uneasy Lies the Head That Would Wear the Crown
213
8 Queen of Heartsand Minds?
217
9 The Shrewdness of Solomon
220
The Breakup of Their Camp
225
2 The End of Empire
227
3 Musical Thrones
229
4 Athaliah Redivivus
233
5 The War between the States
240
6 The Last Days of Israel
241
Elijah and the Rise of Israelite Prophecy
245
2 A Prophetic Whos Who
246
3 Gods Spokespersons
250
4 Also in the Cast Were
252
5 Prophetic Continuity
253
6 My God Is YHvH
255
7 Pure Yahwists
256
8 Amos of Israel Social Critic
259
9 Changing the Axis of Worship
262
10 Prophecy in Judah
263
11 Isaiah ben Amoz
264
Judah Alone
267
2 Under the Shadow of Assyria
271
3 Living Next Door to a 400Pound Gorilla
275
4 Hezekiahs Reforms
279
5 Evil Manasseh
280
6 Amon and Josiah
283
7 A Book of the Law
284
Jeremiahs Judah1
287
2 A Curse in Disguise?
288
3 The Ark of the Covenant
289
4 The Boy King
290
5 Responding to Gods Call
292
6 Grandpa Josiah and the Mrs Josiah
294
7 On Backing the Wrong Horse
296
8 The Last Days of Judean Independence
299
9 Jeremiah in Egypt
301
The Way Back into the Ground of Jewish Metaphysics
303
2 Whos on first?
305
3 A Star to Steer Her By
307
4 Coping with Exile
312
5 A Pearl of Great Price
315
6 To What End?
317
7 Coping with Diaspora
320
8 Debates with Biblical Historians22
322
9 The Jewish Uncertainty Principle
323
Bibliography
327
Copyright

Gyakori szavak és kifejezések

Népszerű szakaszok

275. oldal - Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
60. oldal - After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, "Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you." 74 Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, "I do not know the man.
120. oldal - By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!
181. oldal - And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.
85. oldal - I'm in seventh heaven" — ruled by the sun, the moon, and the five planets visible to the naked eye, namely, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn (to give them the order they retain in latinate day names).
19. oldal - Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977). 2. Here I will call upon Walker Gibson, "Composing the World...
68. oldal - If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods' bodies the same shape as their own.

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