From epic to canon : history and literature in ancient Israel / Frank Moore Cross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cross, Frank Moore.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bible. Old Testament--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible.

Bible. Old Testament.

Judaism--History--To 70 A.D.

Judaism.

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 262 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University press, [1998]

Summary:

The most distinguished Judaic scholar of his time, Frank Moore Cross has devoted his life to understanding the textual legacies of the ancient Israelites, from archaic Hebrew poetry to the Bible, and was among the first scholars to collect and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls. His 1973 book, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, is arguably the most important single book on Biblical studies and the religious history of Israel to appear in the second half of the twentieth century. And now Cross has written the successor to that influential study.

In From Epic to Canon, Cross discusses specific issues that illuminate central questions about the Hebrew Bible and those who created and preserved it. He challenges the persistent attempt to read Protestant theological polemic against law into ancient Israel. Cross uncovers the continuities between the institutions of kinship and of covenant, which he describes as "extended kinship". Cross examines the social structures of ancient Israel and reveals that beneath its later social and cultural accretions, the concept of covenant -- as opposed to codified law -- was a vital part of Israel's earliest institutions. He then draws parallels between the expression of kinship and covenant among the Israelites and that practiced by other ancient societies, as well as in primitive societies.

Drawing on the Daliyeh Papyri, excavations on the ancient city of Get in the remains of the Samaritan temple, and a host of lesser archeological finds elsewhere, Cross also reconstructs a more complete and accurate history of the era of the Judaean Restoration than has been possible in the past. Cross doses this magisterial book suggesting that a radical rewriting of thetext and canon of the Hebrew Bible has become necessary in light of new information gleaned from the Dead Sea Scrolls he has studied for nearly fifty years, and argues that at the very least, the new data requires a wholly fresh critical approach to the Hebrew Bible.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

0801859824

OCLC:

38966035