Myth and history in the Bible / Giovanni Garbini ; translated by Chiara Peri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garbini, Giovanni.

Series:

Journal for the study of the Old Testament. Supplement series ; 362.

Journal for the study of the Old Testament. Supplement series ; 362

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Bible. Old Testament.

Myth in the Bible.

Bible. Old Testament--History of Biblical events.

Bible.

Bible. Old Testament--Historiography.

Historiography.

History of Biblical events.

Physical Description:

viii, 149 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Sheffield : Sheffield Academic Press, 2003.

Language Note:

Translated from the Italian.

Summary:

The Old Testament, and biblical scholarship itself, distinguishes between mythical and historical. This book argues that only historical thing in the Bible is the Bible itself, a superb product of Jewish thought. What is narrated in the Bible is only myth. But this myth about Israel's past was still built with fragments of history, or rather with written traditions that were different from those expressed in the actual text, and obviously more ancient. These essays follow in the spirit of Garbini's controversial History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, which combine detailed philological reseaerch, a wide knowledge of ancient Near Eastern literature and Biblical Archaeology -- and a radical way of understanding what the biblical text is really telling us.

This is an erudite and thought-provoking book, which should not be ignored by anyone who finds the origin of the Bible a fascinating and still largely unknown phenomenon.

Notes:

"Some of the chapters of this book ... were originally lectures ... The others were written as specific studies"--P. [vii].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

082646260X

OCLC:

52729208