Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 11 July 2002

Textbooks on Western Civilization

Current scholarship on ancient Israel and Judah suggests the Jewish scriptures were compiled late. It considers periods before the establishment of the Israelite monarchy—if not the united monarchy itself—as unhistorical. Jack Cargill, a student of Greek, a history teacher and reviewer of textbooks, writing in The History Teacher, notes that awareness of these scholarly developments are absent from the chapters on ancient Israel in sixteen university-level textbooks on Western Civilization.

Cargill, being a historian, places his emphasis on examining the validity of the bible as a historical source of Israelite history, pointing out that rejection of a literalist or fundamentalist reading of the history of ancient Israel as told in the Hebrew bible is nothing new. The history textbooks he reviews all treat the bible as a historical source, and his criticism relates to their unsophisticated and ill-informed ways of doing it. Interpretations based on the biblical narrative itself or on conservative scholarship are the norm in the way these textbooks handle Israel’s history.

The textbook authors stress the impact the bible has had on western civilization, and that part of that impact has been because of the quality of some of its messages, notably demands for social justice in some prophetic books and the notion in Second Isaiah of a universal deity available to all people. But most of the Jewish bible’s message focused on the chosenness of Israel, on the arbitrary preference of its god for the advancement of his people, often in direct opposition to the interests, or even survival, of other peoples.

Paul and other early Christians consciously reinterpreted—or rather misinterpreted—the Jewish scriptures, teaching that the assurances of divine favor embodied in them were equally and directly accessible to everyone, without most of the cultic requirements and prohibitions. The Jewish bible was renamed the Old Testament and was coupled with the Greek New Testament in a redefined bible. In this Christianized form, when the Roman Empire and its successors adopted Christianity as a state religion, it became the most influential religious literature in western civilization.

Some of the textbooks on ancient Israel consistently followed a biblical-literalist line. Steven Hause and William Maltby, Western Civilization: A History of European Society, say that the Jewish religion was “inspired by revelations that can be dated with some accuracy.” Yet, some of the texts offer what appear to be serious disclaimers as to the historical reliability of the Jewish bible. Lynn Hunt, Thomas R Martin, Barbara H Rosenwein, R Po-chia Hsia, and Bonnie G Smith, The Making of the West, admit:

Unfortunately, no source provides clear information on the origins of the Hebrews or of their religion. The bible tells stories to explain God’s moral plan for the universe, not to give a full historical account of the Hebrews, and archaeology has not yielded a clear picture.

Authors of textbooks on western civilization for university classes offer university students a literalist-leaning account that is by scholarly standards at least twenty years out of date. Instead, university level textbook authors should be stimulating thought and analysis, and so should include more works by critical scholars in their recommended readings. Then, students would have a chance to confront the arguments on their own. Modern work on the historical accuracy of the Jewish scriptures is less widely known among non-specialists than conventional treatments. Teachers or authors do not have to agree with the interpretations of ancient Israel in recent decades by scholars, but it is bad pedagogy to ignore them.

On these criteria, most of the textbooks fail to do the job. They bestow, usually implicitly, a special status on particular ancient literature that is not bestowed on any other. The Jewish bible is not a reliable source for the history of ancient Israel, and many authors of the textbooks surveyed seem unaware of it. Are the writers of these sections on ancient Israel motivated by fear of giving offense, or the need to pander to a conventional viewpoint? If so, it is a sad reflexion of the power of the religious right in America.

Abraham

None of the texts comments on the blatant anachronism of the bible’s reference to “Ur of the Chaldaeans” (Genesis 11:31) as the original home of the patriarch Abraham. Yet whenever the Chaldaeans emerged as the dominant group in southern Mesopotamia, it was centuries later than any period in which Abraham supposedly inhabited the old Sumerian city of Ur. William H McNeill, A World History, cites “Biblical tradition” for Abraham’s leaving Ur, but supplies an approximate date (“perhaps about 1900 BC”) and says:

There is nothing intrinsically improbable about this traditional account.

Abraham’s place of origin is variously given in the textbooks as Ur, Harran, or Mesopotamia (unspecified), and he is dated mostly within 100 years before or after 1900 BC. C Warren Hollister, J Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, The West Transformed: A History of Western Society, begin discussing Abraham and his covenant as if only reporting the tradition in Genesis, but end up speculating about what Abraham thought and believed, treating him as a real person. Abraham’s “covenant” with Yehouah is treated as historical in some of the texts.

The Hebrew Nation in Egypt

Most of the texts accept the biblical “sojourning” and enslavement in Egypt, some putting the migration by the Hebrews into Egypt as early as the time of the Hyksos rulers (c 1648-1540 BC), perhaps as part of a wave of Semites entering the Delta, some even earlier, others simply supply varying dates.

C Warren Hollister, et al, has the Hebrews in Egypt during the mid-1300s reign of Akhenaten, but says that they, being “at the bottom of the Egyptian social order, remained unaffected” by his religious reform. It also says “the Hebrew community in Egypt clearly also included kindred folk and probably other Semitic people.” It adds the suggestion that while there, “the Hebrews may have extended their covenant of Abraham to include greater numbers of oppressed people.”

Margaret King, The Meaning of the West, suggests that:

The Israelites… thought of Canaan as their homeland despite generations of slavery in Egypt.

Those who name a “Pharaoh of the oppression” tend to name Rameses II or possibly his son Merneptah. Preferred exodus dates generally range over the span 1300-1200 BC.

Moses, Exodus, Sinai Wanderings

The various elements of the biblical story of Moses—the exodus event itself, his epiphany on Mount Sinai (or Horeb), his reception of the Ten Commandments, his renewal and/or revision of the divine covenant earlier made with Abraham, and his leadership through the years of “wilderness wandering”—are handled with varying degrees of distancing by the textbook authors, but almost none of them denies the stories some historicity.

Thomas F X Noble, Barry S Strauss, Duane J Osheim, Kristen B Neuschel, William B Cohen, and David D Roberts, Western Civilization: The Continuing Experiment, introduce discussion with “According to the biblical account,” reports that the Israelites “are said to have” made a covenant with Yehouah, and describes the approximate date provided as being according to “those who accept its historicity,” but then reports as if factual:

The Exodus … is one of the rare examples of a successful national liberation movement in antiquity… The Exodus is also one of the central events in the history of ancient Israel, because it marked another covenant… In return for obedience to Yehouah’s commandments, they would be God’s chosen people… The … covenant … in form and style … bears a certain similarity to the treaties of international diplomacy of the period 1400-1200 BC which suggests the genuine antiquity of the biblical tradition…

The central event in the history of ancient Israel was the covenant, or treaty, at Sinai…

Richard L Greaves, Robert Zaller, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Civilizations of the West: The Human Adventure, inform readers:

Historians have been frustrated by the absence of unmistakable references in Egyptian records to the sojourn of the Hebrews, but this omission is not decisive,

and say that

the Exodus was the formative event of the Jewish faith…

Lynn Hunt, et al, although offering several comments indicating the problematic nature of the biblical evidence, nonetheless casually uses “in the time of Moses” as a dating formula, and couples references to “Israel” on Merneptah’s stele and to “the Hebrews who fled from Egypt with Moses.” Steven Hause, et al, explains:

The Ten Commandments were brought down by Moses from Mt Sinai and delivered to the people of Israel before their entry into Canaan,

though the law based on them “evolved over time.” Margaret King, reports the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan already “endowed with a religious and ethical tradition that constituted the world’s first major monotheism,” adding:

Moses not only had led his people out of Egypt, but also had bestowed upon them, carved in stone, the law code decreed by their one God.

Later, David:

hoped to build a temple to Yehouah that would house the Ark of the Covenant, the shrine containing the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Cannistrato says the Ark in Solomon’s temple had been “handed over by Moses,” and “Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai produced the basis for Jewish law…” C Warren Hollister, et al, discussing Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, says that “it became custom to pronounce the word Adonai (the Lord) where the text read YHWH,” as if there were any conceivable temporal connection between this very late pious development within Judaism and the supposed history of the Sinai epiphany!

Conquest and “Chasing after Baals”

The biblical “conquest of Canaan” by Hebrews coming from outside seems to be generally accepted by the textbooks’ authors; Thomas F X Noble, et al,

Through a combination of the biblical narrative and archaeological evidence, Israelite history after 1200 BC is relatively easy to trace.

In the main, however, they implicitly deny the whirlwind nature of Joshua’s triumph as reported in the bible—most of them not even mentioning Joshua by name. But Margaret King, says that the leadership of the Israelite invaders “by Joshua, lieutenant of Moses” is attested by Exodus 1-15 when these chapters describe the exodus from Egypt, not mentioning Joshua at all. Then, “Joshua’s dramatic capture of Jericho… was allegedly accomplished by faith and the sound of trumpets.” “In reality,” however, much remained to be done “after the death of Joshua.”

Peter N Stearns, World History in Brief, and Stanley Chodorow, MacGregor Knox, Conrad Schirokauer, Joseph R Strayer, and Hans W Gatzke, The Mainstream of Civilization, do not mention Joshua, nor indicate a rapid conquest. They prefer instead to follow scholars who stretch the process over a couple of centuries, most commonly c 1200-1000 BC. In scholarly terms, they modify Albright’s “conquest” model by partially accepting the “infiltration” model of Albrecht Alt, generally ignoring more recent models (those of George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald) that see the “Israelites” as indigenous to Canaan.

Several supply details, reflecting different degrees of literal acceptance of the biblical narrative. Mark Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien, Civilization in the West, refer to the years “wandering in the desert and then slowly conquering Canaan” as the period in which the Israelites, some of them originally Egyptians, developed their identity and faith, in that “they adopted the oral traditions of the clan of Abraham as their common ancestor and identified his god, El, with Yehouah,” whom they had taken over from the Midianites. “Inspired by their new identity and their new religion, the Israelites swept into Canaan,” where the local populations either “accepted the religion of Yehouah” and welcomed the invaders or were “slaughtered”—no other alternatives being mentioned.

Lynn Hunt, et al, also refers to the adoption of Yehouah from the Midianites, and says:

The Israelite tribes joined their relatives who had remained in Palestine and somehow carved out separate territories for themselves there.

Some texts are willing to rationalize the bible’s “backsliding” into polytheism and understand it as the pre-monotheist norm among the Israelites. John McKay, Bennett D Hill, and John Buckler, A History of Western Society, concedes: The Hebrews, “not always hostile… freely mingled with the Canaanites, and some went so far as to worship Baal.…” A golden calf statuette found at Ashkelon, a Philistine town, in 1990 is interpreted as archaeological support for the biblical account.

Kings of the United Monarchy

The textbook authors generally equate the establishment of the Israelite kingdom with the choosing of Saul as its first king, supplying approximate dates. Inconsistencies seem to be largely a matter of seeing David as the monarchy’s “true” founder, the foundation of the monarchy may be given the same date as the beginning of his reign, even though Saul is mentioned as king before him. The texts offer varying dates for Saul, David, and Solomon, ranging generally from shortly before 1000 to somewhere in the 920s.

Such dates are all guesswork based on biblically-reported reign-lengths, calculated backwards from the traditional approximate date for the end of Solomon’s reign. 1 Samuel 13:1, where Saul’s reign-length would appear, is corrupt in the traditional Hebrew text, which says he became king at age 1 and ruled for 2 years, and missing in the Greek Septuagint. Acts 13:21 attributes 40 years to Saul’s reign, but no one accepts this. David is said to have ruled for 40 years at 2 Samuel 5:4-5 and 1 Chronicles 29:27. 1 Kings 11:42 and 2 Chronicles 9:30 attribute 40 years also to Solomon. None of the texts mention that the “united monarchy” itself might be fictional.

Essentially following the most conventional version of the documentary hypothesis and showing obliviousness to all more recent suggestions, the textbook authors usually put the beginning of the writing down of the Jewish scriptures in the period of the united monarchy—if not earlier. Margaret King’s first chapter begins with the scene from Genesis 22 of Abraham’s not-quite sacrifice of Isaac, described thus:

Written down nearly 3000 years ago, this story originated even earlier, not long after the appearance of the first human civilization.

Thomas F X Noble, et al, assures readers:

Much of the Jewish bible… is based on written sources that probably date back at least as far as the early Israelite monarchy of about 1000 BC. Some scholars trace these written sources back several centuries earlier, to… Moses and the laws he is said to have promulgated.

Marvin Perry, Myrna Chase, James R Jacob, Margaret C Jacob, and Theodore H Von Laue, Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics & Society, say:

Under Solomon, Israel… experienced a cultural flowering: some magnificent sections of the Old Testament were written…

C Warren Hollister, et al, sees the earliest version of the Torah as having been “probably put into written form during Solomon’s reign.”

Empire and Capital City

Ignoring recent archaeological arguments concerning Jerusalem and several other sites, the textbooks are essentially unanimous about the greatness and splendor of the “united monarchy” under David and Solomon. Richard L Greaves, et al, insists that David “made Jerusalem into an impressive capital,” Solomon ruled “an elegant city,” and the temple reconstructed after that of Solomon was destroyed “never recovered the grandeur of earlier times.”

In fact, the temple built by Herod the Great (37-4 BC) was immensely more elaborate and impressive than any that preceded it. C Warren Hollister, et al, puts the expansion under David and Solomon “in the eleventh and tenth centuries BC,” saying that under David and Solomon Israel extended to the upper Euphrates, while “the Phoenician cities retained their independence only through…submissive cooperation” and “Solomon made Jerusalem the cosmopolitan capital of a wealthy empire.”

Jackson J Spielvogel, Western Civilization, says that David “established control over all of Palestine” and that Solomon “created a strong, flourishing state.” Anthony Esler, The Western World: A Narrative History, and Richard L Greaves, et al, accept and give some importance to the biblical account’s marriage between Solomon and the daughter of some unnamed Egyptian pharaoh (1 Kings 3:1; 11:1). Miller and Hayes, Garbini, and Soggin, all deny such a marriage as likely.

Although some texts interpret the biblical split of the united monarchy into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah as prompted by economic and regional factors, some see a religious dimension in the north’s secession, like John McKay, et al, who say Solomon:

In the eyes of some people, was too ready to unite other religions with the worship of the Jewish god Yehouah… With political division went a religious rift: Israel, the northern kingdom, established rival sanctuaries for gods other than Yehouah.

Taking an opposite theological line, Mark Kishlansky, et al, says:

The northern region, demanding that aspirants to the throne should be tested for their faithfulness to Yehouah, broke off to become the kingdom of Israel…

Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M Turner, The Western Heritage, offers the puzzling comment that Solomon’s “sons” (plural) could not hold the kingdom together. Only Solomon’s heir Rehoboam is mentioned in biblical descriptions of events at this time.

Two kingdoms, Judah, Law and Prophets

The period of the two kingdoms and of Judah after the fall of Israel to the Assyrians is a period for which external written sources, primarily Assyrian and Babylonian, are comparatively abundant. The key political events reported in the bible, all with important impact on interpretations of Israelite/Judahite history and its meanings, were the fall of the northern capital Samaria in 722 or 721, Sennnacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701, the so-called “Deuteronomic reformation” described as being carried out in Judah under King Josiah in 622, and the two Babylonian sieges of Jerusalem, only the first of them confirmed by Babylonian evidence, in 598-7 and 587-6 by Nebuchadrezzar (Biblical Nebuchadnezzar), each said to have involved deportations and the second said to have led to the destruction of Solomon’s temple and the city.

This is also the period in which scholars have generally located most of the biblical prophets, whose spoken oracles are usually believed to have formed at least the core of several books in the canonical collection. Although by and large the textbooks agree with conventional scholarship generally following the documentary hypothesis, several of them deviate markedly from Wellhausen’s conclusion that the work of the Jewish prophets preceded the establishment of the “Mosaic” law. They tend instead to follow the bible in depicting the prophets as calling the Israelites back to observance of the already-established law.

William H McNeill, argues: Although the prophets of the eighth century and beyond created fully developed monotheism, their task was “comparatively easy” because “Yehouah had always been a jealous god, requiring the undivided loyalty of his people and repudiating all rivals.” Donald Kagan, et al, having suggested that monotheism may be as old as Moses, insists that “it certainly dates as far back as the prophets of the eighth century BC.”

Josiah and the Deuteronomic Reformation

The documentary hypothesis is essentially followed in regard to Josiah’s reformation. Thomas F X Noble, et al, says:

Josiah… assembled “the entire population, high and low,” to swear to obey “the scroll of the covenant which had been discovered in the house of the Lord” (the scroll probably was Deuteronomy, now the fifth book of the Torah)… They succeeded in making the Temple… the unquestioned religious center of the whole Israelite people, and they began the process of canonizing the Jewish bible.

William H McNeill, asserts:

Not long before the conquest of Jerusalem (587 BC) a strenuous effort had been made to purify the worship of Yehouah. In the course of this reform the sacred scriptures were organized into the books of the Old Testament, almost as known today.

Yet despite the fact that it is a fundamental tenet of the documentary hypothesis, a hypothesis that most of them consciously accept, none of the textbook authors ventures to suggest that the scroll “discovered” in the temple in Josiah’s reign might in fact have been written at that time by those instigating the cultic reformation. Compare the phrasing of Morton Smith:

It is possible, indeed likely, but not certain, that the Deuteronomic code was the most influential forgery in the history of the world.

One might add now that the book might have been the law brought by Ezra, and deliberately retrojected to the time of Josiah to make it more acceptable.

Deportations to Babylonia

In discussing the “Babylonian captivity,” a primary issue is the sheer scale of both the deportations and the return, since the biblical text clearly takes as normative and definitive the experience of those who went through both processes, marginalizing those who either remained in Palestine all along or stayed on in Babylonia. The biblical narrative at 2 Kings 24:12-16, which shows signs of re-writing, reports deportations in the time of Jehoiachin (597 BC), including the king himself and his entourage, providing both 10,000 and 7000 as total numbers. 2 Kings 25:6, 11-12, 21 (parallelled in Jeremiah 39:7, 9-10 and 52:11, 15-16, 27) indicates that “the remainder of the population,” excepting some few agricultural workers, followed a decade later. A more modest biblical version (in Jeremiah 52:28-30) gives precise and much smaller numbers—a total figure for all the Babylonians’ deportations (including a third one after the assassination of their governor) of 4600.

Most of the textbook authors see the deportations from Jerusalem, especially the second, as being large in proportion to the population of Judah, generally accepting the large scale of deportations indicated by the dominant biblical tradition. Some of the texts actually seem to try to combine the incompatible biblical narratives, more or less to equate deportation of the elite with deportation of the large majority of the population. Other texts are more ambiguous or more inconsistent. A few textbooks say that only the elite were exiled.

The Jewish bible itself says very little about what happened among the exiles in Babylonia. The textbook authors follow the consensus of conventional scholarship in generally agreeing that important work in putting together the biblical books, or at least the Torah, was done among the exiles. Commonly cited as new works produced in Babylonia are Psalms 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…”) and the prophetic corpora of Ezekiel and “Second Isaiah”—whose universalizing message is emphasized. The general impression conveyed in the textbooks is that what occurred during the exile and/or after was mostly a “selection,” from extensive pre-existing written materials, many of them several centuries old. It is also generally asserted (again without biblical or other evidence) that many practices associated with Jewish worship began among the exiles. Thus C Warren Hollister, et al, says:

It was during the Babylonian Captivity that the Sabbath and dietary codes came into focus, as well as the insistence on male circumcision and bans on marriage outside the faith… The Psalms… were assembled and edited during the Exile…

William H McNeill, is certain that the exiles in Babylonia “possessed the sacred texts and could read and study them,” which they did in weekly meetings, each led by “a teacher (rabbi).” Thomas F X Noble, et al, says it is possible that the exiles put together the Torah in something like its present form, and points out that some scholars believe that they organized the first synagogues.

Despite the emphasis given to exilic developments, some of the texts do show awareness that the Jewish bible as we now have it was not finally completed for centuries. The full development of the religion we call Judaism is also seen as coming rather late, after the exile. Jackson J Spielvogel, says:

It was among the Babylonian exiles… that Yehouah… came to be seen as the only God. After the return of these exiles to Judah, their point of view eventually became dominant, and pure monotheism… came to be the major tenet of Judaism.

C Warren Hollister, et al, argues:

It took several centuries to impose on Palestine the Judaism that had been born in the Exile.

John McKay, et al, says:

During and especially after the Babylonian Captivity, the exiles redefined their beliefs and practices, and thus established what they believed was the law of Yehouah.

These actually confuse the production of the Torah with that of the much later Talmud, describing the Talmud as a work “begun during the Babylonian Captivity and completed by the end of the sixth century BC.”

Return to Jerusalem and Environs

The biblical tradition that the return to what became the Persian province of Yehud began within a year of Cyrus’ capture of Babylon in 539 BC, authorized by an edict of Cyrus himself, is followed without question, despite testimony (also biblical) that the actual reconstruction of Jerusalem’s temple did not occur until the reign of Darius. Given their general belief that both the exile and the return involved quite large numbers of Judahites, it is not surprising to see little discussion in the textbooks consulted about what some current scholars see as the appropriation and redefining of the traditions of an entire people by a fairly small minority.

The description of the conflict in postexilic Yehud in C Warren Hollister, et al, is atypically objective, reporting the conflicting claims of various parties: the returning exiles, the “people of the land,” and the Samaritans (who “never became Jews of the new type”) with considerable evenhandedness. T L Thompson, Mythic Past:

The failure of historians to address the continued existence of Samaria after the Assyrian takeover is due to their use of the bible as if it were Palestine’s primary history.

Lynn Hunt, et al, is unusual in emphasizing the influence of Persian Zoroastrianism on the religion of the Hebrews.

There is in the textbooks consulted a general unconcern with, or unawareness of, the numerous source problems afflicting the biblical texts of Ezra and Nehemiah, and it is frequently stated as simple fact that Ezra attained some sort of public ratification of the Torah in the second half of the fifth century BC. Thomas F X Noble, et al, reverses, but without comment, the biblical sequence and puts Nehemiah a generation earlier than Ezra, and says in a chronology that “Judaean assembly accepts the Torah” c 425 BC. Margaret King reports:

Ezra organized the compilation of the Jewish writings (probably some part of the Pentateuch… perhaps only Deuteronomy). From a wooden pulpit, he read the law aloud…. With that… the history of Judaism begins.

Cargill’s Assessment of the Textbooks

Cargill thinks Jackson J Spielvogel’s book is more consistent with the findings of recent scholarship on ancient Israel than any of the other textbooks surveyed. The Hebrews’ nomadic period, their descent from Abraham whose origins were in Mesopotamia, their sojourn and enslavement in Egypt, Moses and the exodus, the wilderness wanderings, their entry into Canaan, division into twelve tribes, and conflict with the Philistines, all are presented by Spielvogel only as “a tradition concerning their origins and history that was eventually written down as part of the Jewish bible… ” with “according to tradition” and “according to the biblical account” further inserted within the summary to reiterate the point that only tradition (not history) is being reported. This summary of tradition is followed immediately by these observations:

Many scholars today doubt that the early books of the Jewish bible reflect the true history of the early Israelites. They argue that the early books of the bible, written centuries after the events described, preserve only what the Israelites came to believe about themselves and that recently discovered archaeological evidence often contradicts the details of the biblical account. Some of these scholars have even argued that the Israelites were not nomadic invaders but indigenous peoples of the Palestinian hill country.

A few pages later, traditions about Moses and the exodus are reported in greater detail, modified throughout by such phrases as “the Israelites believed,” “supposedly,” “according to tradition.” The lateness of the general adoption of “pure monotheism” is also recognized:

For some Israelites, Yehouah was the chief god of Israel, but many, including kings of Israel and Judah, worshiped other gods as well.

Only in exilic and post-exilic times did monotheism become dominant:

During and after the Babylonian exile the Jews recorded many of their traditions in order to preserve their identity. These writings became the core of the Jewish bible.

Spielvogel does not question the historicity of the “united monarchy.” He treats it as historical and allots it a subsection, and “Creation of monarchy in Israel” is the first item in his time-chart of Israelite history. Spielvogel does not suggest, however, that any parts of the Jewish bible were written as early as the time of Solomon.

John McKay, et al, in 1998, reported certain important archaeological finds that have not yet been mentioned in any of the subsequently-published texts—the reportage is valuable even if the interpretations offered for the historical significance of the artifacts remain doubtful. Evidence excavated in 1990 for golden calf worship in Palestine hardly supports—as McKay, et al, imply—the specifics of the narrative of Exodus 32 (the calf created by Aaron at Sinai while Moses is atop the mountain).

This textbook is especially to be commended for reporting so promptly the 1993 discovery of a ninth-century Aramaic inscription from Tel Dan in northern Galilee that seems, in the eyes of many scholars, to mention the “House of David.” None of the other texts mentions it. Yet the apparent context of the phrase is misinterpreted, and the inscription is seen as celebrating a victory of “the royal line of Israel,” when the phrase (on the most generous reading) seems to identify a king of the dynasty in Judah, in contrast with a king of Israel (the northern kingdom), also referred to, both of whom are defeated, not victorious. Lemche and Thompson, Davies, and Ehud Ben-Zvi question the “House of David” reading in JSOT 64 (1994).

Recommended Readings

Spielvogel, in his “Suggestions for Further Reading” for the fourth edition, deletes two books by Albright (Bright’s History is retained, however) and adds Kuhrt’s Ancient NE (2 volumes), Soggin (though carelessly cited in his 1984 edition, rather than its 1993 revision, Introduction), and several other Israel-related books of the 1980s and 1990s, while retaining from the previous edition Miller and Hayes, History, Shanks, Ancient Israel (1988), and Lemche, Ancient Israel.

Lynn Hunt, et al, among the most recent (2001) of the textbooks surveyed, not surprisingly has some of the most up-to-date “Suggested Readings.” Books recommended in this text but not in its 1995 predecessor include Kuhrt, Ancient NE, D C Snell, Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-322 BCE (1997), Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (1993) and (all these uniquely among the textbooks surveyed) Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World (1997) and Jonathan N Tubb, Canaanites (1998).

The “Suggested Reading” in John McKay, et al, is both more up-to-date and higher in quality than that of any contemporary (1998) or earlier textbook, and compares very favorably with that of the texts of 1999-2001 that were surveyed. A History of Western Society was the earliest of the surveyed texts to list several of the comparatively critical recent treatments, Kuhrt, Ancient NE, Shanks, Rise of Ancient Israel, J R Bartlett (ed), Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation (1997), Susan Niditch, Ancient Israelite Religion (1997). The only other texts consulted that list Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel are Mark Kishlansky, et al, C Warren Hollister, et al, Thomas F X Noble, et al, and Lynn Hunt, et al.

The treatments of Israel in the other textbooks surveyed was conventional. None of them discusses ancient Israel with anywhere near the sophistication of Jackson J Spielvogel or shows nearly as much awareness of recent critical scholarship as Hunt, et al, or McKay, et al. The conventionality of their historical narratives is not surprising when one consults the recommended readings sections of these other texts. Most of the books listed are traditional, even if written in the 1980s and ’90s. The relevant bibliographical essay in William H McNeill (1999) has not been updated from 1979. Nothing specific to Israel postdates 1960!

Marvin Perry, et al, (1996) is the only text surveyed that devotes an entire chapter to ancient Israel, and its suggested readings are both numerous (sixteen items) and specific to Israel. Nonetheless, they are generally conventional, and only one listed book dates to the 1990s. Stanley Chodorow, et al, (1994), despite considerable rewriting in its section on the ancient Israelites, makes absolutely no changes in bibliographies (even the misspelling of one author’s name is retained), lists nothing specifically about Israel later than 1963, and is still listing works of 1932 and 1913 among suggested readings! It is very rare to find in the texts surveyed any books listed that are written by any of the so-called “biblical minimalists.”

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