Memories of Ancient Israel : An Introduction to Biblical History--Ancient and Modern

Philip R Davies
Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
 9780664232887
0-664-23288-4

Recent years have seen an explosion of writing on the history of Israel, prompted largely by definitive archaeological surveys and attempts to write a genuine archaeological history of ancient Israel and.

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Judah. The scholarly world has also witnessed an intense confrontation between so-called minimalists and maximalists over the correct approach to the historicity of the Bible. Memories of Ancient Israel looks at the issues at stake in biblical history--the ideologies involved, the changing role of archaeology, and the influence of cultural contexts both ancient and modern. Philip Davies suggests a different way of defining the problem of "reliability" and "historicity" by employing the theory of cultural memory. In doing so, he provides a better explanation of how ancient societies constructed their past but also a penetrating insight into the ideological underpinnings of today's scholarly debates.