JSOTS on Israel and Moses (4 vols.)

This book is a collection of articles written by a distinguished array of scholars, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its ancient versions and textual history—the fields in which the late Dr. Weitzman worked—and is an authoritative assemblage of current research in these and closely related fields. Michael P. Weitzman was Reader in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. He taught and supervised research in Hebrew language, the Hebrew Bible and its literary history, and rabbinic texts for twenty-six years. The contributors include: Edward Ullendorff, Andrew Macintosh, Robert Gordon, Philip Alexander, Alison Salvesen, Michael M. Winter, and Gillian Greenberg.

In recent years there has been a tendency among certain scholars, such as Philip Davies, Thomas Thompson, and Niels Peter Lemche, to claim that little can be known about pre-exilic Israel, because the Old Testament was only compiled in the post-exilic period. One scholar (Lemche) has even claimed that the Old Testament is a Hellenistic work. The purpose of this book is to argue that this is an extreme and untenable position and that, though much of the Old Testament was indeed edited in the exilic or post-exilic period, many of the underlying sources go back to the pre-exilic period and, when critically analyzed, can shed much light on that period. This volume surveys not only historiography but also various aspects of what can be known of pre-exilic prophecy, law, wisdom and psalmody. This important work is the product of a team of seventeen international scholars, no fewer than five of whom are Fellows of the British Academy.

Is the Bible a Hellenistic book? The essays in this volume respond to that challenging question, formulated by Niels Peter Lemche, and offer everything from qualified agreement to vociferous opposition. In so doing, they debate and illuminate the many features of Jewish writing in the Second Temple period, including not only the Scriptures themselves and their own history, but the non-canonized literature of the late Second-Temple period. The purpose of the essays presented here is to, in Grabbe’s words, “thrash out questions of historical methodology.” Lester Grabbe introduces the discussion, contributes several articles, and concludes the text with a reflection. Joining him are: Niels Peter Lemche, Rainer Albertz, Hans M. Barstad, Kai Peltonen , Bob Becking, Robert P. Carroll, Philip R. Davies, David M. Gunn, Thomas L. Thompson.

Moses is not only inseparable from biblical tradition he is an inherently ambiguous figure and often a perennial focus of controversy. Brian Britt traces the development of biblical and post-biblical traditions about Moses by analyzing elements of polemic and ideology in the Moses of the Bible and in scholarly writings, as well as the Moses depicted in film, novels, and visual art. He is able to effectively integrate literary criticism with historical criticism.