The Creation of History in Ancient Israel by Marc Zvi Brettler

by Marc Zvi Brettler

Much of the Old Testament looks like history. Yet, a close reading of the biblical text in conjunction with other ancient literature and archaeological evidence indicates that its accounts of 'events' are often inaccurate or untrue. What then were the goals of the ancient biblical historians? How are we to read these texts if not as history? The Creation of History in Ancient Israel explores a set of biblical texts, which offer answers to these questions. It examimes the Book of Chronicles, which presents the clearest model for how ancient biblical historians might have worked. Marc Zvi Brettler, a leading authority in this field, then surveys texts from Genesis, Deuteronomy, Judges and Samuel which illustrate how biblical historians were influenced by typology, interpretation of earlier texts, satire and ideology. Taking a central chapter from Kings, he shows how these factors function together in a single, complex text. The implications of this model of history writing for the modern historian are evaluated. This study shows how the Hebrew Bible can be used as a historical source. It strikes a balance between the position that the Bible is fictitious and the position that the Bible is completely true.

Paperback

First published September 14, 1995

Reviews

[Simcha York · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was something of a disappointment. It is essentially six largely-unrelated essays pulled together under an ostensibly overarching premise, all of which is prefaced by a wordy introductory apologetics for the author's particular approach to Biblical criticism.

I don't have any beef with Mr. Brettler's critical methodology. However, I did feel that his introductory chapters presented an author more interested in these methodologies and in their acceptance by the intellectually hip among his peers than he actually is in the results produced by these methodologies.

The individual chapters which display his critical approach in practice - separate analyses of Chronicles, Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Ehud story in Judges, Samuel, and one small section of II Kings - do have their moments of interest. Brettler is a keen close reader of Biblical texts and is able to make compelling cases when delineating between the various sources that have been pulled together to create the Biblical texts with which we are now familiar. Unfortunately, Brettler does little of interest with these close readings. Instead, his primary thesis is simply that the various authors of the Biblical texts had "ideologies." That's it. Even in 1995, when this book was first published, this was not ground-breaking news.

This thesis is re-stated in the concluding chapter of the book - a chapter which pretty much covers everything that the book has to offer. In short, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel is a 144 page book (not counting the copious endnotes - a majority of the material in the book is rightfully credited to other writers) that could have been reduced, without any significant loss of information, to an essay of 10 pages.