The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Michael D. Coogan (Editor)

In this impressive volume, leading scholars offer compelling glimpses into the biblical world, the world in which prophets, poets, sages, and historians created one of our most important texts--the Bible.
For more than a century, archaeologists have been unearthing the tombs, temples, texts, and artifacts of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. Using new approaches, contemporary scholars have begun to synthesize this material with the biblical traditions. The Oxford History of the Biblical World incorporates the best of this scholarship, and in chronologically ordered chapters presents the reader with a readable and integrated study of the history, art, architecture, languages, literatures, and religion of biblical Israel and early Judaism and Christianity in their larger cultural contexts. The authors also examine such issues as the roles of women, the tensions between urban and rural settings, royal and kinship social structures, and official and popular religions of the region.
Understanding the biblical world is a vital part of understanding the Bible. Broad, authoritative, and engaging, The Oxford History of the Biblical World will illuminate for any reader the ancient world from which the Bible emerged.

Genres: History, Religion, Christianity, Nonfiction, Reference, Biblical Studies, Judaism

508 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Michael David Coogan is Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum and Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. For several decades, he has taught an introductory course on the Hebrew Scriptures at Harvard University, as well as at Wellesley College, Boston College, and Stonehill College. One of the leading biblical scholars in the United States, he is the author of The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, and editor of the acclaimed third edition of The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

Reviews

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Highly Credible Resource

The Bible is easily the most widely read, discussed and studied book (or rather collection of books) from the last 2,500 years. New readers will quickly become confused as it shifts between poetry, narrative stories and legal codes - sometimes all in the same book! The variety of commentaries and fights over interpretation showcase a dire need for historical context. This volume brings together top minds of Jewish and Christian history to reconstruct the past through archaeology, linguistic and textual criticism, and frequent quotation from the literature of surrounding cultures. It becomes much easier, for example, to understand the books of Ezra and Nehemiah when you have a working knowledge of the Judeans' exile from Jerusalem to Babylon and its impact on the structures and themes within Judaism. Likewise, there is a significant gap - especially in the Protestant canon - between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Even a brief summary of the Greco-Roman influence on Judea helps here, starting with Alexander the Great's empire down through the events of Hannukah, the Roman occupation and the emergence of different Jewish sectarian groups.

A note of caution: it took me many months to read this cover-to-cover as it is at times very dry. I never thought I'd encounter something boring from Amy-Jill Levine but a work of this nature necessitates a highly technical and academic treatment. Each chapter is penned by a different author and occasionally provides conflicting summaries, which is explained at length in the preface. I would advise against reading the book in its entirety. Rather, I would highly recommend it if you are looking to begin an in-depth study of a particular historical period; it will acquaint you with the state of modern scholarship the most important details for the period. The footnotes and bibliography are an excellent jumping-off point for further research. This is as close as you can hope to find for an all-in-one narrative history of the biblical world.

[William Bies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obligatory background material for any serious student of scripture, though propadeutic in nature only. This reviewer’s hardcover edition is outfitted with numerous black-and-white figures, maps, diagrams, tables and photographs, as well as color plates. What one can draw from The Oxford History of the Biblical World, edited by Michael D. Coogan and published by the Oxford University Press in 1998, would be the secular historian’s perspective which is to be contrasted with the theologian’s in our immediately preceding reviews (see Lawrence Boadt’s Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, here; and Walther Eichrodt’s Theology of the Old Testament, Vol. I here and Vol. II here). The former purports to be more scientific, as this term tends to be conceived nowadays, in that he will entertain as true only what can be established on objective criteria rather than accept the scriptural narrative at face value—while the latter wants to know what we can learn about God from his revelation of himself and is willing to draw on all the evidence, not ruling out the possibility of supernatural causation, in principle.

In consequence, there obtains a certain tension between the two hermeneutical approaches to the OT, which we could suggest is, on the whole, healthy. For theological interpretation ought to be grounded in the literal sense, hence it behooves us to be quite sure about what the literal sense is and about how reliable it might be, a task that falls as much under the purview of the historian as under that of the exegete. Failure to observe this methodological norm down through the centuries has led to much unguarded and ungrounded employment of scripture to serve questionable ends, at the hands of often heretical mystics or theosophists—the likes of, say, Joachim of Flora (c. 1135-1202) or Nostradamus (1503-1566). Careless and unscholarly efforts such as these can only divert one from a secure grasp of the actual message of scripture, which for the believer must always be paramount, but even for the secular historian continues to be of the essence in view of the great extent to which the broad sweep of world history has been influenced by the religious cultures of the three monotheistic faiths, in which the role of heretical sects has for the most part been subordinate.

Yet, there is this to remark on the other side of the ledger. The theologian differentiates himself from the mere historian not only in the type of evidence he is prepared to admit, but also in his overall objective, viz., to gain a conceptual understanding of the religious phenomenon tout court. Hence, the data concerning what occurred and when are to be pressed into a higher service and, as such, do not in themselves represent the telos that the secular historian, for whom religion itself can be no more than a persistent illusion, grants to them. As a result, from a theological point of view the secular historian tends often to get bogged down in side issues (such as, say, whether the camel had been domesticated as of the time of Joseph and his brothers, circa 1800 BC; cf. Genesis 37:1-50:26) and thereby to miss the real content residing in the text, which will scarcely be impaired by an occasional anachronism—in the case of the Joseph Cycle, the way in which God’s providential care makes use of Joseph’s long-suffering so as to bring about a greater good, the preservation of the Jewish people during a time of world-wide famine. Even the secularist, of course, needs to be aware of the religious meaning people ascribed to the scriptural text in that this, too, forms part of its Wirkungsgeschichte in the societies for which the Bible plays a normative role, no less the object of historical study than any other societal characteristic. The divide between the two, thus, will not be absolute, but, for sure, there persists a divergence in focal interest between the typical modern historian and the theologically minded exegete.

All this having been said in the domain of high theory, from a practical point of view the historically oriented resp. the religiously oriented reader of the OT share a common interest and a common difficulty, namely, that the text of scripture comes to us from long ago and far away, and was written for contemporaries in the world of the ancient near East which, unfortunately, will be little known to most of us moderns. Therefore, the articles in this Oxford handbook will be invaluable in setting the context. The Prologue (In the Beginning: The Earliest History) and chapter one (Before Israel: Syria-Palestine in the Bronze Age) offer plenty of good commentary. For instance, that the material condition for the Israelite conquest of Palestine was the collapse of its civilization during the thirteenth century BC [p. 64]. A good illustration of the types of information one won’t find elsewhere would be a detailed discussion of rainfall patterns in Palestine and the Levant [p. 240], or geographical patterns in the strata in question: from the late eleventh century well into the tenth century, settlement in the Judean hill country almost doubled compared to any earlier period [p. 240, thus accounting for the material basis of the legendary wealth and prosperity during Solomon’s reign].

The following lengthy quotation is apt to give the reader an idea of what kind of analysis to expect here:

Another area in which research on the second millennium BCE has illuminated the ancestral stories has been the understanding of the pastoralist way of life described in the narratives. The ancestors of Israel appear in Genesis as pastoral nomads living along the edge of settled society in the land of Canaan, having occasional dealings with city-dwellers, sometimes even briefly moving into a town. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern biblical scholars tended to illustrate the life of the ancestors by reference to the modern nomads of the Near East, the bedouin. They were often portrayed as fully nomadic wanderers, isolated from settled life and generally hostile toward the sedentary population. Scholars usually saw an evolutionary pattern at work in nomadic societies, in which the nomads would come out of the desert, clash with the sedentary population, but eventually give up the nomadic way of life and become town-dwellers themselves. This pattern was used to reconstruct the beginnings of the nation of Israel as it emerged from its nomadic origins. There was some skepticism about the accuracy of the depiction of the pastoral life in Genesis, since the stories have the families moving back and forth between nomadic and town dwelling with relative ease. The past three decades have seen considerable anthropologically based research on the ancient pastoral way of life. This research has shown that pastoralism during the second millennium BCE differed considerably from that of the modern bedouin, and that the earlier evolutionary view of nomadism is incorrect. Of particular help have been the Mari tablets, which provide much information about the pastoralists who inhabited the middle Euphrates during the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE. The Mari tablets and other texts have shown that there was not a simple process of peoples moving from nomadism to sedentary life. Rather, members of tribal groups fluctuated between pastoralism and sedentary life, depending on their circumstances. In the ancient texts that have recently come to light, tribal groups largely characterized as pastoralists also had large elements within their tribes who were sedentary—some living in villages, and some found even in the large metropolises of the Near East. Nor is there evidence that the pastoralists were generally antagonistic toward sedentary life, regularly raiding in pillaging the towns. Rather, the texts point to a strong symbiotic relationship between the pastoralists and the inhabitants of the small towns, each providing goods that were necessary to the other. Pastoralists and small-town-dwellers alike resisted the large cities’ attempts to impose political control over them. This understanding of the pastoralist life seems reflected in the narrative of Genesis. The biblical ancestors camp near the towns, as one would expect (see Genesis 12:6-9;13:12-19;33:18-20), and at times even become sufficiently sedentary to carry out cultivation (26:12). They are portrayed as having close and cordial relations with townspeople (21:25-34), and in times of trouble they even come for a while to live in major towns as resident aliens (12:10-20; 20:1-18; 26:6-11). [pp. 74-75]

Chapter two (Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt), chapter three (Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel) and chapter four (‘There was no King in Israel’: The Era of the Judges) are all very informative, as reviews of the archaeological and anthropological status of the built environment and societal institutions of those times. The going gets to be harder in subsequent chapters, on, resp., the early monarchy; the political division between Judah and Israel after Solomon’s death to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC; the Assyrian conquest and Exile to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC; the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods to the first Jewish revolt; and the rise of Christianity. Why so, if these chapters are indeed replete with good information and assessment of its historical value? (For instance, sections on Material Features of the Early State in Israel, Jehu’s Legacy, the Age of Hezekiah: Glory and Defeat etc.) In effect, what the contributors do is to strip out all religious content from the narrative and piece together a synthetic reconstruction of the political and economic developments in Israel and Judah, availing themselves wherever possible of extra-biblical sources. Thus, they do for biblical history what J.B. Bury does for ancient Greece in his A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (originally published 1900, our review here).

But it isn’t history just to enumerate all the trees in a forest! Setting aside the restriction to political events, one really would want some discussion of trends and analysis of the reasons behind them. If one were to undertake to do so, he would soon realize that cultural factors matter, and in a thoroughly religious culture such as that of the ancient near East, it is impossible to omit religion altogether, if there is interest to know what happened as the participants experienced it. Thus, the production of this Oxford handbook constitutes perhaps a worthwhile, if subsidiary exercise for some to engage in, akin to compiling tables of special functions for working applied mathematicians to refer to, but should not be confused with the writing of history proper.

And, to be polemical for a moment: one should energetically resist and combat this immense act of forgetting! The issue of revelation per se simply cannot be sidestepped in what claims to be a biblical history, as if it were irrelevant when it is, in fact, the main substance—somewhat akin to writing an account of the Soviet Union without mention of Karl Marx! It could be done but would miss the point. What animated the main players was, precisely, Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The defect of this Oxford handbook, thus, appears to be irremediable. The theological themes of land, lineage, covenant, prophecy etc. which were uppermost in the minds of the ancient Israelites cannot just be ignored, but should be subject to a sensitive exploration in order to disclose why they acted as they did. For instance, why were Hezekiah and Josiah such avid supporters of the Deuteronomic reforms? Without entering into their religious psychology, all one can do is to note the fact, without explanation, and thereby to fall short of the historical ideal.

Let us, then, award two stars, as the material included seems to be fairly well presented, if one internalizes what it claims to be and, in fact, is, purely secular. Nevertheless, it must be faulted for an entire want of an overarching perspective in what amounts merely to a heaping up of a great mass of uninterpreted disjecta membra. Perhaps an outcome such as this was inevitable given the format of this handbook, as a collection of independent articles contributed by experts. The ensuing disappointment this reviewer has to register motivates him to seek out a good book that might offer a rigorous methodological reflection on the use of history as a discipline, maybe going back to classic authors like Macaulay, Thackeray or Dilthey? The myopic perspective of the authors of the present handbook is not, after all, necessitated by a methodological commitment to naturalism. Their admitted inability to engage the theological content of scripture has to be taken in stride, as a sunk cost. But even an avowedly secular historian ought to be able to connect up the dots in a more imaginative manner.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading for background on Sea Traders/Peoples/Lebanese. The Philistines (Sampson) were a tribe of Sea Peoples. Sea Peoples harassed Egyptians in Bronze Age. Probably originated from Greek Mycean culture, a loose confederation of tribes. Great archeological evidence, reference to Bibles, Greek and Egyptian writings. No mention of out settlements to form Carthage. Sea people have been international traders since the Bronze (4500-3300 BCE) currently named Chalcolithic age. Who says career tendencies don’t have genetic components?

[Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted *more*. Articles on race, class, art, culture, intercultural exchange among Jews and their various neighbors, the drive to conquer/colonize, etc. I'm glad views on women were interrogated, but I wish it had gone much further.

Also, a cultural comparison of diaspora Jews elsewhere in the "biblical" world seems like it would be relevant. At least the bibliography is strong.

[Peter Corrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this at the New Year as a companion to my first ever full Bible reading project. I got to the finish line first on this one but not by much. This is not an easy 'book' to review as it is actually a series of long essays by experts in their respective fields. The quality and readability varies somewhat but these are all academic treatments of their subjects from University experts with little attempt to put a Biblical 'spin' on things. One person called it a propadeutic (serving as a preliminary instruction or as an introduction to further study), which could be a fair assessment though I doubt most people would even read this entire thing.

Below is the table of contents:

Prologue - In the Beginning: The Earliest History
Chapter 1 - Before Israel: Syria and Palestine in the Bronze Age
Chapter 2 - Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt
Chapter 3 - Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel
These chapters cover the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant, providing background and context to the biblical narrative. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and others who influenced the development of Israel.

Chapter 4 - ‘There was no King in Israel’: The Era of the Judges)
Chapter 5 - Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy
Chapter 6 - A Land Divided: Judah and Israel from the Death of Solomon to the Fall of Samaria
Chapter 7 - Into Exile: From the Assyrian Conquest of Israel to the Fall of Babylon
Chapter 8 - Israel Among the Nations: The Persian Period
Chapter 9 - Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period
Chapter 10 - Visions of Kingdoms: From Pompey to the First Jewish Revolt
Chapter 11 - Churches in Context: The Jesus Movement in the Roman World
Chapter 12 - Epilogue: Jews and Christians in the Roman World

Each chapter has a selected set of references which look very useful as well.

There are numerous fine photos (b&w), excellent maps throughout and finally a very useful Chronology showing dates, Archaeological ages and concomitant events in Syria/Palestine (i.e. Israel), Egypt and Mesopotamia. Really helps keep track of the bigger picture!

It was definitely a useful complement to reading the Bible but does not address the veracity of the Bible or the revelation that is it's essence. Another reviewer put it this way: 'The issue of revelation per se simply cannot be sidestepped in what claims to be a biblical history, as if it were irrelevant when it is, in fact, the main substance—somewhat akin to writing an account of the Soviet Union without mention of Karl Marx! It could be done but would miss the point. What animated the main players was, precisely, Marxist-Leninist doctrine'. I have to agree but this remains a valuable compendium, just don't expect it to either bolster or undermine your faith or not in any substantial way. 2.5 stars rounded up.

[Harry Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This deserves five stars, though the quarter-century of growth in the field since publication dims the practical applicability.

It's worth noting that while the titular focus topic has been filled in considerably since publication, the overall picture has remained largely consistent with this book. In other words, if a new edition were made, there would be a lot to add, but there wouldn't be that much to delete. The book has aged well and a reader of it today would gain a still-accurate perspective.

I fail to understand how this volume did not merit further editions. More recent academic works covering this topic so so either voluminously or concisely. This work manages to provide a thorough, detailed, academically rigorous but entirely readable account covering several millennia in a single volume. I know of no subsequent university-labelled work to have achieved this.

While each section is written by different scholars, there is a general uniformity of tone, pacing, and structure that allows the book to cohere and read like a single unbroken work.

The book is accessible and well written. On a scale weighing academic vs "popular" writing styles, this book likely tips in favor of the academic; much of the terminology is not written for novices. This is, though, not a dry academic work; the prose can be evocative , colorful, and adventurous at times, and keeps plodding academian scorekeeping to a minimum.

Most importantly, the book is balanced and humble in its considerations and conclusions. It is not dogmatic or pursuing a particular narrative. It's honest - almost to a fault - about what is not known or certain. It is respectful of various viewpoints but stands gently firm on matters where the research is clear in one direction.

well structured formatclear, structured, honest, informed, and accessible

[Arturo Castillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not finished reading it to be honest. I use it as reference only.

I find it incredible that there is so much knowledge from the biblical time period, from the areas that the bible mentions and from the people back then and there.

The very first time that the Hebrew bible was translated into Greek happened in Alexandria, Egypt. Under the tutelage of the second Ptolemy otherwise known as "Philadelphus." Seventy elders from Jerusalem were used to translate it and that is why that bible was called the "Septuagint" or seventy. This is known thanks to a document called "The letter of Aristeas." Aristeas was someone who lived in Ptolemy's court.

Great book that can give you a window to biblical times.

[Art Killings · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an okay book, it's an pretty mixed bag.

[Peter Cardilla]

I give this book my highest recommendation. No person should comment on the Bible, either in defense or in criticism of it, without having read this book.

[Holy Spirit]

220.95

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like last summer when I read through THE OXFORD HISTORY OF ISLAM, this time I read through THE OXFORD HISTORY OF THE BIBLICAL WORLD. While I wasn't familiar with most of the material in the former, I was at least nominally familiar with a lot of the material presented in this volume. And as a consequence, I was able to absorb (and finish) it a lot quicker. It consists of 12 scholarly essays on the different historical periods from prehistory up to a few hundred years after the Roman Empire split. The earlier chapters were a little less interesting to me, insofar as they had to rely a lot more heavily on the archaeological record (read: a lot of pottery), but the reconstruction of pre-Israelite history was still eye-opening. I wasn't really looking to confirm any biases regarding the Bible's historicity, but it was helpful to see where it diverged and (quite surprisingly, at points) where they coincide. Though this may not occur to the average Bible reader, the people who wrote/compiled the Bible weren't primarily interested in historical accuracy as seen through modern eyes and methods, instead writing with a more theological purpose. Even with that in mind, you still learn a lot about where Judaism and Christianity came from and how they adapted and set themselves apart from the multiplicity of religious traditions surrounding them. In between, there was a lot of war, moving populations, and exchanging of ideas. The Biblical literalist will probably find a lot of what they read here hard to swallow, but I have a feeling that most open-minded people would (and should) give it a shot. There certainly is a lot to digest here, but it's definitely worth your time.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally I finished it!
This tome goes from the very ancient of times to about the eighth century AD.
I did not read it for a class, but independently. It is an assumption by the authors that you will have some sort of background knowledge of this era.
Informative and expansive. This is the most recommended book for anyone interested in biblical history.

[Brad Kuhn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wealth of information on the historical setting of the bible. I found the chapters on Christianity to be too short/high-level, but the majority of the book covers pre-Christian history and I learned a tremendous amount.

[Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

With dry writing and lengthy sections, it normally is not a pleasant read; but the information went beyond repeating passages in the Bible. The author tried to base the work on archeology.

[Beth]

Very interesting and helpful to understand the biblical world

[Sue K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good intro on history in Levant. Will be one of my ongoing resource books to refer to

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative, interesting, but tended to be a bit dry.

[Scott Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good methodology, good results. Some chapters were weaker than others; some were a delight to read.

[Jason Larimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and I think I will read it again because of its sheer depth of detail.

[Belle Meade School]

220.95