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Remembering Abraham: Culture, Memory, and History in the Hebrew Bible
According to an old tradition preserved in the Palestinian Targums, the Hebrew Bible is "the Book of Memories." The sacred past recalled in the Bible serves as a model and wellspring for the present. The remembered past, says Ronald Hendel, is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture. It is a mixture of history, collective memory, folklore, and literary brilliance, and is often colored by political and religious interests.
In Israel's formative years, these memories circulated orally in the context of family and tribe. Over time they came to be crystallized in various written texts. The Hebrew Bible is a vast compendium of writings, spanning a thousand-year period from roughly the twelfth to the second century BCE, and representing perhaps a small slice of the writings of that period. The texts are often overwritten by later texts, creating a complex pastiche of text, reinterpretation, and commentary. The religion and culture of ancient Israel are expressed by these texts, and in no small part also created by them, as they formulate new or altered conceptions of the sacred past. Remembering Abraham explores the interplay of culture, history, and memory in the Hebrew Bible. Hendel examines the Hebrew Bible's portrayal of Israel and its history, and correlates the biblical past with our own sense of the past. He addresses the ways that culture, memory, and history interweave in the self-fashioning of
Israel's identity, and in the biblical portrayals of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and King Solomon. A concluding chapter explores the broad horizons of the biblical sense of the past.
This accessibly written book represents the mature thought of one of our leading scholars of the Hebrew Bible.
In Israel's formative years, these memories circulated orally in the context of family and tribe. Over time they came to be crystallized in various written texts. The Hebrew Bible is a vast compendium of writings, spanning a thousand-year period from roughly the twelfth to the second century BCE, and representing perhaps a small slice of the writings of that period. The texts are often overwritten by later texts, creating a complex pastiche of text, reinterpretation, and commentary. The religion and culture of ancient Israel are expressed by these texts, and in no small part also created by them, as they formulate new or altered conceptions of the sacred past. Remembering Abraham explores the interplay of culture, history, and memory in the Hebrew Bible. Hendel examines the Hebrew Bible's portrayal of Israel and its history, and correlates the biblical past with our own sense of the past. He addresses the ways that culture, memory, and history interweave in the self-fashioning of
Israel's identity, and in the biblical portrayals of the patriarchs, the Exodus, and King Solomon. A concluding chapter explores the broad horizons of the biblical sense of the past.
This accessibly written book represents the mature thought of one of our leading scholars of the Hebrew Bible.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
3 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Hendel
11 books1 followerRonald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and general editor of The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition.
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September 20, 2023If you had to guess why a certain passage in the Hebrew Bible was written/what its function was for its audience/what it meant in its original context and you wagered it had something to do with delineating an ethnic/cultural/national identity, you would probably be right about 99.9% of the time. Revisiting it recently, it's amazing just how much of the Bible is about providing an etiology or maintaining an ethnic/cultic boundary or explaining tribal relationships, and how little has to do with what I as a twenty-first century gentile should think/say/do/believe. But it's also interesting how fluid those boundaries are. As Hendel points out, "A dialectic of sharing and distancing, of inclusion and estrangement, [of uniqueness and similarity, I would add,] characterizes biblical culture from it's earliest sources to its latest." Boundaries need to be constantly redefined/reinterpreted, which is literally the entire story of the Hebrew Bible and of all religion to this day. This is why I'm a bit more sympathetic to Jewish frames for reading the Bible ("What is Torah? The midrash of Torah") than those that claim the Bible is absolutely fixed for all time. Those folks are negotiating with the text just as much as anyone else, but either don't see it or intentionally obscure this fact. Hendel again: "A culturally and historically alive Bible may be unsettling to some, for whom its meanings require the stable sediment of tradition. But tradition is itself unstable, and interpretation goes on, without end." Lots more going on here, but these are just some thoughts I had after reading the first essay, which is excellent. ANYWAY, this is a book I've seen retail for $90 that I found in "acceptable" condition on Thriftbooks for $10 and it was literally brand new. ✨
March 13, 2023
“The remembered past is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture. … The religion and culture of ancient Israel are expressed by these texts and, in no small part, also created by them, as various texts formulate new or altered conceptions of the sacred past.”
potential-reads
March 26, 2024R.b. Robert Altar
February 9, 2014
Did the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob literally exist? Were the Israelites miraculously redeemed from slavery in Egypt during the Exodus? Did King David rule over the Twelve Tribes of Israel from his throne in Jerusalem? I like how talk show host, Dennis Prager answers these questions. He says that he is unapologetic in believing these Bible accounts; and that whether figurative or literal, he believes these stories are to be read literally as history. His reason is that it is as history that the Biblical narratives meaningfully inform our lives.
Dennis Prager draws this conclusion from his own personal experience as a lifelong student of Torah and as a professional observer and commentator on society and modern life. In a reverse-analysis from that of Prager, based not on personal perspectives but on national and cultural considerations, author Ronald Hendel proposes that these stories are the deposit of historic MEMORY as interpreted and selectively transmitted through the generations. As important as the historic detail of an event may be, the MEANING of the event in cultural memory is more durable. In our age, we take for granted the transmission of history through written texts. But widespread access to written histories has not been available until very recent times; and even with such access, texts will not be read or remembered unless they detail events that have been adopted into cultural memory as markers of group identity.
Reading the Bible with this awareness can be challenging to the fundamentalist. Why? Because seams emerge where earlier accounts are modified by later editors. Polemics replace revelation. Human fingerprints are seen on the divine text. Is it thereby diminished, or enhanced? Ronald Hendel responds to these questions in seven concise chapters: 1) Israel among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East, 2) Remembering Abraham, 3) Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives, 4) The Exodus in Biblical Memory, 5) The Archaeology of Memory: Solomon, History, and Biblical Representation, 6) The Biblical Sense of the Past, Appendix: Linguistic Notes on the Age of Biblical Literature (clues from Classical vs Late Biblical Hebrew). Ronald Hendel uses the tools of Biblical criticism both to confirm historic roots to ancient Hebrew narratives and to demolish the historicity of some scriptural accounts. A book worth the effort for serious Bible students.
Dennis Prager draws this conclusion from his own personal experience as a lifelong student of Torah and as a professional observer and commentator on society and modern life. In a reverse-analysis from that of Prager, based not on personal perspectives but on national and cultural considerations, author Ronald Hendel proposes that these stories are the deposit of historic MEMORY as interpreted and selectively transmitted through the generations. As important as the historic detail of an event may be, the MEANING of the event in cultural memory is more durable. In our age, we take for granted the transmission of history through written texts. But widespread access to written histories has not been available until very recent times; and even with such access, texts will not be read or remembered unless they detail events that have been adopted into cultural memory as markers of group identity.
Reading the Bible with this awareness can be challenging to the fundamentalist. Why? Because seams emerge where earlier accounts are modified by later editors. Polemics replace revelation. Human fingerprints are seen on the divine text. Is it thereby diminished, or enhanced? Ronald Hendel responds to these questions in seven concise chapters: 1) Israel among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East, 2) Remembering Abraham, 3) Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives, 4) The Exodus in Biblical Memory, 5) The Archaeology of Memory: Solomon, History, and Biblical Representation, 6) The Biblical Sense of the Past, Appendix: Linguistic Notes on the Age of Biblical Literature (clues from Classical vs Late Biblical Hebrew). Ronald Hendel uses the tools of Biblical criticism both to confirm historic roots to ancient Hebrew narratives and to demolish the historicity of some scriptural accounts. A book worth the effort for serious Bible students.
January 21, 2015
Did the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob literally exist? Were the Israelites miraculously redeemed from slavery in Egypt during the Exodus? Did King David rule over the Twelve Tribes of Israel from his throne in Jerusalem? I like how talk show host, Dennis Prager answers these questions. He says that he is unapologetic in believing these Bible accounts; and that whether figurative or literal, he believes these stories are to be read literally as history. His reason is that it is as history that the Biblical narratives meaningfully inform our lives.
Dennis Prager draws this conclusion from his own personal experience as a lifelong student of Torah and as a professional observer and commentator on society and modern life. In a reverse-analysis from that of Prager, based not on personal perspectives but on national and cultural considerations, author Ronald Hendel proposes that these stories are the deposit of historic MEMORY as interpreted and selectively transmitted through the generations. As important as the historic detail of an event may be, the MEANING of the event in cultural memory is more durable. In our age, we take for granted the transmission of history through written texts. But widespread access to written histories has not been available until very recent times; and even with such access, texts will not be read or remembered unless they detail events that have been adopted into cultural memory as markers of group identity.
Reading the Bible with this awareness can be challenging to the fundamentalist. Why? Because seams emerge where earlier accounts are modified by later editors. Polemics replace revelation. Human fingerprints are seen on the divine text. Is it thereby diminished, or enhanced? Ronald Hendel responds to these questions in seven concise chapters: 1) Israel among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East, 2) Remembering Abraham, 3) Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives, 4) The Exodus in Biblical Memory, 5) The Archaeology of Memory: Solomon, History, and Biblical Representation, 6) The Biblical Sense of the Past, Appendix: Linguistic Notes on the Age of Biblical Literature (clues from Classical vs Late Biblical Hebrew). Ronald Hendel uses the tools of Biblical criticism both to confirm historic roots to ancient Hebrew narratives and to demolish the historicity of some scriptural accounts. A book worth the effort for serious Bible students.
Dennis Prager draws this conclusion from his own personal experience as a lifelong student of Torah and as a professional observer and commentator on society and modern life. In a reverse-analysis from that of Prager, based not on personal perspectives but on national and cultural considerations, author Ronald Hendel proposes that these stories are the deposit of historic MEMORY as interpreted and selectively transmitted through the generations. As important as the historic detail of an event may be, the MEANING of the event in cultural memory is more durable. In our age, we take for granted the transmission of history through written texts. But widespread access to written histories has not been available until very recent times; and even with such access, texts will not be read or remembered unless they detail events that have been adopted into cultural memory as markers of group identity.
Reading the Bible with this awareness can be challenging to the fundamentalist. Why? Because seams emerge where earlier accounts are modified by later editors. Polemics replace revelation. Human fingerprints are seen on the divine text. Is it thereby diminished, or enhanced? Ronald Hendel responds to these questions in seven concise chapters: 1) Israel among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East, 2) Remembering Abraham, 3) Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives, 4) The Exodus in Biblical Memory, 5) The Archaeology of Memory: Solomon, History, and Biblical Representation, 6) The Biblical Sense of the Past, Appendix: Linguistic Notes on the Age of Biblical Literature (clues from Classical vs Late Biblical Hebrew). Ronald Hendel uses the tools of Biblical criticism both to confirm historic roots to ancient Hebrew narratives and to demolish the historicity of some scriptural accounts. A book worth the effort for serious Bible students.
July 17, 2012
Superb overview of early Judaism
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