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Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel
 
 
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Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel [Paperback]

Frank Moore Cross (Author)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 394 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press; New edition edition (29 Aug 1997)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0674091760
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674091764
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 909,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

Cross's classic work is...an essential element in the armory of any serious biblical scholar...If you haven't got it, get it! It is profound, definitive, and wonderfully readable. -- J. Harold Ellens Journal of Psychology and Christianity The essays in this study are all written with the complementary breadth of scope and attention to detail characteristic of Cross; each one is stimulating and several are a mine of information beyond the confines of the essay's topic. -- Bezalel Porten Journal of the American Academy of Religion Deserves to be read carefully and to be digested slowly...[This] book is full of fertile and productive theories. -- P. Wernberg-Moller Journal of Jewish Studies

Product Description

Directed toward a synthesis of the history of the religion of Israel, the essays in this volume address key aspects of Israelite religious development. Frank Moore Cross traces the continuities between early Israelite religion and the Caananite culture from which it emerged, explores the tension between the mythic and the historical in Israel's religious expression, and examines the reemergence of Caananite mythic material in the apocalypticism of early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
A MUST HAVE 21 April 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
An excellent guide fot anyone (including non-believers) who wants a basic understanding about the biblical account of the mythical past of Palestine.
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Amazon.com:  12 reviews
81 of 86 people found the following review helpful
Conservative, Radical, Challenging, Debatable 10 Jan 2002
By Timothy Dougal - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
"Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic" is a series of related essays on the composition of the Hebrew Bible. It is conservative in that it takes the general framework of the Biblical chronology as accurate, and Cross refers readily to "patriarchal folk", "the league" of tribes, "the empire of David and Solomon" and the "divided monarchy". Within this conservatism, Cross adheres to the relative conservatism of the Documentary Hypothesis, which is taken for granted by most scholars, but anathema to those who hold to the unity of the scriptures.

The book is radical in that Cross isolates themes and expressions derived from Canaanite mythology, particularly from mid-2nd millenium tablets found at Ugarit, written in an alphabetic script. He delves deeply into the names, titles and attributes of God, as well as into various sources which were united in the Bible as we now know it. "The Song of the Sea" rates a special chapter in which Cross demonstrates the independence of the poem from the story that surrounds it. He also reconstructs archaic precursor poems to various Biblical texts.

The book is challenging in that it is quite difficult and detailed. When I got started reading "Canaanite Myth..." 6 months ago, I quickly realized I didn't know enough to read it, so I took a few months to acquaint myself with the rudiments of Hebrew and middle-Eastern archaeology. Hebrew text, transliterations of Ugaritic, discussions of etymology and usage, sources of scribal error, and so on, using technical terms are the stuff of the volume, so it's not nearly as simple or neat as a least one of the other reviewers has suggested.

Finally, the book is debatable in that the reconstuctions of archaic texts based on the text we now have, the oldest exemplars of which date from the Hellenistic/Roman period, and projecting them backwards a millenium, and deriving political and ritual presumed practices from them seems to me highly speculative and ultimately dubious. For instance, while Cross does successfully demonstrate that "The Song of the Sea" is independent of the J and E sources, without more data, how can anyone possibly know at what point the poem became Yahwistic? The author cites archaic usage in dating, but it does not escape me that in our own culture, which is much less conservative than ancient cultures were, right into the 20th century, virtually all religious texts were translated into pseudo-King James English, which itself was archaic in 1611. Without securely dated copies, how would any future scholars date these? At the same time the book raises a number of issues which merit further study. This is not a book to read once and put on the shelf. It has much to offer for long term study.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Still groundbreaking, although some reconstructions pf the premonarchic cultus are questionable 15 Oct 2006
By Rob - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
As it was written in the 70s, Canaanite Myth is a little behind the times- it assumes, for example, that monolatry was present in Israel from the premonarchic period, and that later prophetic polemics and reforms were directed against "syncretism." We now know that this is probably not the case, and that most of the gods condemned as "foreign" by the prophets and Deuteronomists- Asherah, Astarte, Baal, and the Heavenly Host- were simply pan-Levantine gods that Israel had inherited from its Canaanite ancestors. It is Cross's work that has, in large part, prepared us to deal with this however. Cross's book meticulously examines a wide variety of biblical and extrabiblical texts, early and late, and observes many continuities between Israelite and Canaanite beliefs and modes of worship; poetics, theophanic language, and so on are largely identical between the two cultures, the only real difference being that Israel's public religion was overwhelmingly focused on a single deity (but not, as Cross assumes, completely excluding others, at least until the late monarchy). Cross's reconstruction of the Judean monarchic cultus is based on a lot of evidence both biblical and comparative; the chapters on the development of apocalyptic language are where the analysis really shines. When he extends this reconstruction into the premonarchic period, however, it becomes problematic. His assumption that the Israelite league was a solid and largely unified politco-religious unit, rather than a loose, shifting coalition of tribes as even the Bible itself suggests (the list of tribes in the Song of Deborah includes ten tribes, not twelve, two of which are demoted to the status of sub-tribal "clans" in later lists) largely distorts his analysis. Nonetheless, the book is still a must-read for those interested in understanding the biblical world.
42 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Extremely Helpful 26 April 2000
By John Walsh - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
You won't find any value in this book unless you are really into deep scholarship. This book was written by a leading Harvard expert in the field. I found it very helpful for researching some similarties between Ancient Israel and her polytheistic neighbors.
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