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The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past
 
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The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (Hardcover)

by Thomas L. Thompson (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (25 Feb 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0224039776
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224039772
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 722,448 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
For centuries it was widely held that the Bible recounted real historical events such as the Exodus, the kingdom of David and the Exile. But recently there has been a radical shift in interpretation--most scholars now accept that one can't simply paraphrase the Bible for an accurate history of ancient Israel and Palestine. Spearheading that shift, often controversially, has been Thomas Thompson, now Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Here, he takes his argument much further. The Bible is a crucial text, not so much for its veracity but as great literature and as the best insight we have into how stories are moulded for the audience of their time. The very idea of history, he argues, is a modern concept, incompatible with the world view of the ancient world. This book "looks at the Bible's view of the past on its own terms...because it is only as history that the Bible doesn't make sense". He argues that by doing so "we are not getting rid of the Bible" but are discovering "where it has always been: playing among its stories and legends".

With detailed literary and historical analysis of the texts, referring always to what we now know about the contemporaneous socio-political forces at work in the Middle East, Thompson illuminates the relationship between the Old Testament and the New, Yahweh and Christ, Judaism and Greek philosophy. He writes delightfully, making a complex argument both accessible and fascinating to the general reader. --Jim Rickards

Product Description
For centuries, archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars believed that the stories of the Bible described real historical events. In this text, Professor Thompson shows that we misunderstand the Bible if it is read as history, rather than literature.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Old Testament origins reconsidered, 12 Mar 2000
There is a whole corpus of books on the origins, the history and the archaeology of the Jewish people, but curiously little evidence. Professor Thompson starts where many other scholars place the compilation of the OT writings, but he considers this period to be their origin. The Persian Empire, like other mega-states in antiquity, would move whole peoples around like so much wet concrete - an early example of social engineering. The peoples who arrived in what is now southern Israel as refugees and exiles had to make sense of their past. Influenced by legends of such as Abraham and David (of whose kingdom there is virtually no evidence at all) they wrote a spiritual / theological account of the two ways of faith and life, grounded in history. Old Israel had vanished because it was unfaithful and rejected by God. But new Israel, best characterised by the second part of the prophecy of Isaiah, was a renewed people with fresh hope. A group of scribes, holy men and prophets thus wrote their own account of themselves as New Israel. In this account, the Old Testament is a vivid example of the creation of meaning through religious myth. Prof. Thompson has gotten into trouble in the past for his theses, but this book and its analysis of the scriptures rings true. The old questions such as : why is there no evidence at all of Israel in ancient Egypt ? What proof have we that Isaiah was written in two parts, 300 years apart ? These questions are answered by Thompson's book. You seem to sense that he is right, and look at the OT in a new way.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Historicisation repudiated, 6 Sep 2007
By S A Moran "Sean" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (Paperback)
The Bible's stories have provided the paradigm for the myriad of 'histories' that have been written about ancient Israel over the past two centuries. Further, archaeologists have usually approached their discipline with these stories in mind and have interpretated their data in accordance with this biblical paradigm. Since the late 1960s however, this consensus has been subjected to a challenge from a new school of scholars, of which Prof. Thompson is one of the most prominent. Here he firmly challenges the notion(s) that the Bible's stories are accounts of past events. Rather, the texts are structured from tropes and motifs that belong firmly within the intellectual matrix of the ancient Near East. Biblical figures such as Jesus, Elijah, Moses and David are placed firmly within these tropes: epitomising piety, humility and submission to God's will. Exodus, exile and a so-called return to the land are treated as metaphors that point to an apostate past: and the hope for a pious future of an Israel who can serve God with a pure heart. Prof. Thompson even challenges the idea that the god of the biblical stories is the God worshipped by the authors. Rather, they are just traditional, very human, understanding of an unknowable, transcendant divine. With extensive exegesis and a survey of the data, Prof Thompson's book is highly recommended and an essential read.
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