Synopsis
One of the most distinguished Judaic scholars of his time, Frank Moore Cross has devoted his life to understanding the textual legacies of the ancient Israelites, from archaic Hebrew poetry to the Bible, and was among the first scholars to collect and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls. His 1973 book, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, is arguably the most important single book on Biblical studies and the religious history of Israel to appear in the second half of the twentieth century. Now Cross has written the successor to that influential study. In From Epic to Canon, Cross discusses specific issues that illuminate central questions about the Hebrew Bible and those who created and preserved it. He challenges the persistent attempt to read Protestant theological polemic against law into ancient Israel. Cross uncovers the continuities between the institutions of kinship and of covenant, which he describes as "extended kinship." He examines the social structures of ancient Israel and reveals that beneath its later social and cultural accretions, the concept of covenant--as opposed to codified law--was a vital part of Israel's earliest institutions.
He then draws parallels between the expression of kinship and covenant among the Israelites and that practiced by other ancient societies, as well as in primitive societies. Cross also reconstructs early Israelite institutions from surviving elements of traditional narrative, especially sacral traditions, by combining new insights drawn from the study of oral transmission of epic and sacred lore, as well as from the ongoing harvest of archeological data and inscriptional remains. He focuses on the place of Jewish priestly institutions and ideology into the context of New Eastern religion and the survival of "olden gods" within the henotheistic beliefs of early Israel. Drawing on the Daliyeh Papyri, excavations on the ancient city of Gerizim in the remains of the Samaritan temple, and a host of archeological finds elsewhere, Cross also reconstructs a more complete and accurate history of the era of the Judean Restoration than has been possible in the past.
Cross closes this magisterial book suggesting that a radical rewriting of the text and canon of the Hebrew Bible has become necessary in light of new information gleaned from the Dead Sea Scrolls he has studied for nearly fifty years, and argues that, at the very least, the new data require a wholly fresh critical approach to the Hebrew Bible. "Distinguished scholar Cross, author of the classic Canaanite Myth and hebrew Epic, uses excavations at the city of Gerizim, the Daliyeh Papyri and other archaeological finds to give fresh meaning to the reading of the Hebrew Bible. Cross argues that the concepts of covenant and kinship, rather than codified law, were the structures underlying early Israelite religion. He also contends that the information gained from the Dead Sea Scrolls calls for a new critical approach to the Hebrew Bible, as well as a rewriting if its text and canon. Impeccable scholarship and lucid prose make Cross's book a must-read for Hebrew Bible scholars." --Publishers Weekly, November 16, 1998. "This book is surely destined to become a classic, a crowning achievement to a distinguished life of scholarship."
--Biblical Archaeology Review "In the study of the Old Testament, perhaps no one has been a better and more stimulating scholar in the past half century than Frank Moore Cross, emeritus professor at Harvard, editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls and author of salient books and articles. Cross is one of the few who commands the whole range of the biblical field, from the second millenium BCE to the Roman period. He has embodied the model of the scholar, who is, as Shakespeare puts it in Henry VIII 'Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading. To those men who sought him sweet as summer.'"--Mark Hamliton, Stone-Campbell Journal
