The Hebrew Bible new insights and scholarship (New York University Press, 2008)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Israel without the Bible / Gary A. Rendsburg -- Bible, archaeology, and the social sciences: the next generation / Elizabeth Bloch-Smith -- Literary approaches to biblical literature: general observations and a case study of Genesis 34 / Adele Berlin -- Feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible / Esther Fuchs -- The laws of biblical Israel / Raymond Westbrook -- The study of ritual in the Hebrew Bible / David P. Wright -- By the letter?/word for word? Scripture in the Jewish tradition / Leonard Greenspoon -- From Judaism to biblical religion and back again / Ziony Zevit -- Jewish biblical theology / Marvin A. Sweeney -- Epilogue: Let a hundred flowers bloom: some reflections on reading and studying the Hebrew Bible / Peter Machinist
In April of 2001, the headline in the Los Angeles Times read, 'Doubting the Story of the Exodus.' It covered a sermon that had been delivered by the rabbi of a prominent local congregation over the holiday of Passover. In it, he said, 'The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.' This seeming challenge to the biblical story captivated the local public. Yet as the rabbi himself acknowledged, his sermon contained nothing new. The theories that he described had been common knowledge among biblical scholars for over thirty years, though few people outside of the profession know their relevance. New understandings concerning the Bible have not filtered down beyond specialists in university settings. There is a need to communicate this research to a wider public of students and educated readers outside of the academy. This volume seeks to meet this need, with chapters describing how archeology, theology, ancient studies, literary studies, feminist studies, and other disciplines now understand the Bible. --From publisher's description