Overview

Few topics are as broad or as daunting as the God of Israel, that deity of the world's three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who has been worshiped over millennia. In the Hebrew Bible, God is characterized variously as militant, beneficent, inscrutable, loving, and judicious. Who is this divinity that has been represented as masculine and feminine, mythic and real, transcendent and intimate? The Origin and Character of God is Theodore J. Lewis's monumental study of the vast subject that is the God of Israel. In it, he explores questions of historical origin, how God was characterized in literature, and how he was represented in archaeology and iconography. He also brings us into the lived reality of religious experience. Using the window of divinity to peer into the varieties of religious experience in ancient Israel, Lewis explores the royal use of religion for power, prestige, and control; the intimacy of family and household religion; priestly prerogatives and cultic status; prophetic challenges to injustice; and the pondering of theodicy by poetic sages. A volume that is encyclopedic in scope but accessible in tone and was honored with all three of the major awards in the field in three seperate disciplines (American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) 2020 Frank Moore Cross Award, 2021 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, 2021 Biblical Archaeology Society Biennial Publication Award for the Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible), The Origin and Character of God is an essential addition to the growing scholarship of one of humanity's most enduring concepts.

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9780197687543

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This is an important book, full of insightful comments, and is both wide-ranging and well-researched. * Eryl W. Davies, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament * Theodore J. Lewis's magnum opus reflects his scholarly commitment to the study of the religion of ancient Israel through the centrality of the definition, agency, history, and meaning of God. A masterful presentation of interdisciplinary scholarship incorporating archaeology, art, culture, literature, politics, and the lived experiences and realities of religious faith with scripture, this encyclopedic survey will become a classic reference work as well as a classic must-read for scholars of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as an audience beyond the academy. * 221 AAR Book Awards * Recommended. Ambitious upper-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers. * J. S. Kaminsky, Smith College, CHOICE * The Origin and Character of God is a magnum opus on the religion of ancient Israel. Taking a history of religion approach, Professor Lewis properly places the emergence of Israelite religion in the broader context of near eastern religion and history. It will be an essential reference work for generations to come. William M. Schniedewind, UCLA In this landmark reference work, Theodore J. Lewis surveys the gods El and Yahweh, along with the goddess Astarte, as well as their rituals, personnel and polemics. Lewis masterfully describes the vast evidence found in iconography and texts, both biblical and extrabiblical. A readable volume marked by rich documentation, sober assessment, balanced judgment. * Mark S. Smith, Author of The Genesis of Good and Evil: The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible * The Origin and Character of God is driven by critically evaluated data. In it, Theodore J. Lewis illustrates how hypotheses developed with conscientious methodological rigor should be applied to explain such data. In this remarkable magnum opus, Lewis, whose many contributions to the study of Israelite religion and, more generally, of divinity in the ancient Near East are well known and highly regarded, provides scholars a useful model for the type and quality of research that will carry these fields forward in coming decades. * Ziony Zevit, American Jewish University * Theodore Lewis's new book is a true magnum opus. It takes on the challenge of understanding ancient Israelite religion by focusing on how the Israelites conceptualized deity, more specifically, the god Yahweh and Yahweh's older relative, the Canaanite El. Lewis spares no effort to be comprehensive, taking in all the primary evidence from written texts and non-written archaeology and all the modern scholarship.... His coverage is lucid and systematic, and not simply descriptive, but a probing inquiry on many levels... paying close attention to both visual and written sources and their interplay, and demonstrating an acute awareness of the limits of our primary evidence. * Peter Machinist, Harvard University *

Author Information

Theodore J. Lewis (PhD Harvard University) is the Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Origin and Character of God: The Religion of Ancient Israel through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford University Press), Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (Harvard Semitic Monographs), and co-author of Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (SBL Press). He is General Editor of the multi-volume Writings from the Ancient World translation series and the co-editor with Gary Beckman of Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion. He is former editor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Hebrew Annual Review. His research has received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lewis's multidisciplinary The Origin and Character of God has received the Frank Moore Cross Award from the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) for the most substantial volume related to the history and/or religion of the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean, the 2021 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion, and the 2021 Biblical Archaeology Society Biennial Publication Award for the Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible.

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