Overview

The Hebrew Bible is permeated with depictions of military conflicts that have profoundly shaped the way many think about war. Why does war occupy so much space in the Bible? In this book, Jacob Wright offers a fresh and fascinating response to this question: War pervades the Bible not because ancient Israel was governed by religious factors (such as 'holy war') or because this people, along with its neighbors in the ancient Near East, was especially bellicose. The reason is rather that the Bible is fundamentally a project of constructing a new national identity for Israel, one that can both transcend deep divisions within the population and withstand military conquest by imperial armies. Drawing on the intriguing interdisciplinary research on war commemoration, Wright shows how biblical authors, like the architects of national identities from more recent times, constructed a new and influential notion of peoplehood in direct relation to memories of war, both real and imagined. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jacob L. Wright (Emory University, Atlanta)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.80cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.600kg
ISBN:  

9781108480895

ISBN 10:   1108480896
Pages:   350
Publication Date:   23 July 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Part 1. Refugee Memories: Negotiating Relations and Borders to Neighboring States; 1. Passages to Peace; 2. Edom as Israel's Other; Part 2. Kinship and Commandment: The Transjordanian Tribes and the Conquest of Canaan; 3. Mapping the Promised Land; 4. The Nation's Transjordanian Vanguard; 5. A Nation Beyond Its Borders; 6. Kinship, Law, and Narrative; Part 3. Rahab: An Archetypal Outsider; 7. Between Faith and Works; 8. The Composition of the Rahab Story; 9. Rahab's Courage and the Gibeonites' Cowardice; Part 4. Deborah: Mother of a Voluntary Nation; 10. A Prophet and Her General; 11. A Poetic War Monument; 12. A National Anthem for the North; 13. Women and War Commemoration; 14. Jael's Identities.

Reviews

'The book is a welcome follow-up to the author's previous volume (David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory) [Cambridge, 2014] … The highlight of the work, however, is its thoroughgoing interdisciplinary character. Wright has provided an exemplar of the interdisciplinary study that should mark today's engagements with biblical warfare texts. This interdisciplinarity includes engagement with political theory and philosophy, sociology, anthropology, classical Greek literature, and international law. Readers of this monograph will find both a compelling technical approach to specific biblical texts and an invitation to a broader social and cultural conversation much needed in our time.' Brad E. Kelle, Society Of Biblical Literature

'The book is a welcome follow-up to the author's previous volume (David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory) [Cambridge, 2014] ... The highlight of the work, however, is its thoroughgoing interdisciplinary character. Wright has provided an exemplar of the interdisciplinary study that should mark today's engagements with biblical warfare texts. This interdisciplinarity includes engagement with political theory and philosophy, sociology, anthropology, classical Greek literature, and international law. Readers of this monograph will find both a compelling technical approach to specific biblical texts and an invitation to a broader social and cultural conversation much needed in our time.' Brad E. Kelle, Society Of Biblical Literature

Author Information

Jacob L. Wright is a professor at Emory University in the Candler School of Theology. He writes on a wide array of topics, ranging from material culture to commensality and urbicide. His first book, Rebuilding Identity (De Gruyter, 2003), won the Templeton Prize, and his most recent book, David, King of Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2014), won the ASOR Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award. His free online course (The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future) consistently ranks among the top online courses in the humanities.

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