Introduction

Abstract

The intent of this introduction is to signpost how the various studies of this book unfold. The thread that binds the chapters that follow consists of two questions: what did the biblical scribes know about the past referred to in their narratives? And how did they come to know it? This work responds to these questions by triangulating biblical references with a wider constellation of archaeological evidence unearthed from the era in which the biblical stories are set, thus enabling us to examine the relationship between the past attested by these archaeological remains and that past represented within the biblical writings. What comes to light through this manner of investigation, this study argues, are meaningful details concerning the past knowledge made available to Hebrew scribes through information handed down to them, including insights into the underlying frameworks and modes of knowing that would have made narrating a past in prose writing possible.

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

“…Work by Weitzman (2017) and Pioske (2018), for example, examines how biblical or Israelite origins were conceived over the long durée. Biemann (2009) turned to the idea of a 'Jewish Renaissance' of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to understand how conceptions of modernity reshaped notions of beginnings and renewals for Jewish thinkers, and Mintz 2017examined S.Y.…”