The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age by John J. Collins

Author:John J. Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-09-13T10:28:00+00:00

Israelite Religion: The Return of the Goddess

The Hebrew Bible is in large part a purported history of the people Israel, with a primary focus on its religion. Consequently, scholars have often found it hard to distinguish between biblical theology and the history of Israelite religion.' The primary basis for a distinction lies in the weight given to nonbiblical sources in the latter enterprise. The so-called Religionsgeschichtliche Schule of a century ago was inspired in large part by the discovery of ancient texts from Mesopotamia and elsewhere, which offered the possibility of putting the biblical account in a broader cultural context.2 For much of the 20th century, however, the history of religion was eclipsed by theology. The theological approach was concerned with the distinctiveness of Israel or, in the phrase of G. Ernest Wright, with setting "the Old Testament against its environment "3 This approach was not confined to Christian theologians. Ironically, the most extreme disjunction of the Bible from ancient Near Eastern religion was expressed in a book entitled The Religion of Israel, by the Israeli scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann.4

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