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John Bright's History of Israel

An authoritative history of the Old Testament such as John Bright's "A History of Israel" must, ironically, proceed on a degree of faith. This naturally undermines the intent of the work from the outset, which is ostensibly to authenticate patriarchal traditions by providing them with a historical basis. Bright, in accepting most Biblical accounts as realitiesùincluding the covenant at Sinai, ancient Old Testament claims to monotheism, and the Genesis rendering of a personal relation between the individual and his God ùultimately masquerades religious dogma as serious history. Bright's thick, maximalist approach to the history of Israel is rich and enthralling, but theoretically flawed and a great deal more hypothetical than the author would have us believe.

The storyline of the Bible is not, in all likelihood, historical, but rather an accumulation of myths, fables, and revisionist stratagems designed to legitimize the past, present and future claims of an ancient people. The fact of the matter is, archaeology continues to contradict biblical postulates, and little hard evidence has been unearthed that can corroborate even the most basic assumptions of the Old Testament; as modern critics have pointed out, "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomonùnone of these biblical characters turns up in any written sources outside the Bible." In this, it likely true that arguably the most cherished component of Israeli religious loreùthe leaders, prophets, kings and teachersùcannot be said with any certainty to have existed anywhere other than in the Bible itself.

This is not a tragedy, nor does it deal a deathblow to Bright's noble enterprise. Historical inquiry is, by its nature, a difficult and delicate process, and a genuinely fact-based and minimalistic approach to the pre-history and history of Israel would undoubtedly yield a slim volume that would raise issues only to set them asi...

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John Bright's History of Israel. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:08, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703776.html