The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past Book

For centuries it was widely held that the Bible recounted real historical events such as the Exodus, the kingdom of David and the Exile. But recently there has been a radical shift in interpretation--most scholars now accept that one can't simply paraphrase the Bible for an accurate history of ancient Israel and Palestine. Spearheading that shift, often controversially, has been Thomas Thompson, now Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Here, he takes his argument much further. The Bible is a crucial text, not so much for its veracity but as great literature and as the best insight we have into how stories are moulded for the audience of their time. The very idea of history, he argues, is a modern concept, incompatible with the world view of the ancient world. This book "looks at the Bible's view of the past on its own terms...because it is only as history that the Bible doesn't make sense". He argues that by doing so "we are not getting rid of the Bible" but are discovering "where it has always been: playing among its stories and legends". With detailed literary and historical analysis of the texts, referring always to what we now know about the contemporaneous socio-political forces at work in the Middle East, Thompson illuminates the relationship between the Old Testament and the New, Yahweh and Christ, Judaism and Greek philosophy. He writes delightfully, making a complex argument both accessible and fascinating to the general reader. --Jim RickardsRead More