Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah

The past generation of scholars saw the shift from unified notions of biblical theology to diverse developmental models based on the rise of monotheism towards the end of the biblical period. Now another, perhaps more relevant, shift is becoming apparent: a movement from ideas of unity to those of pluralism and diversity within the religion practiced by ancient Israelites and Judahites. Edited by two prominent scholars, this book brings together all the existing scholarly perspectives on such diversity, and adds some new ones. This remarkable volume represents the eye of the storm in current biblical scholarship. -- Bernhard Lang, University of Paderborn, Germany. Books about "the religion of ancient Israel" are not always clear as to whether their subject matter is what people in those times and places were actually doing and thinking (a further degree of difficulty) in the religious sphere of their lives, or rather what certain religious elites - priests, prophets, law scribes - thought they ought to be doing and thinking. As its title suggests, the present volume is quite clear on that point. Its contributors present a wide range of religious practices diversified geographically (north, south), topographically (household, village, city, temple, royal court), and sociologically (peasant culture, professional groups, cultic personnel), in the process illuminating many fascinating by-ways of scholarship. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated on putting together a composite image of religion in practice under the rubric of religious diversity. This is a book not to be missed. -- Joseph Blenkinsopp, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA. It has long been a commonplace to assume development within the religion of ancient Israel -- as is evidenced by the many chronologically-based histories of Israelite religion that were produced during the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century. Development, moreover, could be taken to imply diversity, through the defining of differences between Israelite religious thought of the monarchical period, say, and of the postexilic era. But the authors of Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah bring a far more sophisticated and far more exciting paradigm of difference to bear in their work, both by moving beyond scholars' traditional focus on developments in the religious thought of Israel's theological elites in order to concentrate instead on Israelite religion as it was actually lived and practiced among the population at large, and also by taking seriously differences in the ancient Israelites' religious life and practice that were manifest concurrently during any given time within ancient Israelite history - due, say, to differences in geographical location or due to differences in social context within the same geographical region (so that, for example, Israelite religion as it was practiced in urban venues is contrasted profitably to the religious expressions that characterized rural settlements, and religion as it was practiced in the Judahite royal palace is equally profitably contrasted to the religion of the commoner's household). The result is a richly textured description of Israel's "micro-religions" that represents, moreover, the state of the art, as older narratives of theological evolution are left behind in favor of a multivalent and carefully nuanced account of the manifold variations that characterized Israelite and Judahite religious life at every moment during these two polities' existence.' -- Susan Ackerman, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA The editors of this volume have brought together an international team of scholars who have already published landmark contributions to the issue of diversies of relegion in ancient Israel. Here they give pedagogical presentations of their specialist insights into matters of importance to all students of the Hebrew Bible. -- Tryggve

Francesca Stavrakopoulou is Lecturer in Hebrew Bible, University of Exeter. Her research focuses on ancient Israelite religion, Judahite kingship, and history and ideology in the Hebrew Bible. John Barton is Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford.

Ch. 1: Introduction; John Barton (University of Oxford); Ch. 2: Living between heaven and the underworld; Susan Niditch (Amherst College, Massachusetts); Ch. 3: 'Official' religion and 'popular' religion; Francesca Stavrakopoulou (University of Exeter); Ch. 4: 'Israelite' religion and 'Canaanite' religion; Mark S. Smith (New York University); Ch. 5: Royal religion in Judah and Israel; Nick Wyatt (Emeritus Professor, University of Edinburgh); Ch. 6: Temple worship beyond Jerusalem and Samaria; Diana Edelman (University of Sheffield); Ch. 7: Urban religion and rural religion; Philip Davies (University of Sheffield); Ch. 8: Domestic religion; Carol Meyers (Duke University); Ch. 9: Personal piety; Rainer Albertz (Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat, Munster).