mens_sana

I saw that you plan to hold off on the OT reading for a while. I find it "relaxing" after a stint of NT debates. So, here's a starter list to file away (alphabetical by author):

History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, Vols. I & II: From the Beginnings to Maccabees Albertz, Rainer; Trans. by John Bowden. Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 1994. 0-664-21846-6/0-664-27847-4. 740 pp. of which 198 are footnotes, in smaller font! Heavy reading, not for the faint-hearted; will make more sense after Collins and Gottwald.

Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition. Batto, Bernard F. Westminster/John Know Press, Louisville, 1992. 0-664-25353-9. Yahwist primeval myth, Priestly revision, Exodus as myth, Atrahasis epic in Genesis, Ugaritic myth in the Bible.

Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Collins, John J., Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2004. 0-8006-2991-4. Essential critical & comparative perspectives, socio-historical background, compositional history of the books; Collins is Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale.

The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Coogan, Michael, Ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. 0-19-513937-2.

Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Cross, Frank Moore, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1973. 0-674-09176-0. 9th printing, 1997

From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel. Cross, Frank Moore; John Hopkins U.P., Baltimore, 1998. 0-8018-6533-6.
These two Cross books trace the continuities between early Israelite religion and the Canaanaite/Ugaritic culture. They are classics, very little of which has been superceded.

What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It? Dever, William, G.; Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2001. 0-8028-4794-3.

Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Dever, William G.; Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2003. 0-8028-0975-8.

Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Dever, William G.; Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2005. 0-8028-2852-3.
The 3 Dever titles are pretty much self-explanatory. Dever is a highly respected archaeologist and an agnostic, secular humanist, which makes the 1st title above all the more intriguing for its sometimes strident rant against the "minimalists."

The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. Gottwald, Norman K.; Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1985. 0-8006-1853-X.
Read this one with the Collins above. The author supports the indigenous revolution theory for the Joshua-Judges period, but the rest of the book is fine. He is one of the first to have termed several of the Bible books "novellas."

The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History. Halpern, Baruch; Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1988. 0-86683-990-9. Halpern was a student of Richard Elliott Friedman, but did not succumb to the blandishments of DH-solves-everything.

The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. Levenson, Jon D.; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993. 0-300-06511-6. The idea that the ancient Israelites did NOT engage in human sacrifice will never enter your mind again!

Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000-586 B.C.E. Mazar, Amihar. Doubleday, New York, 1990; New Preface 1992. 0-385-42590-2. This is a standard textbook/handbook.

How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel. Schneidewind, William M.; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004. 0-521-82946-1. From orality to textuality; cogent argument for a written pre-exilic Torah, without saying that the text reached any kind of set state.

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Smith, Mark S,; Fwd by Patrick D. Miller; Eerdmans Pub.Co; Grand Rapids, 2002. 0-8028-3972-X. Smith is Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at NYU.

The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Smith, Mark S.; Oxford University Press, 2001. 0-19-516768-6.

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Smith, Mark S,; Fwd by Patrick D. Miller; Eerdmans, 2002. 0-8028-3972-X.

The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel. Smith, Mark S.; Fortress Press, 2004. 0-8006-3485-3. The 4 Smith titles above are a literary approach. They update the Frank Moore Cross and supplement the Dever.

Life in the Ancient Near East: 3100-332 B.C.E. Snell, Daniel C.; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1997. 0-300-07666-5. Demography, social groups, family, women, labor, land & animal management, crafts, trade, money, government throughout the ancient Near East — the societies the texts came out of.

Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel -- JSOT Supplement Series 111. Taylor, J. Glen.; Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Sheffield, 1993. 1-85075-272-9. Hard to find; avail. through Interlibrary Loan; has a lot of valid detail although the overall thesis has not been widely accepted.

Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. Tcherikover, Victor; trans. by S. Applebaum; Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1959. LC Cat # 59-8518. Hard to find; avail. through Interlibrary Loan; makes solid sense of the Maccabean period; shows WHY Antiochus IV Epiphanes profaned the Temple and how the Jews invited Pompey's conquest.

The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. Zevit, Ziony; Continuum, New York, 2001. 0-8264-6339-8. Goes beyond the Dever and Smith books for a wider, archaeologically based portrait of a polytheistic ancient Israel, but shies away from the practice of human sacrifice. Read the Levenson too. Does line by line analyses of Kuntilet Arjud, etc. inscriptions and drawings.

robto

Yes - but part of the argument relies on his Cross Gospel. I didn't find this part convincing, partly I'm sure because I haven't read Cross Gospel. But that's a small part of the book and it's definitely worthwhile even if you haven't read anything else.
I have to agree with you here. I am, sort of by default, a Q supporter too, but I find it difficult to buy a reconstruction of 3 levels of composition in an already-hypothetical text. But Kloppenborg is quoted so often, you'll have to read him eventually.
[shameless self-promotion]
Yes.
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mens_sana, thanks for the OT list! Now I've got some new stuff on my wish list, too!

Amaleq13

I've got it (IIRC, it was difficult to find; out of print?) but I think he summarizes the argument well enough in BoC. It is an interesting argument but I, too, was not convinced.

Steven Avery

Hi Julian, here are seven excellent books.

The Messiah in the Old Testament In the Light of Rabbinical Writings by Risto Santala

The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters
by Samuel R. Driver, Adolf Neubauer

Rabbi Akiba's Messiah - The Origins of Rabbinic Authority
by Dan Gruber http://www.elijahnet.org/

God, the Rabbis, and the Virgin Birth
by Daniel Gruber Elijah Publishing PO Box 776 Hanover, NH 03755

The Servant of Jehovah by David Baron

The Messiah Texts by Raphael Patai

Nazarene Jewish Christianity - Ray Pritz