Davies returns to ancient Israel

THE BIBLE AND INTERPRETATION:

A Guide For The Perplexed

What makes me a disciple of von Rad is that for me too the stories count for more than the “facts”. I have no commitment to “scripture”, but if I want to understand “ancient Israelites” or any other human groups or individuals from the past, I will do so better by coming to terms with what they thought about the past than what had actually transpired. If, as I think was most often the case, the writers of these biblical stories did not actually know what had happened, then the actual events have a restricted relevance to them: it would have made no difference to these writers whether what they narrated had happened or not.

See Also: The History of Ancient Israel: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

In Search of "Ancient Israel": A Study in Biblical Origins (Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2 edition, 1992).

By Philip R Davies
Chair, Palestine Exploration Fund
Emeritus, University of Sheffield, England
November 2015

Davies is usually controversial and always interesting.