This volume honoring Diana V. Edelman focuses on a pervasive topic of her prolific scholarship, namely her pursuit of the history of ancient Israel. She has contributed to Southern Levantine history, archaeology, and culture within the larger framework of the ancient Near East. She has added much to our knowledge of emerging forms of Judaisms in the Persian and Hellenistic periods as well as strategies for re-conceptualizing the divine in the biblical texts. In particular, she has addressed different “sites of memory” (cf. Pierre Nora’s concept lieux de mémoire), which includes, for instance, geography/space, buildings, monuments, religious texts, people/figures, and events. The purpose of these sites of memory is to bring up images that stimulate collective remembrance of the past and offer directions for the future. Diana has argued that characters, places, objects, and the like mentioned in the Hebrew Bible represent such “sites of memory” and that they together form a network of sites of memories, what she has called “the memory landscape” of ancient Israel (2013). In this network, some are emphasized more than others, so as to play a more prominent role and thus becoming a “core central site of memory” (e.g., Abraham, Moses, David). Not only do these characters have much narrative content about their lives, but they are also mentioned as key figures, serving as central and symbolic figures in the community, aiding it in their understanding of its shared past, its current condition, as well as defining aspirations for the future.

In the monarchic time, Israelites and Judahites practiced circumcision, as did their neighbors. They practiced circumcision on boys at puberty as a “rite de passages” into (nuptial) maturity. In the exilic period, in the context of the encounter with the Babylonian and Persian civilizations, which did not practice circumcision, the Priestly writers invented a new function of circumcision. It became a “rite de passage” into the world and a sign of the covenant between Yhwh and his people. The circumcision of the newborn male became an identity marker also with regards to people who practiced circumcision at the age of puberty. The circumcision on the eighth day is an invention of P.

Recent years have seen a turn to the “human factor” of exile, as scholars increasingly apply insights from various social sciences to their interpretation of the events following the demise of the kingdom of Judah. One area of research within this development focuses on issues of gender; more particularly, on the experience of compromised masculinity that would have accompanied defeat and deportation. Leaning on insights from masculinity studies, trauma studies, and postcolonial critique, this article explores the possibility of construing circumcision–a ritual whose popularity seems to have increased during the exile–as a coping mechanism, which functioned to restore a sense of agency, masculinity, and, paradoxically, physical wholeness. This approach not only helps to account for the peculiarly gendered nature of this identity marker, but also offers an explanatory matrix for the ambivalent treatment circumcision receives in the biblical texts, as a ritual that accomplishes both insider identity and otherness, and can symbolize either virility or emasculation.

In the Hebrew Bible, there are certain characters that plays a significant role in the development of social memory and national or ethnic identity in ancient Israel. A typical example is the patriarch Jacob, who also is identified as Israel and is used as a representation for the nation and people of Israel. This association between the patriarch and the nation makes him a stand out as main figure of cultural memory and the formation of a national identity in ancient Israel, forming what Edelman has coined a “core central site of memory”. A feature I have observed in the narratives in the so-called Jacob cycle in Gen 25-36, is that the female characters in Jacob’s family seems to play a prominent role and have considerable influence on the life direction and choices of the main protagonist. Thus in this article, I therefore want to explore how the three generations of women – his mother Rebekah, his wives Leah and Rachel and his daughter Dinah – each make their active contributions in shaping the destiny, and development of the character of Jacob in these stories. Through the employment of memory studies and intersectionality, I want to look at how the involvements of these female characters alludes to the larger thematic issues regarding Israel in the Hebrew Bible, such as divine selection, fertility and wealth, experience of exile and the relationship with neighboring people. By doing so, I hope I can recognize certain shared memories of the community and what it can tell us about its perceived identity, how it faced its challenges in the past and near present, and what it can expect to face in the present and the near future.

It is well known that I perceive the Bible as polemic literature. This declaration opens my book “Hidden Polemics in Biblical Narrative,” which discusses the ideologies and types of polemics. My use of the term “polemic” assumes a topic on which opinions differ and in biblical times would have been a subject of intellectual and public debate, of which we have evidence. In my book I describe four types of such polemics: the explicit or open; the indirect; the implicit or hidden, and the seemingly hidden polemic too. They can be distinguished from one another by the way they relate to the topic of the polemic and to the attitude towards. All of them appear in the story of Joseph, therefore this contribution deals with the four types of polemics in this story. Moreover, these polemics prove that the story of Joseph reflects the Persian period.

The famous Shibboleth-Episode combines features of historical record, popular tradition, redaction history of the Deuteronomistic History and theological motifs such as justice in case of mass murder and the divine war-motif. This contribution intends to unfold these different layers of the present text in order to demonstrate the development of a section of the book of Judges that is of special significance until today.

This contribution investigates the literary history of 1 Sam 28 and its contexts in religious history. Contrary to recent models postulating a late Deuteronomistic origin of the narrative, it shows that the literary core of 1 Sam 28 was drafted much earlier, namely in the era of the Northern Israelite monarchy. This core mirrors practices of ancestral cult and necromancy that were an important field of ancient Israelite religion, including the religion of the court, closely related to Ancient Near Eastern and particularly North-West Semitic traditions. At the same time, the original narrative proves a masterpiece of early Hebrew literature, depicting king Saul compassionately as a tragic hero and in no way criticizing him. Only several additions change Saul’s picture according to Deuteronomistic ideas, and the failing king becomes more and more criticized for turning to idolatrous religious practices instead of trusting in Yahweh.

The story of the man of God and the old prophet in 1 Kings 13 has been analyzed using various methods of interpretation. Some scholars have been concerned to determine the source or sources of the story; others have focused on its placement in the book of Kings or its function in the Deuteronomistic History as a whole. These approaches have enriched our knowledge of the story, but debate continues, especially regarding the point of the story. Is it a moral lesson drawn from the consequences of obedience and disobedience to the word of God? Does the story give the reader a way to distinguish true and false prophecy? Is the authority of the prophet its main concern? Is its point to say something of significance about the nature of the word of God? This essay will enter into the debate surrounding the point of the story employing a literary analysis of the structure of the narrative and its dialogue to determine the central message of the story.

While lexical cross-references play a pivotal role for exploring the book of Jeremiah’s relation to Deuteronomy, similar pragmatic strategies have remained marginal to the debate. Against this background, this essay shows how the book of Jeremiah employs a pragmatic strategy pivotal to Deuteronomy to challenge the role that the sefer hattorah written by Moses plays in the restoration after the exile. Jer 30:1–4 will be considered as a test case.

Traditionally, the Books of Haggai and Zechariah (1–8) are connected with the rebuilding of the temple in the reign of Darius I. This rebuilding would have taken place in the reign of Darius I i.e. around 520–515 BCE. In her magnificent monograph on the ‘Origins of the Second Temple’, Diana Edelman has challenged the chronology of the events that took place in Persian period Yehud. As far as I can see, she does not draw any conclusions as to the fate of Haggai (or Zechariah). In this paper, I would like to elaborate on the idea that the Darius mentioned in the Book of Haggai should be identified with Darius II.

An interpretation of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah cannot neglect the various lists. The lists build a network of their own, which interweaves the books and highlights every important event. They function as documentation and as legitimation for special groups. All lists, except Neh 3:1–32, use the groups of the priests, Levites and the lay-people as the backbone of their structure. The group-based description of the community is also integrated in most of the narrative units, only missing in Ezra 4:8–24, Ezra 5:3–6:14/15, and Neh 1:1–7:3. With regard to the priests, neither the lists nor the narrative units legitimize one single priestly character. On the contrary, the diversity of priestly persons is striking. Only the high priestly lineage is used as an important argument throughout the various texts and lists, though the people with a high priestly genealogy are rarely related to each other. The situation appears quite different with regard to the Levites. A group of (six) Levites is clearly emphasized, as they appear in almost every list and, beyond, in narrative texts. The Levites Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani/Binnui/Bunni, Hodaviah/Hodiah/Judah, Sherebiah and Hashabiah/Hashabneiah build a network all over the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, disregarding even the chronological setting of the events.

While Kings foretells Josiah with the prophet from Judah, Chronicles makes no explicit prediction in advance of the king. However, the highly adapted narrative of Josiah from that in Kings contains several references to earlier material in Chronicles. This will include the stated genealogy in 1 Chr 3. While acknowledging the obvious rewrite of the “reform” backward from Josiah to Hezekiah and Manasseh, that will not be the focus of this essay. Instead, narrative inclusions useful for the Josiah portrayal from the earlier text will be considered. David and Solomon as temple cultus authors as well as other literary connections throughout the work will be contemplated.

This contribution uses a memory-oriented perspective to shed light on three aspects of the archaeology of the Southern Levant, which perhaps can be seen as material correlates of cultural and social memory. The examples are from Late Bronze Age New Kingdom Egypt, Iron Age Philistia, and the Hellenistic Hasmonean culture. These examples can serve as an indication of the potential contribution of memory-oriented perspectives in the study of the ancient cultures of the Southern Levant.

The recent excavations at Tell Halif utilized household archaeology in order to focus on its Iron 2B dwellings; as a result, Halif is uniquely placed to help archaeologists and biblical scholars alike to better understand the cultural context of ancient Israel/Judah. In order to better understand daily life, our focus must shift from the monumental places (like palaces and temples) to the common stage where daily life occurred – the home. In this paper, a detailed analysis of Halif’s most recently excavated house (aka the A8 house), will be presented followed by a preliminary investigation into its position in the “neighborhood.” The focus of household archaeology and its methodology of spatial analysis will be employed to better understand the daily activities of this Iron 2B Judahite household.

The memory of Jericho in Ancient Judaism is generally related to the conquest of Canaan and luxuriant palm groves. Numerous geographical, historical, archaeological, epigraphic, literary and administrative data are now available to reconstruct the cultural landscape of the region and its dynamics in Late Antiquity. The relationships between Jericho and Qumran, i.e. the Khirbeh and its inhabitants – the Essenes – during the Hasmonean and Herodian periods reveal dynamics at work between the centre of Jericho’s territory and its southern periphery, i.e. Khirbet Qumran, and vice-versa. The multispectral approach, following the New Cultural Studies, results in (re )evaluation of Jericho in the origins of the Essene community, and the not negligible role of Khirbet Qumran and its inhabitants within the territory of Jericho.

One of our problems in writing the early history of ancient Israel is that the period of its beginnings is essentially a “Dark Age.” Yet this is hardly the only period of history known as the “Dark Age”; another well-known one is the period of two centuries or so after the Romans left the British Isles. It is during this period that King Arthur is placed. This essay will attempt to work out principles for writing a history of Israel’s Dark Age by looking at the historiographic problems and their proposed solutions arising from the British Dark Age and, especially, the historicity of King Arthur.

In the preface to The Fabric of History, Diana Edelman appeals for more theoretically attuned approaches to the history of ancient Israel that attend, critically and self-consciously, to the type of sources we weave into the fabric of those histories we write. This study pursues one thread of this larger cloth by examining the conditions under which the referential claims of the Hebrew Bible first became possible. A key provision for the composition of these biblical stories, this investigation argues, was the appearance of a native Hebrew prose tradition in the ancient world of the southern Levant. This investigation retraces elements of the genealogy of this prose tradition by exploring comparative instances of prose writing from other literary cultures in antiquity and epigraphic evidence from the region, texts that, this study maintains, helps us to both situate the emergence of Hebrew prose historically and understand better the types of past knowledge these writings convey.

Diana Edelman devoted much attention to Benjamin. Philip Davies, Diana’s long time Sheffield colleague, elaborated the hypothesis of a Benjaminite prototype for the two biblical historiographies. This article deconstructs various rebuttals to Davies’ Benjaminite History of Israel that use Josiah’s reform to trump a Benjaminite prototype. Given the historical problems relative to Josiah, we conclude that a Benjaminite subtext for Joshua–Kings and for Chronicles remains a persuasive hypothesis. We suggest some additional episodes from the Book of Judges to those identified by Davies as part of the Benjaminite prototype.

This paper analyses the presentation of Cyrus in Isa 40–48 by emphasising its imperial context. After locating the Cyrus discourse in Isa 40–48, in which this foreign king is situated among Israel, YHWH, other deities, kings and peoples, I will explore how scholars have compared the presentation of Cyrus in Isa 40–48 to various material related to Persian kings. Such comparisons are carried out from different points of view, like pursuit of influence or a comparison that aims at shedding light on the prophetic discourse by bringing in new perspectives. I will discuss two recent studies, by Kratz and Silverman, which both explicate the presentation of the topic of creation and Cyrus in Isaiah as due to an influence of Achaemenid imperial ideology and cosmology. When scholars read this prophetic discourse through the lens of this scholarly constructed ideology, the focus tends to be on assumed similarities without paying enough attention to decisive differences. While Kratz and Silverman map influence of the prophetic discourse of Cyrus mainly from material related to Darius I, I will rather compare the presentation of Cyrus in Isa 40–48 to the Cyrus cylinder. This analysis will be informed by perspectives taken from postcolonial studies, illuminating how accommodation and resistance to the Empire were simultaneously engaged. In all instances, what matters is how Cyrus is placed under the authority of the deity of Israel in this prophetic discourse.

Much has been written on the development of “authoritative texts” in Persian Yehud, but there remains little consensus on what authority itself means or the relevant social structures in which it operated. This essay sketches a framework for analyzing authority and emphasizes the impact of the social structure of Yehud on authority with reference to the memory of Davidic kingship and the presence of Persian kingship. Since the evidence for social structure is currently inconclusive, the essay will outline several potential scenarios and explore how authority may have functioned in each instance.

Against a background of an examination of Judean military communities in Egypt this paper asks if the institution of the politeuma, or of the synagogue, or other associations of Judean military communities had libraries, and whether Judean scribes in Egypt may have been influenced by the literary culture of other groups, Egyptian and non-Egyptian, among whom they lived? Was this the context for the production, copying, preservation, and exchange of Judean-Greek stories and traditions? Did the politeuma, the synagogue, and other institutions of military communities, including private associations, provide the context for the preservation and production of literature?

When Ps 105 and 106 remember history, they do so in different ways. Not only do they recall different episodes from the past, focus on the role of God or the people, emphasis different theological themes, but they also highlight different emotions connected with the retold events. In this way, they also evoke different emotions in the readers. This paper focusses on the emotional dimension of Ps 105 and 106. Following the argumentation of these psalms, it describes the explicitly mentioned emotions, the emotional evaluations of the remembered events and it points out an emotional dynamic that these texts can evoke in their readers. I argue that this emotional process of remembering the past strengthen the persuasive power of these prayers and enables the readers to join in the viewpoint of these psalms.

The notion of ‘cultural memory’ or ‘social memory’ has been commonplace in biblical research since about 2008, when an EABS research group bearing that name had its first meeting. Central in the use and development of that concept was Ehud Ben Zvi. A number of scholars, like Philip R. Davies and Niels P. Lemche, adopted the term and included it in their study of biblical historiography. Mostly, people refer to Jan Assmann, but a closer look shows that the term is not quite clear in his writings. There is the impression that research in the wake of Assmann’s work maintained this lack of clarity. Accordingly, the concept is still being used, not only in works on historiographic texts in the Bible, but also on prophetic and poetic texts, often combined with re-use of older texts in late 2nd Temple texts. The objective of this contribution is to assess the latest development of “cultural/social memory-studies” and especially its relation to other terms and concepts, some of them now becoming important in works related to biblical studies, like utopia/dystopia, the older term “charter myth,” and concepts like ‘trauma literature’ (a notion also studied by D. Edelman). Deuteronomy is a text central to Diana Edelman’s latest research. Relating the assessment of the present situation in memory-studies to Deuteronomy (and the Exodus story) should also include a discussion of its relation to didactical terms used in that book and current research about them. Some years ago (in FS E. Ben Zvi), I discussed his concept of social memory. As Ben Zvi and Edelman have collaborated on several publications, including also work on the book of Deuteronomy, it is time to see how the concept has developed and its implication for that book (and the Exodus story).

This contribution explores a range of Alexanders of memory of the late Second Temple Judah, as we may reconstruct them based on extant literary texts (e.g., Josephus), and as it does, so it sheds cross-cultural light on a more general issue, namely that of “mnemonic appropriations of ‘high-value’ outsiders” by local, groups engaged in asymmetric power relations with “imperial” courts and settings. This contribution explores, inter alia, how a subaltern community may shape for itself an in-between conceptual area shared by the local community and the ‘foreigner’ symbolically embodied in the figure of the relevant ‘high value’ character, which is important for not only the subaltern construction of and interaction with the Other, but also for the construction of the subaltern Self. To be sure, such processes often go together with the emergence of voices hinting at local hesitations and concerns about foreign rulers, and the whole business of appropriating and thus lionizing the ‘high value’ outsider.

“Ancient Persia and the “Persian Period” have been important for the production of biblical literature. This essay presents Jane Dieulafoy, French explorer, excavator of Susa, writer, and ethnographer, whose work complemented the knowledge produced by biblical scholars – through studies of material remains, archaeological excavations, and ethnographic fieldwork. Based on and inspired by her findings in the mentioned research areas, she turned her prize-winning novel on the Ancient Persian queen Parysatis into a libretto for a drame lyrique (an operatic sub-genre) of the same name, with incidental music by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The drama is discussed under the umbrella of reception history, including the reception history of the Persian Empire in the imperial ambitions of 19th Century France. Dieulafoy’s interest in the opera format, as demonstrated through the libretto for Parysatis, represents the convergence point for her research areas, cultural engagements and political entanglements

This volume honoring Diana V. Edelman focuses on a pervasive topic of her prolific scholarship, namely her pursuit of the history of ancient Israel. She has contributed to Southern Levantine history, archaeology, and culture within the larger framework of the ancient Near East. She has added much to our knowledge of emerging forms of Judaisms in the Persian and Hellenistic periods as well as strategies for re-conceptualizing the divine in the biblical texts. In particular, she has addressed different “sites of memory” (cf. Pierre Nora’s concept lieux de mémoire), which includes, for instance, geography/space, buildings, monuments, religious texts, people/figures, and events. The purpose of these sites of memory is to bring up images that stimulate collective remembrance of the past and offer directions for the future. Diana has argued that characters, places, objects, and the like mentioned in the Hebrew Bible represent such “sites of memory” and that they together form a network of sites of memories, what she has called “the memory landscape” of ancient Israel (2013). In this network, some are emphasized more than others, so as to play a more prominent role and thus becoming a “core central site of memory” (e.g., Abraham, Moses, David). Not only do these characters have much narrative content about their lives, but they are also mentioned as key figures, serving as central and symbolic figures in the community, aiding it in their understanding of its shared past, its current condition, as well as defining aspirations for the future.