Ancient Israel. What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? by Lester L. Grabbe (T & T Clark

Ancient Israel. What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? By Lester L. Grabbe (T & T Clark, $150; hardcover; $29.95 paperback). This book is not a history as such but an attempt to discuss the issues relating to writing a history of Israel. G. guides the reader through this thicket of questions, giving the pros and cons on each question, but tending toward the so-called minimalist position although he avoids the ad hominem arguments that are common among historians of Israel today. For each period G. surveys the archeological and textual sources (biblical and inscriptional), identifies the issues under discussion, and then draws a balance in a section called analysis. A few gleanings: Jerusalem was unwalled and unfortified between the 16th to 8th centuries; the Albright thesis of a unified conquest has been abandoned by mainstream scholarship; the spread of alphabetic writing did not antedate the mid-8th century; monotheism was a late development; no one’s reconstruction of the united monarchy bears much resemblance to the biblical description; and the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt are contradicted b what we know of Egyptian history. The bibliography is first rate, with forty items by the author himself. Ralph W. Klein