History : Historiography

This engaging collection of 12 essays challenges what the author calls the penchant of the Irish to use overly simplistic techniques, such as nostalgia and cliche, as a means of understanding their history. Skewering Ireland's writers, historians and its popular culture alike, Foster, a history professor at Oxford and a biographer of W.B. Yeats, takes aim at the "popularization of history...which has more to do with packaging and marketing." By emphasizing a romanticized mythology of Ireland, the writer maintains, storytellers sanitize the complexities of the Irish experience and accentuate "victimhood and tyranny." Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams are two memoirists whom Foster unflinchingly targets for their soggy and formulaic notions of Ireland. "Both...turn Irish childhoods to very particular purposes and both exemplify narratives skewed through selective 'evidence' and a manoeuvred memory." On the other hand, Foster is quick to praise writers such as Elizabeth Bowen and Hubert Butler for their idiosyncratic voices. more...

Price: $15.00

The thesis that the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings have undergone a redaction that made them into a 'Deuteronomistic History' has become since Martin Noth (1943) a widely accepted idea in Old Testament scholarship. But there is no consensus when this history was edited: under Josiah (622 BCE), during the exile (c. 560 BCE) or even later? And what was the intention of its redactors? Can we rely on the so-called Deuteronomistic History for the reconstruction of Israelite history? Or should we give up the thesis of a Deuteronomic redaction of the Former Prophets? This volume explores these and many other questions about this key topic in Old Testament scholarship. It results from a research seminar organized by the Swiss universities of Fribourg, Geneva, NeuchGtel and Lausanne. It contains contributions by the following scholars: R. Albertz, J. Briend, M. Detienne, W. Dietrich, J.J. Glassner, S. Japhet, E.A. Knauf, A.D.H. Mayes, S.L. McKenzie, S. Pisano, M. Rose, A. Schenker, F. Smyth, A. de Pury and T. R÷mer. Articles in French were translared by J. Edward Crowley. more...

Price: $180.00

This study assimilates diverse interpretations of the origins of the Middle East conflict. The collection presents the most recent developments in the conflict's historiography and a critical reassessment of Israel's past. more...

Price: $36.95

Avihu Zakai analyzes Jonathan Edwards's redemptive mode of historical thought in the context of the Enlightenment. As theologian and philosopher, Edwards has long been a towering figure in American intellectual history. Nevertheless, and despite Edwards's intense engagement with the nature of time and the meaning of history, there has been no serious attempt to explore his philosophy of history. Offering the first such exploration, Zakai considers Edwards's historical thought as a reaction, in part, to the varieties of Enlightenment historical narratives and their growing disregard for theistic considerations.Zakai analyzes the ideological origins of Edwards's insistence that the process of history depends solely on God's redemptive activity in time as manifested in a series of revivals throughout history, reading this doctrine as an answer to the threat posed to the Christian theological teleology of history by the early modern emergence of a secular conception of history and the modern legitimation of historical time. In response to the Enlightenment refashioning of secular, historical time and its growing emphasis on human agency, Edwards strove to re-establish God's preeminence within the order of time. Against the de-Christianization of history and removal of divine power from the historical process, he sought to re-enthrone God as the author and lord of history--and thus to re-enchant the historical world.Placing Edwards's historical thought in its broadest context, this book will be welcomed by those who study early modern history, American history, or religious culture and experience in America. more...

Price: $69.00

A sustained close reading of 1 Samuel 8 to 2 Samuel 1 from the perspective of the intended ancient audience. A conscious effort is made here to read and understand the text 'through the eyes of an ancient Israelite', to the extent that the world-view and idioms of late seventh-century Judah can be reconstructed. The study reveals a coherent, carefully developed narrative of Saul's career as the first king of Israel. more...

Price: $160.00