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		Wright, Jacob L.

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		Bible. Old Testament.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Origins.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Antiquities.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Evidences, authority, etc.
		Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
		Jews -- History -- 1200-953 B.C.
		Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.
		Jews -- Civilization -- To 70 A.D.
		Palestine -- History -- To 70 A.D.

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		Wright, Jacob L.
		Bible. Old Testament.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Origins.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Antiquities.
		Bible. Old Testament -- Evidences, authority, etc.
		Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
		Jews -- History -- 1200-953 B.C.
		Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.
		Jews -- Civilization -- To 70 A.D.
		Palestine -- History -- To 70 A.D.


	MARC Display

Why the Bible began : an alternative history of Scripture and its origins / Jacob L. Wright.

by Wright, Jacob L.

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Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Bible. Old Testament.

Bible. Old Testament -- Origins.

Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible. Old Testament -- Antiquities.

Bible. Old Testament -- Evidences, authority, etc.

Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.

Jews -- History -- 1200-953 B.C.

Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.

Jews -- Civilization -- To 70 A.D.

Palestine -- History -- To 70 A.D.

9781108490931 (hc.)

Alternate title:

Alternative history of Scripture and its origins

xvii, 482 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Includes Biblical References and index.

"Why did no other ancient society produce a text remotely like the Bible? That a tiny, out of the way community, could have created a literary corpus so determinative for peoples across the globe seems improbable. For Jacob Wright, the Bible is not only a testimony of survival, but also an unparalleled achievement in human history. Forged after Babylon's devastation of Jerusalem, it makes not victory but total humiliation the foundation of a new idea of belonging. Lamenting the destruction of their homeland, scribes who composed the Bible imagined a promise-filled past while reflecting deeply on abject failure. More than just religious scripture, the Bible began as a trailblazing blueprint for a new form of political community. Its response to catastrophe offers a powerful message of hope and restoration that is unique in the Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds. Wright's Bible is thus a social, political, and even economic roadmap - one that enabled a small and obscure community located on the periphery of leading civilizations and empires, not just to come back from the brink, but ultimately to shape the world's destiny. The Bible speaks ultimately of being a united yet diverse people, and its pages present a manulal of pragmatic survival strategies for communities confronting societal collapse." --Page before the title page.

"In this landmark study, Wright (War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible), an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible at Emory University, analyzes why and how “the most influential corpus of literature the world has ever known” originated in “a remote region of the ancient world, rather than... the centers of civilization.” According to Wright, scribes began working on the Torah following the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and intentionally wove their peoples’ subjugation by the Babylonian Empire into the narrative, creating a history that reexamined “every facet of their existence.” Mostly, though, the “biblical project” was an answer to the smoldering rifts between the Northern kingdom (of Israel) and the Southern kingdom (of Judah), in hopes that the vision of “a nation that transcends the borders of its kingdoms” would prove “the populations of these two rival states could be one people.” Wright paints a fascinating and multilayered portrait of the scriptural authors, who “built questioning into the system of the Bible” (interspersing scripture with “contradictions that undermine their overall message, requiring the reader to ponder the problems and take a personal stance”) and whose writings provide the modern reader with insights into “questions of corporate life, common welfare, and collective survival.” Thought-provoking and scrupulously researched, this is a tour de force."--Publishers Weekly.

Jacob L. Wright is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. His first book, Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and its Earliest Readers (de Gruyter, 2004), won the 2008 Templeton prize for a first book in the field of religion. He is also the author of David, King of Israel, and Caleb in Biblical Memory (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which won The Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research, and most recently, War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

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