Customer Reviews

Religion and Culture in Ancient Israel

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J Andrew Dearman begins his book with definitions of religion and culture from a noted anthropologist named Clifford Geertz. Religion is a set of symbols which act as long-lasting motivations in people. In narrow contrast, culture is
"historically transmitted patterns of meaning." For Dearman religion is "inseparable" (page 5) from culture.

In the first three chapters of his book, Dearman describes the relationship between religion and culture in the Deuteronomistic history, the Chronicler's history, and the Maccabean history. In the last four chapters Dearman addresses four specific phenomena: Covenant instruction, pre-exilic prophecy, wisdom literature, and apocalypticism.

Dearman's book is heavily footnoted. One chapter has more than 200 footnotes. the book is well researched. Yet one shortcoming of Dearman's book is that he does not exercise a criticial view of the historicity of the biblical narratives. On page 127 he states that Deuteronomy "is the most comprehensive statement in the Pentateuch of the application to the life of all Israel." Yet he knows that this writing was written some centuries after the events it intends to record. For this reason I conclude that Dearman never shows that patterns of meaning were historically transmitted.

Second Dearman makes short use of extra-biblical sources in explaining the culture of ancient Israel. So what one reads in this book is a record of religion and culture in *biblical* Israel.

Finally, I find Dearman's thinking in this book to be shallow.
For example, on page 104 Dearman writes that Ezra-Nehemiah represent torah observance as a key to Israel's identity. Some 22 lines later Dearman begins the next paragraph with the same idea and little development of thought in between or afterward.