Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 17:1 (NA 1966)
Article: Historical Method And Early Hebrew Tradition
Author: Kenneth A. Kitchen

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TynBul 17:1 (1966) p. 63

Historical Method And Early Hebrew Tradition1

K. A. Kitchen

One of the most enlivening and valuable features of Near Eastern historical studies during these last four or five years has been the regular appearance of successive fascicules of the new edition of the first two volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History. With well over 40 fascicules published or in the press, perhaps a half of the whole is now (or soon will be) available. From the Aegean to Mesopotamia and Elam, from the austere Anatolian uplands across the Syrian littoral to the ribbons of culture along the Nile, we are treated to a richly documented series of essays that mark in a myriad of ways the vast strides in our knowledge and understanding of the Ancient Near East in the four decades which have elapsed since the first edition of CAH, I/II appeared in 1924-26. Suffice it to mention the brilliant discoveries at Ugarit, Mari and its archives of 20,000 tablets, the systematization and extension of an entire province of archaeology in Anatolia, the dramatic recovery of remarkable Neolithic and later cultures there and in Syria-Palestine and Mesopotamia, an the steady advances in our knowledge of the two ‘senior’ civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Both in the old CAH and in the new one, among the records of the politically ‘lesser’ peoples, the Hebrew traditions of the Old Testament have their due place. For the new CAH I/II, Professor Otto Eissfeld, well known in continental Old Testament studies, has written two fascicules.

TynBul 17:1 (1966) p. 64

In the first (The Exodus and Wanderings), he briefly comments on the limited sources of information for Old Testament characters (i.e., usually the Old Testament alone), and upon the supposed literary structure of the Pentateuch. Then he considers the Hebrew patriarchs—who or what they were, their possible date, the role of their need of pasture in relation to traditions of early Hebrew movements in and out of Egypt. Eissfeldt next deals similarly with the traditions of the Exodus and the wanderings in Sinai and Transjordan. In the second fascicule (The Hebrew Kingdom), like consideration is given to the settlement in Canaan and the period of the Judges, before passing on to the generally acknowledged solid ground of the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon.

In that second fascicule, we find—to use Eissfeldt’s words (6)— a ‘positive form [of historical treatment that] intentionally avoids’ the kind of ‘resigned scepticism’ of CAH, first edition when we read the sections (VII—IX) on Saul, David and Solomon; that on Canaan and Israel (VI) is likewise ‘positive and notable ...

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