Download Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel

Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel
The use of social-scientific methods as a means of illuminating the ancient information has
become an essential element in studies of ancient Israelite society.
By Paula McNutt
Department of Religious Studies
Canisius College
Much of the recent research on the history of ancient Israel has given attention to
understanding the nature and development of society. When I began writing Reconstructing
the Society of Ancient Israel, there was no single-authored general synthesis of these studies
that both gave attention to methodology and covered the periods extending from the tribal
period through the period of Persian domination. This volume, in Westminster John Knox’s
Library of Ancient Israel series (edited by Douglas Knight), represents my attempt to provide
such a synthesis.
Reconstructing the Society of Israel is organized chronologically, beginning with the
question of the origins of "Israel" and ending with the Persian period. Several chapters focus
on the social processes associated with major transitions in ancient Israel's history (that is, on
the diachronic dimension of Israelite society), and introduce some of the processual models
that have been proposed for these transitional periods. Other chapters are more synchronic, in
the sense that they deal more with social institutions, social structure, and social organization.
They include discussions of demography and settlement patterns, economy (subsistence
strategies, patterns of labor, systems of exchange and trade, land ownership and distribution
of wealth, technology), sociopolitical organization and structure, and social and political
institutions (leadership, government, the judicial system, religion). Each of the chapters is
introduced with a general overview of the available evidence associated with the period in
question.
Writing a book like this was possible in large part because of a significant methodological
shift in biblical studies over the last several decades that emphasizes a more intentional
application of social-scientific methods, models, and theories as tools for reconstructing
ancient Israel's social world. This development has significantly expanded the field of
questions it is possible to ask about the nature of ancient societies. It has also encouraged us
to view the nature and function of ancient literature in a new light. The current emphasis
among Syro-Palestinian archaeologists on recovering as much material information as
possible about all aspects of ancient life has also had an effect on expanding the field of
inquiry. The book is thus as much about the problems and processes associated with
constructing the past from the available sources as it is about the social world of ancient
Israel itself. In a sense, it presents history more as an "ongoing conversation" between past
and present than as what we know or think we know about past events and peoples. What
follows is an abbreviated version of the introductory chapter of the book, which focuses
primarily on issues relating to sources, methods, and models.
Sources
The sources available to us for reconstructing the social world of ancient Israel include the
Hebrew Bible in its various early versions, other ancient Near Eastern texts and documents,
and material information recovered through archaeological excavations. Although
traditionally the Hebrew Bible has been the primary source for interpreting the social
contexts out of which it emerged, many recent studies have placed more emphasis on
archaeological information and theories and models from comparative sociology and
anthropology. There is, in fact, some controversy over the relative value of the various
sources, particularly with respect to the question of the degree to which the Bible contains
actual historical and social information. At one end of the spectrum are those who insist that
the Bible is accurate in its historical details. At the other end are those who view the overall
value of the Bible as a historical source with great skepticism. Most biblical scholars fall
somewhere between the two extremes, but the skeptics' voices in recent years have been loud
enough that they have generated some heated responses from some who hold the middle
ground or are closer to the other end of the spectrum.
I do not attempt in the book to offer any definitive solutions to these issues. Each
perspective is worth considering, and reconsidering, as we engage in the task of constructing
and reconstructing histories of ancient Israel and trying to look behind the evidence to catch a
glimpse of what Israelite and Judean society may have been like.
The Bible
Like all texts, the Bible grew out of sociopolitical realities and cannot be fully understood
apart from them. Because of their relatedness to such realities, if used critically the biblical
texts are potentially useful sources of social and cultural information. But, as is the case for
any text, the biblical traditions are models or constructs of reality. Although they can tell us
something about general cultural "notions" about reality at various times in Israel’s history,
they do not record "history" in the sense that history is understood in the twentieth century.
Thus the "history" recorded in the biblical narratives, whether they contain accurate
information or not, should be understood first and foremost as representing notions and
beliefs constructed to serve some purpose in the social and historical contexts in which they
were written, edited, and arranged in their present form. Particularly in crisis situations such
as political subordination or exile, or periods of rapid social change, the biblical writers in
various periods would have appealed to and reinterpreted sacred history (myth) to legitimate
claims about the present and to encourage others to accept these claims, with such intentions
as strengthening national identity, or reaffirming or reinterpreting shared values. This type of
response is well documented by anthropologists in other societies experiencing rapid culture
change or crisis brought on by other factors.
Another important consideration is the social locations and intentionalities of those
responsible for writing and editing the texts, and who their audiences were. For example, the
authors of the biblical literature were most likely male and would almost certainly have been
from a small and elite class. The literature they constructed, then, most likely reflects more
the concerns of their own gender and their own class consciousness than that of the society as
a whole. Different groups would have had different, often competing interests (whether these
are articulated or not), and different worldviews. Such competing interests often give rise to
the production of propaganda. Ruling elites in socially stratified states, for example, often
seek to maintain their power through persuasion and propaganda, and propaganda is almost
certainly present in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, whatever actual religion and ideology the
biblical literature reflects, it is not necessarily the religion and ideology of the people outside
the elite classes.
Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Documents
The Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts from Syro-Palestine, Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and Anatolia share a broad cultural heritage as well as some common literary
forms and themes. There are a number of different types of literature from ancient Near
Eastern contexts that provide us with potentially useful historical, social, and cultural
information—inscriptions, ostraca and letters that record information about events and
political relationships; mythological literature and cultic inscriptions that reveal something
about religion, worldview, customs, practices, and the like; inventories that give us a glimpse
of economic systems and relations; legal texts that reflect beliefs about social values and
concepts of justice.
Comparison of these texts to those in the Bible has contributed in a number of ways to our
understanding of ancient Israel and its literature, history, and culture and provide us with
additional information about Israel's and Judah's historical and political relations with the
surrounding regions. But, as is the case with the biblical literature, these texts yield very
selective kinds of information, are often ambivalent, sometimes make conflicting claims, and
are sometimes simply unbelievable. It is necessary, therefore, to observe the same kinds of
cautions identified for the biblical material in evaluating the historical value of this
material—for example, the possibility that royal inscriptions were intended as propaganda,
and thus present a distorted picture of real events and relationships.
Archaeological Information
In the past, archaeologists working in the Middle East were typically interested in
illuminating the biblical text and clarifying the relationship of Israel to surrounding cultures.
Thus, historians used the material remains of ancient Israelite culture revealed through
excavation to supplement, and often to corroborate, the biblical texts. In recent years,
however, more emphasis has been placed on the kinds of information they contribute to
reconstructing the total range of ancient Israel's social world. Of particular significance in this
regard is the shift in research strategy of many recent excavations, surveys, and
archaeological studies—from an almost exclusive concern with the chronology and
monumental architecture of large sites and sites thought to be associated in some way with
the biblical traditions, to a consideration of smaller sites and the types of remains that provide
us with information on everyday life. The attention now given to excavating and surveying
smaller sites is especially important given the fact that rural life has not been nearly as well
documented archaeologically as has city life. The past emphasis on the latter has left us with
a rather lopsided view of ancient life, particularly given the fact that about 90 percent of the
population probably would have lived in small towns and villages. Many types of
archaeological materials that at one time would have been ignored are now recognized for
their value in helping us define, for example, the economic and technological bases of a
settlement or region. The arrangement and size of structures, and the distribution of
resources, prestige items or valued commodities, and the like indicate something about social
structure and organization and relations with neighboring groups. The patterns of settlement
distribution, artifact and building distribution within a settlement, distribution of resources,
distribution of artifacts among graves in a cemetery, and regional distribution of exchanged
items provide insights into aspects of the social and economic structures of ancient societies
that are not necessarily revealed in texts.
Archaeology, then, provides an impressive range of information that has advanced our
knowledge and understanding of the physical, technological, economic, social, and
intellectual life of the peoples of the ancient world, as well as how, and why, change occurs.
Archaeology also allows us to reconstruct ancient Palestine's environment (for example,
topography, climate, land and water resources), subsistence systems, exchange networks,
settlement patterns, demography, and the like which cannot be reconstructed on the basis of
texts. For ancient Palestine, it has also provided an important corrective to the biblical picture
of ancient Israel's origins, the transition to a state form of sociopolitical organization, the
internal structure and external relations of Judah and Israel, and the nature of society in
Palestine following Judah's restoration.
Archaeological evidence is considered by many to be more reliable and accurate than the
biblical texts as a source of historical information because, in contrast to the Bible, there is no
intentional selectivity in what has been left behind for archaeologists to find. In a sense, there
is actually some selectivity (although not intentional) in archaeological remains, resulting, for
example, from such things as the arbitrary nature of human behavior and accidents of
preservation, and thus potential information is lost, and the reconstructions of scholars
distorted. But many, nevertheless, argue that the remains of material culture, by their very
randomness, are more objective and neutral and, thus, more representative of what really
happened in the past.
Archaeological information, then, is an important source for understanding the nature of
Israelite society and its transformation over the course of many centuries. But, like the
biblical literature and other ancient Near Eastern texts, it mediates between what actually
happened in the past and what is represented through it as having happened, and thus it must
be interpreted. Any resulting interpretations must be recognized as hypotheses that are
subject to change as new information or different methods of interpretation are applied.
Methods: Anthropology
Anthropology and sociology have informed many of the recent reconstructions of ancient
Israel's social world, although there seems to be a move toward more dependence on
anthropology. As an academic discipline, anthropology is somewhat difficult to define, in
large part because there is no clear agreement on a central paradigm for research or on the
nature of the questions anthropologists should be asking. This is reflected in the variety of
reconstructions that have been proposed about the character and development of ancient
Israelite society.
Among the emphases in anthropology that have been useful in reconstructions of ancient
Israelite society are those that focus on analyzing social structure and organization and those
that are concerned with social institutions such as kinship, community, and tribe.
A more recent emphasis is on studying cultural symbols and patterns of meaning, that is,
on the ways in which people think about their worlds and construct systems of meaning that
are expressed through symbols, and the ways in which these influence social and cultural
change. This approach to studying cultures shows a concern not only with the behavior of
human populations but also with their notional models for generating behavior and for
perceiving and interpreting their material environments. It includes consideration of how
people generate, maintain, modify, and reproduce symbols as a way of making sense of the
world and determining how to act in it. Trying to get at the shared meanings of such symbol
systems can be especially problematic when studying societies such as ancient Israel whose
basic concepts of time, space, and person, along with other aspects of the social order,
differed significantly from our own. Contributing to this problem for the interpreter is the fact
that such notions are often taken for granted to such an extent that they are never fully
articulated.
Traditionally, one of the goals of anthropologists has been to develop universal "laws" of
social organization or of cultural order. But many anthropological studies focus on specific
societies and cultures within particular historical contexts, and thus anthropology shares
many common features with the discipline of historical studies. Historians, for example, seek
primarily to explain specific events, but they nevertheless rely, even if only implicitly, on
sociological or anthropological conceptions about such things as the nature of religious
beliefs and political relations. And although anthropologists may be concerned primarily with
studying recurrent regularities in a society, their expression is necessarily related to specific
historical events. Both historians and anthropologists, then, seek systematically to infer what
is known or knowable about beliefs and social order.
Ethnohistory and ethnoarchaeology are subdisciplines in anthropology that combine the
methods of historians and anthropologists and have been used in some recent reconstructions
of ancient Israel’s social world. For the ethnohistorian, both oral traditions and traditional
history are accepted as legitimate data for reconstructing cultures and their histories.
Ethnohistory is a kind of documentary ethnology in which “documents” are treated as
ethnographic data that can be applied to the study of human behavior within an
anthropological theoretical framework. For the ethnohistorian, then, the "document," either
oral or written (e.g., biblical texts), or material (e.g., archaeological information), plays the
role the informant plays for the ethnologist.
Ethnoarchaeology is an approach that is similar to ethnohistory in highlighting the
complementarity between anthropological and historical approaches to studying culture and
society. It emphasizes integrating historical and archaeological data and using ethnographic
information from contemporary societies and anthropological models as a way of
illuminating this information. It operates on the assumption that some behavioral elements of
sociocultural systems have material correlates. Those material correlates that are part of the
archaeological record are used to develop inferences about the behaviors with which they
were associated. Many of the recent archaeologically-based reconstructions of ancient Israel
are essentially ethnohistorical/ethnoarchaeological in nature.
Social-Scientific Approaches in Biblical Studies
Serious ventures on the part of biblical scholars to fathom the complexities of the ancient
Israelite social world began over a century ago, although most of them were oriented toward
solving literary and historical puzzles rather than social ones, and they were hampered by
undeveloped anthropological and sociological methods and models. But it has only been
since the renaissance of interest in social-scientific approaches in the 1970s that biblical
scholars have come generally to recognize the importance of relating the literature of the
Hebrew Bible to its varied social contexts and of applying social scientific approaches and
theories to this end. This is related to a growing awareness that this literature was shaped by
social, religious, and ideological factors that were influenced by social forces as well as the
historical phenomena that were emphasized in the past. The availability of a wider range of
social scientific data and approaches and increased attention to methodological rigor have
contributed to generating new theories with the potential of opening up new perspectives on
biblical material. An especially significant development in recent studies is the emphasis on
the importance of diachronic and processual studies for understanding culture and society, an
orientation that is necessary both for understanding the nature of the biblical literature and the
sociocultural contexts that underlie it.
The social-scientific approach as it is now applied in biblical studies is represented by a
number of different methodological currents. These studies appeal, for example, to
sociological and anthropological models of nomadism, tribalism, and state formation.
Advances in archaeological theory have contributed to these developments by giving more
attention to the use of ethnographic analogies and to such factors as settlement patterns and
means of subsistence.
A number of the studies are functionalist in orientation. Essentially, the premise of
functionalism is that the parts of any cultural system must be understood in relation to each
other and to the overall structure of the system as a whole. Parts of the cultural system (for
example, religious practices, belief structures, mechanisms for dealing with conflict) are thus
viewed as contributing to the maintenance or perpetuation of the system, assuming that social
systems, like organisms, have a tendency toward equilibrium. Conflict is often considered by
functionalists to be a natural element in a society's development, resolving itself within the
modified but coherently "functioning" unity. Although the functionalist approach is now
recognized as having a built-in bias of treating societies as if they were closed systems
existing at only one historical moment, making it difficult to correlate with the processes
associated with transition and change, it is still considered useful as a practical framework for
organizing research.
Other studies have relied heavily on conflict models. In contrast to functionalist models,
conflict models tend to view social structure and change as related to the ways in which
different groups within a society pursue their own interests, emphasizing the conflicts among
different worldviews and ideologies rather than accepting the functionalist view of society as
a self-maintaining organism. The distinction between these two approaches, which was
important in sociological theory in past years, is now more blurred, and some reconstructions
of ancient Israelite society have incorporated both.
Another approach that has played a part in recent developments in social-scientific
reconstructions of ancient Israelite society is the historical cultural materialist approach.
This approach, advocated in biblical studies especially by Norman Gottwald, developed in
part as a reaction against structural-functionalism and its inability to account for social
change. The emphasis is on relating social forms to their roots in a society's economy and
environment and the role of economy, environment, and technology as important factors in
social change.
The interdisciplinary le longue durée approach of the French Annales school of social and
economic history, has been considered in recent years to be a particularly useful one among
Near Eastern archaeologists. The emphasis in this school is on generalization and searching
for broad insights without regard for the kind of "disciplinary territorialism" that is often
allowed to control analysis.
Some recent studies have focused on institutional aspects of ancient Israelite social life,
looking at offices or roles and administrative structures represented or implied in biblical
texts, often with attention to other ancient Near Eastern parallels or broader comparisons
from anthropological and sociological studies.
Many social-scientific analyses of ancient Israel consider particular historical periods. The
period that has received the most attention is the enigmatic transition from the Late Bronze
Age to Iron Age I. Both the controversy over the reasons for the substantial increase in
settlements in the hill country of Palestine and the recognition that Martin Noth's
amphytyonic hypothesis inadequately explained the organization of the tribes have
contributed to a growing interest in appealing to social scientific models for possible insights.
Recent social scientific methods and theories have also been applied to interpreting the
social world of the early Israelite monarchy. Studies focusing on the rise of kingship and the
state have used anthropological theories and models on state formation to reconstruct this
transitional period in Israel's history during which tribal organization began to move toward
state organization and the establishment of kingship. The transition is examined in light of
cultural evolution and social anthropological descriptions of the processes involved in
succession to high office. Factors such as kinship, politics, religion, and economics and their
contributions to the rise of monarchy are considered. Archaeological information and literary
images are illuminated with comparative anthropological studies, and constructing models for
using and interpreting various types of information is important in some of these recent
studies. Of primary import in these studies is the recognition that factors internal to the social
world of ancient Israel may have played an equal, if not more significant, role in the adoption
of a state form of sociopolitical organization as such external forces as the Philistine threat
emphasized in the biblical narratives.
The period of the divided monarchy is not well represented among the recent studies with
social-scientific orientations, perhaps because the texts that deal with this period are generally
believed to contain more accurate historical information, and thus have not drawn the same
amount of attention as the transitional periods at the beginning and end of Iron Age I. This
relative lack of representation may also have to do with the fact that there is little theory
available that is appropriate for analyzing small, village-based states like Israel and Judah.
The social world of the Persian period, on the other hand, is receiving more attention. This
may, again, be due to a relative lack of biblical information relating directly to this period. In
any case, there are a number of recent studies that focus on such issues as ethnic identity,
social organization, religion, demography, and the status of women.
In addition to studies associated with particular periods and transitions, there are a number
of useful studies that focus on particular subjects such as the institution of prophecy, women's
roles, social and religious movements, and types of leadership.
There is no general agreement among scholars about which social-scientific models are
particularly relevant in reconstructing ancient Israelite society or how they should be used.
But the use of models as a means of illuminating the ancient information has become an
essential element in studies of ancient Israelite society, particularly in trying to understand the
relationship between various types of information.
There are a number of advantages in approaching the study of ancient Israel from a socialscientific perspective. The type of comparative inquiry typical in anthropology, for example,
forces implicit assumptions to the surface, providing fresh ways of conceptualizing the
relations among the phenomena in question. From anthropology and sociology, biblical
historians have drawn valuable information on structural and processual forms in other
societies that can shed light on the social organization and institutions of ancient Israel and on
the religious foundations underlying the biblical texts. Application of the "ideal type"
construct—models of social roles and institutions—has helped us to understand more about
the nature and social functions of such things as prophecy, charismatic leadership, and sects.
The social sciences also illuminate the sociological dimensions of the interpretive process,
providing ways of identifying the origins, transmission, and meanings of texts, and relating
these to social roles, social groups, and social structures. They offer analogies from modern
and historical societies that help us to interpret the oral traditions underlying the biblical texts
and the functions of the literary forms in the Hebrew Bible. The significance of using a
social-scientific approach to interpreting ancient Israelite history, therefore, lies not in
providing further evidence to the biblical scholar—analysis of the text itself, and the
archaeological information, must provide the criteria for supporting, disproving, or modifying
hypotheses generated by anthropological material—but rather in introducing tools for
analyzing and raising questions about the ancient information, and applying theories about
the ways in which societies in general are organized and develop. This type of approach
provides an important corrective to traditional historical reconstructions that conceive of
history as the story of deliberate action on the part of discrete persons or groups of persons. It
balances the tendency to concentrate on Israel's political and religious history with attention
to economic, social, technological, and other aspects of daily life. It also introduces a stronger
concern for the general as well as the specific, for the social world as well as isolated events
and single individuals. Reconstructing social history involves consideration of the
relationships between events and processes as well as the roles of individuals, a concern with
the interconnectedness of events and the structure of ideas, values, and social relations.
At present, there are numerous, often conflicting, theories and hypotheses about the nature
and development of ancient Israelite society. We cannot know with any certainty which of
these theories and hypotheses are more or less valid. Because historians' interpretations are
not scientifically testable, their hypotheses offer plausible explanations, guide further
reflection, and are subject to constant revision, but they can never be "true" or "false." All we
can say with any confidence is that one or another hypothesis or theory seems more or less
convincing or adequate in light of the evidence, and that these hypotheses and theories will
continue to be reevaluated and adjusted in the future. We must continually ask the question of
what social explanation (hypothesis/model) makes the most sense of the relevant evidence, at
the same time acknowledging that all interpreters approach their object of study with
assumptions, dispositions, and tools of analysis that lead them to single out and emphasize
particular aspects of their object of study. The reconstructions surveyed in Reconstructing the
Society of Ancient Israel are treated as representative of the direction social world studies has
taken, not as being comprehensive or definitive.
Selected Bibliography
General
Bendor, S
1996 The Social Structure of Ancient Israel. Jerusalem: Simor Ltd.
Brettler, Marc
1996 The Creation of History in Ancient Israel. New York: Routledge.
Carney, T. F.
1975 The Shape of the Past: Models and Antiquity. Lawrence, KS: Coronada Press.
Clements, R. E., ed.
1989 The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard
1990 The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gottwald, Norman K.
1993 The Hebrew Bible in Its Social World and Ours. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Halpern, Baruch
1988 The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Lang, Bernhard, ed.
1985 Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Levy, Thomas E., ed.
1994 The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. New York: Facts on File.
Matthews, Victor H., and Don C. Benjamin
1993 Social World of Ancient Israel 1250-587 B.C.E. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson.
Overholt, Thomas W.
1995 Cultural Anthropology and the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Rogerson, J. W.
1978 Anthropology and the Old Testament. Atlanta: John Knox Press.
Whitelam, Keith W.
1986 “Recreating the History of Ancient Israel.” JSOT 35: 45-70.
1996 The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. New York:
Routledge.
Wilson, Robert R.
1984 Sociological Approaches to the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Iron Age I: The Origins of Ancient Israel
Coote, Robert B., and Keith W. Whitelam
1987 The Emergence of Israel in Historical Perspective. Sheffield: Almond Press.
Davies, Philip R.
1994 In Search of “Ancient Israel.” Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Finkelstein, Israel
1988 The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Nadav Na’aman
1995 From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel.
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.
Freedman, David Noel, and David Frank Graf, eds.
1983 Palestine in Transition: The Emergence of Ancient Israel. Sheffield: Almond Press.
Gottwald, Norman K.
1979 The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050
B.C.E. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
1993 “Recent Studies of the Social World of Premonarchic Israel.” Currents in Research:
Biblical Studies 1: 163-89.
Shanks, Herschel, ed.
1992 The Rise of Ancient Israel. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society.
Iron Age IA and IB: The “Tribal” Period
Dearman, J. Andrew
1992 Religion and Culture in Ancient Israel. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson.
Hopkins, David C.
1985 The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age. Sheffield: Almond
Press.
Lemche, Niels Peter
1985 Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society Before the
Monarchy. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
McNutt, Paula M.
1990 The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism, and Tradition in Ancient Society.
Sheffield: Almond Press.
Meyers, Carol
1988 Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Wilson, Robert R.
1977 Genealogy and History in the Biblical World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press.
Iron Age IC: The Rise of Monarchy
Finkelstein, Israel
1989 “The Emergence of the Monarchy in Israel: The Environmental and Socioeconomic
Aspects.” JSOT 44: 43-74.
Flanagan, James W.
1981 “Chiefs in Israel.” JSOT 20: 47-73.
1988 David’s Social Drama: A Hologram of Israel’s Early Iron Age. Sheffield: Almond
Press.
Frick, Frank S.
1985 The Formation of the State in Ancient Israel. Sheffield: Almond Press.
1986 “Social Science Methods and Theories of Significance for the Study of the Israelite
Monarchy: A Critical Review Essay.” Semeia 37: 9-52.
Fritz, Volkmar, and Philip R. Davies, eds.
1996 The Origins of the Ancient Israelite States. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Iron Age II: The Period of the Monarchy
Buccellati, Giorgio
1967 Cities and Nations of Ancient Syria: An Essay on Political Institutions with Special
Reference to the Israelite Kingdoms. Rome: Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente.
Culley, Robert C., and Thomas W. Overholt
1981 Anthropological Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy. Semeia 21.
Frick, Frank S.
1977 The City in Ancient Israel. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press.
Grabbe, Lester L.
1995 Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of Religious Specialists in
Ancient Israel. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International.
Jamieson-Drake, David W.
1991 Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Sociological Approach. Sheffield: Almond
Press.
Knight, Douglas A.
1994 “Political Rights and Power in Monarchic Israel.” Semeia 66: 93-117.
Lemche, Niels Peter
1994 “Kings and Clients: On Loyalty between the Ruler and the Ruled in Ancient ‘Israel’.”
Semeia 66: 119-32.
Mettinger, Tryggve
1971 Solomonic State Officials: A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite
Monarchy. Lund: CWK Gleerup.
Overholt, Thomas W.
1989 Channels of Prophecy: The Social Dynamics of Prophetic Authority