A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period

Volume I: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy

Volume II: From the Exile to the Maccabees

Rainer Albertz

Translated by John Bowden from Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit, Das Alte Testament Deutsch, published 1992 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen

© Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1992

Translation © John Bowden 1994

First published 1994

by SCM Press Ltd,

26-30 Tottenham Road, London N1 4BZ

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First American Edition 1994

Published in the U.S.A. by Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Albertz, Rainer, date.

[Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit. English]

A history of Israelite religion in the Old Testament / Rainer Albertz.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: v. 1. From the beginnings to the end of the monarchy — v. 2. From the exile to the Maccabees.

1. Judaism—History—To 70 A.D. 2. Bible.—O.T.—Theology. 3. Jews—History—To 70 A.D. I. Title.

BM165.A4313 1994

296'.09'01—dc20

94-7424

ISBN 0-664-21846-6 (v. 1)

ISBN 0-664-21847-4 (v. 2)

THE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY

Editorial Advisory Board

James L. Mays

Carol A. Newsom

David L. Petersen

FOR MY WIFE

Preface

This book, which because of its length is being published in two volumes, goes back a long way. My post-doctoral study,1 in which I had come across the interesting phenomenon of a socially-conditioned ‘internal religious pluralism’ in the religions of Israel and Mesopotamia, prompted me to plan a history of Israelite religion which also integrated a social history of Israel—as compared with the high cultures of the Near East—and describe the reciprocal relationship between the two. So the first series of lectures which I gave as a brand-new lecturer at Heidelberg in the winter semester of 1977/8 was entitled ‘Social Revolution and Religious Change in Israel’, and in the summer semester of 1981 for the first time I ventured a series of lectures on ‘The History of Israelite Religion’ conceived along these lines. However, because of the wealth of material they extended only as far as the early monarchy.

The lively response of the students, who spontaneously formed a study group on the lectures, showed me that there was a clearly neglected need here, and led me to think that the lectures should be published as a book. I took up the plan with the Siegen Hochschule and went some way towards realizing it there with a large number of lectures on aspects of the project. A first provisional article—intended for a wider public—appeared in 1987 under the title ‘Religionsgeschichte Israels in vorexilischer Zeit’.2 It then took me more than ...