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Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing is unavailable, but you can change that!

Works on Old Testament historiography, the “Conquest,” and the origins of Israel have burgeoned in recent days. But while others have been issuing new reconstructions, this novel work presents a close reading of the biblical text. The focus is on the literary techniques that ancient writers employed in narrating stories of conquest, and the aim is to pinpoint their communicative intentions in...

only approaches a representation of the reality which it purports to describe. But, of course, this is the case with any historical narrative.100 Thus M. Fishbane correctly perceives that: in the Hebrew Bible historical narrative is always narrative history, and so is necessarily mediated by language and its effects. It is thus language in its artistic deployment that produces the received biblical history.101 The seven episodes of 10:28–39, like any historical account, are figurative. These episodes
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