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Studying the Ancient Israelites: A Guide to Sources and Methods is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Old Testament was not written in a vacuum. It was written by and to a specific people who lived within specific social, historical, political, and literary contexts—contexts not only of their own culture but also of the surrounding peoples. Clearly, an understanding of ancient Israel and the ancient Near East is essential for proper interpretation of the Bible. Unfortunately, as students...

Canaan (1 Sam. 11:14–15) (Polzin 1988). Here Joshua had initiated the conquest of the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan River (Josh. 4:19–20), and Saul surely hoped to position himself in the minds of the people as the “new Joshua.” He therefore chose to begin his reign on the site where the last national leader of the people had led them to victory. As the conquest narrative in Joshua indicates, the Israelites did not build their nation in an empty land; many of the cities mentioned in the biblical
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