BARlines

Triple Convention

Prolegomena to Boston

If you’re going to the Society of Biblical Literature-American Academy of Religion American Schools of Oriental Research meetings in Boston, December 5–8, 1987, don’t miss the session on “New Perspectives on the Emergence of Israel in Canaan.” It promises to be a slam-bang performance. Proposed and organized by William Dever, it will have a star-studded cast:

1. Israel Finkelstein of Bar-Ilan University, Israel, author of a widely acclaimed book on the Israelite settlement that will appear shortly in English, will speak on “New Excavation and Survey Data on Early Israelite Highland Villages.”

2. Lawrence E. Stager of Harvard University, author of an important and widely cited study on the social organization in early Israel, will speak on “The Late Bronze Age Matrix of Tribal Israel.”

3. Norman K. Gottwald, author of The Tribes of Yahweh and leading proponent of the “peasant revolt” theory of Israel’s emergence in Canaan, will speak on “Historical Cultural-Material Paradigms and the New Archaeology.”

4. Peter Machinist of the University of Michigan, a rising young star in the academic firmament (he won a 1984 BAS Publication Award for his article on “Assyria and Its Image in the first Isaiah,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, October–December 1983), will speak on “‘Revolution’ in the Ancient Near East: The Problematic of Ancient Israel.”