Biblical Archaeology Review

“Jericho and the Biblical Story,” in Wonders of the Past (New York: Wise, 1937), p. 1222.

In the 1970s, Walt Kelly, creator of the comic strip Pogo, parodied Oliver Hazard Perry’s words after a naval battle: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

Consider the Israelite etiology for the Moabites and Ammonites in Genesis 19:37–38.

See Deuteronomy 20:17–18 for a typical Deuteronomistic diatribe, and note that it does not lump all the peoples of Canaan together under one name.

See William G. Dever, “Folk Religion in Early Israel: Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” in Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt, eds., Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1996).

The Bible itself records the evolution of Israel’s identity. For example, the Song of Deborah does not include the tribe of Judah in its roster of Israelite tribes. Judah became one of the “twelve tribes of Israel” when Judah’s king David was acknowledged by the northern tribes, who called themselves Israel.

Killebrew, p. 184.

Killebrew, p. 184.

Ann E. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines and Early Israel (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005).

For more on eulogiae, see Hershel Shanks, “Solomon’s Blessings,” BAR 27:05 and Gary Vikan, “Don’t Leave Home Without Them,” BAR 23:04.