Читать книгу A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible - Colleen M. Conway - Страница 46

This chapter addresses the questions “How did the earliest Israelites live?” and “What were some of Israel’s most ancient traditions?” You will learn about ancient Israelite tribal life and how that form of social organization is distinguished from two other forms of social life important in later chapters of Israel’s history: the monarchal city-state and the empire. The chapter discusses some unique characteristics of the kind of oral tradition typical of such tribal groups, and it finds evidence of such oral traditions embedded in biblical texts about Jacob, the exodus from Egypt, and Deborah’s victory over the armies of Hazor. In their early oral form (no longer available to us), these stories and poems, often celebrating devious “tricksters” who triumph over all odds, formed part of a “collective memory” that helped distinguish the tribal-culture Israelites from the Canaanites surrounding them. At the same time, despite these differences in social organization and tribal tradition, you will also discover in this chapter ways that early Israel was more “Canaanite” in its religion and culture than you previously thought. Read both for ways ancient Israel was different from its neighbors and for ways it was similar.