On the Prospects for Writing a Social History of Iron Age Palestine

EMANUEL PFOH

Berlín

Congreso; European Association of Biblical Studies Annual Meeting / Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting - Berlin 7-11 August 2017; 2017

EABS / SBL / Humboldt Universität

Scholarly interest in the social aspects of the ancient Israelites (and Judeans) has been present in Old Testament studies since the late 19th century. However, 'social history', as a specific historiographical genre, appeared only in the 1970s in the context of a reconfiguration of approaches in general history writing in Europe and the United States; its formal integration in historical studies of the Old Testament is relatively recent. In a parallel development, the ubiquitous notion of 'biblical world/s' (both of the Old and New Testaments) has appeared as the perfect match for the social history of the biblical peoples since?it is assumed?social aspects evoked in biblical stories refer more or less directly to Iron Age Palestine?s social realities. Now, after the criticism raised towards the historicity of biblical images, events and periods, especially since the 1990s onwards, a key question arises: what is the referent of the historiographically created biblical worlds? Even more, is ?biblical world? a valid term for defining the cultural and historical boundaries and features of first-millennium BCE Palestine? In this paper I try to answer this question while discussing themes of politics, economics and cultic practices from the perspective of social history and other sociological and anthropological insights.