The Untold Story of the Kingdom of Judah | Tel Aviv 360

Part B: The Untold Stories of Ancient Jerusalem The only memory that exists of the founding event in the history of the Kingdom of Judah, when King David conquered Jerusalem, made it his capital and founded the dynasty and the kingdom, was of the involvement of the “blind and the lame,” and that anyone who struck them had to be purified. In this chapter, I argue that the source of the story’s memo...

Part B: The Untold Stories of Ancient Jerusalem Memory-bearing objects, places and buildings are permanent elements in changing demographic, political and religious landscapes, whose memory is rooted in their very existence, and the interpretation, understanding and use of memory changes according to the needs and desires of each generation. The existence of memory-bearing objects, buildings and p...

Part B: The Untold Stories of Ancient Jerusalem Many details about Jerusalem were left untold by the authors of ancient history simply because they were clear and obvious to both the authors and the readers of these accounts. Some of these details are also known to us, but some are no longer. The biblical story was written by Jerusalem scribes who lived in Jerusalem and their descriptions were wri...

Part A: Introductory chapters The book of Joshua continues the book of Deuteronomy, and is connected to it historically, conceptually and narratively and also by its Deuteronomistic ideology. Despite this connection, and despite the clear continuity between the two books, Joshua is the first of the “Former Prophets” books in the Hebrew Bible. This is the introduction for the historiographic descri...

Part A: Introductory chapters There are large gaps between the “Israel” described in the Hebrew Bible, the “Israel” that can be reconstructed by following the archaeological evidence, and the “Israel” that appears in written sources other than Biblical historiography. Comparing the “Israel” described in the Hebrew Bible (the figure of Jacob/Israel, his sons who are “The Children of Israel,” from w...

Part A: Introductory chapters The biblical historiography began to be written in the days of Josiah, several decades before the destruction of the First Temple, in order to explain to the readers in Jerusalem of that time period how they should understand the past and learn from it about the reality of their day, and the way they should behave in the future. The destruction of Jerusalem and the te...

Part A: Introductory chapters The connection between the book of Deuteronomy and the cult reform of the days of Josiah is the most important chronological and historical anchor point within biblical research, and is also the ‘heart of the consensus’ among most scholars. This connection explains the ideology of the authors of the biblical historiography as well as the time when the historical accou...

Part A: Introductory chapters The historians who composed the ancient historiographical work, which is found today in the ancient core of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, reflected their worldview in it. They aimed not to tell the history of Judah (or of Israel and Judah), but to explain the historical progression, the overall situation, and the reasons why Judah and Jerusalem were w...

Part A: Introductory chapters The biblical story of the history of the Kingdom of Judah, as told in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, describes the point of view of the Jerusalem elite: what it knew, what it wanted to tell and what served its political, religious and economic interests. In this podcast I we will try to find out what the authors of biblical history didn't tell. Fir...