A Biblical History of Israel

Currents in Theology and Mission, June, 2005

A Biblical History of Israel. By Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III (Westminster John Knox, $24.95). The last generation has seen great turbulence in the discussion of the history of ancient Israel, with the breakdown of the Albright-Bright consensus and the rise of a group of Old Testament specialists, sometimes called minimalists, who have challenged not only the historicity of the patriarchs, Exodus and conquest, but of the United Monarchy and much of the history of Judah as well.

I picked up this book with some hope, therefore, of finding a plausible recounting of Israel's history for the twenty-first century. Alas, while the authors show some awareness of the changing scene, they give a much too simplistic account of Israel's history that often does little more than paraphrase the biblical narrative. A number of anachronisms in the patriarchal account, for example, that call into question the antiquity of the whole, are glibly interpreted as later updatings of a basically historical account. RWK