Concepts of the Promised Land

    Project Details

    Description

    One of the most remarkable ways of divine discriminating love in Genesis to 2 Kings is the promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants. Geographical descriptions of this land previously belonging to the Canaanites and Amorites offer a valuable contribution to the message of biblical books. In addition, the depictions can be exploited in combination with non-biblical texts and archaeological remains in order to reconstruct their origin and use by the ancient scribes, for the texts mostly refer to actual borders, locations and regions. For almost a century, the geographical descriptions and depictions of the land of Israel in Numbers 34:1-12 (cf. Ezekiel 47:13-20); Joshua 13—19; Judges 1:1-36; 1 Kings 4:7-19; 2 Kings 14:25 stand out as possible sources used by Israelite scribes in order to create their image of the past. Scholars studied the geography of the lists and districts and attempted to date them, while synchronic studies revealed that they clearly function in a storyline that is most of the time very critical of the way Israel deals with the religious pluralism of its environment.
    Accordingly, vital questions are (a) what process of identity formation and orientation can be observed in this (re)shaping of texts and their ideological claim to places and regions and (b) how the references to the realia are related to the unique place of Israel among the nations and the nature of Yhwh’s discriminating love of Yhwh.
    StatusActive
    Effective start/end date1/01/18 → …

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