This dissertation investigates literary tropes and metaphors that indicate pleasing scents and spices and explores their transformation in ancient Jewish literature. The project is divided into two parts: Hebrew Bible and rabbinic exegesis (primarily on Song of Songs in Song of …
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The dissertation is a catalogue of the artifacts of hand-held weapons which have been excavated in the southern Levant in Iron Age II contexts and which were published with an accompanying drawing or photograph. The intent has been to place in one easily accessible volume repres…
The purpose of this interdisciplinary work is to examine expressions of differentiation among groups of people named in the stories of the major judges in the book of Judges in order to determine if the narratives depict identity, segregation, and interaction among groups and th…
In order to assess the purpose and function of the incest narratives in the Pentateuch and the incest prohibitions of Leviticus 18, the following examination constitutes a formal analysis of ancient Israelite kinship terminology. According to anthropologists, only through a form…
This dissertation concerns the definitions of ethnicity and nationalism and their use in discussing the Iron Age I settlement of Syria-Palestine by peoples dispossessed by the upheaval that occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The Bible presents a picture of the settlemen…
This study explores how a person in ancient Judah, reading the book of Jonah prior to its inclusion in the Hebrew canon, might have construed this story's meaning. To date, biblical scholarship has attempted to ascertain the meaning of Jonah apart from its historical context by …
This dissertation addresses a problem in the history of Israelite literature and religion long recognized by biblical scholars: what I call the “novelty” of biblical narrative. Long before Herodotus and even Homer, Israelite writers practiced a conspicuously innovative narrative…
The purpose of this study is to describe Northern Israelite political and economic systems during the dynasty of King Omri within the broader context of Israel's social history. The study is based upon a critical assessment of the Elijah and Elisha stories (referred to here as t…
The Old Testament attests to two altar laws, that of Exodus 20 and that of Deuteronomy and the Old Testament historical books. Deuteronomy 12:5; 14:22–29; 15:19–20; 16:6, 11, 16, and the like instructed Israel to worship Yahweh in a central sanctuary as one designated place. Exo…
In this dissertation I examine the relationship between Biblical Israel and Moab in order to determine if this relationship is different in any way from the relationship between Israel and its other Transjordanian neighbors. I will also explore how the relationship between Israe…
Jesus' charge in Luke 22:35-38 that his apostles should buy swords is one of the most enigmatic texts in the gospels. Although previous studies made use of a wide range of standard critical methods, none of these approaches satisfactorily revealed the pericope's meaning. In a fr…
This dissertation examines the creative ways in which the ancient Israelites used genres that were part of the broader ancient Near Eastern cultural repertoire in order to shape a narrative of their early history as a people. Study of the itinerary genre as it is used in adminis…
The Iron Age has long been pinpointed by biblical scholars as the period during which the earliest versions of several texts now preserved in the Hebrew bible were composed in Judah. This study finds that the epigraphic evidence can support the latter half of the Iron II period …