PDF Swami Vivekananda by Amiya P. Sen in History

Description

At the center of this book lies a fundamental yet unanswered question: under which historical and sociological conditions and in what manner the Hebrew Bible became an authoritative tradition; that is; holy scripture and the canon of Judaism as well as Christianity. Reinhard G. Kratz answers this very question by distinguishing between historical and biblical Israel. This foundational and; for the arrangement of the book; crucial distinction affirms that the Israel of biblical tradition; i.e. the sacred history (historia sacra) of the Hebrew Bible; cannot simply be equated with the history of Israel and Judah. Thus; Kratz provides a synthesis of both the Israelite and Judahite history and the genesis and development of biblical tradition in two separate chapters; though each area depends directly and inevitably upon the other. These two distinct perspectives on Israel are then confronted and correlated in a third chapter; which constitutes an area intimately connected with the former but generally overlooked apart from specialized inquiries: those places and "archives" that either yielded Jewish documents and manuscripts (Elephantine; Al-Yahudu; Qumran) or are associated conspicuously with the tradition of the Hebrew Bible (Mount Gerizim; Jerusalem; Alexandria). Here; the various epigraphic and literary evidence for the history of Israel and Judah comes to the fore. Such evidence sometimes represents Israel's history; at other times it reflects its traditions; at still others it reflects both simultaneously. The different sources point to different types of Judean or Jewish identity in Persian and Hellenistic times.