The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography, and Reception

Now in paperback from SBL Press

This collaborative commentary explores cross-cutting aspects of Kings ranging from the analysis of its composition, historically regarded, to its transmission and reception. Ample attention is accorded sources, figures and peoples who play a part in the book. The commentary deals with Kings' treatment in translation and role in later ancient literature. While the comments do not proceed verse by verse, the volume furnishes guidance, from contributors highly qualified to advance contemporary discussion, on the book's historical background, its literary intentions and characteristics, and on themes and motifs central to its understanding, both of itself and of the world from which it arose.

Features:

• An affordable edition of an essential Brill hardcover reference work
• A meta-commentary, offering windows into the secondary literature

André Lemaire is correspondent of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (Paris) and is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic Philology and Epigraphy. He is director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne, Paris). He has published extensively on Bible and West Semitic Epigraphy.

Baruch Halpern is the Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia. His publications include David's Secret Demons, and a number of edited volumes and articles. While considered a historian, he insists on the import of language, archaeology and ethnology for the understanding not just of ancient texts, such as the Bible, but also of ancient living patterns and technologies.