Divine Commitment and Human Obligation: Selected Writings of David Noel Freedman Vol. 2, Poetry and Orthography

To survey the writings of David Noel Freedman is tantamount to reviewing the history and development of nearly every facet of American biblical scholarship following the Second World War. From the confidence of the Biblical Theology Movement in the 1950s and 1960s to the critical response to the subsequent rethinking of many of the assumptions associated with the Albrightian school's approach to ancient Israelite history in the 1970s and beyond: from the emergence and rapid rise to popularity of literary approaches beginning especially in the 1970s, to the proliferation of newer approaches to the re- (or de-)construction of ancient Israelite history in the late 1980s and 1990s with threatening cracks in the once seemingly invincible edifice known as the documentary hypothesis, to the advent of countless alternative criticism applied to the interpretation of the biblical text - through it all, as both author and editor, David Noel Freedman has remained a vibrant and towering presence in the field. The creativity and originality of his many contributions are exceeded only by their prodigious number. In Volume 2, Poetry and Orthography, Editor John R. Huddlestun has gathered nineteen of Freedman's most important studies related to biblical poetry and orthography. From The Pronominal Suffixes of the Third Person Singular in Phoenician (1931) to Patterns in Psalm 23 and 34 (1992), the articles collected here represent some of Freedman's most original contributions to this specialized field of study.