First Historians

Baruch Halpern is Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of Ancient History and Religious Studies at Penn State University. His books include The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, edited with W. H. Propp and D. N. Freedman (1990) and Law, Politics, and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World, edited with D. W. Hobson (1992).

“The First Historians is a book that no one with serious interest in biblical scholarship can afford to neglect. Halpern is one of the most fertile, exuberant, and audacious minds of his generation. He is witty, learned, and outrageous in turn, a Momigliano of Hebrew historiography. One learns more from one book by Halpern than from a dozen by his plodding peers.”—Frank Moore Cross, Harvard University