The Old Testament, and biblical scholarship itself, distinguishes between mythical and historical. This book argues that only historical thing in the Bible is the Bible itself, a superb product of Jewish thought. What is narrated in the Bible is only myth. But this myth about Israel's past was still built with fragments of history, or rather with written traditions that were different from those expressed in the actual text, and obviously more ancient. These essays follow in the spirit of his controversial History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, which combine detailed philological research, a wide knowledge of ancient Near eastern literature and biblical archaeology - and a radical way of understanding what the biblical text is really telling us. This is an erudite and thought-provoking book, which should not be ignored by anyone who finds the origin of the Bible a fascinating and still largely unknown phenomenon.
Giovanni Garbini is teacher of Semitic Philology at the University Di Roma "La Sapienza".
1. The Myths of the Origins of Israel; 2. Cain's impunity; 3. Abraham and Damascus; 4. Reuben's Incest and the Contested Primogeniture; 5. Moses and the Law; 6. Davidic Traditions; 7. The Calf of Bethel; 8. Ezra's Birth; 9. Birth and Death of a Messiah; 10. The End of Myth.
