Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel (ASOR Books: V7 Series), Vol. 7

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Archaeological data, when viewed objectively, provide independent witness to the religious practices of the ancient inhabitants of Syria-Palestine and help to identify the integral part that religion played in the social and political worlds of the Israelites and Canaanites. By applying current anthropological and sociological theory to ancient materials excavated over the past eighty years, the author offers a new way of looking at the archaeological data. Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel summarizes and analyzes the archaeological remains from all known Middle Bronze through Iron Age temples, sanctuaries, and open-air shrines to reveal the ways in which social, economic and political relationships determined - and were shaped by - forms of religious organization.

SYNOPSIS

In this amplification of her 1993 Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Arizona, Nakhai demonstrates that archaeological data can provide witness independent of literary sources to the religious practices of Canaanites and Israelites in the second to mid-first millennia BCE. She argues that the physical artifacts of archaeological concern are unbiased by the theological stance of the inhabitants.