Books published by Sheffield Phoenix Press

Always spoken for, never speaking. Always the object of discourse, never the subject. Constant focus upon Israel in the biblical texts by the interpretative tradition in the modern context has resulted, whether consciously or not, in the eclipse of voices of Israel's Palestinian neighbors. Interpretations reinforce the liminality of ethnic groups like the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Samaritans effected initially through re-presentation. Stereotyping becomes an ethno-typing strategy that establishes the presumed superiority of 'Israel', the identity construction of the 'others' as anything but superior, and the placement of each group stereotyped on the 'border'.A postcolonial perspective, however, reveals that the focus of the commentary tradition extends liminality beyond the temporal. This study brings to speech the constructed voices of marginalized ethnic groups by juxtaposing those of fifth-century Yehud with those of nineteenth-century America placed there by stereotypic re-presentations. The examination of these re-presentations, though they intend to establish separation through an identity of difference, reveal instead a reflection of the identity of 'self' within 'other' despite efforts by an ethnic group identifying itself as 'Israel'.

This highly original study locates the question of scribes and scribal schools in monarchic Judah in a socio-archaeological context. It departs from earlier studies by assigning priority to interpreting archaeological data within a broad interdisciplinary framework before trying to assess biblical and epigraphic sources. The book provides an analysis of data on settlement, public works, and luxury items in order to produce an archaeologically based picture of the development of state level administrative systems in Judah. The study questions the consensus that the Judahite monarchy became a state at some point in the tenth century BCE. The evidence for the increase in population, building, production, centralization and specialization in the eighth century suggests that Judah did not function as a state before the eighth century BCE. This incisive study challenges the assumption of widespread literacy and the traditional picture of the development of the Judahite monarchy. This volume is a reprint of the 1991 edition with a new preface by Keith W. Whitelam setting the work in the context of recent debates on the history of ancient Israel.

Rabbi Akiba is famously reported to have said, 'Heaven forbid that any one in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs is holy, for the whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies'. This book is an extended elaboration of Rabbi Akiba's statement. It argues that the Song is a Hellenistic composition, drawing on the resources of ancient Near Eastern erotic poetry and characterized by a complex though fragile unity.Through the metaphors, the lovers progressively see themselves reflected in each other, as well as in the world about them and the poetry of love. The poem celebrates the land of Israel in spring, an ideal humanity, and a perfected language. It culminates in the contestation of love and death, and the assertion that only love survives the exigencies of time.The pervasive ambiguity of the Song, in which one never quite knows what happens, is related to the ambivalence of beauty, which is closely related to ugliness. Hence the surrealist imagery of the Song verges upon the grotesque and stretches the resources of our imagination. Through a detailed comparison with the Garden of Eden story, Landy argues that the Song is a vision of paradise seen from the outside, through the ironic poetic gaze, in a world potentially hostile or indifferent.