From Epic to Canon

The author has devoted his life to understanding the textual legacies of the ancient Israelites, from archaic Hebrew poetry to the Bible, and was among the first scholars to collect and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this work, he discusses specific issues which illuminate central questions about the Hebrew Bible and those who created and preserved it. He challenges the persistent attempt to read Protestant theological polemic against law into ancient Israel. Cross uncovers the continuities between the institutions of kinship and of covenant, which he describes as "extended kinship". He examines the social structures of ancient Israel and reveals that beneath its later social and cultural accretions, the concept of convenant - as opposed to codified law - was a vital part of Israel's earliest institutions. He then draws parallels between the expression of kinship and covenant among the Israelites and that practised by other ancient societies, as well as in primitive societies. Drawing on the Daliyeh Papyri, excavations on the ancient city of Gerizim in the remains of the Samaritan temple, and a host of lesser archaeological finds elsewhere, Cross also reconstructs a history of the era of the Judaean Restoration which he intends as more complete than those in the past. He closes his work suggesting that a radical rewriting of the text and canon of the Hebrew Bible has become necessary in the light of new information gleaned from the Dead Sea Scrolls he has studied, and argues that at the very least, the new data requires a wholly fresh critical approach to the Hebrew Bible.