Text and History

For several decades the Hebrew Bible's worth as evidence for the history of ancient Israel has been under sustained attack. As scholars dated its final form ever later, often into the Hellenistic period, its historical value was marked down accordingly, while the link between text and archaeological finds grew harder to make convincingly. Some of the sharpest sceptics worked in Copenhagen, and it is from Copenhagen that Jens Bruun Kofoed answers them.

His concern is method. Kofoed examines the assumptions behind competing approaches and works through specific test cases. He argues that a late date does not by itself strip a text of historical worth, and that attention to modern genre research and authorial intent changes how ancient historiography should be judged. It is a careful, rigorous study for students and scholars of biblical history who want a way past the current deadlock.