Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible.
The ancient Israelite authors of the Hebrew Bible were not philosophers, so what they could not say about God in logical terms, they expressed through metaphor and imagery. To present God in His most impenetrable otherness, the image they chose was the desert. The desert was Ancient Israels southern frontier, an unknown region that was always elsewhere: from that elsewhere, God has come -- God came from the South (Hab 3:3); God, when you marched from the desert (Ps 68:8); from his southland mountain slopes (Deut 33:2). Robert Miller explores this imagery, shedding light on what the biblical authors meant by associating God with deserts to the south of Israel and Judah. Biblical authors knew of its climate, flora, and fauna, and understood this magnificent desert landscape as a fascinating place of literary paradox. This divine desert was far from lifeless, its plants and animals were tenacious, bizarre, fierce, even supernatural. The spiritual importance of the desert in a biblical context begins with the physical elements whose impact cognitive science can elucidate. Travellers and naturalists of the past two millennia have experienced this and other wildernesses, and their testimonies provide a window into Israel's experience of the desert. A prime focus is the existential experience encountered. Confronting the desert's enigmatic wildness, its melding of the known and unknown, leads naturally to spiritual experience. The books panoramic view of biblical spirituality of the desert is illustrated by the ways spiritual writers -- from Biblical Times to the Desert Fathers to German Mysticism -- have employed the images therefrom. Revelation and renewal are just two of many themes. Folklore of the Ancient Near East, and indeed elsewhere, that deals with the desert / wilderness archetype has been explored via Jungian psychology, Goethean Science, enunciative linguistics, and Hebrew philology. These philosophies contribute to this exploration of the Hebrew Bible's desert metaphor for God.
Is there a gap between the academic study of the Bible and the work of theologians? What lies behind this gap? And most important, how have biblical scholars tried to bridge the gap with hermeneutical methods? This book addresses the exegesis vs. theology impasse and categorizes the most important attempts to bridge it over the past century, especially those of the last decades. These attempts are assessed and evaluated so that readers can see the philosophies undergirding each and the potential each has for a true "theological interpretation" of the Bible.
Providing a comprehensive study of ""oral tradition"" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible. ""In this book, Robert Miller offers an assessment of the modern study of oral tradition in ancient Israelite literature . . .The result is an engaging survey of the question of oral literature in ancient Israel. The book points up the problems and prospects involved in this most difficult area of biblical studies."" -Mark S. Smith Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies New York University ""Robert Miller's Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel is warmly to be welcomed. Miller is particularly well equipped for this task, being equally at home in literary and archaeological work, and this timely and comprehensive study does not disappoint. Miller succeeds brilliantly in demonstrating that there was an interplay of oral and written composition and performance throughout Israel's history. We are very much in his debt."" -Paul M. Joyce Theology Faculty Board Chairman University of Oxford ""This study is a fascinating contribution to discussion of the role of oral tradition in the composition of biblical texts. Miller offers an impressive critique of classic and recent studies on the oral-written continuum in a wide range of literatures and cultures, opening up new insights into the literature and culture of the Hebrew Bible."" -Katherine Hayes Professor of Old Testament Seminary of the Immaculate Conception Robert D. Miller II, SFO, is Associate Professor of Old Testament at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is the author of Chieftains of the Highland Clans and Syriac and Antiochian Exegesis and Biblical Theology for the 3rd Millennium.
In the seven years since it was published, "Miller's yeoman narrative" (Ryan Byrne, BASOR) has become an important part of academic discourse on early Israel. An illuminating social history of ancient Israel, Chieftains of the Highland Clans offers an unusually thorough and original reconstruction of Israelite society prior to the rise of the monarchy around 1000 BC. Using the latest archaeological research and anthropological theories, Robert Miller presents an intriguing picture of what life was like in early Israel. This reprint edition contains a new preface by the author that surveys developments in the past decade impacting issues addressed in Chieftains of the Highland Clans.
The ancient Israelite authors of the Hebrew Bible were not philosophers, so what they could not say about God in logical terms, they expressed through metaphor and imagery. To present God in His most impenetrable otherness, the image they chose was the desert. The desert was Ancient Israels southern frontier, an unknown region that was always elsewhere: from that elsewhere, God has come -- God came from the South (Hab 3:3); God, when you marched from the desert (Ps 68:8); from his southland mountain slopes (Deut 33:2). Robert Miller explores this imagery, shedding light on what the biblical authors meant by associating God with deserts to the south of Israel and Judah. Biblical authors knew of its climate, flora, and fauna, and understood this magnificent desert landscape as a fascinating place of literary paradox. This divine desert was far from lifeless, its plants and animals were tenacious, bizarre, fierce, even supernatural. The spiritual importance of the desert in a biblical context begins with the physical elements whose impact cognitive science can elucidate. Travellers and naturalists of the past two millennia have experienced this and other wildernesses, and their testimonies provide a window into Israel's experience of the desert. A prime focus is the existential experience encountered. Confronting the desert's enigmatic wildness, its melding of the known and unknown, leads naturally to spiritual experience. The books panoramic view of biblical spirituality of the desert is illustrated by the ways spiritual writers -- from Biblical Times to the Desert Fathers to German Mysticism -- have employed the images therefrom. Revelation and renewal are just two of many themes. Folklore of the Ancient Near East, and indeed elsewhere, that deals with the desert / wilderness archetype has been explored via Jungian psychology, Goethean Science, enunciative linguistics, and Hebrew philology. These philosophies contribute to this exploration of the Hebrew Bible's desert metaphor for God.
In the seven years since it was published, "Miller's yeoman narrative" (Ryan Byrne, BASOR) has become an important part of academic discourse on early Israel. An illuminating social history of ancient Israel, Chieftains of the Highland Clans offers an unusually thorough and original reconstruction of Israelite society prior to the rise of the monarchy around 1000 BC. Using the latest archaeological research and anthropological theories, Robert Miller presents an intriguing picture of what life was like in early Israel. This reprint edition contains a new preface by the author that surveys developments in the past decade impacting issues addressed in Chieftains of the Highland Clans.
Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible.
Is there a gap between the academic study of the Bible and the work of theologians? What lies behind this gap? And most important, how have biblical scholars tried to bridge the gap with hermeneutical methods? This book addresses the exegesis vs. theology impasse and categorizes the most important attempts to bridge it over the past century, especially those of the last decades. These attempts are assessed and evaluated so that readers can see the philosophies undergirding each and the potential each has for a true "theological interpretation" of the Bible.
In Western tradition, St. George is known as the dragon slayer. In the Middle East, he is called Khidr (“Green One”), and in addition to being a dragon slayer, he is also somehow the prophet Elijah. In this book, Robert D. Miller II untangles these complicated connections and reveals how, especially in his Middle Eastern guise, St. George is a reincarnation of the Canaanite storm god Baal, another “Green One” who in Ugaritic texts slays dragons. Combining art history, theology, and archeology, this multidisciplinary study demystifies the identity of St. George in his various incarnations, laying bare the processes by which these identifications merged and diverged. Miller traces the origins of this figure in Arabic and Latin texts and explores the possibility that Middle Eastern shrines to St. George lie on top of ancient shrines of the Canaanite storm god Baal. Miller examines these holy places, particularly in modern Israel and around Mount Hermon on the Syrian-Lebanese-Israeli border, and makes the convincing case that direct continuity exists from the Baal of antiquity to the St. George/Khidr of Christian lore. Convincingly argued and thoroughly researched, this study makes a unique contribution to such diverse areas as ancient Near Eastern studies, Roman history and religion, Christian hagiography and iconography, Quranic studies, and Arab folk religion.
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