About the seminar paper
We are accustomed to perceiving the religion of Israel and the religion of Judah as only marginally different, given their shared origins in the tribal prehistory of “Israel”. Unity is maintained at the level of national narratives. However, recognizing that political territories in the first millennium BCE were in constant flux and that governance and religion were coextensive, the notion of a monolithic Yahwism has to be replaced with a dynamic plurality and diversity. Jerusalem is not comparable to Megiddo, Galilee differs from the Shephelah, and Samaria and Judah do not develop identically. Landscapes and regions form stable profiles that are shaped by other factors such as political changes. This approach gives rise to a regionally sensitive religious history that considers local traditions as well as shifts in political power structures. Overlaps and interferences, imbalances, bifurcations as well as homogenizing identification processes, become visible. The seminar will examine selected examples from archaeology, epigraphy, and iconography to explore regional clusters in the 1st millennium BCE.
About Christian Frevel
Christian Frevel (1962), holds the chair of Hebrew Bible at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Ruhr-University Bochum. Form 1998-2004 he was Professor for Biblical Theology at the University of Cologne. He has served as member in several boards of biblical and other societies as well of editorial committees. Since 2015 he is also extraordinary professor at the Department of Old Testament and Hebrew Scriptures of the University of Pretoria.
Selected Publications
- Geschichte Israels (Stuttgart 2015; 22018).
- ET: History of Ancient Israel (Atlanta 2023).
- When and From Where Did YHWH Emerge? Some Reflections on Early Yahwism in Israel and Judah, in: Entangled Religions 12, 2021
- Recent Issues in History: Can We Speak of a United Monarchy or an Independent Judah?, in: Steven L. McKenzie/Matthieu Richelle (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Book of Kings, Oxford 2024, 258-270.
- Is it not Samaria? (Micah 1:5) – Reconsidering the Centrality of Jerusalem’s Yahwism in the Iron Age, in: Semitica 65, 2024, 179–196.