The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament 2.Reihe)

In this study, Andrew Tobolowsky offers a new approach to biblical descriptions of the tribes of Israel as the "sons of Jacob". He reveals how shifting assumptions about early Israelite history and the absence of references to Jacob in most accounts of the tribes make it unlikely that this understanding was part of early tribal discourse. Instead, drawing on extensive similarities between the role Jacob's children plays in the biblical narrative and the role that shared descent from figures such as Hellen and Herakles play in the construction of ancient Greek histories, Andrew Tobolowsky concludes that the "tribal-genealogical" concept was first developed in the late Persian period as a tool for the production of a newly integrated, newly coherent account of a shared ethnic past: the first continuous biblical vision of Israelite history from Adam to the fall of Jerusalem and beyond. Cover 1 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Introduction: Genealogical Myth and Biblical History 12 Chapter 1: The History of the Tribal System, Part I 54 Chapter 2: The History of the Tribal System, Part II 79 Chapter 3: Jacob, Joseph, and the Birth of the Tribal-Genealogical Idea 96 Chapter 4: The Tribal-Genealogical Layer 122 Chapter 5: The Primary History: Other Methods of Combination 150 Chapter 6: The Chronicles Genealogy, the Catalogue of Women, and the Project of the Tribal-Genealogical System 172 Chapter 7: The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles 199 Chapter 8: Where, When, and How 221 Conclusion: The Triple Coincidence 243 Bibliography 258 Index of References 286 Index of Subjects 293 Andrew Tobolowsky bietet in dieser Studie einen neuen Zugang zur biblischen Beschreibung der Stämme Israels als »Söhne Jakobs+quot