Israel in Transition: historical method exemplified in two seminal periods (Early Iron and Early Hellenistic)

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The AHRC portion is part of a wider project aiming to address the problem of Israel's development during two seminal periods in the history of ancient Israel and the Jews (c. 1200 to 850 BCE and about 400-200 BCE), with the objective of considering methodological questions and problems relating to writing a history of ancient Israel and Judah. The project sought to deal with these issues (1) by bringing together groups of specialists to debate the issues and then to publish their contributions and (2) by providing a context for the principal investigator to finish a monograph (for which a Research Leave grant was obtained). In spite of the intense debate over this seminal period of Israel's history, there is no good recent publication that brings together the main views and evidence for the early Iron Age transition for the whole of Palestine. With AHRC funding two events were planned, with the object of producing two edited volumes. The first was a symposium specifically on the archaeology of the first period, with a dozen or so professional archaeologists invited to debate the issues. This was held in April 2006, and the volume of the papers from it appeared in 2008. A second part centred on the European Seminar in Historical Methodology, founded in 1995 by the principal investigator and convened annually ever since, with seven volumes published so far and another in the press. Two meetings were held by the Seminar, focusing more on the textual and historical aspects of this period. A volume of these essays is in the press. These two volumes together form a unit (both have the same title. Transitions in Israel, with the sub-title of volume one being Volume 1 The Archaeology and the sub-title of the other being Volume 2 The Text). Volume 1 has a concluding chapter that summarizes the contribution of the volume to debate on archaeology, but the Conclusion of volume 2 also includes some of the main issues arising from the archaeology and thus serves as a concluding synthesis for both volumes. The broader project also envisaged another conference specifically on the late Persian/early Greek transition (not AHRC funded), which indeed took place in April 2007, with a volume in the process of editing. Finally, the principal investigator has produced a monograph on the early Hellenistic period (335-175 BCE) as volume 2 of his History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period (published 2008), which was funded under the AHRC's Matching Study Leave scheme.