The Untold Story of the Kingdom of Judah by Oded Lipschits

The Untold Story of the Kingdom of Judah by Oded Lipschits

This book was written out of a great love for the biblical text and out of an even greater curiosity about the people who wrote it.

The different chapters of the book are an invitation to a journey following those who composed the historical descriptions in the Hebrew Bible, in an attempt to find out who they were, when they wrote and where. The main questions in the book are not what the historical description is and how much it indeed reflects what really happened, but what the authors of the Biblical historiography knew about the ancient past of Israel and Judah, what they chose to include in their descriptions and what story they chose not to tell. The untold story is an important key to understanding the purpose of biblical historiography, the target audience for which it was intended and the message it carried.

The main conclusion is that biblical historiography was not written to tell what history was, but to explain the present against the background of past events, and through this to teach a lesson about the right way to behave in the present, in order to ensure a good future.

This is how Biblical historiography should be read and understood.

Oded Lipschits, Tel Aviv University, Israel.