Back to Reason: Minimalism in Biblical Studies

Biblical scholars at the University of Copenhagen were denounced 20 years ago for exposing the fallacies of traditional historical-critical biblical scholarship, which had created a society out of this world called biblical Israel. This study proposes an alternative theory that exposes and explains the intention behind the fallacy of using a story from the Old Testament to invent the biblical concept of Israel.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 196 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2022
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd

Twenty years ago some biblical scholars at the University of Copenhagen were denounced as being nihilists and a threat to western civilization. What was their crime? They had exposed the fallacies of traditional historical-critical biblical scholarship, which was neither historical nor critical. Although the historical-critical interpretation of the Bible had developed over a period of more than a hundred years, it had ended up, with the help of a rationalistic paraphrase of the stories of the Old Testament, creating a society out of this world called biblical Israel. Israel was like no other society in the ancient world, and scarcely a real historic society at all. It was structured like a house of cards. Therefore, when some scholars began to question the historical content of the construction of ancient Israel, as it was usually called, the edifice broke down, first in bits and then totally. This study addresses the development of 'Minimalism' from its roots in the historical-critical paradigm and outlines an alternative theory which exposes and explains the intention behind the fallacy of using a story found in the Old Testament to simply invent the biblical concept of Israel.

Weight: 4078g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800501881