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Review Summary: Good Presentation |
Date: 2007-08-23 |
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Details: Mark Smith has arranged his materials such that his critiques are easy to follow with the aid of a tanach [I don't have an Ugaritic text]. Thought provoking and thorough. Smith tells you the relative probabilities of different critical hypothesis' & it is apparent when he is positing his own opinions.
I especially like the way Smith's approach opens up tanach as a text with a context familiar to contemporaneous West Asians.
This is not a quick read. The citations in the manuscript as well as the footnotes are worth following up if possible.
It is especially helpful if one knows hebrew language. The hebrew letters are transliterated into a roman alphabet which means you've got to retranslate from the roman letters into the hebrew letters in order to realize the shoreshim [roots of the word meanings]...a minor irritant.
I highly recommend this book for those with an interest in tanach in particular or West Asian religions in general. |
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Review Summary: Interpretation forces the source material into a mould |
Date: 2006-07-10 |
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Details: It's a disturbing trend that qualified scholars who are clearly not UNintelligent are playing leapfrog with sources, to produce an impression that is unsupported by genuine source material.
Unfortunately, this book is typical of many similar to its type - i.e., source material is not dated, assumptions proliferate, conclusions are drawn between one point and another as though the points' existence proved their relationship, and so on.
I hesitate to recommend this work even to those writing theses on the subject of early polytheism, as it's difficult to sort out what text actually says what and in what context, let alone supplying information on chronological reliability of sources, their dates, and so on. |
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Review Summary: Scholars Dream |
Date: 2006-01-04 |
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Details: This is an excellently documented book, written by a true scholar. All assertions are documented, and when the author makes an assertion, any contrary evidence is disclosed as well.
This book examines the the Ugaritic pantheon and how it relates to pre-exilic Hebrew religion. |
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Review Summary: A Scholarly Tour De Force |
Date: 2003-05-10 |
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Details: If you have read Smith's "Early History of God" and been intrigued by his conception of the development of our notion of God during the Biblical period, "The Origins Of Monotheism" delivers a significantly more detailed analysis of the ancient Bronze Age texts from Ugarit and their influence on the culture of ancient Palestine in general, and Biblical texts in particular. Mr. Smith examines conceptions of the divine family and council of the gods, more general notions of ancient aspects of divinity, and the roles of various divinity. Especially insightful is his critique of James Frazier's category of "dying and rising" gods in the Near East. In his analysis of Isaiah, he gives considerable background into Mesopotamian views on the divinity of statues of gods, whithout prejudice. There is a lot more than I can list here in this book, but if you're interested in how the idea of one, all-powerful god came about, this is really essential reading. |
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out of 4 Reviews
