This article reads the book of Samuel as the product of competing Benjaminite and Judean memories, arguing that the Saul–David narrative is not a record of history but a construct shaped by scribal memory. The early Saul traditions (1 Sam. 9–11) preserve an independent Benjaminite memory that was later absorbed into a Judean, Jerusalem-centred framework. This process of transformation reflects not popular recollection but the discursive reworking of memory among the literati. Ultimately, Samuel presents ‘Israel’ not as a fixed entity but as a narrative space forged through the collision and silencing of rival communal memories.
The superscription to Nahum announces an oracle ( massā ) concerning Nineveh. In the rest of the book, one finds a vivid portrayal of the fall of this capital city of the Assyrian Empire, named explicitly in Nah. 3.7 when Nineveh is declared to be utterly destroyed ( šaddā ) (cf. also Nah. 2.8 [MT 9]). However, given the complexity in dating the book of Nahum, with scholars arguing respectively for a 7th century, an exilic, or post-exilic setting for this book, it is a question of which empire’s real or imagined fall is celebrated in this book. This article considers whether Nineveh really is Nineveh and whether this fallen city perhaps may also represent empires to come. Being mindful of the shifting constructions of empire and how later generations reused past empires to speak about the empire that remains holds important implications for contemporary readers who continue to navigate complicated relationships with empire themselves.
This paper builds on two trajectories of our recent scholarship: (1) the study of indigenous motifs in Priestly and pre-Priestly literature, and (2) an examination of Zionist and scholarly debates in the formative years of the State of Israel concerning a Jewish ‘right to the land’. The ancestral traditions in Genesis articulate belonging to the land through genealogies, covenants, treaties, and shared ancestry rather than through conquest, defining Israel’s identity in relation to surrounding peoples rather than in opposition to them. These traditions, preserved especially in the Priestly materials of Genesis, emerged in contexts of dispossession and exile, where aspirations for unconditional belonging existed alongside forms of coexistence with neighboring groups. It is therefore illuminating to consider how these traditions have been received, adapted, and reinterpreted within modern Zionist scholarship.
