The Invention of Hebrew (Traditions) Review

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(More customer reviews)Why has everyone from Haile Selassie to Martin Luther felt the bible was speaking to them, and why do we continue to find it powerful today? In this book, Seth Sanders combines anthropology and biblical studies to describe how Hebrew came to be used so widely, and to explain the unique status of the bible as a written document. According to Sanders, the bible was the first document to combine local Hebrew traditions of history telling and prophecy with imported Assyrian practices of addressing conquered people -- as a result the bible put a people, rather than a king, at the center of history. Because it was one of the first books ever to speak directly to its readers, it makes anyone who reads it feels it is directed to them.
This book is extremely clearly written for an academic book, and even has a certain flair to it. It is also extremely short -- 170 pages without the footnotes. Although at times it gets pretty technical, readers can easily skip the heavily epigraphic or theoretical bits and still keep up with the main argument because of the book's clarity and structure. While over-educated Jews will realize that this book is actually a gigantic drosh on the shema, it will appeal to many, many other audiences as well: biblical scholars could read it, as could anthropologists -- but the book is also perfectly approachable by anyone who studies the ancient near east or the bible seriously (not a little, but seriously) as a hobby. If it were available in softcover, or if you taught only certain chapters, it could be used in upper-level undergraduate courses in history, ancient near east, sociolinguistics, religion, political science, sociology -- the list goes on and on.
In my opinion, this book is great. It combines so many fields that have been kept separate, compares ancient Israel with so many others cultures and societies. Reading Sanders's book, you feel as if your eyes have been opened and the fog has lifted on a lot of ancient history. If you study the bible or the ancient near east, the book is a must-read. And if you do not, now is your chance to start: Sanders's vision of the relation between politics and language is too good for anyone to pass up.

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The Invention of Hebrew is the first book to approach the Bible in light of recent findings on the use of the Hebrew alphabet as a deliberate and meaningful choice. Seth L. Sanders connects the Bible's distinctive linguistic form--writing down a local spoken language--to a cultural desire to speak directly to people, summoning them to join a new community that the text itself helped call into being. Addressing the people of Israel through a vernacular literature, Hebrew texts gained the ability to address their audience as a public. By comparing Biblical documents with related ancient texts in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Babylonian, this book details distinct ways in which Hebrew was a powerfully self-conscious political language. Revealing the enduring political stakes of Biblical writing, The Invention of Hebrew demonstrates how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power previously unknown in written literature: "the people" as the protagonist of religion and politics.

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Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age Review

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(More customer reviews)Bryce is a writer who brings history excitingly to life. This book covers the last 500 years of the bronze age, which separates the era of the city states on one hand and - after an interim "dark age" - the great empires of the first millenium on the other.
Bryce explores this world through the medium of the written archives of the 5 great states that dominated this world over the bulk of this period. It is an exciting and readable story, which I completed over the course of a single weekend. Bryce does not pretend that this tells the complete picture of these societies - it is the picture of an elite at work, rest and play - but it is a wonderful overview that is well worthy of the tradition of Herodotus.
I docked one star because there were occasional signs of hasty writing / proofediting that marred my reading enjoyment. I made some notes from one single page near the end of the book, page 228.
para 4, first sentence "But it may not have failed entirely." It's not immediately obvious what the subject "it" refers to, and might be better phrased "But the viceroy's rebuke may not have been entirely without effect."
On the next line, "cap-ability" the hyphen is missing (I was left wondering for a few seconds what a "defence cap ability" was!)
And finally the penultimate paragraph, first sentence "The letter was found in the house of Rapanu." Who or what is Rapanu - i had to refer to the index to be reminded he had cropped up in a previous chapter. The sentence would be better formulated for the reader, "This letter, found in the house of a senior citizen of Ugarit named Rapanu, shows that it was clearly..."
Having written this much, one final comment - in the historical overview at the beginning, a bit more scaffolding for the reader might be helpful. I can find immediately one example of what I mean: on page 16, when hammurabi comes to power, it could be mentioned that this was towards the end of the reign of Shamshi-Adad - this both provides a useful reference point and brackets nicely the text to the point where the Assyrian kingdom finally falls under his sway.
But to sum up: I can promise that no-one with any interest in ancient history will fail to be enthralled by this book.


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Offering fascinating insights into the people and politics of the ancient near Eastern kingdoms, Trevor Bryce uses the letters of the five Great Kings of Egypt, Babylon, Hatti, Mitanni and Assyria as the focus of a fresh look at this turbulent and volatile region in the late Bronze Age. Numerous extracts from the letters are constantly interwoven into the fabric of narrative and discussion, and this lively approach allows us to witness history through the eyes of the people who lived it, revealing the personalities and reactions of kings, queens, princes, princesses and royal officials more than 3500 years ago to the current events of the day.

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History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History Review

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(More customer reviews)Although I've been known to grumble at Kramer's dullness, the present book, far from being dull, ought to be of real interest to many. Professor Samuel Noah Kramer was the world's leading Sumerologist, but in this book he seems to have risen above the dry academic persona we find in some of his other books and allowed his love and enthusiasm for things Sumerian to show.
Basically the book sets out to explain and describe, using extensive quotations from Sumerian Literature, what Kramer took to be thirty-nine civilizational firsts of the Sumerians. Many new archaeological discoveries have been made since the 3rd revised edition of 'History Begins at Sumer' was published in 1981, and current thinking seems to be leaning towards the view that, far from beginning in Sumer, civilization first arose further East in India.
But whether it first began in Sumer or in India, since the Indus script hasn't yet been deciphered, and the Indians didn't write on imperishable clay tablets anyway, we have as yet no thirty-nine Vedic Indian firsts, and perhaps should give Kramer the benefit of the doubt and enjoy his splendid book.
After a brief Introduction, the thirty-nine firsts follow. Mutterings have been heard about the 'pop' overtones of the term 'firsts,' but it seems to me an interesting way of treating Sumer's history, and the book, in my opinion, is far more successful at capturing and holding one's attention than Kramer's later and more conventional study, 'The Sumerians.'
Most of the chapters are centered on a Sumerian text, some quite brief and others fairly long, which Kramer envelopes with his full and interesting commentary. Often we are given a line drawing of the actual cuneiform tablet from which the text was taken, and these have a special fascination all of their own. Besides the 28 line drawings, the book is further enriched with 34 halftones - sculptures, cuneiform tablets, stelae, artefacts, archaeological sites - which greatly add to the interest of the book.
Among the firsts covered are such things as: The First Schools, The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency, The First "War of Nerves," The First Bicameral Congress, First Historian, The First Case of Tax Reduction, The First Legal Precedent, The First Pharmacopoeia, The First Moral Ideals, The First Animal Fables, The First Literary Debates, The First Love Song, The First Library Catalogue, The First "Sick" Society, The First Long-Distance Champion, The First Sex Symbolism, Labor's First Victory, and so on.
Many of these and other chapters are memorable, and once having read them you'll never forget them. You'll never forget them because, in fact, they are about yourself. What I mean is that one of the more important things we learn from Kramer's fascinating book is that, whether we realize it or not, we are all, in a sense, Sumerians.
The patterns that were perhaps first laid down in Sumer - urbanization, monumental architecture, kingship, writing system, distinct social classes, laws, lawyers, lawcourts, taxes, formal education, libraries, a regular army, organized warfare, labor disputes, etc. - are still very much with us today. We usually refer to the whole package as 'Civilization,' without realizing how indebted to the Sumerians we all are. But Sumer, sadly, after a relatively brief efflorescence, crashed in ruins. Here are a few lines from Kramer's 'Sumerian History, Culture and Literature' describing that crash:
"In the course of centuries Sumer became a "sick society" ... it yearned for peace and was constantly at war; it professed such ideals as justice, equity and compassion, but abounded in injustice, inequality and oppression; materialistic and shortsighted, it unbalanced the ecology essential to its economy.... And so Sumer came to a cruel, tragic end" (in Diane Wolkstein and S. N. Kramer, 'Inanna - Queen of Heaven and Earth,' page 126).
Why, after achieving such brilliance, did Sumer crash in ruins? And Egypt? And Athens? And Rome? And why does this pattern seem to be repeating itself today in the West? Is civilization inherently unworkable? Or is there another answer? Personally, I think there is another answer. But you won't find it in the works of Professor Samuel Noah Kramer.


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Which civilization had the first system of law? The first formal educational system? The first tax cut? The first love song? The answers were found in excavations of ancient Sumer, a society so developed, resourceful, and enterprising that it, in a sense, created history. The book presents a cross section of the Sumerian "firsts" in all the major fields of human endeavor, including government and politics, education and literature, philosophy and ethics, law and justice, agriculture and medicine, even love and family.History Begins at Sumer is the classic account of the achievements of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq during the third millennium B.C. They were the developers of the cuneiform system of writing, perhaps their greatest contribution to civilization, which allowed laws and literature to be recorded for the first time.

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