"Forge " (v.) to form, especially by effort; to beat into shape; to reshape by heating and hammering; to forge a bond between parties; to create (something) enduring; to imitate . . .
As far as the Hebrew Bible goes, every aspect of the above definition applies. As we will explore in this workshop, not only were Israel's scriptures the outcome of their complex relationships with surrounding empires, but the biblical texts were shaped by different interest groups in the smelter of political intrigue only to be reshaped in the same furnace by later interest groups. But most importantly, the biblical text imitates the traditions of every empire that ancient Israel and Judah forged bonds with. And finally, the ideas about God that they derived from their neighbours, have certainly been enduring. Even today, modern Christians are confronted with the strangeness of these ideas. It has been said that the future of the church is already being shaped by our efforts to negotiate these alien and disturbing ideas. In this workshop, we will look at the provenance of some of the most troublesome features that the biblical authors ascribed to their God and the possible reasons why they found their way into the Christian Old Testament. In Part One of the workshop, we will be looking at how typical and widespread it was in the ancient world for authors to copy, appropriate and rehash old ideas from far and wide.
Introduction
“Versions of the earliest source texts of the Hebrew Bible – royal psalms, folk traditions and creation myths – existed in all the ancient Near Eastern libraries of Assyria, Egypt and Mesopotamia. With these early building blocks (which are now embedded in the Old Testament books) ancient Israel had a collection of source texts much like any other elsewhere in the ancient Near East.” - David Carr
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