Can anyone recommend some books that would help me understand

The Bible
The Jewish War - Josephus

>>1473809
No, the bible is not good. Its a literary work.
I want something that goes beyond the bible, that examines things based also on archeological findings.
I want different speculations on how people might have lived back then based on all the information we have.

>>1473827
Josephus wrote about the post jesus times. I wanna know about the time when israelites might have still being polytheists or were transitioning to monotheism. as in the times in which the bible was written.

>>1473852
>No, the bible is not good. Its a literary work.

That's like saying Homer isn't a good source for history because it's a poem.

Stop being so lazy and stoopid.

I'll begrudgingly give you two social histories. You dick.

The Social History of Ancient Israel: An Introduction - Kessler

Social World of Ancient Israel: 1250-587 BCE - Benjamin & Matthews

>>1473827
Fun Fact about Josephus everyone knows already: almost none of his works were preserved by Jews. The Jews regarded him as a race-traitor and Philhellene (which he was both). All of his works were preserved by Christians though, both to study Jewish antiquity and the time of Jesus.

Obviously his most famous passage was about Jesus...
>About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. - Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63

However the paragraph is at odds with the rest of his writing style. It's also odd that Josephus (a Jew whom didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah) would give such a glowing endorsement to a guy he never met, without subjecting it to the same skeptical razor he uses on others. The answer may be Christians (the only ones preserving his works after his death) may've edited the paragraph at a later date.

The original may've looked something like this...
>About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. - Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63

>>1473876
>That's like saying Homer isn't a good source for history because it's a poem
it really isn't. even acknowledging a mere kernal of historical basis it is a horrible source for history beyond a source for greek culture

>>1473899
>it really isnt.

Then you're fucking retarded dude.

Fuck you and your dumbassery.

I mean seriously, do you really need to make a thread for this shit? Just type in "social history of ancient israel" and you'll get all you need.

>>1473903
nice argument and I'm not OP. do you also read King Arthur for English history?

>>1473907
Many have historians have.

>>1473876
The bible is very inaccurate and is not a history book.
I have read it im not lazy.
Also thank you for the recommendations.

>>1473914
It being not being a history book does not mean it's not a source. You cunt.

But no problem man hope you find what you're looking for fella.

>>1473910
historians barely take anything as true from King Arthur and the Iliad. their conclusions amount to quite vaguely there was a ruler in England at one time named Arthur and that there was a battle of some size between greek city states and Troy. the Iliad is not intended to be a history. it's a story meant to entertain

>>1473876
I cant find these on libgen. Anyone knows where i can get them?

>>1473918
why do you feel the need to insult anyone that challenges your position? also while the bible is a source, it is not neccisarily a good source, just like how the Iliad is a source it is not a good source.

>>1473918
What is YOUR problem?

>>1473923
>historians barely take anything as true from King Arthur and the Iliad. their conclusions amount to quite vaguely there was a ruler in England at one time named Arthur and that there was a battle of some size between greek city states and Troy.

They take more from the works than that.

For example the Odyssey can be used as a source for Greek knowledge of the geography of Europe at the time.

The Iliad is also used (and I believe it was reasonobaly accurate) as a source for the wealth and power of Greek city states, as in the Iliad, Homer goes over the war contributions of the various cities (eg Athens sent X amount of ships).

>>1473929
>>1473931
My problem is gaylords like you being faggots on my board. Frick off wankers.

>>1473924
Try Bookzz.org

Read Ancient Israel by Lester L. Grabbe. it's not focused on the daily lives of people but moreso a summary and analysis of our sources. I think this stuff is fundamental to being able to come to any understanding of the daily lives of people

>>1473937
>The Iliad is also used (and I believe it was reasonobaly accurate) as a source for the wealth and power of Greek city states, as in the Iliad, Homer goes over the war contributions of the various cities (eg Athens sent X amount of ships).
bullshit. this is like saying Numbers is a good source for the population size and military contributions of the tribes of Israel. an epic poem is not a likely source to have raw data from such a war

File: Boar_tusk_helmet_from_Athens.jpg (70KB, 375x500px) Image search: [Google]

70KB, 375x500px

>>1473951
>an epic poem is not a likely source to have raw data from such a war

No shit, I'm not arguing that it was a highly accurate source for the amount of ships they sent in a war. It's just a decent source for working out the powers at the time, and the amount of ships that would/could be sent out for war.

I'm not arguing the Iliad is a history book, but I'm saying it's not just a work of pure fiction.

For example, he write of Odysseus receiving a Boar Tusk Helm, these have been found in archaeological digs.

"Meriones gave Odysseus a bow, a quiver and a sword, and put a cleverly made leather helmet on his head. On the inside there was a strong lining on interwoven straps, onto which a felt cap had been sewn in. The outside was cleverly adorned all around with rows of white tusks from a shiny-toothed boar, the tusks running in alternate directions in each row."

Pic related is from the 14th century BC.

>>1473972
>No shit, I'm not arguing that it was a highly accurate source for the amount of ships they sent in a war. It's just a decent source for working out the powers at the time, and the amount of ships that would/could be sent out for war
you are contradicting yourself here. the same case with Numbers applies here. it is more likely that these numbers moreso reflect later views about what the city states could bring or pure propaganda. for example in Numbers Judah and Ephraim supply the most troops despite Judah throughout all of history having a significantly smaller population. we can tell here that this is pro-Judah propaganda trying to put them on equal footing with the ruling tribe of the historical Israel. there is also potential for these numbers to be put there simply because it's considered a magic number (ex: good kings in Judah rule for 40 years and period of peace in Judges last 40 or 80 years) or is involved in a numerical progression that has some significance to the author (ex: the lifespans of the patriarchs in Genesis)

>>1473996
>you are contradicting yourself here.

I think it's more of a case of miscommunication

I'd love to discuss further, but I'm off.

I'll leave this copy/paste here for anyone interested:

The designation "Catalogue of Ships" suggests that the passage is in some way detachable from its context.[citation needed] It is bracketed between two invocations. In the debate since antiquity[2] over the Catalogue of Ships, the core questions have concerned the extent of historical credibility of the account, whether it was composed by Homer himself, to what extent it reflects a pre-Homeric document or memorized tradition, surviving perhaps in part from Mycenaean times, or whether it is a result of post-Homeric development.[3] Dörpfeld notes that while in Odyssey Odysseus's kingdom includes Ithaca, Same, Dulichium, and Zacynthus, the Catalogue of Ships contains a different list of islands, again Ithaca, Same, and Zacynthus but now also Neritum, Krocylea, and Aegilips.The separate debate over the identity of Homer and the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey is conventionally termed "the Homeric Question".

The consensus before the mid-twentieth century was that the Catalogue of Ships was not the work of the man who composed the Iliad,[4] though great pains had been taken to render it a work of art;[5] furthermore, that the material of the text is essentially Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean, while disagreement centres largely on the extent of later additions.

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>>1474010

If taken to be an accurate account, the Catalogue provides a rare summary of the geopolitical situation in early Greece at some time between the Late Bronze Age and the eighth century BCE. Following Milman Parry's theory of Homeric oral poetry, some scholars, such as Denys Page, argue that it represents a pre-Homeric recitation incorporated into the epic by Homer.[6] A few argue that parts of the recitation, such as the formulae describing places, date as early as the time of the Trojan War in the mid-13th century BCE, or possibly before. Others contend that the Catalogue is based on the time of Homer himself in the eighth century BCE and represents an anachronistic attempt to impose contemporary information to events five centuries earlier.[citation needed]

An intermediate theory is that the catalogue developed through a process of accretion during the poem's oral transmission and reflects gradual inclusion of the homelands of local sponsors by individual singers[citation needed]. In the most recent extended study of the Catalogue, Edzard Visser, of the University of Basel, concludes that the Catalogue is compatible with the rest of the Iliad in its techniques of verse improvisation, that the order of the names is meaningful and that the geographical epithets evince concrete geographical knowledge. Visser argues that this knowledge was transmitted by the heroic myth, elements of which introduce each geographical section.[7] W. W. Minton places the catalogue within similar "enumerations" in Homer and Hesiod, and suggests that part of their purpose was to impress the audience with a display of the performer's memory.[8]

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>>1474012
The most striking feature of the catalogue's geography is that it does not portray Greece in the Iron Age, the time of Homer. By then a tribal identity called the Dorians had enveloped western Greece, the Peloponnesus and Crete, while the shores of Ionia were densely populated by a people claiming to descend from families in the now-Dorian regions of Greece. The whole northwestern part of Greece is not mentioned and it is these peoples (Epirotes, Macedonians, some Thessalians etc.) thought to be of Dorian descent.

Instead the catalogue portrays a loose union of city-states, mostly in mainland Greece, ruled by hereditary families under the overlordship of the High King (ἄναξ, ánax) of Mycenae. Hardly any of them are Dorian.[citation needed] The Ionian Greeks are mainly missing.[citation needed] This political snapshot is undeniably one intended to be of Late Bronze Age Greece.

(Bonus Round)