Cart 0 Log In
SBL Press Bookstore
Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E
Morton Cogan
ISBN
9780884140412
Volume
SBLMS 19
Status
Available
Price
$22.00
Publication Date
January 2013
Paperback

$22.00

“Cogan’s thesis is that the Neo-Assyrian western expansion in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. was primarily military and political in intent and had little or no stress upon imposition of the Assyrian religion on conquered peoples. … Cogan’s argument is based on an analysis of the Scripture, Neo-Assyrian texts, and other relevant material. … On the whole, the monograph is a healthy corrective to the excesses that were indicative of earlier attempts to analyze the significance of Neo-Assyrian cultic practices on the religion of Israel.
— John E. Eggleton, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

“The political and military interaction between Assyria and Israel, especially in the 8th–7th cent., have been written on with increasing accuracy in the last few decades as the result of two things: first, the Assyrian royal inscriptions are becoming better classified, and gradually reedited, with some new ones being added to their number; and, second, scholars are coming to the fore who are at home in the literature of both countries. The work under review is valuable because it presents the views of a vigorous group of modern Israeli scholars, such as Y. Kaufmann, Y. Aharoni, Β. Mazar, M. Harán, and H. Tadmor, the last two having written extensively and integrated the fields of ancient Near East and the Bible, and whose ideas warrant a wider presentation to the western world. … Cogan’s book is unusual and provocative in that the religious statements in the royal inscriptions are analyzed, and biblically-oriented questions are asked of them. It will make the reader conscious, if he is not already so, of the influence of the Assyrians in Israel in the 7th–6th centuries.”
— Richard A. Henshaw, Journal of Biblical Literature