Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey

I am a "minimalist" in analyzing the archaeology and Near Eastern references to the Bible, and Hess probably would fall into a centrist-to-maximalist" position. This book, nevertheless, is a cornu copiae of contemporary information which is presented in a logical and will-referenced order. When the author says there are six points to a position, he CLEARLY numbers them, quite unlike many other authors who seemingly forget that they promised a specific number of items. He is one of the few to connect the archaeological discoveries at Emar with Biblical notions. He is generally not "preachy" but occasionaly lapses into a sort of "believer" mentality. His easy writing ability makes the book immensely readable, even for regular folks. Well worth the purchase. I bet it would be fun to be a student in one of his seminars!

Helpful for my Old Testament Classes in Seminary. Good Resource

The usefulness of Hess's book for me was its copious archeological data and summaries of several approaches to and scholarly views of the bible throughout the past century or so. Hess's main approach is to combine ancient textual and material-cultural data with the bible, with an emphasis on the antiquity of the biblical traditions. He fortunately avoids theological considerations about deviations from some idea of a 'normative' Israelite religion and instead focuses on descriptions of various religious practices in Israel. This makes for tedious reading at times with the sheer number of data he lists and summarizes.The pieces on other ancient religious texts and material culture outside of Israel was helpful for putting Israelite religion/s in perspective. Some of the biblical and evidence comparisons seem vague and superficial sometimes though. I would have also liked to see Hess tackle the question of the development of Yahweh-alone theology in depth. He avoids it, mentioning the work of Tigay several times, by merely suggesting Yahweh-alone theology seems to have appeared very early in Israelite history.The work overall is quality with a conservative bent, and I will continue to use it in my studies, especially for its mine of data, its summaries, not to mention its huge bibliography.

I learnt a lot from this book. It gives an overview of the textual and archaeological evidence for religious diversity within Israel, while taking a conservative view on the existence of a Biblical 'Orthodox' religion as something that existed from the earliest days of the nation. Material arguing for the early authorship of the Pentateuch was unexpected but welcome.