Books by Dan Pioske
This book is the first study of ruination and the Hebrew Bible. It asks how those in antiquity ex... more This book is the first study of ruination and the Hebrew Bible. It asks how those in antiquity experienced the material remains they came across and what meanings they derived from these encounters.
Articles by Dan Pioske
Urbanism in the Iron Age and Beyond, 2025
The urban locations that arose in the southern Levant during the Iron Age period were typically c... more The urban locations that arose in the southern Levant during the Iron Age period were typically constructed among the ruins of former Bronze Age sites. This study asks how the presence of older material remains at these settlements impinged on how residents of the region thought about the past. To begin, I survey the archaeological evidence that pertains to how older Bronze Age remains endured within the environs of Iron Age locations in the southern Levant. The result of this history, I contend, was the formation of urban landscapes whose appearance included an assemblage of more venerable and more recent arrangements, their pasts and present coexisting in durable, visible forms. This investigation then turns to the biblical writings and their vision of these locations, in which current archaeological research is brought to bear on how the biblical writers conceived of time periods that preceded their own. What comes to light through this study, I argue, is a more restricted or narrow temporality that enclosed the biblical past, a temporality that nevertheless mirrored the residual material traces of previous ages that were located among urban centres that arose in the Iron Age period.
The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings, 2024
This study investigates the conditions of knowledge that made the Book of Kings possible.
The Ancient Israelite World, 2022
This essay considers the interpretive relationship between words and things for the history of an... more This essay considers the interpretive relationship between words and things for the history of ancient Israel by drawing on the theory of assemblage. It then develop this hermeneutical framework through a study of Jerusalem's history between the 14th and 10th centuries BCE.
The Hunt for Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of Diana V. Edelman, 2022
In the preface to The Fabric of History, Diana Edelman appeals for more theoretically attuned app... more In the preface to The Fabric of History, Diana Edelman appeals for more theoretically attuned approaches to the history of ancient Israel that attend, critically and self-consciously, to the type of sources we weave into the fabric of those histories we write. This study pursues one thread of this larger cloth by examining the conditions under which the referential claims of the Hebrew Bible first became possible. A key provision for the composition of these biblical stories, this investigation argues, was the appearance of a native Hebrew prose tradition in the ancient world of the southern Levant. This investigation retraces elements of the genealogy of this prose tradition by exploring comparative instances of prose writing from other literary cultures in antiquity and epigraphic evidence from the region, texts that, this study maintains, help us to both situate the emergence of Hebrew prose historically and understand better the types of past knowledge these writings convey.
Revue Biblique, 2022
Within the Hebrew Bible we encounter a substantial amount of references to ruins scattered among ... more Within the Hebrew Bible we encounter a substantial amount of references to ruins scattered among a wide number of biblical books. But what is striking about these passages is that the importance granted to such remains is something other than the information they provide about those populations who once inhabited them. Never, in other words, do we read of attempts to explore these sites, to dig among them, and connect their ruins to the cultures and civilizations that had come before. This study asks why.
Harvard Theological Review, 2022
The question of how to approach the Hebrew Bible as a source for the histories we write of ancien... more The question of how to approach the Hebrew Bible as a source for the histories we write of ancient Israel continues to divide scholars. This study responds to such concerns by pursuing an approach informed by a historicized view of knowledge, eras in which they are realized. What this line of research encourages, I argue, are historical investigations into the underlying modes of knowing that would have contributed to the stories told in the biblical writings. Since knowledge about the past is itself historical, this study contends that it is necessary to situate such claims in time, examining the normative assumptions of an era that establish the parameters by which this knowledge is organized and granted credibility. The epistemic conditions that gave rise to the stories recounted in the Hebrew Bible are as much an object of historical interest, on this view, as the stories themselves for assessments of what evidence they might offer. * I am indebted to Elaine James, Paul Kurtz, Andrew Tobolowsky, Ian Wilson, and two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their incisive readings and comments. 1 Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) 221.
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2019
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2018
Vetus Testamentum, 2016
The brief, cryptic account of Jerusalem’s takeover by David in 2 Sam 5:6-9 has elicited a conside... more The brief, cryptic account of Jerusalem’s takeover by David in 2 Sam 5:6-9 has elicited a considerable number of historical investigations into what events may have transpired according to this story. But what has received less historical attention is the scribal cul- ture responsible for this text’s composition. With this concern in mind, the aim of this study is to approach 2 Sam 5:6-9 as a scribal artifact in an effort to examine how this text took form and what cultural expectations guided its production. What comes to light through this manner of inquiry, I contend, is a text deeply shaped by an oral storytelling tradition. The results of this analysis are then brought to bear on certain interpretive questions connected to how one reads ancient prose accounts rendered by scribes who lived in a world of oral, living speech.
![Research paper thumbnail of The Scribe of David: A Portrait of a Life. Maarav 20.2 (2013 [appeared in 2016]): 163-88.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/49342330/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The first references to a scribe in the Hebrew Bible occur within two lists of officials connecte... more The first references to a scribe in the Hebrew Bible occur within two lists of officials connected to the reign of David in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam 8:16–18; 2 Sam 20:23–26). If little can be known directly about the individual referred to within these administrative lists, the possibility these texts raise about a scribal office developing in early tenth century BCE Jerusalem nevertheless invites the historian to explore a broader set of questions about the historical circumstances in which such a figure would have been involved. This approach toward the history of David’s scribe would consequently forego the attempt to recover the actual life of the individual attested to in the brief, cryptic references available to us in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, this study adopts a more oblique historical stance, being solicitous of a wider assemblage of evidence that pertains to Iron I/IIA scribalism in the Levant in an effort to retrace how the life of David’s scribe would have transpired if such an individual existed at that time. Provided that a scribe was active in early tenth century BCE Jerusalem, in other words, how would we envision the setting in which this official practiced his craft? How would this scribe have come to Jerusalem, where did he reside, and what texts would he have produced? What possible roles would such an individual have performed at this moment in Jerusalem’s early Iron Age past? Through such questions and considerations a meaningful portrait of an ancient life is able to unfold, I argue in the following, by way of a method and discourse that situates itself in the conditional.
Biblical Interpretation, 2015, 2015
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2015
Memory and the City in Ancient Israel, 2014
Near Eastern Archaeology, 2013
Book Reviews by Dan Pioske
How to approach the history of ancient Israel today is a lively and pressing question, emboldened... more How to approach the history of ancient Israel today is a lively and pressing question, emboldened by old debates that have grown tired and new evidence that invites us to reexamine former historical assumptions and assessments. With Philip Davies's study we are presented with a discussion of what methods might be used to write such histories and the particular challenges that may impede these efforts. Davies's volume is located within Bloomsbury's Guides for the Perplexed, which seeks to provide "clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging."
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Books by Dan Pioske
Articles by Dan Pioske
Book Reviews by Dan Pioske