Table of Contents

Acknowledgement
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One
The Rise of the Concept of Race
Social Evolution and Race
Human Evolution and the Concept of Culture(s)
Chapter Two
Archaeology and Evolution
Archaeology and the Question of National Identity: Gustav Kossinna
Archaeology and Culture: V. Gordon Childe
Archaeology and the Identity of Israel
Chapter Three
The Emergence of ‘Ethnicity'
Primordialism and Instrumentalism in the Study of Ethnicity
Chapter Four
Cognitive Perspectives on Ethnicity and Identity
Ethnicity as Cognition: Pierre Bourdieu
Chapter Five
The Loss of Innocence
New Archaeology and the Ethnic Interpretation of Style
Style as Active Comunication
The Archaeology of Practice
Chapter Six
Biblical Archaeology and La Longue Durée
Archaeology and Israelite Identity
Israel in the Merneptah Stele
‘Israel' as an Essentialist Category of Social Cognition
Chapter Seven
Israelite Ethnicity and Biblical Archaeology
Ethnic Sentiments in the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible and the ‘Creation' of Israelite Identity
Chapter Eight
Ideology, Doxa, and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity
Common Sense as Social Power
Conclusion
Bibliography

Promotional Information

It presents a vision of Israel as an epistemological rather than an ontological entity; a perspective on the world rather than an entity in it.

About the Author

Dr. Nestor is Lecturer in Old Testament studies at Australian Catholic University in Sydney.

Reviews

This is clearly an important text, shrewdly perceptive in content, informative in every detail, and offering a new perspective for sociological investigation of the biblical material that would be of interest to biblical scholars with an interest in ethnicity and Sitz im Leben.
*Reviews in Religion & Theology*