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Israel's Neighbors And The Problem Of The Past, Chapter One Of Ancient Israel's Neighbors, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "My purpose in this book is to tell the story of Israel's nearest neighbors- not only discovering what the Bible has to say about them but also what we can know from archaeology, ancient inscriptions, and other sources. To say that this task is complicated is putting it lightly. For one thing, the Bible itself presents these neighbors in nuanced and conflicting ways; sometimes they are friends or even related to Israel at a family level, and sometimes they are enemies, spoken of as though they must die in order for Israel to live. The Moabites, for example, violently …