The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel

by Mark S. Smith

This insightful work examines the variety of ways that collective memory, oral tradition, history, and history writing intersect. Integral to all this are the ways in which ancient Israel was shaped by the monarchy, the Babylonian exile, and the dispersions of Judeans and the ways in which Israel conceptualized and interacted with the divine-Yahweh as well as other deities.

Genres: Religion, Old Testament, Judaism, Theology, History, Biblical Studies

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2004

About the author

Mark S. Smith is Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University. He has served as visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Smith was elected vice president of the Catholic Biblical Association in 2009.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a culmination of Mark S. Smith's work on the history of God and ancient Israelite religion. I give it only four stars because he really doesn't succeed at his stated aim of producing a book for the general public. It is short on footnotes, but you have to know the literature and the theories to really understand this book. I had no problems with the book, but I have an undergraduate degree in ancient Near Eastern languages and civilizations and a master's degree in Jewish studies. Were the book longer with more discussion of the actual theories and issues rather than simply naming them and assuming you know what he is talking about, then it would have rated 5 stars.

Generally, if you have read his scholarly works _Origins of Biblical Monotheism_ and _Early History of God_, then you have the gist of most of the book.

Smith's contribution to advance scholarship in this book is in applying French theories of collective memory to the development of the Biblical text through time. It is relatively novel, at least cloaks a fairly simple proposition in a bunch of French jargon which makes it sound important.

[Thomas Ray]

Library-of-Congress BS1192.6 .S553 2004 College Library Rm. 1191

[Aron · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone draw to this sort of history as part of my spiritual practice, I've become a fan of Mark S. Smith, but have always felt he was talking way over my head. Not intentionally, but simply out of the specialized field he deals with. This book seemed more directed at the general reader, but as that purpose, it fails to a certain extent. It's a better introduction to the topic than say "Early History of God", but I still felt I had to go elsewhere to grasp this topic as others reviewers have mentioned.

If you've read others introductions to biblical scholarship and histories of the Near East and feel like you're ready for the next step and want to try something sort it length, this works well, but it's certainly not for beginners.

[Ítalo Borges · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, professor Mark S. Smith is brilliant in writing the history of Israel. He bases the assertions on substantiated claims, scholarly consensus, verifiable information and evidence. When he is not certain about something, he admits it. I'm already looking foward to read another book from his.

[Jonathan Brat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well deserving of the praise that it receives. I think it leaves the reader with an appetite for more, but that’s also sort of the point for a book of this size.

Plenty of references are sprinkled throughout, especially Pritchard’s ANET which is hardly affordable but there’s a (legal?) copy available online for free. I thought the discussion in the third section concerning the structures of divinity among earlier and neighboring traditions deserved to take place earlier on.

On the whole though, this represents a benchmark for accessing scholarly literature on the evolution of religious traditions in the Levant.

[w gall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very eye opening, even though I grasped only some of it. Very scholarly. The conclusion summarized the implications. Not a sceptic, but he shows aspects of the continual occasional editing of the texts through the centuries before Christ that serve as a rude awakening to Bible fundamentalists ( which I once was) and also to Bible critics who have chosen to put aside history to simply focus on contemporary application.