The Hebrew narrative art achieves its highest level in the stories of Saul, David, and
Solomon. But beyond that, the description of these all-too-human characters and the
dramatic events of the birth of the Israelite state depicts a change of eras that became
determinative for half a millennium of Israelite history. In this volume Dietrich introduces
readers to the stories of the early Israelite state from a variety of perspectives: literarycritical,
historical, and theological. After tracing how biblical and extrabiblical texts describe
the period, Dietrich skillfully untangles the knotty questions related to the history of the
period and perceptively examines the development of this literary corpus as well as the other
biblical material that came to be associated with it. In a concluding chapter Dietrich revisits
the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon to explore what they teach about theological issues
of enduring significance, what they teach about God, humanity, the state, the use of force,
and the relationship between women and men.

Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)