A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars

Rating:
Summary: Incomplete and Inadequate
Review: First the good: Kaiser is obviously quite knowledgeable, and is not a mere Bible thumper in my opinion, as some of the reviewers seem to think.

The bad: This work should be MUCH longer to adequately deal with the material. I am left with many questions. Second, it is clumsily written. Third, I have no objection to the very conservative viewpoint, but I do not think that he ably argues that position at every turn--though he does much of the time. Lastly, some passages are incorrectly referenced. I agree with the reader who thought this work read like a rush job.

Dr. Kasier should return to the data and literature, and re-write this work from the ground up, doublling its length.

Rating:
Summary: A very interesting survey of Israel's history
Review: I agree with a previous reviewer about the number of typographical errors in the book and I even saw a number of run on sentences, more so than I am used to in a work from a major scholar. And the first 35 pages of the book constitutes some of the most turgid and boring prose I have ever read. But once the story enters the last two millenia of the BC era, the book picks up steam rapidly. It becomes a very engaging whirlwind trip through the Old Testament, with Kaiser stopping along the way to make some salient points anbout the historicity of particular passages. He discusses the date of the Exodus,, the historicity of the conquest of Israel, David's kingdom, and Josiah's discovery of the Book of the Law in the Temple. He also defends the early date for the book of Deuteronomy.

Kaiser is definitely swimming upstream in this book, as he is constantly dialoging with scholars who take less conservative positions on these matters, and he is virtually alone in the early dating of the Exodus. But he does an admirable job, and if you can make it past page 35, the book becomes very rich indeed.

Rating:
Summary: A shallow piece of historical pseudoscience
Review: The bible fundamentalists should choose someone else than
Mr Kaiser Jr. to defend the idea of the litteral interpretation of the Bible. Mr Kaiser's reasonings are infantile and do very little to support his extremely conservative view. For instance the primacy he claims for textual material (the Bible) over acheological finding ignores the fact that archeology gives information on what happened at the time it happened whereas the biblible is an oral and then written tradition whose earliest exponents are at least one thousand years later than the events they describe.

Mi suggestion is not to buy this book

Rating:
Summary: Good Overview For All and Yet Lacking...
Review: This work by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. offers a persuasive Evangelical view of Israelite history during the Old Testament. With a meaningful blend of archaelogical and biblical data, Kaiser presents students of the Bible with relevant information concerning the events and people that most shaped the Old Testament stories. Written in a clear and concise manner, this work also serves as an excellent resource to those searching for an introductory work on the background of the nation Israel during this period in Old Testament history.