although many elderly testomony students desire now not to talk of the Elohist resource within the Pentateuch, Gnuse seeks to safeguard the lifestyles of this pentateuchal culture via responding to scholarly critics, keeping apart texts belonging to the resource and delivering a theological evaluate of those texts. Dream stories in old close to jap texts from the 7th and 6th centuries BCE undergo notable familiarity with the biblical dream reviews within the Elohist. Prophetic narratives within the books of Samuel and Kings seem to have encouraged the next production of the Elohist narratives within the Pentateuch. hence, Gnuse situates the Elohist culture within the 7th century BCE after the autumn of the kingdom of Israel within the north in 722 BCE, that is a later date than students have attributed to this resource long ago. due to this atmosphere the Elohist texts can be assessed in a different way than they've been some time past. The texts may need spoken to exiles from the northern kingdom with issues that bespeak devotion to 1 God, desire of recovery, and absolute obedience to a transcendent deity who's printed via desires, fireplace, and prophets. the writer additionally ponders what those texts say to our sleek age.

"In this examine, the made of decades of wondering the Elohist, Robert Gnuse has produced a useful advisor to the relevant texts and subject matters of this usually neglected and underappreciated biblical writer. The Elohist is easily deserving of better consciousness, and Gnuse is to be recommended for enticing it head-on."
--Joel Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Yale University

"Robert Gnuse has again to an previous query within the serious research of Israelite culture. He does so with clean perception and theological mind's eye. by way of mobilizing a large and deep array of scholarship he exposits a selected strand of the culture that at the one hand attests the transcendence of God, and at the different shows the urgency of civil disobedience. His e-book is compelling proof of how during which severe learn of the Scriptures serves modern theological interpretation."
--Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

"Against the grain of a lot modern scholarship, Gnuse provides an impressive case for the Elohist as a seventh-century BCE resource within the Pentateuch. The research brilliantly brings the Elohist narratives to existence as a northern theological reaction to the autumn of Israel in 722 BCE Gnuse additionally illustrates the theological relevance of the Elohist to trendy readers who fight with concerns just like the hiddenness of God, the world-wide raise of refugees, and the inadequate offer of meals for lots of humans on the planet. Biblical students and theologians alike will gain vastly from this book."
--Stuart A. Irvine, Louisiana kingdom University

"Robert Gnuse brings a powerful wisdom of Pentateuchal scholarship to undergo at the long-debated query of the lifestyles and goal of the Elohist. He builds a robust case for concerning those traditions as designated cycles of stories crafted principally in the course of the century after the Assyrian conquest to assist the exiles deal theologically with this defeat. rigorously evaluating those texts with the early prophetic and later Yahwistic traditions, Gnuse deals an illuminating contribution to the discussion."
--Douglas A. Knight, Drucilla Moore Buffington Professor of Hebrew Bible, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University

Robert Karl Gnuse is the James C. Carter, SJ/Chase financial institution uncommon Professor of the arts and entire Professor of Hebrew Bible at Loyola collage in New Orleans, the place he has taught outdated testomony and global Religions for thirty-six years. he's writer of Misunderstood Stories (Cascade Books, 2014), Trajectories of Justice (Cascade Books, 2015), and The outdated testomony and strategy Theology (Wipf & inventory, 2016).