Social Groups behind Biblical Traditions

Is the Hebrew Bible purely a product of Jerusalem or were there various social groups who each played a role in its development during the Second Temple period? This is the guiding question of the present volume, which fills a crucial gap in recent research by combining current literary-historical, redactional and text-historical analysis of the Hebrew Bible with the latest results pertaining to the pluriform social and religious shape of early Judaism. For the first time, the thirteen articles in this volume address the phenomenon of religious plurality by bringing together archaeological, (religious-) historical, and literary-critical approaches. The articles by internationally renowned scholars cover the panorama of currently known social groups of Yahwistic character and the impact of this phenomenon on the making of the Hebrew Bible – from the Persian period to the time of Qumran.