even though many aged testomony students favor now not to talk of the Elohist resource within the Pentateuch, Gnuse seeks to shield the life of this pentateuchal culture via responding to scholarly critics, keeping apart texts belonging to the resource and providing a theological review of those texts. Dream reviews in historical close to jap texts from the 7th and 6th centuries BCE endure outstanding familiarity with the biblical dream stories within the Elohist. Prophetic narratives within the books of Samuel and Kings seem to have encouraged the following construction of the Elohist narratives within the Pentateuch. hence, Gnuse situates the Elohist culture within the 7th century BCE after the autumn of the nation of Israel within the north in 722 BCE, that is a later date than students have attributed to this resource some time past. due to this surroundings the Elohist texts will be assessed in a different way than they've been long ago. The texts may have spoken to exiles from the northern country with topics that bespeak devotion to 1 God, desire of recovery, and absolute obedience to a transcendent deity who's published via desires, hearth, and prophets. the writer additionally ponders what those texts say to our sleek age.

"In this examine, the made from a long time of pondering the Elohist, Robert Gnuse has produced a important consultant to the relevant texts and issues of this usually ignored and underappreciated biblical writer. The Elohist is definitely deserving of larger realization, and Gnuse is to be counseled for attractive it head-on."
--Joel Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible, Yale University

"Robert Gnuse has again to an outdated query within the severe learn of Israelite culture. He does so with clean perception and theological mind's eye. through mobilizing a large and deep array of scholarship he exposits a specific 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 booklet is compelling facts of how within which severe research 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 lifestyles 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 matters just like the hiddenness of God, the world-wide bring up of refugees, and the inadequate provide of nutrition for lots of humans on the earth. Biblical students and theologians alike will gain drastically from this book."
--Stuart A. Irvine, Louisiana nation University

"Robert Gnuse brings a magnificent 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 relating to those traditions as detailed cycles of stories crafted principally through the century after the Assyrian conquest to assist the exiles deal theologically with this defeat. conscientiously 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 wonderful Professor of the arts and entire Professor of Hebrew Bible at Loyola collage in New Orleans, the place he has taught previous testomony and international Religions for thirty-six years. he's writer of Misunderstood Stories (Cascade Books, 2014), Trajectories of Justice (Cascade Books, 2015), and The previous testomony and approach Theology (Wipf & inventory, 2016).