Scribal Representations and Social Landscapes of the Iron Age Shephelah

The Shephelah borderlands in the southwestern region of Iron Age Israel (ca. 1200-586 BCE) are one of the most intensely excavated areas in the world, a complex social-political place standing between the central highlands and the coastal home of the so-called biblical "Philistines." Yet the lives of these people on the margins of ancient Israel are lost to us today, left only in the fragments of archaeological remains and in the Bible's entangled representations of the proximate Other. In Scribal Representations and Social Landscapes of the Iron Age Shephelah, Mahri Leonard-Fleckman delves into how the Other is created and fashioned in ancient witnesses to these regions by analyzing identity in the Iron Age Shephelah. Focusing on two contemporary archaeological sites with plausible ancient connections, Tel Batash (ancient Timnah) and Tell es-Safi (ancient Gath), she journeys through texts and archaeology that bear witness to the social and political complexities of the region. Significantly, she presents irresolution as a practice for scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Levant and illustrates how resisting conclusions can be an asset to investigating the distant past. Along the way, she advances new hypotheses that illuminate biblical passages describing individuals and communities from the regionsuch as the stereotypical Philistines, Samson, Tamar, Delilah, and others. The book draws together a range of critical perspectives to spark compelling conversations about identity and history between anthropologists, archaeologists, biblical scholars, literary theorists, and historians.

Mahri Leonard-Fleckman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She has published widely on the intersections between composition history, historical methods, and scribal practices in the ancient Levant. She is the author of The House of David: Between Political Formation and Literary Revision, co-author with Alice Laffey of The Book of Ruth in the Wisdom Commentary Series, and co-editor of two volumes. She is currently co-editor of the Cambridge University Press Elements series The Ancient Near Eastern World and the Bible (ANEWB).