The Primary History as Museum Exhibit

Rethinking the Recovery of the Hebrew Bible’s Artifacts

Bibliographic Data

ID12201801
AuthorsAndrew Tobolowsky (0000-0001-8107-6741, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, College of William & Mary Williamsburg, VA US, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume32
Issue3
Pages233-258
Publication date2020-05-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMethod & Theory in the Study of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0943-3058 • E-ISSN: 1570-0682
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/15700682-12341479
OpenAlexW3033699647
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

The “Primary History” is the scholarly term for the biblical narrative spanning Genesis through Kings, created largely through the combination of pre-existing texts and traditions. This narrative has played a central role in scholarly reconstructions of the history of Israelite and Judahite traditions more generally because it is often possible to recover these pre-biblical traditions apparently intact. However, the recovery of pre-biblical traditions is a more complicated problem than typical approaches—which focus on the reconstruction of original texts—allow. Scholars also need to consider how the combination and arrangement of traditions has altered our perception of them, even when we can recover their original form. This article employs contemporary theoretical approaches to museum exhibits in order to explore how the combination and presentation of artifacts reshapes what they seem to mean, without physically altering them, and applies those lessons to the study of reconstructed pre-biblical texts

Aesthetics · Art · Biblical studies · Epistemology · Focus (optics · Hebrew Bible · Literature · Narrative · Order (exchange · Perception · Presentation (obstetrics · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Development, Ethics, and Society · History · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy

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