Life giving resources. Faithfully delivered.
FREE delivery on orders over £10
Serving over 2 million Christians in the UK
with Bibles, Books and Church Supplies
Our Buy-Now-Pay-Later accounts used
by over 4,000 UK Churches & Schools
Excellent 4.8 out of 5

Trustpilot

You now have 0 of this item in your basket

The Empty Men

The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel [Hardback]

by Gregory Mobley

Author
Gregory Mobley
Book Format
Hardback
Publisher
Yale University Press
Published
December 2005

Read full description

Click to expand

Today's Price

£66.76

Free UK Delivery

Available - Usually dispatched within 4 days

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Enter the product quantity

The Empty Men

Today's Price £66.76

Frequently Bought Together

The Empty Men

by Gregory Mobley

Hardback

Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East

by Dr. Gregory Mobley

Hardback

Add both to basket for £220.06

Product Description

In a groundbreaking work of literary archaeology, a bold young scholar adds a new page to the quintessential book of adventure stories, that of the heroic traditions of the "Old Testament". Gregory Mobley brings a highly original eye to the familiar stories found in Judges, which depict Israel's frontier era, and in First and Second Samuel, which portray the ragged and violent emergence of kingship in Judah and Israel.From Ehud's mission into an inaccessible Moabite palace to the triumph of Gideon and his elite squadron against a Midianite swarm, from the gangland epic of the warlord Abimelech's rise and fall to the narrative of Samson, Israel's great outlaw-hero, Mobley rescues these stories from their theologically minded biblical editors and traditional interpreters. Mobley draws upon Semitic and European heroic traditions about warriors and wild men, and upon Celtic, Anglo-American, and African-American balladry about borderers and outlaws, to dig out the heroic themes submerged in biblical adventure stories."The Empty Men" describes the process by which adventure stories - replete with foolish love, warfare, assassinations, ritual slaughter, and grim masculine codes - were transformed into sermons and history lessons. Mobley also offers reflections on the Iron Age theology of these narratives, with their emphasis on poetic justice, and on the mythic dimensions of landscape in these stories. Mobley is sure to attract much attention in the scholarly community for his raw portrayals of biblical heroes, for his unblinking attention to the martial codes and the warrior subculture of ancient Israel, and for his bittersweet reflections on the theological and ethical significance of this corpus of adventure stories that are under the surface - but close to the bedrock - of the many mansions that Judaism and Christianity have built in subsequent centuries on these foundational texts.