only article included in the volume that was not published previously. It originated as the Boone M. Bowen lecture given at the First Methodist Church in Clemson, South Carolina shortly after Bowen’s death in 1987. In the true spirit of Hayes’s consistent emphasis on evaluating ideas of scholarship within their formative intellectual currents, the article offers one of the most comprehensive assessments of the development of the notion of covenant within Hebrew Bible scholarship from the 1920s to the mid-1980s—a virtual snapshot of how covenant as a theological, social, and institutional concept emerged from Max Weber forward and where that discussion stood near the end of the twentieth century. Additionally, Hayes successfully set out the history of the connection of the term hesed with the concept of covenant before explaining the more recent challenges to this association. For today’s reader, this article, like several others included here, provides the background for understanding much of what one finds in current scholarly discussions of covenant and hesed.
Taken together, the articles included in this volume provide a valuable resource to today’s students and scholars working with Israelite history, prophecy, and law. At a number of points, they provide succinct yet comprehensive snapshots of the background of ideas that underwent significant changes in the field in the late twentieth century and help to explain some of the methods and perspectives that characterize current scholarship. At other points, they propose innovative approaches that were new at the time and have since become part of theories and proposals whose weight is still recognizable today. In every case, however, Hayes’s work in these studies encourages both present and future scholars to be candid and courageous, to undertake their task with a healthy, gadfly-like skepticism toward taken-for-granted settlements and consensuses, and to offer boldly new ideas that, at times, go against the mainstream of scholarly opinion. Even more, throughout the articles included here one senses a kind of good humor that characterized Hayes’s career as a scholar and teacher. This good humor is a spirit that refuses to take any concept or convention—including one’s own, sometimes innovative and daring, proposals—as unquestionable “givens” that stand apart from the human, social, and intellectual influences that shaped them. Surely this kind of good humor and broad perspective is a happy byproduct of a life lived in settings as wide-ranging as an academic classroom and a sharecropper’s field, a university faculty and a rural beef-cattle farm. It represents a healthy understanding of the human and embedded nature of all scholarly pursuits—an understanding that Hayes has expressed even more explicitly in his post-retirement writings, producing a witty book of earthy thoughts about the road of life and a novel reflecting the struggles and triumphs of life in rural southern cultures.14 Seen in Hayes’s way, all students and scholars should approach the past, present, and future ideas of their discipline for what they are—honest, but limited efforts to make sense of available data undertaken by real-life human beings, who are embedded in a host of social, cultural, and intellectual realities.
Bibliography
Becking, Bob. The Fall of Samaria: An Historical and Archaeological Study. Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East 2. Leiden: Brill, 1992.
Gitay, Yehoshua. Prophecy and Persuasion: A Study of Isaiah 40–48. Forum Theologiae Linguisticae 14. Bonn: Linguistica Biblica, 1981.
Hayes, John H. Abanda: A Novel. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012.
———. Amos, the Eighth Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon, 1988.
———, editor. Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation. 2 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999.
———. If You Don’t Like the Possum, Enjoy the Sweet Potatoes: Some Principles for Travel Along the Road of Life. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009.
———, editor. Old Testament Form Criticism. TUMSR 2. San Antonio: Trinity Uni-versity Press, 1977.
Hayes, John H., and Stuart A. Irvine. Isaiah, the Eighth Century Prophet: His Times and His Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon, 1987.
Kelle, Brad E. Hosea 2: Metaphor and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective. Society of Bib-lical Literature Academia Biblica 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
———. “Hoshea, Sargon, and the Final Destruction of Samaria: A Response to M. Christine Tetley with a View Toward Method.” SJOT 17 (2003) 226–44.
———. “What’s in a Name? Neo-Assyrian Designations for the Northern Kingdom and Their Implications for Israelite History and Biblical Interpretation.” JBL 121 (2002) 639–66.
Kelle, Brad E., and Megan Bishop Moore. “Introduction.” In Israel’s Prophets and Israel’s Past: Essays on the Relationship of Prophetic Texts and Israelite History in Honor of John H. Hayes, edited by Brad E. Kelle and Megan Bishop Moore, 1–5. Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 446. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006.
Miller, J. Maxwell, and John H. Hayes. A History of Ancient Israel and Judah. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986; 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006.
Moore, Megan Bishop, and Brad E. Kelle. Biblical History and Israel’s Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.
Na’aman, Nadav. “The Historical Background to the Conquest of Samaria (720 BC).” Bib 71 (1990) 206–25.
Park, Sung Jin. “A New Historical Reconstruction of the Fall of Samaria.” Bib 93 (2012) 98–106.
Shaw, Charles S. The Speeches of Micah: A Rhetorical-Historical Analysis. JSOTSup 145. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993.
Sweeney, Marvin A., and Ehud Ben Zvi, editors. The Changing Face of Form Criticism for the Twenty-first Century. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Tetley, M. Christine. “The Date of Samaria’s Fall as a Reason for Rejecting the Hypothesis of Two Conquests.” CBQ 64 (2002) 59–77.
Thompson, Thomas L. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. BZAW 133. 1974. Reprinted, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002.
Van Seters, John. Abraham in History and Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975
Younger, K. Lawson. “The Fall of Samaria in Light of Recent Research.” CBQ 61 (1999) 461–82.
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
ANECS Ancient Near East: Classic Studies
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969
Ant. Josephus, Antiquities
ARAB Annals and Records of Assyria and Babylonia. Translated by D. D. Luckenbill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926–27
b. Babylonian Talmud tractates
BA Biblical Archaeologist
Bib Biblica
BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
EvTh Evangelische Theologie
FRLANT
