Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B. C. E. ( Academia Biblica Series)

In the current debate over the historical reliability of the Bible, this book gathers a particular kind of relevant evidence in the inscriptions of ancient Israel and her near neighbors. It provides a way to evaluate whether inscriptional evidence supports the Bible's references to specific persons. - - - - - I give it a four-star rating because due to production delays, it is updated only to mid-2002. On the other hand, there is no five-star book of its kind, because there is no other book that contains 1) a comprehensive system for evaluating such references in inscriptions or 2) a resulting, extensive list of Bible-era inscriptions that name biblical persons. This book and its appendixes examine 91 inscriptions from the biblical era. - - - - - This book is a revised dissertation completed in the Dept. of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was selected by Prof. Saul M. Olyan of Brown University, the series editor, to appear in Academia Biblica, a scholarly book series devoted to doctoral dissertations. The author is currently a tenured Library Faculty member at Purdue University.