Deity in the Hebrew Bible

This book interrogates the conceptualization of deity and divine agency in the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the problem of the relationship of divine images and representatives to their patron deities. In order to move beyond the tendentiousness of previous scholarship that addresses this problem, I employ an interdisciplinary approach that will center cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion, and also include biblical criticism, archaeology, anthropology, materiality studies, and other disciplines. I begin in Part One with a methodological discussion that describes the approaches being taken and interrogates some of the conceptual frameworks that have governed the previous scholarship on the question, such as "religion" and the practice of definition. It will then move on to discuss the concepts of agency and personhood, and how contemporary anthropological research on both can help inform our interrogation of the ancient world.