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The story of Israel is one of the outstanding tales of human history. Israel, occupying a narrow strip of land between sea and desert, was positioned on an international highway of commerce and warfare. This was a people whose future would be intertwined with the stories of nations great and small.F. F. Bruce shapes the daunting complexities of this history, nearly fourteen hundred years from the exodus to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, into straight prose that sparkles with clarity. More than half of the book is devoted to the postexilic history of Israel, the "intertestamental" period and the first-century history that forms the backdrop of the New Testament.First published in 1963, Israel and the Nations has achieved wide recognition as an excellent introduction to the history of Israel. This new edition, carefully revised by David F. Payne, includes some new material and a revised bibliography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An context for the Bible
Because the Bible has a spiritual point and tells a spiritual story, the context with which that story develops can seem obscure at times. Professor Bruce's effort, in Israel and the Nations, attempts to place most of the Old and New Testament within its regional political and cultural context in a very precise and clear prose style.

Bruce writes with the presupposition of the historicity of the miracles and supernatural interaction with the Hebrew people being real, but that is not his primary focus. His focus is to place the spiritual story within the larger story of the ancient near east. He does regard the the Bible to be a history source of the highest rank. The author makes no theological judgments of the events, but merely places them in time.

His story is remarkable when taken out of its familiarity: a large tribe of nomads arising from Egypt over 3500 years ago onto a cross-roads section of the Mediterranean coast, after various civil wars, economic collapses, and defeats by a string of neighboring powers, should be nothing more than a footnote to history, as much as the Hittite Empire or the Amorite. Instead, they changed the world, largely due to their struggle to keep and at times abandon their unique religious faith.


The first half of the book covers the period from the Egyptian exodus to the end of the prophets. This retelling of the history has a wonderful way of humanizing the events told in the Old Testament. The envies and strife spring from real tribal warfare, real economic crisises, and real political intrigue. The rise and fall of King Solomon and his descendants is an excellent example. Taking advantage to exploit natural resources, like copper and horses for chariots, his tribal empire grew; yet fell when tax burdens, forced labor, double-crossings of allies and enemies happened and raw nepotism and favoritism ensured the worst of combinations: weak and oppressive government, something not easily picked up by reading the scriptural narrative, but the elements are all there.

The value of Psalm 137, which tells of the joy of Judah's traditional enemy, Edom, rejoicing over their fall to the Babylonians in 587 BC has a greater ring to it when you understand the doom of the fall of Jerusalem and what that meant for relations to neighbors and what that said about the confidence of the Jewish people in years to come.

The last half of the book deals with what is known as the inter-testament period to the final fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 to the Romans and the Jewish diaspora that forever changed Judaism and his daughter faith Christianity. The exploits of Alexander the Great, his successor Greek rulers, the rise of Rome, and the Herodian dynasty are all told here from the perspective of the Jewish people and state. What readily becomes apparent is that the Jews were becoming more of a spiritual people and less of a nationalistic people, as the Greek influence after Alexander, spread the Jewish influence around the Mediterranean basin. In fact the first translation of the Bible out of its native tongue, the Septuagint, took place around 50 BC in the Jewish learning centers of Alexandria, Egypt.

This is an excellent book, not only because the story it tells is excellent, but because Dr. Bruce writes of it extremely well and concisely in under 250 pages. It would be a worthwhile read for students of the Bible.

Important reading
This book fills an important gap in the period covered.While not as extensive as some histories of the period it binds together each section of history very well, showing how one event not just preceded the other but in most cases gave birth to it.Today is the product of yesterday is what this book demonstrates in a comprehensive way. Accordingly to understand the days in which our Lord lived this book is invaluable.A must read.F F Bruce is both reliable and academic without being cold and analytical.

Israel & The Nations - Solid History Well Told
Israel & The Nations packs an incredible level of detail into a well flowing and very readable history. I highly recommend it for the Bible student or teacher who is seeking to have a clear chronological context forthe events in the Scriptures. The authors' accounts are concise andfact-laden. The account of Nebuchadnezzar's defeat of Pharaoh Necho, thesubsequent deportations of Israelis to Babylon, and Zedekiah's revolt isbetter told than all other theother reference books in my bookcasecombined (and I have a lot of books). This is the overview history that Iwish I had twenty years ago. ... Read more

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The organization of the first Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) conference centered around two specifically identifiable research topics -- autobiographical memory and eyewitness memory. These two areas -- long-time staples on the menu of investigators of memory in more natural settings -- differ on a variety of dimensions, perhaps most notably on their specific goals for scientific inquiry and application. For many questions about memory and cognition that are of interest to scientific psychology, there have been historical as well as rather arbitrary reasons for their assignment to the autobiographical or eyewitness memory fields.

Perhaps as a result of differing historical orientations, the first volume's seven autobiographical memory chapters focus upon the qualities or types of recall from research participants, whereas the seven chapters in the eyewitness memory volume generally focus upon the quantity (a concern for completeness) and accuracy of recall. This interest in the ultimate end-product and its application within the legal process in general encourages eyewitness memory investigators to modify their testing procedures continually in an attempt to gain even more information from participants about an event. Indeed, several of the eyewitness memory chapters reflect such attempts.

Beyond the specific contributions of each chapter to the literature on autobiographical and eyewitness memory, the editors hope that the reader will come away with some general observations:
* the autobiographical and eyewitness memory fields are thriving;
* these two fields are likely to remain center stage in the further investigation of memory in natural contexts;
* although the autobiographical and eyewitness memory chapters have been segregated in these two volumes, the separation is often more arbitrary than real and connections between the two areas abound;
* the two research traditions are entirely mindful of fundamental laboratory methods, research, and theory -- sometimes drawing their research inspirations from that quarter; and
* the two fields -- though driven largely by everyday memory concerns -- can contribute to a more basic understanding of memory at both an empirical and a theoretical level.
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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Forensic Examiner, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2007. The length of the article is 4211 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Victim impact evidence: people in Payne.(Case Study)
Author: Bruce Gross
Publication: The Forensic Examiner (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 16Issue: 4Page: 56(6)

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64 pages. white stapled wraps. ... Read more

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Employment law issues occupy a significant amount of management time. Many of these issues generate time consuming and costly administrative complaints or lawsuits. In order to avoid the loss of management time, negative publicity, legal fees and costly verdicts, management and personnel professionals must be knowledgeable about the latest legal developments in labor and employment law. To be effective, management must be aware of strategies and preventative measures available to eliminate or minimize legal challenges against their companies or clients. ... Read more