The Modern Scholar

The History of Ancient Israel: From the Patriarchs Through the Romans

By: Professor Eric H. Cline

Narrated by: Eric H. Cline

Israel conjures up myriad associations for peoples of all cultures and religious backgrounds. Inextricably associated with the world's three most prominent religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Israel is steeped in history and conflict, much of which is known through the tales of biblical figures such as Moses, David, Solomon, and, of course, Jesus Christ.But how much of the Bible can be relied upon as accurate history? And how much of the biblical record can be verified through archaeology? Esteemed professor, researcher, and author Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University addresses these and other questions in this fascinating series of lectures.Download the accompanying reference guide.©2006 Eric H. Cline (P)2006 Recorded Books

A great, yet brief survey of Ancient Jewish histor

This was a very accessible, and easy to follow lecture series. It is very nice that audible includes a link to download the course guide.

The author is knowledgeable. He presents a balanced story that neither wholeheartedly endorses, nor completely rejects any religious traditions. He simply relates what is verifiable, and what some of the major competing ideas are regarding specific events or persons.

He clearly establishes his criterion for accepting stories from ancient texts as historically verifiable. He wants to have three independent sources before he is comfortable with accepting something as an historical fact.

I wish there were more lectures. I will listen to these lectures multiple times. They are informative and interesting to any would-be scholar regardless of individual ideologies and beliefs.

Excellent

Excellent course. Professor Cline is awesome. Shut the TV off, and learn something. I bought and read 1177 BC 3 times and also bought the audiobook which Cline does not narrate. Then I sought to find other books by him and heard his voice the first time with Intro to Biblical archaeology, which is a great short book, like 5-6 hours. Cline presents all views, both Biblical Maximists & Minimalists along with those who are grounded like he is, to understand possible bias when reading some interpretations of what the ditch diggers find. This audiobook was my logical next choice as a 3rd purchase of his work. Too bad the Modern Scholar website is gone.

I will seek to buy further books by this author including his LBA text book. And if you want my opinion, stop watching worthless celebrities on TV and learn something with the superstars of Academia and you don't have to spend tens of thousands in school as I did, and I refuse to do again.

I shut off the music while I work and play audiobooks. after reading code all day or editing/tv/doing graphics, all computer work, I found it hard to really dig into studies because I'm only doing research and not testing out of a course. My eyes need a rest.

Find the time to learn something new. Any major reading I do is in the morning prior to working and audio books allow me to continue research without having to read them multiple times. Cline has something specific I've been looking for creating characters.

Maybe that gives someone here an idea of how to work things into your schedule. I listen to Audible on multiple devices. Always download from the site for iTunes/media player FIRST then Kindle or you may have to call for them to reset the download type. So that bit of tech info is worth reading this long post :D If you have a problem audible will reset the download type to download on PC/Mac too.

Great lectures

Fantastic lectures, lots of references to the sources, love listening to the readings of original documents. Highly recommended.

Good But a Little Biased

Professor Cline makes this course interesting. He does come into this work assuming that some parts of the Old Testament are not true. This is an understandable viewpoint, but it might concern some faithful Jewish and Christian believers.

A very good piece of work!

What did you love best about The Modern Scholar?

An excellent introduction to a very complex and long history. We learn the state of the latest diggings and archeological hypothesis and at the same time, we always keep in mind the biblical framework.

Ancient Israel is a fascinating civilization, with fascinating and incredibly influential history, which is rather extraordinary given the small size of the state and the very short lenght of its political autonomy (compared with Egypt or Rome).