Ehud Ben Zvi

My main research interest and expertise is in the area of ancient Israelite history in general and in particular in the books that were eventually included in the Hebrew Bible (for the main part, the “historical” and prophetic books) as social products that emerged within a certain set of historical circumstances. As I analyze these books, I tend to focus on questions such as how they were read and reread by the (historical) communities within which they were written, and for which they were first intended? Who were included in these communities? How did they relate to other groups in ancient Israel? Which groups supported these groups of readers and writers and why? Which social functions were served by the writing, reading and rereading of these texts in ancient Israel? What kind of “mental” universe did these books reflect and shape? How did these ancient Israelites construct their own story about their past? I study ancient social memory in Israel and its social roles in general and I tend to focus on sites of memory and arrays of sites of memory that existed in the minds of Yehudite literati during the Persian period.