Bibliography
| Title: The death of Herod. An essay in the sociology of religion Pages: 200 Type: Book Year: 1992 Abstract: in: EBB 11.2 (1995), 539: "Salvageable failure due to Christian perspective and three cognate oversights".
"Fenn, professor of Christianity and society at Princeton Theological Seminary, proposes to show how a sociologist might approach the structure and processes of Palestinian society in light of the death of Herod the Great in 4. B.C. and the crisis of succession. After introductory observations on methodology and past scholarship, he discusses the priestly and prophetic viewpoints, modes of analysis (description, interpretation, explanation), levels of observation and of analysis (making the right choices), the role of the observer and the beginnings of theory ("What is going on here?"), the search for useful concepts (evil and charisma), and the making of a theory. He concludes that a vicious circle was operating after Herod' s death and that Palestinian Jewish society underwent a legitimacy crisis as a result".
"Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, and after his death, Jewish society fell into a situation of crisis. Fenn shows how a sociologist, in examining Josephus' account of the struggle for succession within the Herodian household, would set about asking questions about Palestinian society as a whole. The author identifies a succession-crisis that affects every level of Palestinian society, which leads him to ask how that crisis may threaten Israel' s capacity to reproduce itself from one generation to the next. The struggle within the Herodian family mirrors the struggles going on in society at large". Keywords: Jewish History: Roman Era Philo of Alexandria, contributions in the biography of Joseph, son of Jacob. Flavius Josephus, contributions in the biography of Joseph, son of Jacob. Herod I, King of Judea, 73-74 C.E., death and burial. Herodian dynasty, 37 B.C.E.-ca. 100 C.E. Jews, History, 168 B.C.E.-135 C.E., historiography. |