Interpreting Ancient Israelite History, Prophecy, and Law

The diverse topics covered by the included articles find their unity in a particular posture and ethos from which Hayes's work operated. Hayes consistently engages in a "thick analysis" that embeds the topic under consideration within broader interpretive contexts. More so than any one particular proposal, this way in which Hayes approached the study of specific methods, seminal figures, biblical texts, and historical reconstructions has potentially lasting implications for contemporary scholarship . . . [O]ne finds in Hayes's work a dogged insistence that biblical texts must be understood as firmly embedded within particular historical, social, cultural, and political matrices out of which they emerged and within which they functioned. Following from this, at times when it was not always popular to do so, Hayes argued that the biblical texts must be taken seriously (but not uncritically) as yielding important data to be used in various ways for historical interpretation. Whether exploring the social formation of early Israel, the final years of Samaria, or the social concept of covenant, Hayes demonstrated a textually focused and exegetically based approach.

--Brad E. Kelle, from the Introduction