Boyd Seevers

While the 20th Century is the bloodiest century in human history, warfare was a reality for ancient peoples. The Bible deals with reality so, it is no surprise that when you look at the Hebrew scriptures you find battles and warfare enshrined in the text. Boyd Seevers, professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Northwestern St. Paul, did his doctoral studies on warfare in the Ancient Near East. In Warfare in the Old Testament, Seevers examines Israel and five Ancient Near East cultures to show how each waged war. He looks at their military organization, weapons, strategy and tactics.

Israel’s had five major enemies through out nationhood, destruction and exile. These include Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and Persia. Of course there were other nations which troubled Israel, but these nations were particularly troublesome in different eras of their history. Egypt was the large empire to the West where the Israelites had escaped from. They continued to exert influence throughout the region. The Seafaring Philistines were a thorn in the side of Israel during the period of the Judges and early monarchy. The cruel Assyrians destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel and turned Judah into a vassal state and laid siege to Jerusalem. Babylon sacked Judah and carried its inhabitants into exile with the spoils of war. And the Persians and the Medes overthrew the Babylonian empire. Seevers illustrates the unique features of each culture by beginning each section with a ‘historic fiction’ which describes particular battles from the perspective of one of its military commanders. He then goes on to catalog the organization, weapons and tactics of each nation.

This makes this a perfect book for tooling around in the background of the text. Those who study and research the Bible will find Seevers synthesis and summary of Ancient Near East warfare helpful– both academics and pastors working to exegete the text well. This book is exegetical, not expositional. Seevers focuses on describing the tactics of Ancient warfare and thus does not comment on the the theological significance of particular passages of scripture. So when Seevers presents ‘spying’ as an Israeli tactic in warfare (70), he does not comment on the ambiguity of Joshua sending spies in Joshua 2 after God spent the previous chapter commanding him, “Be strong and courageous.” This is not a criticism, but it does illustrate what this book was intended to do: to fill out the cultural background of warfare, especially where the Bible is economic and sparse in its description.

This is a great resource for teaching from the Old Testament. Because it spans the whole of Israel’s national, military history, it does illuminate the arc and trajectory of the biblical narrative and describes some technological developments. The illustrations in each chapter (based on archeological discoveries) show how weaponry, armor and military structure changed over the centuries. I recommend it as a Bible background resource for those exegeting the historical books and the prophets. I give it four stars: ★★★★.… (lisätietoja)

A very good book about how to understand the difficult parts of the Bible. I agree with previous views that it scratches the surface. However, it does point us in the right direction for going deeper. It is a quick easy read yet full of insight. I enjoyed how he explained how to read and study apocalyptic scripture.

I truly love reading the Old Testament. There are treasures hidden there.

I would love to take some of the classes he teaches and I hope he writes more books on understanding the Bible, a commentary or a Bible study topic.… (lisätietoja)

When I read about the battles that take place in the Bible, I have a vague picture in my mind of two generic groups of ancient soldiers fighting, nothing really specific about their attire, weapons or fighting methods. This is may be the case with most people. In Warfare in the Old Testament, Boyd Seevers sets out to give us a more detailed picture of what these clashes may have looked like.

The organization, weapons and tactics of the nation of Israel are described first, "Typically, one finds good military records from nations only after they attained great strength. Surprisingly, some of the best information from Israel comes from when it was struggling for birth and survival." Then in the subsequent chapters Seevers describes the enemies of Israel namely, Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and then Persia. He introduces each nation with a short fictionalized account of a soldier in each particular army, his thoughts, worries and considerations of the particular army he and his nation are up against, and then stops the story and moves on to particulars in regards to the nation's history, strategy and weapons. I thought that that was an interesting way to do it.

One of the things that specifically grabbed my attention was in the chapters on the Assyrians. I had never really considered the idea that Israelite exiles might have served in their captors' armies. The fictional short story at the beginning of the first chapter on the Assyrians deals with an exiled Jew from Samaria, who served in the Assyrian Army. It seems that there actually was a unit in the Assyrian army, made of Jews, which was a known as the 'Samarians'. "No other unit bore the name of a city or nation, especially from a conquered region."

It was also interesting to learn more about the Philistines, where they may have come from, and how they came to be in the same general territory as Israel. In the account of the Persians, the attack by Cyrus upon Babylon would particularly informative while reading along with Daniel 5. Belshazzar is warned that God was bringing his kingdom to an end, and then it says that he was slain in the night. If you have information of the account of the invasion, you can think that while Daniel was interpreting the writing on the wall to the King, outside of Babylon the enemy already had a strategy for breaking in, having drained, or getting ready to drain the river so that they could wade into the city.

This book is filled with maps of the various nations discussed, and illustrations of soldiers and weapons taken from actual archeological finds from the various eras. There were only a couple that I found unnecessary, picturing stripped soldiers who were taken prisoner. I don't think they were very detailed.

Now, I didn't like that Seevers described certain information in the Bible as being "frustratingly unclear". Particular information not given in the Bible is information we do not absolutely need, otherwise God would have made it more clear. But it is nice to get to know some of it.

Overall, though I did not find any of the information absolutely necessary, I liked this book.

Thanks to Kregel Academic for sending me a free review copy of this book!(My review did not have to be favorable)
… (lisätietoja)

Most of us experience warfare only through classic “war movies” or by means of game like Risk. Oh, but then there are the stories in Sunday School too! We hear of David and Goliath, the conquest of Canaan, and the sack of Jerusalem. In truth, tales of war are foreign to our very makeup. If we haven’t served in the armed forces, we cannot really appreciate all that goes into fighiting for one’s land and the sacrifice and honor it brings.

Warfare was a fact of life in the ancient Near East (ANE), and Bible characters, like everyone else, were affected by the ebb and flow of the seasons, and “the time when kings go out to battle” (2 Sam. 11:1). The Bible is written in this context of ANE warfare and assumes we know what chariots and javelins are, and why it is that a people would want a king to “go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam. 8:20). (Chariots, by the way, were less like tanks and more like mobile platforms for archers.)

Boyd Seevers gives us a tool in understanding the concept of war in ANE history with his new book "Warfare in the Old Testament: The Organization, Weapons, and Tactics of Ancient Near Eastern Armies." In this accessible and attractive volume, he itemizes the implements and tools for war as found in the dominant cultures represented in the Old Testament: Philistia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and of course, Israel.

Strategy, history, numbers and weapons, boats and chariots, siege engines, and armor — all these and more are described in the detail a bible geek or armchair archeologist-historian will love. Maps, drawings, diagrams and sketches fill the pages like a technical manual. Interesting facts are highlighted, like the difficulties with the Hebrew number system, the fact that Akkadian was a lingua franca as far back as the fourteenth century BC, and Persia’s invention of the first true “pony express.”

Seevers doesn’t just present dry historical facts ad nauseum, however. He offers fictional vignettes of typical soldiers on a campaign before each discussion of the military history of a given culture. This draws the reader in and adds the tool of imagination which helps flesh out the incomplete picture that too often emerges after the archeological digs are done sifting through what remains we have left. His style is inviting, even if at times his rigid arrangement of the material comes off somewhat wooden.

This book will help situate the student of OT history, and will make a good addition to any scholar’s library. It may interest the casual reader, but it may not. The laser focus of the material will not appeal to everyone, but for those who are interested, Seevers leaves few stones unturned.

Disclaimer:
This book was provided by Kregel Publications. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a positive review.… (lisätietoja)