Abstract

The maximalist/minimalist debates of the 1990s reflect a positive moment of epistemological and methodological discussions within the field of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament historical studies, in spite of some concerned voices viewing such debates as reflecting a crisis in the writing of ancient Israelite history. These debates actually allowed for rethinking the traditional ways in which the history of "ancient Israel" was being produced, the status of the Hebrew Bible as a historical source, and they even opened up the possibility of addressing a new and wider historiographical genre in the field: the history of ancient Palestine, as a more critical historiographical horizon overcoming the limitations of the traditional focus on "ancient Israel". This paper considers, in a first place, the relevance of the so-called minimalist positions for a critical historiography of ancient Israel/Palestine, and in a second place, the prospects for writing histories of the region beyond issues of historicity related to ancient textual traditions