The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium. Edited by LOWELL K. HANDY. Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East, vol. 11. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1997. Pp. xx + 539, 2 maps. $115. [Review]

This collection of papers and essays reflects the chaotic and confused state of biblical studies at the turn of the millennium, their influence on the study of the archaeology of Israel, and the counter-influence of archaeology on biblical studies. Scholarship is thus entangled in circular argumentation, of which one can locate neither the beginning nor the end. The papers and essays here can be divided roughly into two groups: descriptive and polemic. The more objective ones are the descriptive articles, those describing the ancient Near East around the tenth century B.C.E. They illustrate the background for the plausible emergence of the Davidic-Solomonic kingdom.