Download or read book Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings written by Roger S. Nam and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-02-17 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the growing proliferation of literature concerning the social world of the Hebrew Bible, scholars continue to face the challenge of a proper understanding of ancient Israel’s economies. Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings is the first monographic study to use an anthropological approach to examine the nature of the economic life behind the biblical text. Through Karl Polanyi’s paradigm of exchange as a methodological control, this book synthesizes Semitic philology with related fields of Levantine archaeology and modern ethnography. With this interdisciplinary frame, Nam articulates a social analysis of economic exchange, and stimulates new understandings of the biblical world.