Abstract
This book was inspired by the author's sojourn in modern day Israel. During his several years of working and ministering in the country, it seemed to him that most modern Israelis couldn't imagine life without the army. This impression coupled with the observation that “warfare clearly pervaded much of the ancient Near Eastern world” (p. 20) led to the writing of the book.
The purpose of the book is to describe the military organization, weapons, and tactics of Joshua, David, the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians. The author consults textual and archaeological evidence in order to describe the ancient military practices. The book is lavishly illustrated with maps, figures, and full color drawings that provide explanatory visuals.
Seevers organizes his discussion in nine chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to Israel, 3 and 4 to Egypt, 5 to Philistia, 6 and 7 to Assyria, 8 to Babylon, and 9 to Persia. At the end, he includes a section with suggestions for further reading. The book closes with three indices: one for figures and maps, one for subjects, and one for scriptural references.
The description of warfare, as practiced by each nation, begins with a fictional account relating a soldier's point of view on one of his people's major historical battles. Seevers uses all available evidence to maintain verisimilitude in the details of these accounts. He then analyzes the historical background, in which he placed the historical fiction narratives, and explains the connections between the fictional memoir and the evidence. Subsequently, he focuses on the details of military organization, such as recruitment of soldiers and organization of the army, officers, military branches, the role of the king, weapons, strategy, and battle tactics before and after the fights.
He offers a great taxonomy of weapons (short, medium, and long range ones), and he describes in detail defensive equipment, chariots, and siege engines. The line drawings modeled after pictorial evidence and artifacts are particularly informative since they are carefully paired with the author's explanation. There is one consistent difficulty with all extra-biblical textual information about battles. These texts were not meant to describe how the battles were actually waged. They were rather propaganda narratives meant to glorify the victors and extol their superiority. Seevers recognizes the limitations that this problem poses for his goals and tries his best to work around them. As a result some chapters are more substantive than others. For example, the chapters on Egypt include a lot more detail than others. Additionally, the chapter on Persia borrows most of the information from the Greek historians, who have their own biases.
When it comes to the information on ancient Israel, the author seems to accept the data provided by the Bible at face value. Even though he creates a systematic and clear presentation of the material, the information offered is little more than a good reader would get from a detailed reading of the biblical text. On the one hand, Seevers does not take advantage of the insights offered by modern critical scholarship and research, and that is a missed opportunity to enhance the sophistication of his discussion. On the other, he treats as historically reliable biblical narratives that seek to achieve goals other than providing a historical record. This tendency compromises the overall impact of his work. For example, he treats as historical the siege of Jericho, in the book of Joshua, despite the contrary evidence of the archaeological record. By focusing on the details of how Jericho was taken, he misses the opportunity to critique the practice of Holy War in Deuteronomistic History. The contextualization of Holy War would have offered the appropriate occasion to highlight the importance of peace in the Bible. In turn, that would have provided the necessary balance to a book that is dedicated to war and violence in the Bible. Similarly, he treats the battle between David and Goliath as a reliable historical event. He does not acknowledge that there is a competing report in 2 Samuel 21:19, according to which Elhanan, one of David's men, kills Goliath.
The historical fiction accounts that he uses are captivating and draw the reader into the world of the ancient Near East. While these narratives enhance successfully the accessibility of the events he describes, they do not seem written from the viewpoint of someone who has actually been exposed to the traumatic experiences of war. The deep emotional scars that are typical of the battle-weathered soldiers fall by the wayside.
This book would be appropriate for readers who have little or no familiarity with the Bible. It would also be a good book to attract the attention of young readers whose interest is captivated by artfully illustrated books.