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3 - Israel and the Near East

from Part I - Preliminaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
By
Jaco Gericke
Edited by
Stephen Bullivant
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
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Summary

What can be said about Israel and the Near East in the history of atheism? One way to approach this question is to take a step back and look at some of the presuppositions, problems, and perspectives involved in the genealogy of the specific scholarly concepts, concerns, and categories in the associated research. In other words, the history of atheism in relation to Israel and the Near East is also itself an idea with a history, a more concise reconstruction of which is long overdue. I shall do so with a brief summary of a selection of assorted nuances characterizing the literature on the subject.

First, perhaps trivially, scholars whose writings explicitly refer to ‘atheism’ in the contexts of Israel and the Near East are, for the most part, concerned with the ancient world – that is, ancient Israel and the ancient Near East.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 34 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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