The theme of leadership played an important role in ancient Israel and its discourse. It was explored time and again through memories of proper, improper and in-between leaders and through memories of particular institutions like monarchy, priesthood, and prophethood. The ways in which this theme was shaped, reflected, and above all explored through social memory and how, in turn, those memories played a socializing role within the community is the focus of this collection of seventeen essays, which grew out of the 2013 research program of the group, Israel and the Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods of the European Association of Biblical Studies. The editors were co-chairs of the research group from 20052013. Additional papers were invited on selected topics in order to round out the collection and further internal dialogue among the contributions. Although, as anticipated, the nature and limitations of kingship, both native and foreign, is a central theme of many of the essays, the volume includes discussions of both official and unofficial local leadership within an empire setting, alternatives to royal leadership like theocracy, charismatic judgeship, and Greek-style tyrants, as well as considerations of Greek political discourse on the best type of leadership. Authors include the following biblical scholars or historians of ancient Israel: Ehud Ben Zvi, Kare Berge, Thomas M. Bolin James Bos, Lorenzo DiTomasso, Diana Edelman, Beate Ego, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, Reinhard Muller, Christophe Nihan, Wolfgang Oswald, Anne-Mareike Schol-Wetter, Ian D. Wilson. In addition, there are two contributions from the Stuyvesant P. Comfort Professor of Law at New York University, Geoffrey Parsons Miller, and from a well-known classicist, Lynette Mitchell.
Ehud Ben Zvi's interests include ancient Israelite history and historiography, social memory in ancient Israel, the latters intellectual history, and the prophetic and historiographical books that eventually became part of the Hebrew Bible. He has worked mainly in the Persian/early Hellenistic period. Diana V. Edelman is professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo. Her own research focuses on the history, archaeology, and literature of the southern Levant, the development of early forms of Judaisms, and ancient Near Eastern literature viewed from the perspective of social memory. She has thirteen seasons of excavation experience in Israel. While her research tends to focus on the Iron Age and Persian period, she is interested in earlier and later periods and a wide range of topics. Current interests include local responses to imperialism, royal ideology, the development of technology and agriculture, everyday life, issues involving religion and ritual, burial and afterlife beliefs, diaspora studies, migration studies, frontier studies, social memory, ancient economies, and ancient political organization. Her numerous publications include 17 authored or edited books, 44 chapters in edited volumes, 14 articles in refereed journals, 58 dictionary and encyclopedia articles, and 128 book reviews (as of 2/2015).

Diana Edelman

Ehud Ben Zvi