George Emery Mendenhall (August 13, 1916 – August 5, 2016) was an American Biblical scholar who taught at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

's Department of

Near Eastern Studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studie ...

Career

Mendenhall graduated from

Midland College Midland College (MC) is a public community college in Midland, Texas. It was established as an independent junior college in 1972 and held its first classes on campus in 1975. Since that time, the campus has expanded to a main campus on in Mi ...

in Nebraska in 1936, and from

Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (Gettysburg Seminary) was a seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was one of seven ELCA seminaries, one of the three seminaries in the Easter ...

in 1938. Mendenhall was first an ordained

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

minister, and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he served as an intelligence officer in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. After the war, Mendenhall obtained a Ph.D. in

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...

s from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

and began a career in

Ancient Near Eastern The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

and Biblical studies as well as related archeology. He was professor at the

from 1952 to 1986. The University of Michigan honored Mendenhall by creating the "George E. Mendenhall Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Biblical Studies". ''The Tenth Generation'' proposed that the Ancient

Israelite The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

settlement was actually the result of a cultural-religious

egalitarian Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hu ...

revolution within

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

ite society, rejecting the views it was either a military conquest or a process of peaceful

sedentism In cultural anthropology, sedentism (sometimes called sedentariness; compare sedentarism) is the practice of living in one place for a long time. , the large majority of people belong to sedentary cultures. In evolutionary anthropology and a ...

.p.52–53
It was popular with some New Left scholars in the mid 1970s. Mendenhall died in August 2016, just 8 days short of his 100th birthday.

Partial bibliography

*''Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East'' Pittsburgh: The Biblical Colloquium, 1955. *''The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition'' Johns Hopkins, 1973. *''Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction to the Bible in Context'' (Edited by Gary A. Herion)

Westminster John Knox Press Westminster John Knox Press is an American publisher of Christian books located in Louisville, Kentucky and is part of Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, the publishing arm of the Louisville, Kentucky-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) The P ...

, 2001. *''Our Misunderstood Bible'' BookSurge Publishing, 2006 *''The Quest for the Kingdom of God: Studies in Honor of George E. Mendenhall'' Eisenbrauns, 1983.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mendenhall, George E. 1916 births 2016 deaths People from Muscatine, Iowa Johns Hopkins University alumni Midland University alumni University of Michigan faculty