Ideology and the history of ancient Israel

An answer to the recent criticism of Ian Provan and James Barr of the position of the so-called ''revisionists'' among Old Testament scholars. Provan - as well as Barr - accuses the revisionists for being ''ideologists'', i.e., that ideology has governed their research. This is a false accusation. The revisionists originally shared the ideology of the scholarship of the modern age. Only at a later date they adopted, forced by their analyses, an ideological approach to the reading of text that seems more on-line with ideas that are said to be postmodern.