The Making of a Nation

The Making of a Nation is a work by Charles Foster Kent, the American biblical scholar who lived from 1867 to 1925 and who taught Hebrew and biblical literature at Yale University from 1901 until his death. Kent was one of the leading American biblical scholars of his generation and produced substantial work on the Hebrew Bible and the history of ancient Israel for both academic and educated general audiences.

Kent worked in the historical critical tradition of biblical scholarship that had developed across the nineteenth century, primarily in German universities, and that was substantially established in American academic biblical studies during the years when Kent was teaching at Yale. The tradition treated the Hebrew Bible as a substantial historical document that recorded the development of ancient Israelite religion across many centuries, rather than as a single unified divinely revealed text in the manner that the earlier orthodox Protestant tradition had treated it. The historical critical approach allowed substantial reconstruction of the actual historical development of ancient Israel from the various biblical and extra biblical sources.

The Making of a Nation likely uses the biblical historical material to trace the development of ancient Israel as a distinct national community across the major phases of its history. The relevant material would include the patriarchal narratives, the Exodus and conquest traditions, the tribal confederation period documented in Judges, the early monarchy under Saul, David, and Solomon, the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the prophetic literature that responded to the various political and religious crises of the divided monarchy period, and the eventual destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria and of the southern kingdom by Babylon.

Kent’s approach was substantially shaped by the educational purposes of his work. He produced substantial textbook material for American college and seminary teaching of biblical subjects and was particularly involved in adapting the substantial findings of German academic biblical scholarship for the practical needs of American religious education. The Making of a Nation likely belongs to this educational strand of his work and presents the historical material in accessible form for substantial student and educated general audiences.

The book is of interest now to historians of early twentieth century American biblical scholarship and of the broader American religious education tradition. It pairs naturally with Kent’s other biblical historical works and with the substantial American biblical critical literature of the period.