Abstract
Postcolonial biblical criticism, while not a new endeavor, has very few book length treatments outside of the New Testament Text. Leo Purdue’s work takes postcolonialist thought and surveys the history of Judah and Israel as they are conquered by larger nations as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Purdue is interested in looking closer at the ancient story informed by postmodern historiography. Because there are no ‘pure’ lines of postcolonial literary critique to draw from, Purdue uses the ‘cafeteria style’ approach and chooses several different thinkers and concepts to undergird his work. In this review I will highlight the Introduction/ theoretical framing of Purdue’s writing, then I will review several pieces of the remaining chapters where the author has used his postcolonial lens to re-read the history of the nations of Judah and Israel as they were ruled by larger nations.