About AIRA
AIRA, the Ancient Israelite Religion Archive, is the private research system behind Discovering Israel’s Religion: From the Beginning. It is where research on ancient Israelite religion is collected, organized, tested, and preserved. This website provides a selective public window into that system so readers can inspect the research supporting the book.
AIRA studies ancient Israelite religion.
The book is one product of that research.
Selected AIRA records are published here so readers can follow the evidence behind the reconstruction.Why AIRA exists
Discovering Israel’s Religion grew out of a larger investigation into ancient Israelite religion. AIRA was built to give that investigation a durable structure: a place to preserve sources, track claims, compare competing explanations, record uncertainty, and test conclusions against contrary evidence.
The book cannot carry that entire research apparatus without losing the story it is trying to tell. AIRA allows the research to remain larger than the manuscript while still giving the manuscript an evidentiary foundation.
The full AIRA system remains private for now. This site publishes selected records from it so readers can examine the evidence, sources, claims, methods, and confidence assessments most directly connected to the book.
One body of research, two ways to encounter it
The narrative
The book presents the historical reconstruction as a guided journey. It follows the development of Israelite religion chronologically and is written for readers who want to understand the ancient world without needing specialist training to enter the conversation.
Explore the BookThe public research record
This site publishes selected records drawn from AIRA: chapter research, claims, Evidentiary Confidence Assessments, evidence, sources, charts, maps, and methodological notes that allow readers to inspect how conclusions were reached.
Explore the ResearchThe question behind the project
The research begins from a historical observation: the people who became Israel lived within the cultures of the ancient Levant and the wider ancient Near East. Their language, settlements, political institutions, sacred places, stories, divine imagery, ritual practices, and religious vocabulary developed within that world.
The investigation therefore asks what becomes visible when biblical traditions are read alongside archaeology, inscriptions, comparative religion, ancient Near Eastern texts, historical geography, material culture, and the religious lives of ordinary people.
This does not mean treating every resemblance as borrowing or assuming every biblical tradition is late. It means testing continuity, difference, adaptation, convergence, polemic, and change rather than assuming the answer in advance.