Ancient Palestine in Soviet Educational Literature

Abstract

An important component of the Soviet anti-religious discourse was the atheistic education of the youth. In this regard, the problem of representing the ancient Palestinian society, the development of which cannot be fully studied without referring to the religious context, is extremely interesting, since it allows us to analyze the specifics of embedding this “religious” problem to anti-religious discourse. The study showed that within the framework of school education, it was not possible to reconcile the discourse and the history of ancient Palestine, which is why it was deleted from school textbooks until the end of the Soviet era. In higher education, this process was much more complex and proceeded through the rationalization of biblical history and embedding it into the Marxist canon.