2. Hair in the Material Culture and Art of the Ancient Near East

Author(s):  
Susan Niditch
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karenleigh A. Overmann

Drawing on the material culture of the Ancient Near East as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, the journey of how material number becomes a conceptual number is traced to address questions of how a particular material form might generate a concept and how concepts might ultimately encompass multiple material forms so that they include but are irreducible to all of them together. Material forms incorporated into the cognitive system affect the content and structure of concepts through their agency and affordances, the capabilities and constraints they provide as the material component of the extended, enactive mind. Material forms give concepts the tangibility that enables them to be literally grasped and manipulated. As they are distributed over multiple material forms, concepts effectively become independent of any of them, yielding the abstract irreducibility that makes a concept like number what it is. Finally, social aspects of material use—collaboration, ordinariness, and time—have important effects on the generation and distribution of concepts.


Author(s):  
Brent A. Strawn

This chapter probes one aspect of material culture—namely, ancient Near Eastern iconography—for its pertinence for the prophets. It focuses on lion imagery in the book of Amos and lion iconography in the ancient Near East, but especially in the archaeology of ancient Israel/Palestine. The artistic remains contribute to a better understanding of this motif in Amos, and the same holds true for the many other images and metaphors that may be found in both the biblical text and the archaeology. In certain cases, as with the lion in Amos, attention to the iconographic data can cast light not only on singular instances of an idea in a specific verse or two, but also on wider complexes of ideas across larger units, if not entire prophetic books. Still further, the iconographic data can sometimes contribute to—or, in fact, chasten—debates about a book’s composition and redaction history.


2007 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Nicola Laneri ◽  
Stefano Valentini ◽  
Anacleto D'Agostino

AbstractThe increased number of archaeological activities, underway as a result of the projected construction of the Ilısu dam to be built along the Tigris river in southeastern Anatolia, have brought to light numerous structures associated with the material culture of the late third millennium to mid second millennium BC. The assemblages are characterised by a local variety of pottery, the so-called ‘Red Brown Wash Ware’, usually found in contexts associated with materials similar to those available from contemporaneous periods in northern Mesopotamia, northern Syria and Anatolia. As a consequence, this paper investigates the apparent cultural interactions which took place between the Mesopotamian and Anatolian regions during the above-mentioned period, drawing on recent data obtained at the site of Hirbemerdon Tepe located along the upper Tigris river valley in southeastern Anatolia. Through this overview, an additional objective is to bring to a broader public the material culture of this relatively little known yet increasingly significant region of the ancient Near East.


2020 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Михаил Анатольевич Скобелев

В статье рассматриваются богословие, композиция и литературная форма сюжетов, входящих в состав Пролога книги Бытия (1, 1-11, 26). Во второй половине XIX - начале XX вв. в результате появления Документальной гипотезы и сопоставления Священного Писания с литературными памятниками Древнего Ближнего Востока большая часть сюжетов, составляющих Пролог, была объявлена мифами и древнееврейским фольклором (Ю. Велльгаузен, Г. Гунекель, Дж. Фрезер). Кроме выявленных ближневосточных параллелей, новому отношению к повествованиям Пролога книги Бытия способствовали: отсутствие в нём ясно выраженной исторической задачи и символичность изложения. Защищая традиционный взгляд на Пролог как на священную историю и пророческое откровение, епископ Кассиан (Безобразов) предложил рассматривать все библейские сюжеты, содержащие теофанию, как метаисторию. Протоиерей Сергий Булгаков, А. Ф. Лосев, Б. П. Вышеславцев, занимавшиеся феноменом мифотворчества, назвали библейское повествование о начале мироздания мифом, но в ином смысле, чем это делали Г. Гункель и Дж. Фрезер. Они обосновали новый положительный взгляд, согласно которому миф не есть выдумка или фантазия, а реальность, основанная на мистическом опыте. В статье анализируется каждый из перечисленных терминов: «история», «миф», «метаистория» применительно к Прологу, а также рассматривается возможность их согласования с традиционным церковным взглядом на эту часть книги Бытия. The article deals with the theology, composition and literary form of the narrations which constitute the prologue part of the book of Genesis (1, 1-11, 26). During the second half of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th cent., following the emergence of the Documentary hypothesis as well as the comparison of the Holy Scripture with the newly-discovered literary monuments of Ancient Near East, the greater part of the narrations that constitute the Prologue were labeled myths and ancient Hebrew folklore (J. Wellhausen, H. Gunkel, J. Frazer). In addition to the then detected Near Eastern parallels, this new attitude towards the narrations of the Prologue was fostered by its lack of a clearly expressed historical dedication and the symbolic form of their exposition. Defending the traditional view of the Prologue as sacred history and prophetic revelation, bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov) proposed to consider all the biblical narrations that contain theophanies as metahistorical. Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, A. F. Losev and B. P. Vysheslavtsev, who analyzed the phenomenon of myth-making, called the Biblical narration of the origins of the world a myth, but in a sense different from that proposed by Gunkel and Frazer. They have founded a new and positive conception according to which a myth is not fiction but rather a kind of reality based upon mystical experience. The author of the article analyzes each of the terms enumerated - «history», «myth», «metahistory» - in their use relating them to the Prologue; he also examines the possibility of their harmonizing with the traditional ecclesiastical view of this part of the book of Genesis.


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