Crushing the Insubmissive

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Lemos
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Royal Inscriptions ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter argues that violence was sometimes used to erase the personhood of foreigners not only in ancient Israel but in the wider ancient Near East. The discussion begins with an assessment of whether foreigners were considered to be legal and social persons, treating evidence from biblical texts, legal collections, royal inscriptions, treaty texts, reliefs, and other sources. The evidence found in these sources is mixed. While legal and social agency is often ascribed to foreigners, non-native individuals are frequently compared to animals and portrayed as being the victims of ritualized violence in ancient West Asian, ancient Egyptian, and ancient Israelite materials. The chapter contends that foreigners were persons but that their personhood was subject to erasure in warfare and in cases of transgression. Nonetheless, the categories of native and foreign were less central to how most violence was performed than were conceptions of masculinized domination and subordination.

Introduction to Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East and Beyond

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Royal Inscriptions ◽  
Royal Ideology ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter introduces the idea of temple renovation as a distinct literary topos and shows its close association with royal ideology. Both points are made with evidence drawn from a variety of historical and cultural contexts, ranging from ancient to modern. Next, the chapter surveys previous studies of temple renovation in ancient Near Eastern contexts and previews the contents of the chapters that follow. Finally, it discusses some methodological issues related to the present study, especially issues around the production and promulgation of royal inscriptions and biblical texts.

Of Fields and Forced Labor

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-152
Author(s):  
Carolyn J. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
Economic Control ◽  
History Of

Biblical narratives about ostensibly “local” barter (Abraham’s purchase of the cave at Machpelah), protection of battle spoils (Achan’s theft and subsequent execution), and commodification of labor and bodies (Ruth gleaning for hours and offering herself to Boaz) reveal much about ideologies of economic control operative in ancient Israel. The materialist analysis of Roland Boer provides a richly detailed study of Israelite agrarian and tributary practices, offering a salutary corrective to naïve views of Israelite economic relations. Highlighting labor as the most ruthlessly exploited resource in the ancient Near East, Boer examines the class-specific benefits and sustained violence of economic formations from kinship-household relations to militarized extraction. Boer’s erudite study will compel readers to look afresh at the subjugation of the poor and plundering of the powerless as constitutive features of diverse economic practices throughout the history of ancient Israel.

scholarly journals Praise by animals in the Hebrew Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-513
Author(s):  
Peter Joshua Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Biblical Texts

Among ancient Near Eastern societies was a widespread and particularly intriguing belief that animals were able to worship and praise deities. This study shows the Hebrew Bible evidences the idea that animals were capable of praising God too and proceeds to observe and document the presence of numerous examples of this in specific biblical texts. Through understanding the place of animals in the Hebrew Bible, and their perceived activity in the ancient Near East, this study suggests animals are distinct agents of praise in their own right in the biblical texts.

Conclusion: A New Path Forward

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Berman
Keyword(s):  
Web Application ◽  
Near East ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Over Time

The conclusion argues that to renew the field of Pentateuchal criticism—indeed, the historical-critical paradigm in biblical studies more broadly—historical-critical scholars will need to adopt three new priorities in their work. The first is an epistemological shift toward modesty in our goals and toward accepting contingency in our results. The second is a far greater understanding of the rhetorical and compositional practices of the ancient Near East as we adduce notions of what constitutes a fissure in a text and how the biblical texts grew over time. Finally, scholars will need to ground their compositional theories in a new level of linguistic and stylistic analysis, which is now available through the recently launched Tiberias Project: A Web Application for the Stylistic Analysis and Categorization of Hebrew Scriptures, directed by the author of the book, Joshua Berman, and the computational linguist, Moshe Koppel.

The Rise and Impending Demise of Wisdom Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

After summarizing the growing doubts about the Wisdom category, this chapter traces the development of Wisdom scholarship in the twentieth century, focusing on the question of the category’s limits. Despite efforts to limit its spread, in recent scholarship Wisdom has extended both across the Hebrew Bible and to the “heart of the Israelite experience of God.” As in the similar expansion of Wisdom in the Psalter, Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Near East (analogous to the spread of Deuteronomistic texts), attempts to define Wisdom resort eventually to the scholarly consensus concerning which biblical texts make up the category’s core. This factor carries all the weight in the current debates about Wisdom, and yet little research has been put into how this consensus developed or how it affects interpretation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document