Ancient Near Eastern Religions and the Writings

2018 ◽  
pp. 356-368
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Snell
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
First Millennium

A survey of the Writings shows surprisingly little contact with the religious environment of the Ancient Near East, in which Jews lived in the late first millennium bce. The reasons for this lack do not derive from lack of opportunity but from the self-confidence of the Jewish tradition in the face of polytheism. This finding seems to show that the sense of Judaism as all-sufficient and convincingly monotheistic had been established at least in the minds of the people who brought together the Writings. Although Jews in the late first century bce were exposed to a cacophony of other religious traditions, their interactions do not show up in the Writings, except as critiques or mocking of other traditions.

Prophets in the Hebrew Bible

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack R. Lundbom
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Hebrew Prophets

“Prophets” in the ancient world were individuals said to possess an intimate association with God or the gods, and conducted the business of transmitting messages between the divine and earthly realms. They spoke on behalf of God or the gods, and on occasion solicited requests from the deity or brought to the deity requests of others. The discovery of texts from the ancient Near East in the 19th and early 20th centuries has given us a fuller picture of prophets and prophetic activity in the ancient world, adding considerably to reports of prophets serving other gods in the Bible and corroborating details about prophets in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Two collections are important: (1) letters from the 18th-century Mari written during the reigns of Yasmaḫ-Addu (c. 1792–1775) and Zimri-Lim (c. 1774–1760); and (2) the 7th-century annals of Assyrian kings Esarhaddon (680–669) and Assurbanipal (668–627). Prophecies at Mari are favorable for the most part, and censures of the king, when they occur, are not harsh. Many simply remind the king of some neglect or give him some warning. One tells the king to practice righteousness and justice for anyone who has been wronged. None censures the people of Mari as biblical prophecies do the people of Israel. Assyrian oracles are largely oracles of peace and wellbeing, typically giving assurance to the king about matters of succession and success in defeating enemies. If prophets admonish the king, it is a mild rebuke about the king ignoring a prior oracle or not having provided food at the temple. According to the Bible, Israel’s prophetic movement began with Samuel, and it arose at the time when people asked for a king. Prophets appear all throughout the monarchy and into the postexilic period, when Jewish tradition believed prophecy had ceased. Yet, prophets reappear in the New Testament and early church: Anna the prophetess, John the Baptist, Jesus, and others. Paul allows prophets to speak in the churches, ranking them second only to apostles. Hebrew prophets give messages much like those of other ancient Near Eastern prophets, but what makes them different is that they announce considerably more judgment—sometimes very harsh judgment—on Israel’s monarchs, leading citizens, and the nation itself. Israel’s religion had its distinctives. Yahweh was bound to the nation by a covenant containing law that had to be obeyed. Prophets in Israel were therefore much preoccupied with indicting and judging kings, priests, other prophets, and an entire people for covenant disobedience. Also, in Israel the lawgiver was Yahweh, not the king. In Mari, as elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the king was lawgiver. Deuteronomy contains tests for true and false prophets, to which prophets themselves add other disingenuine marks regarding their contemporaneous prophetic colleagues. Hebrew prophets from the time of Amos onward speak in poetry and are skilled in rhetoric, using an array of tropes and knowing how to argue. Their discourse also contains an abundance of humor and drama. Speaking is supplemented with symbolic action, and in some cases the prophets themselves became the symbol.

Classical and Near Eastern Slavery in the First Millennium bce

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Economic Contribution ◽  
The Difference

Twentieth-century scholarship, guided in particular by the views of M. I. Finley, saw Greece and Rome as the only true ‘slave societies’ of antiquity: slavery in the Near East was of minor economic significance. Finley also believed that the lack of a concept of ‘freedom’ in the Near East made slavery difficult to distinguish from other shades of ‘unfreedom’. This chapter shows that in the Near East the legal status of slaves and the ability to make clear status distinctions were substantively similar to the Greco-Roman situation. Through a survey of the economic contribution of slave labour to the wealth and position of elites in Israel, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Carthage, it is shown that the difference between the ‘classical’ and ‘non-classical’ worlds was not as pronounced as Finley thought, and that at least some of these societies (certainly Carthage) should also be considered ‘slave societies’.

Artefacts of Cognition: the Use of Clay Tokens in a Neo-Assyrian Provincial Administration

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
John MacGinnis ◽  
M. Willis Monroe ◽  
Dirk Wicke ◽  
Timothy Matney
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
Administrative Culture ◽  
Time Period ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Provincial Capital ◽  
The 1960S

The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrative contexts. Now excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe — the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tušhan — have uncovered a corpus of tokens dating to the first millennium bc. This is a significant new contribution to the documented material. These tokens are found in association with a range of other artefacts of administrative culture — tablets, dockets, sealings and weights — in a manner which indicates that they had cognitive value concurrent with the cuneiform writing system and suggests that tokens were an important tool in Neo-Assyrian imperial administration.

scholarly journals REPRESENTASI POLA PERILAKU TASAWUF DALAM MEMBANGUN DINAMISASI MASYARAKAT GLOBAL

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Muhammad Natsir
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Behavior ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Times ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Islamic Values

<p align="center"><strong>Abstrak</strong></p><p>Islam agama Rahmatan lil ‘alamin yang mengajarkan sikap <em>wasathiyah</em> sesuai dengan metodologi Al-Qur’an, yaitu lembut, santun, ramah, berlapang dada, dan mengandalkan kekuatan doa. Wajah Islam Nusantara yang dibawa oleh para mujahid sufi wali sanga adalah  sangat kental diwarnai oleh corak Tasawuf, yaitu corak keIslaman yang lembut, santun dan toleran. Para Ulama’ dari kurun waktu ke waktu yang lain telah memposisikan dirinya sebagai obor umat, yang senantiasa membimbing umat agar menjadi sebatang pohon yang indah. Akar keyakinan yang kokoh; batang, dahan, ranting dan dedaunannya adalah istiqomah; sedangkan buah pohon keIslaman adalah integritas akhlak, etika, dan moral.</p><p>Ajaran Islam memiliki tiga pilar; iman, Islam dan ihsan, kemudian berkembang menjadi akidah, syari’ah, dan akhlak atau tawhid, fikih dan Tasawuf. Ihsan merupakan essensi Tasawuf dan sebaliknya, keduanya merupakan pilar utama untuk membangun pribadi Muslim yang saleh, yaitu pribadi yang tercermin pada diri dan perilaku Nabi Muhammad SAW sebagai Al-Qur’an hidup.</p><p>Indonesia telah masuk pada abad ke-21 atau abad global, banyak masyarakat muslim yang berhasil menduduki posisi strategis di segala ranah kehidupan; politik, ekonomi, sosial dan budaya, yang seharusnya mewarnai Indonesia dengan nilai-nilai keIslaman semisal etos kerja, produktifitas, professional, dan integritas yang berujung pada <strong>kemaslahatan umat manusia</strong>. Akan tetapi, moralitas mereka kotor karena hanya menunjukkan simbol-simbol keIslaman saja. Ihsan (Tasawuf) dipahami secara inklusif; terbatas pada ranah perilaku peribadatan saja, sehingga Rekontekstualisasi nilai-nilai Tasawuf pada seluruh ranah kehidupan manusia akan menjadi wujud perilaku nyata sebagai representasi dari nilai ajaran tasawuf itu sendiri untuk mewujudkan <em>maslahah</em> bagi manusia yang dinamis seiring perkembangan zaman.</p><p><strong>Kata Kunci : Representasi, Tasawuf, masyarakat, global</strong></p><p align="center"><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p> </p><p>Islam Rahmatan lil 'alamin religion that teaches attitude wasathiyah accordance with the methodology of the Qur'an, that is gentle, courteous, friendly, diledang chest, and rely on the power of prayer. The face of Islamic archipelago brought by the Sufi sage mujahid is very strongly colored by the style of Sufism, ie the pattern of keIslaman gentle, polite and tolerant. The Ulama 'from time to time others have positioned themselves as the torch of the Ummah, who constantly guides the people into a beautiful tree. The root of firm beliefs; stems, branches, twigs and leaves are istiqomah; while the fruit of Islamic trees is the integrity of morals, ethics, and morals.</p><p>Islamic teachings have three pillars; faith, Islam and ihsan, then developed into aqidah, shari'ah, and morals or tawhid, fiqh and mysticism. Ihsan is the essence of Sufism and vice versa, both of which are the main pillars for building a pious Muslim personality, a person who is reflected in the self and behavior of Prophet Muhammad as the living Qur'an.</p><p>Indonesia has entered the 21st century or the global century, many Muslim societies have succeeded in occupying strategic positions in all spheres of life; political, economic, social and cultural rights, which should color Indonesia with Islamic values such as work ethic, productivity, professional, and integrity that lead to the benefit of mankind. However, their morality is dirty because it shows only the symbols of Islam. Ihsan (Sufism) is understood inclusively; confined to the domain of religious behavior only, so that Rekontekstualisasi the values of Sufism on the entire realm of human life will be a manifest behavior as a representation of the value of the teachings of Sufism itself to realize the maslahah for human dynamic as the times.</p><p><strong>Keywords: Representation, Sufism, society, global</strong></p>

Philosophy before the Greeks

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Van De Mieroop
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Coherent System ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Many ◽  
Eastern Traditions

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was “before philosophy.” This book presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. The book uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.

Reclaiming the Feminine: Bellydancing as a Feminist Project

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (S1) ◽  
pp. 181-192
Author(s):  
Angela M. Moe
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Self Healing ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Higher Power ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World ◽  
Folk Tradition

Bellydancing is largely misunderstood and stereotyped. Few realize that it is an expressive, ancient, and woman-centered genre of movement, rooted in Middle/Near Eastern folk tradition and culture. Not surprisingly, it has received scant scholarship despite its increasing popularity throughout the world. This paper offers a feminist critique of hegemonic understandings of bellydance, based upon ethnographic research on American women's experiences. Findings are organized along five themes: discovery (of the dance and of self); healing (repair and respite from illness, injury, and victimization); spirituality (connectivity to each other, a higher power, and divine femininity); sisterhood (community, specifically woman-space); and empowerment (omnipresent sense of pride and self-confidence). I argue that bellydance is too easily dismissed as a means through which women are objectified via patriarchal views of beauty, sexuality, and performativity. These may be understood as byproducts of Western Orientalist renderings of the Middle/Near East and contextualized within our contemporary antifeminist society.

The Levite Scribes, Part 1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Leuchter
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Common

Deuteronomy reflects the attempt of northern Levites living in Judah to stabilize Israelite society in the face of accumulated social disruptions and growing tensions between the rural and royal spheres. In Deuteronomy’s vision, Israel is “made” through its fidelity to Moses’ teachings as preserved in text and entrusted to the people—but mediated through the Levites well beyond the esoteric depths of a temple. Flipping the common ancient Near Eastern script that saw such texts as the province of elite and exclusive priesthoods, Deuteronomy makes the textualized voice of YHWH accessible throughout the land, its presence marginalizing and expiating corrosive elements from within the community beholden to its contents. The Levite scribal construction of Deuteronomy becomes an expression of the divine warrior’s power, maintaining the crucible for Israel’s survival.

Laments by Nicetas Choniates and Others for the Fall of Constantinople in 1204

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Angold
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
The Self ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

Nicetas Choniates’s History contains a famous lament for the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the crusaders. It is beautifully phrased, but so conventional that it tells us very little about the emotional reaction of the Byzantines to a dreadful event. More interesting are the funeral orations delivered soon afterwards by survivors for those they had lost, because they mixed tears of grief over the departed, with tears of shame for the overthrow of Byzantium. In doing so, their authors, who were drawn from the highest ranks of the church and imperial administration, reveal the self-regard of the elite, which ran Byzantium. They could not understand how beings, as superior as they were, had been bested by a rabble of foreigners. At least, they knew they were not to blame. Their message was that they and their friends and relatives had displayed their moral and spiritual worth in the face of the indignities that were heaped upon them. They could see that this was God’s way of testing them for the failings of others. It was their duty as the guardians of Orthodoxy to lead the people of Byzantium through this challenge.

Mormonism (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terryl Givens
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
First Century ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Face ◽  
Religious Sect ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church

Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is America's most successful-and most misunderstood-home grown religion. The church today boasts more than 15 million members worldwide, a remarkable feat in the face of increasing secularity. The growing presence of Mormonism shows no signs of abating, as the makeup of its membership becomes progressively diverse. The heightened contemporary relevance and increasingly global membership of the Church solidifies Mormonism as a religious sect much deserving of awareness. Covering the origins, history, and modern challenges of the church, Mormonism: What Everyone Needs to Know offers readers a brief, authoritative guide to one of the fastest growing faith groups of the twenty-first century in a reader-friendly format, providing answers to questions such as: What circumstances gave rise to the birth of Mormonism? Why was Utah chosen as a place of refuge? Do you have to believe the Book of Mormon to be a Latter-day Saint? Why do women not hold the priesthood? How wealthy is the church and how much are top leaders paid? Written by a believer and the premier scholar of the Latter-day Saints faith, this remarkably readable introduction provides a sympathetic but unstinting account of one of the few religious traditions to maintain its vitality and growth in an era of widespread disaffiliation.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Literary Transmission ◽  
Writing Culture

After summing up the key findings of this study concerning the importance of the futility curse as a characteristic feature of Northwest Semitic literature in the first millennium BCE, this conclusion argues that Northwest Semitic literary traditions in general provide stronger pegs from which to hang a comparative approach between biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts than the Mesopotamian materials usually invoked by scholars. If we are to understand anything about the composition of the Hebrew Bible, especially in comparison with texts from the ancient Near East, we must first nuance our attempts with detailed consideration of the writing culture of the ancient Levant—incorporating Northwest Semitic inscriptions, bilingualism, oral and written modes of literary transmission, and scribal practice. This recognition is something which could have major methodological implications for the reconstruction of the historical relatedness of texts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document