Sustenance and Survival in Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Shape Characterization

Food is a comprehensive cultural code. In ancient Israel and early Judaism, food production and preparation structured lives; what one did in the process was determined by gender and class status and sometimes even marked by ethnic and religious identity. Food also serves to structure narrative, shape characterization, and add layers of symbolic signification to story. In the Bible, the drama of the first few chapters revolves around proper versus improper eating, and the final book portrays God as a lamb sacrificed for the Passover meal. Between picking and tasting the forbidden fruit, and slaughtering and eating God, a whole host of food-related plots, characters, and images proliferate, many of which revolve around the most important of foodstuffs: bread. This chapter explores the centrality of bread in the story of Adam and Eve, the book of Ruth, and the gospels of Jesus.

Biblical Israel in the Ninth Century?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP R. DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
United Monarchy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Crucial Part

Most archaeologists of ancient Israel still operate with a pro-biblical ideology, while the role that archaeology has played in Zionist nation building is extensively documented. Terms such as ‘ninth century’ and ‘Iron Age’ represent an improvement on ‘United Monarchy’ and ‘Divided Monarchy’, but these latter terms remain implanted mentally as part of a larger portrait that may be called ‘biblical Israel’. This chapter argues that the question of ‘biblical Israel’ must be regarded as distinct from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a major historical problem rather than a given datum. ‘Biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

scholarly journals The Religion of Idumea and Its Relationship to Early Judaism

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 487
Author(s):  
Yigal Levin
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Persian Period ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many

For several hundred years, from the late Iron Age to the end of the 2nd century BCE, the southern neighbor of Judea was “Idumea”, populated by descendants of Edomites, together with Qedarite and other Arabs and a mix of additional ethnicities. This paper examines the known data on the identity, especially religious identity, of these Idumeans, using a wide range of written sources and archaeological data. Within the Bible, “Edom” is presented as Israel’s twin and its harshest enemy, but there are hints that the Edomites worshipped the God of Israel. While the origins of the “Edomite deity” Qaus remain obscure, as does the process of their migration into southern Judah, the many inscriptions from the Persian period show that Qaus became the most widely worshipped deity in the area, even if other gods, including Yahweh, were also recognized. The Hellenistic period brought heightened Greek and Phoenician influence, but also the stabilization of “Idumea” as an administrative/ethnic unit. Some of the practices of this period, such as male circumcision, show an affinity to the Judaism of the time. This paper also discusses the outcome of the Hasmonean conquest of Idumea and the incorporation of its inhabitants into the Jewish nation.

scholarly journals FROM CRISIS TO MEANING: CREATIVITY IN THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE OF EVE AND THE INVERSION BY F. KAFKA

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-272
Author(s):  
Luc Anckaert ◽  
Roger Burggraeve
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Law

The possibilities of creativity in human life depend on discovering the meaning of life. Franz Kafka’s story Before the Law evokes how every attempt at finding this meaning, represented as the law, comes with a crisis and can result in failure. The secret of human existence is all about intimate personal encounters. The other than myself, which is also deeply present inside myself, is not the impersonal thing that it is oftentimes made out to be. In an already published article, we presented a close-reading of Kafka’s text. We only refer to the results in the first paragraph. In this article, we read the biblical narrative on Adam and Eve as a text that is structured by the same economy – the intertwinedness of the I-Thou relation with the I-It relation. But in opposition to the Kafka narrative, the crisis is overcome and results in a new creative perspective on the human condition: the discovery of the ultimate intersubjective meaning of life. The meaning makes love and labour possible. It means that the creativity of becoming human is the result of interaction. The context of our research is a long project on developing a philosophical reading of Biblical texts that was developed at the KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. The methodology is inspired by the Talmudic readings of Emmanuel Levinas and by the philosophical interpretations of the Bible of Paul Ricœur. In this way, we introduce a non-confessional way of understanding religious texts on the creativity of becoming human. Santrauka Kūrybiškumo galimybės žmogaus gyvenime priklauso nuo atrastos gyvenimo prasmės. Franzo Kafkos apysaka Prieš įstatymą sukelia minčių, kaip bet kokiomis pastangomis rasti šią įstatymo simbolizuojamą prasmę, prasidedančią nuo krizės ir galinčią baigtis nesėkme. Žmogaus egzistavimo paslaptis yra absoliučiai neatsiejama nuo intymių asmeninių sutikčių. Kitas, skirtingai nei aš pats, kuris taip pat esti giliai manyje pačiame, nėra nesuasmenintas daiktas, kuris dažnai taip traktuojamas. Jau paskelbtame straipsnyje pristatėme nuodugnų Kafkos teksto aiškinimą. Pirmame skirsnyje tiesiog pateikiame prieitas išvadas. Šiame straipsnyje interpretuojame biblinį Adomo ir Ievos naratyvą kaip tekstą, kurio struktūra grindžiama tokia pat ekonomija – Aš–Tu ir Aš–Tai santykio sampyna. Tačiau, priešingai Kafkos naratyvui, krizė įveikiama ir baigiasi nauja kūrybine žmogaus būklės perspektyva, atradus didžiausią intersubjektyvią gyvenimo prasmę. Prasmė suteikia galimybę mylėti ir dirbti. Tai reiškia, kad tapimo žmogumi kūrybiškumas yra sąveikavimo rezultatas. Mūsų tyrimo kontekstą sudaro Leveno katalikiškajame universitete (Levenas, Belgija) vykdytas ilgalaikis projektas, plėtojęs filosofines biblinių tekstų interpretacijas. Šiuo atveju pristatome nekonfesinį būdą suprasti religinius tekstus, skirtus tapimo žmogumi kūrybiškumui.

Ancient Israel's Neighbors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian R. Doak
Keyword(s):  
Nearest Neighbors ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Level ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Turmoil

The purpose of this book is to tell the story of Israel’s nearest neighbors—not only discovering what the Bible has to say about them but also what we can know from archaeology, ancient inscriptions, and other sources. The Bible itself presents these neighbors in nuanced and conflicting ways; sometimes they are friends or even related to Israel at a family level, and sometimes they are enemies, spoken of as though they must die in order for Israel to live. We are left wondering how the biblical portrayal might have affected our thinking about these people as historical groups, on their own terms. How would an Aramaean have described her own religion? How would an Edomite have described conflict with Israel? This book explores both the biblical portrayal of the smaller groups surrounding Israel and what people can know about these groups through their own literature, archaeology, and other sources. By uncovering the identity of the Philistines as settlers along the coast at the same time that early Israel carved out their place in the land, for example, one can better understand the social turmoil and political maneuvering that lies just beneath the surface of the biblical narrative, and can see more clearly just how the authors of the Bible saw themselves in the face of others.

Reading the Bible from Below in the Era of Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Rainer Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Asynchronous Development ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Globalized World

It is evident that the world of the Bible is pre-modern and thus distinct from the globalized civilization. This chronological gap challenges readers, whether they are feminist or not. Mainly three attitudes can be observed among scholarly and ordinary readers. For some readers, the Bible is a document of the losers of a historical process of modernization that already began in ancient Israel. For other readers, the Bible is outdated and of no use to confront the challenges of globalization. A third readerly position challenges both of these views. This essay offers four arguments to orient biblical readers in the contemporary globalized world. First, the essay posits that globalization is an asynchronous development. Thus, even today, most people living in the impoverished regions of the world face conditions similar to those dominant in the Bible. Second, the essay asserts that women are the first victims in biblical times and still nowadays. Third, the essay maintains that biblical texts display social relations that still unveil contemporary relations. Fourth, the essay suggests that intercultural Bible readings give hope, as they nurture biblical readings from “below” to strengthen people to overcome the fatal consequences of today’s globalization.

How American Newspaper Comic Strips Portray God, Angels, and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. 398-413
Author(s):  
Leonard Greenspoon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

The comic strip as a mainstay of print and more recently online media is an American invention that began its development in the last decades of the 1800s. For many decades in the mid-twentieth century, comic strips were among the most widely disseminated forms of popular culture. With their succession of panels, pictures, and pithy perspectives, comics have come to cover an array of topics, including religion. This chapter looks at how the Bible (Old and New Testament) figures in comic strips, focusing specifically on three areas: the depiction of the divine, renderings of specific biblical texts, and how comic strips can function as sites in which religious identity and controversies play out. Relevant examples are drawn from several dozen strips. Special attention is also paid to a few, like Peanuts and BC, in which biblical imagery, ideology, and idiom are characteristically portrayed in distinctive ways.

Clio and Canons: in Search of a Cultural Poetics of the Hebrew Bible

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Cultural Poetics ◽  
Leading Edges

AbstractThe enterprise of writing "histories" of "ancient Israel" in which biblical historiography is reproduced by old credulists or critiqued by new nihilists represents one of the leading edges of contemporary biblical studies in relation to the Hebrew Bible. This quest for a cultural poetics or cultural materialist accounts of the Bible is virtually equivalent to a New Historicism in the discipline. In this article analyses of three topics from current debates in biblical studies (historiography of "ancient Israel", the empty land topos, canons and context) are used to provide insights into how new historicist approaches to contextualizing literature may contribute to these current debates about the Bible.

Textualization and the Book of Jeremiah

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-158
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Book Of Jeremiah

Textualization implies the emergence of the concept of a “text” as a specific object that needs to be handled in a specific way: an object that is conceptualized as part of a tradition of reading and interpreting—indeed, an object that is constituted by the desire to preserve and make available a specific utterance (irrespective of whether that utterance was originally produced orally or in writing). Written texts therefore are the results of the desire of an individual or a community to establish a tradition for a speech act that the individuals or the community intend to preserve. As is the case with oral texts, written texts can give rise to ritualized or otherwise significant uses of the text-object. This is the key to the understanding of prophetic collections in the Bible, and especially in the book of Jeremiah. While “tradition” (Überlieferung) is the aim of textualization, that tradition comes in various shapes and forms. The growth of prophetic books is an excellent illustration of Konrad Ehlich’s analysis of the characteristics of textualization and its purposes, especially with regard to the fact that prophetic oracles were, in ancient Israel and Judah, textualized for the purpose of being preserved and performed and of serving as the basis for Fortschreibungen.

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