Materialität und Spiritualität im altisraelitischen Opferkult: Religionsgeschichtliche Abstraktionsprozesse

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jan Dietrich
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
High Esteem ◽  
The Way

Abstract In the ancient near East, including ancient Israel, the material value of sacrifice was held in high esteem. In the sacrificial system of Leviticus 1-5, however, we find modes of abstraction from the material value of offerings which have parallels to the invention of money in ancient Greece. Here, money as an accepted medium of exchange, was invented with the value of the coin not totally dependent on its metal weight. While in ancient Greece this form of abstraction developed in the economic sphere, in ancient Israel it developed in the religious sphere and paved the way to regard prayers or confessions of faith as equivalent substitutions of material sacrifice.

Litigation

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-58
Author(s):  
Eryl Wynn Davies
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Near East ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Trial Procedure ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The Way

The chapter examines the Old Testament evidence concerning the nature of the trial procedure in ancient Israel. Although the evidence is limited in comparison with the abundance of material available in the ancient Near East, the laws in the Pentateuch and the narratives in the Old Testament do provide indirect evidence for the way in which the judicial system operated in Israel and Judah. The elders played a prominent role in trials at a local level, and it is probable that the main qualification for eldership was possession of landed property. Appeal against arbitrary decisions by the local assemblies could be made directly to the king, though, in practice, this responsibility was probably delegated to his officials. In cases where there were no witnesses present the matter could be directed to God for a verdict by means of a “trial by ordeal.”

Winged Goddesses of Sexuality, Death, and Immortality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serinity Young
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Monstrous Feminine

The winged Egyptian goddess Isis is an ancient and complex deity, whose mythology presents her as bestower of fertility and immortality. This chapter follows up on these themes, and the linked relationship between fertility and immortality, by exploring the involvement of women with funeral rites, and concepts of the afterlife in the Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece involving goddesses, who combine sexuality and fertility, war and death, and the promise and hope of immortality. There is a further exploration of ancient bird goddesses demonized via the concept of the monstrous-feminine: furies, harpies, and sirens—all of whom pose a particular danger to men, not women.

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.

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.

Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient near East

1997 ◽  
Vol 116 (4) ◽  
pp. 722
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher ◽  
Moshe Weinfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Ancient Israel
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