Bedouin Culture in the Bible

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clinton Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Unleavened Bread ◽  
The Common ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Common Logic

Bedouin culture, the culture of desert-dwelling nomads, has existed for 4,500 years, including the era when the texts of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, were composed. It is thus a good context for understanding much of the Bible’s often ambivalent content regarding economics, material culture, social values, social organization, legal practices, religious behavior, and oral traditions. The abundant and varied Bedouin materials in this book constitute a cultural document that supplements materials learned from other cultures of the Ancient Near East about the Bible. The plenitude of Bedouin materials in the Hebrew Bible, the common logic between Bedouin and biblical experiences, and the ancient proximity of Bedouin to what the Bible cites as Israelite abodes, ensure that the origin of almost all the biblical references presented in this book stemmed from Bedouin rather than other ancient cultures. This book, in detailing the profusion of Bedouin culture in the Bible, goes far toward establishing that the ancient Israelites did have a nomadic background, as they are portrayed. Through the prism of Bedouin culture we also gain fresh insights into our customary perspectives on prominent aspects of Judaism and their biblical origins, such as the Israelite god Yahweh (enunciated in Judaism as “Adonai”), the attribute of this god as unseen, the original significance of circumcision, the eating of unleavened bread during Passover, the dwelling in thatched booths during the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Jewish prohibitions against eating pork and other forbidden foods.

Hebrew Bible Quotations in Arabic Transcription in Safavid Iran of the 11th/17th Century: Sayyed Aḥmad ʿAlavī’s Persian Refutations of Christianity

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 235-252
Author(s):  
Dennis Halft
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Arabic Characters ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
The Common

In Muslim polemical writings on the Bible written in Arabic, scriptural quotations frequently appear in Arabic transcription of the original Hebrew. This phenomenon also occurs in the Persian refutations of Christianity by the 11th/17th-century Shīʿī scholar Sayyed Aḥmad ʿAlavī. The adduced biblical materials, however, vary significantly depending on the particular manuscript or recension. Nevertheless, they reflect the common repertoire of scriptural verses invoked by Muslim authors. In contrast to Henry Corbin, who argued on the basis of the Hebrew verses transcribed in Arabic characters that ʿAlavī was a Hebraist and directly acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures, it is suggested here that the Shīʿī scholar relied instead on lists of biblical “testimonies” to Muḥammad. Although ʿAlavī’s literary sources are as yet unknown due to a lack of research, there is evidence from the manuscripts dating from ʿAlavī’s lifetime that he copied the transcribed Bible quotations from earlier Muslim writings.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Lipka
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Methodological Foundation ◽  
Women In The Bible ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

There was relatively little scholarship focusing on women, gender, and sexuality in the Hebrew Bible until the 1970s, when modern feminist biblical scholarship first started to emerge as an outgrowth of second-wave feminism. In the 1980s, feminist biblical criticism fully blossomed as a discipline, inspiring a large body of work focusing on issues such as the depiction, treatment, and roles of women, the interrelationship between gender and power, and views toward women’s sexuality in biblical texts, and what can be discerned about various aspects of the lives of women in ancient Israel based on biblical and other evidence. In the past few decades, as the body of scholarship on women in the Bible has continued to grow, it has also broadened its scope as new methodologies and hermeneutical approaches have been introduced. Inspired in part by the rise of third wave feminism in the 1990s, there has also been an increasing amount of scholarship focusing on the intersection of race, class, and ethnicity with gender and sexuality in biblical texts, and an increasing awareness of the need to include more voices from the “two-thirds” world in the scholarly dialogue. In addition to being subjects covered by those engaging in feminist criticism, gender and sexuality studies both emerged as discrete fields in the 1980s, as biblical scholars, building upon the methodological foundation established by theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, began to examine the social, cultural, and historical construction of gender and sexuality in biblical texts. The last few decades have seen a flourishing of scholarship on gender and sexuality in the Bible that continues to both build on these foundations and go beyond them, as scholars incorporate new approaches and methodologies from the areas of gender theory, queer studies, masculinities studies, and, most recently, intersex studies into their work, offering innovative and incisive readings that shed a vivid new light on seemingly familiar biblical texts.

Toradidaktik

2015 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Bernd Schröder
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Helpful Tool ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Canonical Approach

Abstract “Tora” is to be seen as an originally Jewish key concept interpreting the first section of the Hebrew Bible. Adopting this concept within Christian Theology offers a range of fresh learning opportunities to Christian learners - it would help them to appreciate Jewish reading of the Bible, it would stress a canonical approach as well as a theological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. The author of this contribution underlines such an adoption to be a helpful tool for raising the status of Old Testament texts in RE.

Desert Oral Traditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 167-203
Author(s):  
Clinton Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Song Of The Sea ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The Bedouin oral literary product—proverbs, genealogies, tribal stories, and poetry—shares many likenesses with these genres as they appear in the Hebrew Bible. This commonality pertains, even though some Bedouin oral traditions survived until the late twentieth century CE, when they were still heard recited, while the biblical traditions existed orally only until their ancient transcription in the Bible. This chapter brings examples from the various genres of oral tradition in both societies, comparing them in form, content, background, and initiative, and offering insights into their use in the biblical texts. Bedouin poetry also sheds light on the Bible’s oldest poems, “The Song of the Sea” and “The Song of Deborah.”

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

This is a book about clothing and adornment in the world that gave rise to the Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, then, this is a book concerned with material culture: with the various garments and items of adornment that we read about in the pages of the Bible, or with the material remains of objects such as jewellery and cosmetic cases that have been recovered from the ancient Levant....

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