»Schwert, Hunger, Seuche« als Kurzformel für den Untergang Jerusalems

2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 338-349
Author(s):  
Christl M. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Siege Warfare

Abstract Within the Hebrew Bible, terms for »pestilence« or »plague« mainly appear in connection to covenant, curses, and warfare. The essay locates the phenomenon within its ancient Near Eastern context and focuses on how the Hebrew texts describe and interpret this catastrophe. The peculiar triadic phrase »sword, hunger, pestilence«, frequent in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, recalls the horrors of siege warfare, and especially the defeat of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. For the survivors of this catastrophe who seek to explain how this traumatic event could happen, the phrase serves as a literary topos for Yhwh’s reaction to Israel’s wrong-doings and as a shorthand for their cultural trauma.

On Agricultural Imagery in Biblical Descriptions of Catastrophes

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-14
Author(s):  
Nili Samet
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Mass Killing ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Ancient Israel

This article examines the use of agricultural imagery in biblical literature to embody the destructive force of war and other mass catastrophes. Activities such as vintage, harvest, threshing, and wine-pressing serve as metaphors for the actions of slaughtering, demolition and mass killing. The paper discusses the Ancient Near Eastern origins of the imagery under discussion, and presents the relevant examples from the Hebrew Bible, tracing the development of this absorbing metaphor, and analyzing the different meanings attached to it in different contexts. It shows that the use of destructive agricultural imagery first emerges in ancient Israel as an instance of popular phraseology. In turn, the imagery is employed as a common prophetic motif. The prophetic books examined demonstrate how each prophet appropriates earlier uses of the imagery in prophetic discourse and adapts the agricultural metaphors to suit specific rhetorical needs.

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.

The Beneficent Sky God: Cultural History in the Qur’an

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Arts And Sciences

This chapter considers the Qur'an's interpretation of the origins of civilization. When the Arabs conquered the Near East, they shared with their subjects (mainly Jews and Christians) the notion that civilization had arisen as a consequence of Adam's fall. But in contrast to the Hebrew Bible, the Qur'an portrays the rise of civilization positively and makes God its prime mover, much like the gods of ancient Near Eastern myths. There are at least two reasons for this difference. First, Muhammad draws on noncanonical biblical scripture and storytelling that link God, angels, and chosen human interlocutors to the development of beneficial arts and sciences. Second, Muhammad draws on some version of these texts (perhaps oral) to prove his argument that God is the source of all civilization, an argument influenced by late-antique thought on divine providence. He makes this argument to justify either proselytizing among or conquest of non-Muslims, who have forgotten the source of civilization and thus deserve to lose it.

Laws in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Greengus
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The People ◽  
Divine Origin ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Behaviors ◽  
The Many

Biblical laws are found mainly in the Pentateuch (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). The laws are linked to the figure of Moses, who is depicted as having received them directly from God in order to transmit them to the people of Israel during the years in the Wilderness after being released from slavery in Egypt. Biblical laws are thus presented as being of divine origin. Their authority was further bolstered by a tradition that they were included in covenants (i.e., formal agreements made between God and the people as recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy). Similar claims of divine origin were not made for other ancient Near Eastern laws; their authority flowed from kings, who issued the laws, although these kings might also be seen as having been placed on their thrones through the favor of the gods. The biblical law collections are unlike other ancient Near Eastern “codes” in that they include sacral laws (i.e., governing cult, worship, and ritual, as well as secular laws: namely, governing civil, and criminal behaviors). This mingling of sacral and secular categories is the likely reason both for the many terms used to denote the laws, as well as for the unexpected number of formulations in which they are presented. The formulations used in biblical law can be classified as “casuistic” or “non-casuistic.” They are not equally distributed in the books of the Pentateuch nor are they equally used with secular and sacral laws. While there are similarities in content between secular laws found in the Hebrew Bible and laws found in the ancient Near Eastern law “codes,” the latter do not exhibit a comparable variety in the numbers of law terms and formulations. The Hebrew Bible tended to “blur” the differences between the law terms and their formulations, ultimately to the point of subsuming them all under the law term torah (“teaching”) to describe the totality of the divinely given laws in the Pentateuch. Biblical studies in general and Pentateuchal studies in particular are challenged by the fact that manuscripts contemporary with the events described have not survived the ravages the time. Scholars must therefore rely on looking for “clues” within the texts themselves (e.g., the laws cited by the prophets, the reform of Josiah, the teaching of torah by Ezra, and evidence for customs and customary laws found in books of the Hebrew Bible outside of the Pentateuch).

Book of Daniel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tawny Holm
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Resistance Literature ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Composition History ◽  
Book Of Daniel ◽  
End Times

The Book of Daniel contains the only apocalypse in the Hebrew Bible. It is comprised of twelve chapters: 1–6, which are a series of six court tales describing the life of Daniel and his three friends, Judean exiles to the Babylonian court in the 6th century bce, and 7–12, which are a series of four apocalyptic visions, purportedly by this same Daniel. Despite the book’s 6th-century setting, it was probably only finalized during the Maccabean period, perhaps by 164 bce. The stories seem to be earlier than the visions, which reflect anguish under the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who oppressed Judea from 168–164 bce. Especially the last chapters employ the coded language of apocalyptic literature and thus interpret historical figures symbolically without giving their actual names. Combined, the court tales and the apocalyptic vision narratives seem to function as both encouragement and resistance literature. The book was written in both Hebrew and Aramaic. The Greek editions of Daniel include additional material: a prayer and a hymn inserted into Dan 3, and two extra stories, Susanna and Bel and the Serpent. Daniel was placed in the Writings section of the Hebrew Bible but is located among the Prophets in the Septuagint as well as Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. Among the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls, there are at least eight copies of the Book of Daniel, as well as parabiblical literature either focused on a character named “Daniel” or otherwise related to the biblical book. Daniel’s main themes center mostly on its apocalyptic and eschatological features, such as the periodization of history, chronological predictions of end times, the sovereignty of God over earthly empires, martyrdom, and resurrection. These themes have influenced both Jewish and Christian views of eschatology. Within Christianity, the book is frequently read together with the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, an apocalyptic book in the New Testament that was greatly influenced by Daniel. Current research on the Book of Daniel not only utilizes some new approaches and methodologies but also continues to advance our understanding in these main areas: the relationship between the main texts of Daniel (the Hebrew-Aramaic as well as the Greek editions), Daniel’s composition history, its social setting and political theology, and its Ancient Near Eastern influences.

History as trauma and the possibility of the future: Theo Angelopoulos’ Voyage to Cythera

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Homer
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

Theo Angelopoulos has described Taxidi sta Kythira (Voyage to Cythera) (1984) as an attempt to ‘exorcise the past’ and offer the Greek audience a possibility to face the future without the traumas of the past. This article explores the question of the extent to which we can exorcise the past and asks if a future is possible without acknowledging the traumas of the past. Drawing upon cultural trauma theory, the article analyses the Greek Civil War (1946‐49) as a cultural trauma for the Greek Left, especially concerning the recognition of political prisoners and exiles. Psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, suggests that a fundamental characteristic of trauma is the un-representability of the event itself, as a traumatic event is only known through its persistent reiterations. Through its multi-layered narrative structure and aesthetic strategies of deferral and displacement Voyage to Cythera stages the trauma of the Greek Civil War for both the returning exiles and the generation that followed. As a representation of presence through absence, the article considers Voyage to Cythera in terms of Thomas Elsaesser’s concept of the parapractic text and Max Silverman’s notion of palimpsestic memory whereby the film does not exorcise the past as such but reveals a past haunting the present. The article concludes with the reflection that a traumatic past has a tendency to return however much we may wish to lay it rest.

scholarly journals Identifying Intentional Ambiguity

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nephtali Meshel
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Multiple Representation ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Poetic Texts

Identifying Intentional Ambiguity   It is widely acknowledged that certain genres in ancient Near Eastern literature including the Hebrew Bible are characterized by intense ambiguity. In particular, divination, Wisdom literature and erotic poetry thrive on a special type of ambiguity—“double-edged words”—in which a single graphic or phonetic sequence is employed to convey a message and its precise opposite, at one and the same time. However, it is often difficult to demonstrate that a specific case of “double-edged wording” is in fact intentional rather than a product of an eager reader’s over-interpretation. The proposed paper offers three criteria for identifying intentionality in the formulation of ambiguous texts, based on examples from Biblical and other ancient Near Eastern divinatory, Wisdom and poetic texts: (1) Ungrammaticality: Sometimes an author is forced to use an ungrammatical form in order to preserve two opposite meanings. This happens when smoothing the grammar would have been achieved only at the price of losing the ambiguity; (2) Multiple representation: At times the same exact ambiguity is evidenced in identical contexts, but in different words and by means of different sentence-structures (occasionally even in different languages, e.g., Hebrew and Aramaic); when it can be demonstrated that coincidence is highly unlikely, the argument for intentional crafting is strong; (3) Straussian “Art of Writing”: When the author addresses an issue that was demonstrably contentious (from the author’s perspective), potentially-subversive formulations are particularly suspect. The intersection of two or three of these criteria in a single text strongly suggests intentionality

Wisdom Traditions and the Writings

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-98
Author(s):  
James L. Crenshaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Wisdom Traditions ◽  
Wisdom Of Solomon ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the wisdom literature and teachings of sages and scribes in ancient Israel, with a special focus on the postexilic and early Roman periods. Definitions of wisdom, sage, and scribe, their social status, their literary identities, and their teachings are discussed. Pertinent comparisons with ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, Torah and Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the history of ancient Israel anchor presentations of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon. The importance and pertinence of this literature and its teachings for ancient and contemporary seekers of wisdom are argued throughout.

Qoheleth in the Writings

2018 ◽  
pp. 244-260
Author(s):  
Erhard S. Gerstenberger
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literary Composition ◽  
Fundamental Values ◽  
Carpe Diem

Qohelet (Greek/Latin: Ecclesiastes) is a very enigmatic book in the Hebrew Bible. Its critical, sometimes ironic or depressive approach to fundamental values of daily life (property; honor; power; intelligence; reward), however, has antecedents and parallels in Ancient Near Eastern wisdom. Also, it is not foreign to other writings of the Bible. Disconcerting as the absence of JHWH’s name and salvific deeds for Israel may be, the booklet, eventually becoming the festive lecture at the autumnal Feast of Booths, came into being as a textbook in some educational or scholarly institution of ancient Judaism (third century bce), complementing the study of Torah. Vanity and carpe-diem motives permeate the collection. The anonymous author(s) partially speak(s) in the guise of Salomon. Today’s interpretations focus on literary composition, autobiographic experiences of one or more authors, communitarian debate, reactions to historical events or philosophical currents, general skepticism, and eruptive bliss as components of Jewish theology.

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