“Die Empörten Weiber”: Gender, Authority and Protestant Modernism in Jeremiah 44

Because of Protestant modernism’s reconstrual of older Protestant views of inspiration around the Romantic notion of the male charismatic prophet, it unintentionally opened doors for the latent gender inequality of its misogynist cultural context when interpreting female religious activity in the prophets. Because of Protestant modernism’s inability to distinguish itself from its 19th-20th century social elite status, it can end up enabling gender stereotypes of its time and thus engage in unexamined gender bias. Vestiges at times remain in literature that assumes the non- or reduced agency of women in Israelite religion. This is a case study in one of the founders of historical-critical Jeremiah study, Sigmund Mowinckel, focusing not on Protestant modernism broadly but rather on Mowinckel’s clear expression of the modernist Protestant notion of the inspiration of sacred speech.

Thinking with Clay: Procreation and the Ceramic Paradigm in Israelite Religion

The cross-cultural connection between ceramic production and the creation of humans in the ancient Near East offers a new lens through which to examine biblical discourse about procreation and subject formation. The physical properties of clay make it an effective discursive tool in ancient Near Eastern texts, including the Hebrew Bible, for conceptualizing the processes that form and shape the human. Adopting a materialist approach, this article argues that biblical writers are not simply thinking about clay in relation to procreation and subject formation, but are thinking with it – that the raw materials, technologies, and objects of ceramic production helped to generate the ideologies and ritual processes that shape the human from gestation to birth and into early childhood. Material culture from ancient Israel supports this assessment. The manufacture of Judean Pillar Figurines out of clay and their apparent association with childbirth and the nurture of young children further suggest the prevalence of the ceramic paradigm in ancient religious ideology and ritual.

Judaism

Judaism was the first monotheist religion and has about 18 million adherents in the world today. This review covers the historical development of biblical Israelite religion in the ancient land of Israel beginning 1000 BCE and how it gradually developed into the very different rabbinical Judaism that exists today. While most Jews today are secular participants in Western democratic liberal cultures, Orthodox, and especially ultra-orthodox Jews are a rapidly growing minority with special needs for culturally sensitive psychiatry acceptable to their religious lifestyle and observance to the commandments. The traditional Jewish beliefs in a future Messiah is also a component of some manic states and the differential diagnosis between ‘religiosity’ and mental illness can be important in psychiatric settings with orthodox Jewish patients.

The Lemba - ‘angel-stars’, ngoma lungundu and ancestors

Hendel (2004) states that “the remembered past is the material with which biblical Israel constructed its identity as a people, a religion, and a culture. It is a mixture of history, collective memory, folklore, and literary brilliance. In Israel’s formative years, these memories circulated orally in the context of family and tribe. Over time they came to be crystallized [mainly] in various written texts” (my insertion). The experiential dimension of religion of ancient Israel and that of the Lemba (the so-called ‘Black “Jews” of Southern Africa’ and other African tribes) is expressed orally and textually, but also in art. It is in no small part also created by them, as they formulate new or altered conceptions of the sacred past. Guidance by stars, the ancestors and the ngoma lungundu (sacred drum of the ancestors) play a major role in the expression of Lemba and early Israelite religion, culture and art.

A Metallurgical Perspective on the Birth of Ancient Israel

The re-emergence of the copper industry in the Arabah valley between the twelfth and ninth centuries BCE stimulated wealth and economic development across the whole Southern Levant. Combining this reality with the metallurgical background of ancient Yahwism provides a material basis for the spread, from the early Iron Age, of the worship of YHWH in ancient Israel and neighboring nations, especially Edom. These findings strengthen the Qenite hypothesis of the origin of the Israelite religion. They also suggest that an official cult of YHWH, replacing a traditional esoteric dimension, is the main novelty of the Israelite religion. The claim of YHWH’s intervention in history, apparently absent from traditional Yahwism, is the other theological novelty advanced by the Israelites. This article suggests that both innovations are rooted in a desert-shaped form of Yahwism especially adapted to the way of life and the environment of Northwestern Arabia, the land of Biblical Midian.

When and from Where did YHWH Emerge? Some Reflections on Early Yahwism in Israel and Judah

The paper addresses two crucial questions of the history of Israelite religion. Did YHWH emerge in the southern steppe and when did YHWH become the God of Judah? After discussing the available evidence for YHWH’s origin in the South, the paper tests the extra-biblical evidence for the worship of YHWH in Israel and Judah and questions his widespread importance in the tenth and early ninth centuries BCE in the mentioned territories. By presenting the theophoric personal names, the hypothesis is corroborated that YHWH was significantly introduced at the earliest by the Omrides. Moving then to the epigraphic evidence, the additional evince for YHWH’s origin in the South is reviewed negatively. YHWH of Teman from Kuntillet ʽAjrud cannot prove the origin of this deity in the South. It is rather a piece of evidence that the worship of this deity in the South was not natural even in the mid-eighth century BCE. That YHWH’s true origin is in Midian, Paran, Seir, etc. remains a speculative hypothesis that is built on the tradition-history of some biblical passages and the biblical Sinai tradition. This particular feature is indeed related to the South and its struggle to claim independence for the Southern YHWH from the North. YHWH was only introduced to Judah as a patron deity of the dynasty, and that is the state of the Omrides ruling in Jerusalem.

The Tyrian King in MT and LXX Ezekiel 28:12b–15

The biblical prophecy in Ezekiel 28:11–19 records a dirge against the king from Tyre. While the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) identifies the monarch as a cherub, the Greek Septuagint (LXX) distinguishes the royal from the cherub. Scholarly debates arise as to which edition represents the more original version of the prophecy. This article aims to contribute to the debates by adopting a text-critical approach to the two variant literary editions of the dirge, comparing and analyzing their differences, while incorporating insights gleaned from the extra-biblical literature originating from the ancient Near East, Second Temple Period, and Late Antiquity. The study reaches the conclusion that the current MT, with its presentation of a fluid boundary between the mortal and divine, likely builds on a more ancient interpretation of the Tyrian king. On the other hand, while the Hebrew Vorlage of LXX Ezekiel 28:12b–15 resembles the Hebrew text of the MT, the Greek translator modifies the text via literary allusions and syntactical rearrangement, so that the final result represents a later reception that suppresses any hints at the divinity of the Tyrian ruler. The result will contribute to our understanding of the historical development of the ancient Israelite religion.

Monotheism and Deuteronomy

Monotheism is a vexed subject in biblical scholarship. Many contend that some of the alleged monotheistic claims in the book (6:4) are not at all relevant to the subject or are very late. Others try to show that the book provides useful data points for explaining the development of Israelite religion. This chapter surveys the place of Deuteronomy in the study of monotheism and offers clarity on what monotheism means before assessing key passages on the subject. I argue that Deuteronomy is indeed monotheistic, but that our use of that term needs careful consideration.