Hundley, Michael B. Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East. Writings from the Ancient World Supplement Series 3. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013. xxvi+425 pp. $58.95 (paper).

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-255
Author(s):  
Spencer L. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Supplement Series ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Biblical Literature

He Will Wash His Garments in Wine (Gen 49:11)

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-83
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Special Function ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Ritual Context

This chapter takes its starting point from the notion that, for the biblical authors, clothing and jewellery symbolically encoded the personhood of its wearer. These items could thus manifest and modify the body in ritual contexts. As such, the manipulation and destruction of clothing items in the ritual context took on a heavy symbolic value. After the ritual use of textiles in the wider ancient Near East is explored, this insight is shown to explicate a number of the more difficult references to clothing in biblical literature. Moreover, since the production of textiles was gendered in the ancient world, this special function of clothing provided women with agency in ritual and religious settings. In these texts, textiles afford women with the means to become experts in rituals associated with life and death. These references therefore attest to the use of clothing and textiles in an important but largely unacknowledged aspect of female ritual expertise.

scholarly journals ‘And God gave Solomon wisdom’: Proficiency in ornithomancy

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham O. Shemesh
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Governmental Power ◽  
The Military

The biblical text accords a great deal of attention to King Solomon’s personal abilities and governmental power. Solomon was described as a judge, poet, constructor and the wisest of all people in the Ancient Near East and Egypt. The current study discusses the interpretation of the midrashim that show how Solomon’s wisdom was manifested in his considerable knowledge of ornithomancy, that is, divination using birds, a practice that was considered as an important wisdom in the ancient world because of its practical applications, particularly in the military sphere. It seems that Solomon’s portrayal as a magician is intended and aimed at emphasising his abilities and his impressive character. Moreover, it may have had the purpose of disproving the conception of Solomon as inferior to his surroundings in this respect and the idea that he or his kingdom could be controlled by nations that command this type of wisdom.

Prophets in the Hebrew Bible

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack R. Lundbom
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Hebrew Prophets

“Prophets” in the ancient world were individuals said to possess an intimate association with God or the gods, and conducted the business of transmitting messages between the divine and earthly realms. They spoke on behalf of God or the gods, and on occasion solicited requests from the deity or brought to the deity requests of others. The discovery of texts from the ancient Near East in the 19th and early 20th centuries has given us a fuller picture of prophets and prophetic activity in the ancient world, adding considerably to reports of prophets serving other gods in the Bible and corroborating details about prophets in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Two collections are important: (1) letters from the 18th-century Mari written during the reigns of Yasmaḫ-Addu (c. 1792–1775) and Zimri-Lim (c. 1774–1760); and (2) the 7th-century annals of Assyrian kings Esarhaddon (680–669) and Assurbanipal (668–627). Prophecies at Mari are favorable for the most part, and censures of the king, when they occur, are not harsh. Many simply remind the king of some neglect or give him some warning. One tells the king to practice righteousness and justice for anyone who has been wronged. None censures the people of Mari as biblical prophecies do the people of Israel. Assyrian oracles are largely oracles of peace and wellbeing, typically giving assurance to the king about matters of succession and success in defeating enemies. If prophets admonish the king, it is a mild rebuke about the king ignoring a prior oracle or not having provided food at the temple. According to the Bible, Israel’s prophetic movement began with Samuel, and it arose at the time when people asked for a king. Prophets appear all throughout the monarchy and into the postexilic period, when Jewish tradition believed prophecy had ceased. Yet, prophets reappear in the New Testament and early church: Anna the prophetess, John the Baptist, Jesus, and others. Paul allows prophets to speak in the churches, ranking them second only to apostles. Hebrew prophets give messages much like those of other ancient Near Eastern prophets, but what makes them different is that they announce considerably more judgment—sometimes very harsh judgment—on Israel’s monarchs, leading citizens, and the nation itself. Israel’s religion had its distinctives. Yahweh was bound to the nation by a covenant containing law that had to be obeyed. Prophets in Israel were therefore much preoccupied with indicting and judging kings, priests, other prophets, and an entire people for covenant disobedience. Also, in Israel the lawgiver was Yahweh, not the king. In Mari, as elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the king was lawgiver. Deuteronomy contains tests for true and false prophets, to which prophets themselves add other disingenuine marks regarding their contemporaneous prophetic colleagues. Hebrew prophets from the time of Amos onward speak in poetry and are skilled in rhetoric, using an array of tropes and knowing how to argue. Their discourse also contains an abundance of humor and drama. Speaking is supplemented with symbolic action, and in some cases the prophets themselves became the symbol.

Greek Mythology: Some New Perspectives

1972 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 74-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
New Approach ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
History Of

A new approach to the ancient world is only too often a wrong approach, unless it is based on some concrete discovery. But I think it fair to talk of newperspectives, at least, in the study of Greek mythology. Certainly the old and familiar ones are no longer adequate. Indeed it is surprising, in the light of fresh intuitions about society, literacy, the pre-Homeric world, and relations with the ancient Near East, that myth—one of the most pervasive aspects of Greek culture—has been left in its old and rather cobwebby pigeon-hole. Rose's simple paraphrases are accepted as adequate for students; Nilsson's sparse pages in his history of religion are rightly respected, though some of them are too simple; the Murray-Cook-Harrison-Cornford reconstruction of religion, ritual and myth is regarded as a little excessive, but perhaps not too far out; Kerényi and Eliade are roughly tolerated, if not widely read by Classicists, and their books are ordered in profusion for the library; the psychological side is adequately taken care of, or so it is supposed, by what is left from Freud and Jung, with Cassirer as sufficient authority for the sources of mythical imagination.Many of these critics had their moments of brilliant insight, but most were misleading in their theories taken as a whole. We can now accept that many myths have ritual counterparts, and some have ritual origins, without having to adopt Cornford's belief, developed after Harrison, Frazer and Robertson Smith, that all myths are such.

A Titanic Phenomenon: Marxism, History and Biblical Society

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 141-166
Author(s):  
Roland Boer
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
The State ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Lack Of Fit ◽  
Look Back

Marxist contributions to biblical criticism are far more sustained and complex than many would expect. This critical survey of the state of play, with a look back at the main currents that have led to that state, deals with Marxist contributions to the reconstructions of biblical societies and the interpretation of the literature produced by those societies. It begins by outlining the major Marxist positions within current biblical criticism and then moves on to consider two possible sources of further insight from outside biblical criticism: Western-Marxist studies of the ancient world (Karl Kautsky, Perry Anderson and G.E.M. de Ste. Croix) and the long and neglected tradition of Soviet-era Russian work on the ancient Near East. I conclude by pointing to a number of lingering problems: the unreliability of the literature for historical purposes; the lack of fit between juridical distinctions in the literature and class distinctions in the ancient world; the question as to whether the state can be a class; and the viability of imposing on the ancient world Marxist categories developed in very different situations.

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