Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt: Ground Stone Tools, Rock-cut Installations and Stone Vessels from Prehistory to Late Antiquity. Edited by Andrea Squitieri and David Eitam. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2019. Pp. x + 360 + 229 figures + 89 color plates. £50 (paper).

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-143
Author(s):  
Yorke Rowan
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Ground Stone

“Let us Go and Burn Her Body”: The Image of the Jews in the Early Dormition Traditions

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Christian Society

In his recent book,Mary through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan notes that “one of the most profound and persistent roles of the Virgin Mary in history has been her function as a bridge builder to other traditions, other cultures, and other religions.” This is particularly true of the late ancient Near East, where Mary's significance frequently reached across various cultural and religious boundaries. But it is equally true that Mary often served to define boundaries between traditions, cultures, and religions. As Klaus Schreiner explains in his similarly recent book,Maria: Jungfrau, Mutter, Herrsherin, “Brücken, die Juden und Christen miteinander hätten verbinden können, schlug Maria im Mittelalter nicht… Maria trennte, grenzte aus.” In the rather substantial chapter that follows, Schreiner presents perhaps the best overview of Mary's role as a focus of Jewish/Christian conflict in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Scholars have long recognized the role played by the Virgin and her cult in the exclusion of Jews from Christian society during the Western Middle Ages, Marian piety being, along with eucharistic devotion, the most anti-Jewish aspect of medieval piety. Throughout the medieval period, and likewise continuing into the Renaissance and Reformation, the Virgin Mary figured prominently in Christian anti-Jewish literature, where the (alleged) Jewish disparagement of Virgin Mary “weighed heavier than thefts of the host, ritual murders, and … ell poisoning.”

Why Did Mordecai Refuse to Bow?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Long Chain

In this chapter, it is argued that a pivotal episode in Esther, Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman, is to be read literarily, as a topos, rather than literally, as a historical event. Drawing on materials from the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Late Antiquity, the Qur’an, and the Islamic era, it is shown that Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman is but one link in a very long chain of comparable episodes in Near and Middle Eastern literature. Furthermore, in tracing this topos through history, we are able to cast new light on the Qur’anic passages in which Satan (“Iblis”) refuses to bow to the newly created Adam.

scholarly journals Materiality, Oral Incantations and Supernatural Agency in Ancient Healing Magic

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Marco Simón
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
Supernatural Agency ◽  
External Attack ◽  
Textual Records

In the Ancient World illness was thought to be the effect not of accidental or natural causes, but rather the result of a negative agency, an external attack on the victim’s body. This paper focuses on the diverse strategies used in healing magic attested in the material and textual records from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, with special attention paid to how the cultural status of objects and substances was changed through ritual, a process that, along with the invocations of demons and gods, allowed objects to acquire agency to counterattack the harm inflicted on the victim’s body.

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Contemporary View ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.

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