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Israels Beneficent Dead
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Book Synopsis Israel's Beneficent Dead by : Brian B. Schmidt
Download or read book Israel's Beneficent Dead written by Brian B. Schmidt and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 1996 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did the ancient Israelites perform rituals expressive of the belief in the supernaturalbeneficent power of the dead? Contrary to long held notions of primitive society and the euhemeristic origin of the divine, various factors indicate that the ancestor cult, that is, ancestor veneration or worship, was not observed in the Iron Age Levant. The Israelites did not adopt an ancient Canaanite ancestor cult that became the object of biblical scorn. Yet, a variety of mortuary rituals and cults were performed in Levantine society; mourning and funerary rites and longer-term rituals such as the care for the dead and commemoration. Rituals and monuments in or at burial sites, and especially the recitation of the deceased's name, recounted the dead's lived lives for familial survivors. They served broader social functions as well; e.g., to legitimate primogeniture and to reinforce a community's social collectivity. Another ritual complex from the domain of divination, namely necromancy, might have expressed the Israelite dead's beneficent powers. Yet, was this power to reveal knowledge that of the dead or was it a power conveyed through the dead, but that remained attributable to another supranatural being of non-human origin? Contemporary Assyrian necromancers utilized the ghost as a conduit through which divine knowledge was revealed to ascertain the future and so Judah's king Manasseh, a loyal Assyrian vassal, emulated these new Assyrian imperial forms of prognostication. As a de-legitimating rhetorical strategy, necromancy was then integrated into biblical traditions about the more distant past and attributed fictive Canaanite origins (Deut 18). In its final literary setting, necromancy was depicted as the Achille's heel of the nation's first royal dynasty, that of the Saulides (1 Sam 28), and more tellingly, its second, that of the Davidides (2 Kgs 21:6; 23:24).
Book Synopsis Israel's Beneficent Dead by : Brian B. Schmidt
Download or read book Israel's Beneficent Dead written by Brian B. Schmidt and published by . This book was released on 1995-04-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel by : Kerry M. Sonia
Download or read book Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel written by Kerry M. Sonia and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new reconstruction of cultic practices surrounding death in ancient Israel In Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel, Kerry M. Sonia examines the commemoration and care for the dead in ancient Israel against the broader cultural backdrop of West Asia. This cult of dead kin, often referred to as ancestor cult, comprised a range of ritual practices in which the living provided food and drink offerings, constructed commemorative monuments, invoked the names of the dead, and protected their remains. This ritual care negotiated the ongoing relationships between the living and the dead and, in so doing, helped construct social, political, and religious landscapes in relationship to the past. Sonia explores the nature of this cult of dead kin in ancient Israel, focusing on its role within the family and household as well as its relationship to Israel’s national deity and the Jerusalem temple. Features: A reevaluation of whether burial and necromantic rituals were part of the cult of dead kin A portrait of the various roles Israelite women played in the cult of dead kin A reassessment of biblical writers’ attitudes toward the cult of dead kin
Book Synopsis The Religion of Ancient Israel by : Patrick D. Miller
Download or read book The Religion of Ancient Israel written by Patrick D. Miller and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical and literary questions about ancient Israel that traditionally have preoccupied biblical scholars have often overlooked the social realities of life experienced by the vast majority of the population of ancient Israel. Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines -- such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism -- to illumine the everyday realities and social subtleties these ancient cultures experienced. This series employs sophisticated methods resulting in original contributions that depict the reality of the people behind the Hebrew Bible and interprets these scholarly insights for a wide variety of readers. Individually and collectively, these books will expand our vision of the culture and society of ancient Israel, thereby generating new appreciation for its impact up to the present.Patrick Miller investigates the role religion played in an expanding circle of influences in ancient Israel: the family, village, tribe, and nation-state. He situates Israel's religion in context where a variety of social forces affected beliefs, and where popular cults openly competed with the "official" religion. Miller makes extensive use of both epigraphic and artefactual evidence as he deftly probes the complexities of Iron Age culture and society and their enduring significance for people today.
Book Synopsis The Family in Life and in Death: The Family in Ancient Israel by : Patricia Dutcher-Walls
Download or read book The Family in Life and in Death: The Family in Ancient Israel written by Patricia Dutcher-Walls and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the advantages of seeing a topic from two different but complementary perspectives. All of the papers in the volume were read at two sessions at SBL (2005 and 2006) that were co-sponsored by the Social Sciences and the Hebrew Bible Section of SBL and the American Schools of Oriental Research. The sessions were designed to promote dialogue among scholars by juxtaposing research based in the social sciences and archaeology. Scholars contributed papers from within their own methodological and research perspective, but addressed possible interactions and overlaps that their research might contribute to the complementary perspective. Significant intersections between the approaches emerged when patterns of social interactions accessed by social scientific methods paralleled patterns in material remains accessed by archaeological methods. The sessions and thus the book achieve coherence because all of the papers attended to aspects of the family in ancient Israel. While the presenters selected their own topics in the subject area, several foci emerged that reflect current research interests in these fields. These foci include research on ancestors and the cult of the dead, configurations of family house structures, and family relational interactions. All of the papers make their methods and approaches visible and delineate clearly the textual or material basis of their research, so that the dialogue among the papers is facilitated.
Book Synopsis A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible by : Matthew J. Suriano
Download or read book A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible written by Matthew J. Suriano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was rooted in mortuary practices and conceptualized through the embodiment of the dead. But this idea of the afterlife was not hopeless or fatalistic, consigned to the dreariness of the tomb. The dead were cherished and remembered, their bones were cared for, and their names lived on as ancestors. This book examines the concept of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible by studying the treatment of the dead, as revealed both in biblical literature and in the material remains of the southern Levant. The mortuary culture of Judah during the Iron Age is the starting point for this study. The practice of collective burial inside a Judahite rock-cut bench tomb is compared to biblical traditions of family tombs and joining one's ancestors in death. This archaeological analysis, which also incorporates funerary inscriptions, will shed important insight into concepts found in biblical literature such as the construction of the soul in death, the nature of corpse impurity, and the idea of Sheol. In Judah and the Hebrew Bible, death was a transition that was managed through the ritual actions of the living. The connections that were forged through such actions, such as ancestor veneration, were socially meaningful for the living and insured a measure of immortality for the dead.
Download or read book The Biblical World written by John Barton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2004 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive guide to the contents, historical setting, and social context of the Bible.
Book Synopsis A Covenant with Death by : Christopher B. Hays
Download or read book A Covenant with Death written by Christopher B. Hays and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death is one of the major themes in First Isaiah, although it has not generally been recognized as such. In this study Christopher Hays offers fresh interpretations of more than a dozen passages in Isaiah 538 in light of ancient beliefs about death. Hays first summarizes what is known about death in the ancient Near East during the Second Iron Age, covering beliefs and practicesin Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Judah/Israel. He then shows how select passages in the first part of Isaiah employ the rhetorical imagery of death that was part of their cultural context, and he also identifies ways in which those texts break new creative ground. This books holistic approach to questions that have attracted much scholarly attention in recent decades produces new insights not only for the interpretation of specific biblical passages but also for the formation of the book of Isaiah and for the history of ancient Near Eastern religions.
Book Synopsis Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel by : Kenton L. Sparks
Download or read book Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel written by Kenton L. Sparks and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 1998 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the introduction: "When we speak of ethnicity, we bring into view a particular kind of sentiment about group identity wherein groups of individuals view themselves as being alike by virtue of their common ancestry. It is something of a truism to point out that ethnicity has played an important role in the history of Judaism, both in the postbiblical era and prior to it....The reason for this interest is twofold. First, in virtually every discipline of the humanities, there seems to be a general unhappiness with the superficial way that scholars have handled the issues of culture and identity. More specifically, with respect to ancient Israel, recent biblical scholarly activity--both literary and historical--has raised serious doubts about the supposed origins and antiquity of Israelite ethnicity." With this agenda in view, Kent Sparks provides a summary of current studies in ethnicity and ethnic identity, then moves to a discussion of Israel's ancient Near Eastern context and expressions of ethnic identity in the written remains from surrounding nations. Turning next to ancient Israel itself, he examines texts generally considered early in Israel's history for information relevant to Israel's ethnic identity. Sparks then investigates the witness of the prophets and the historical materials relating to the Judean monarchy and the exilic period, looking for expressions of ethnic sentiment. His research will likely prove to be the foundation on which future study of the topic will be built.
Book Synopsis Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah by : Christopher B. Hays
Download or read book Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah written by Christopher B. Hays and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2011 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death is one of the major themes of 'First Isaiah, ' although it has not generally been recognized as such. Images of death are repeatedly used by the prophet and his earliest tradents.The book begins by concisely summarizing what is known about death in the Ancient Near East during the Iron Age II, covering beliefs and practices in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Judah/Israel. Incorporating both textual and archeological data, Christopher B. Hays surveys and analyzes existing scholarly literature on these topics from multiple fields.Focusing on the text's meaning for its producers and its initial audiences, he describes the ways in which the 'rhetoric of death' functioned in its historical context and offers fresh interpretations of more than a dozen passages in Isa 5-38. He shows how they employ the imagery of death that was part of their cultural contexts, and also identifies ways in which they break new creative ground.This holistic approach to questions that have attracted much scholarly attention in recent decades produces new insights not only for the interpretation of specific biblical passages, but also for the formation of the book of Isaiah and for the history of ancient Near Eastern religions
Book Synopsis Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel by : Jon Douglas Levenson
Download or read book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel written by Jon Douglas Levenson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today's scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world. Found in the Bible and in writings from as far a field as Egypt, China, Indonesia, Greece, and Russia, ring composition is too widespread to have come from a single source. Does it perhaps derive from the way the brain works? What is its function in social contexts? The author examines ring composition, its principles and functions, in a cross-cultural way. She focuses on ring composition in Homer's Iliad, the Bible's book of Numbers, and, for a challenging modern example, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, developing a persuasive argument for reconstruing famous books and rereading neglected ones.
Book Synopsis Life and Mortality in Ugaritic by : Matthew McAffee
Download or read book Life and Mortality in Ugaritic written by Matthew McAffee and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While topics such as death, funerary cult, and the netherworld have received considerable scholarly attention in the context of the Ugaritic textual corpus, the related concept of life has been relatively neglected. Life and Mortality in Ugaritic takes as its premise that one cannot grasp the significance of mwt (“to die”) without first having wrestled with the concept of ḥyy (“to live”). In this book, Matthew McAffee takes a lexical approach to the study of life and death in the Ugaritic textual corpus. He identifies and analyzes the Ugaritic terms most commonly used to talk about life and mortality in order to construct a more representative framework of the ancient perspective on these topics, and he concludes by synthesizing the results of this lexical study into a broader literary discussion that considers, among other things, the implications for our understanding of the first-millennium Katumuwa stele from Zincirli. McAffee’s study complements previous scholarly work in this area, which has tended to rely on conceptual and theoretical treatment of mortality, and advances the discussion by providing a more focused lexical analysis of the Ugaritic terms in question. It will be of interest to Semitic scholars and those who study Ugaritic in particular, in addition to students of the culture of the ancient Levant.
Book Synopsis Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel by : Susan Ackerman
Download or read book Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel written by Susan Ackerman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A synthetic reconstruction of women’s religious engagement and experiences in preexilic Israel “This monumental book examines a wealth of data from the Bible, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography to provide a clear, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of women’s religious lives in preexilic times.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University Throughout the biblical narrative, ancient Israelite religious life is dominated by male actors. When women appear, they are often seen only on the periphery: as tangential, accidental, or passive participants. However, despite their absence from the written record, they were often deeply involved in religious practice and ritual observance. In this new volume, Susan Ackerman presents a comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences. She examines the various sites of their practice, including household shrines, regional sanctuaries, and national temples; the calendar of religious rituals that women observed on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis; and their special roles in religious settings. Drawing on texts, archaeology, and material culture, and documenting the distinctions between Israelite women’s experiences and those of their male counterparts, Ackerman reconstructs an essential picture of women’s lived religion in ancient Israelite culture.
Book Synopsis T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel by : Janling Fu
Download or read book T&T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel written by Janling Fu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food and feasting are key themes in the Hebrew Bible and the culture it represents. The contributors to this handbook draw on a multitude of disciplines to offer an overview of food in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel. Archaeological materials from biblical lands, along with the recent interest in ethnographic data, a new focus in anthropology, and emerging technologies provide valuable information about ancient foodways. The contributors examine not only the textual materials of the Hebrew Bible and related epigraphic works, but also engage in a wider archaeological, environmental, and historical understanding of ancient Israel as it pertains to food. Divided into five parts, this handbook examines and considers environmental and socio-economic issues such as climate and trade, the production of raw materials, and the technology of harvesting and food processing. The cultural role of food and meals in festivals, holidays, and biblical regulations is also discussed, as is the way food and drink are treated in biblical texts, in related epigraphic materials, and in iconography.
Book Synopsis Death and Survival in the Book of Job by : Dan Mathewson
Download or read book Death and Survival in the Book of Job written by Dan Mathewson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-06-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I interpret the Book of Job as literature of survival, reading the death imagery in Job as the complex articulation of traumatic experience.
Book Synopsis God, Self, and Death by : Shannon Burkes Pinette
Download or read book God, Self, and Death written by Shannon Burkes Pinette and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume considers the emerging Jewish interest in an afterlife during the second temple period in relation to developing views of the deity and the self. In some circles God is understood as increasingly distant from the human sphere, and so justice must occur in another world or after death; at the same time, more autonomous constructions of the self in response to community breakdown suggest that reward and punishment come not only collectively, but also on the individual level in a post-mortem realm. The book traces the interconnections between these themes in Job and Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira and Daniel, then Wisdom of Solomon and 4 Ezra, crossing genre boundaries in an attempt to offer a more encompassing historical investigation.
Book Synopsis Old Testament Theology for Christians by : John H. Walton
Download or read book Old Testament Theology for Christians written by John H. Walton and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern readers of the Bible often find the Old Testament difficult and even disturbing. What are we to do with obscure prophecies of long expired nations? Why should we read and study ancient laws that even the New Testament says are eclipsed by Christ? How can we reconcile Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount with the Old Testament’s graphic narratives of sex and violence? What does the Old Testament offer that is not surpassed and even made irrelevant by the New Testament? John Walton has spent a career engaging deeply with the Old Testament’s text and ancient context. He has studied, taught, and written about the issues. His signature approach can be introduced in one sentence: The Old Testament was written for us but not to us. We must not conform it to our own understanding. We will fully grasp the Old Testament and its theology only when we are immersed in the ancient cultural current of Israel within its broader cultural river of the ancient Near East. In Old Testament Theology for Christians, John Walton invites us to leave our modern—and even inherited Christian—preconceptions at the threshold as we enter the world of the Old Testament. He challenges us to see it anew—as if for the first time—as guests in a strange and fascinating foreign land. Then we will rediscover its testimony to God’s great enterprise. In this capstone to a career of studying and teaching the Old Testament, Walton unfolds a grand panorama of Yahweh and the gods, of cosmos and humanity, of covenant and kingdom, of temple and torah, of sin and evil, and of salvation and afterlife. Viewed within its ancient Near Eastern cognitive environment, the text takes unexpected turns and blossoms into fresh and challenging insights. No matter how you are accustomed to viewing the first testament of the Bible, Old Testament Theology for Christians will challenge and sharpen your perceptions.
