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 Rise and Impending Demise of Wisdom Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

After summarizing the growing doubts about the Wisdom category, this chapter traces the development of Wisdom scholarship in the twentieth century, focusing on the question of the category’s limits. Despite efforts to limit its spread, in recent scholarship Wisdom has extended both across the Hebrew Bible and to the “heart of the Israelite experience of God.” As in the similar expansion of Wisdom in the Psalter, Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Near East (analogous to the spread of Deuteronomistic texts), attempts to define Wisdom resort eventually to the scholarly consensus concerning which biblical texts make up the category’s core. This factor carries all the weight in the current debates about Wisdom, and yet little research has been put into how this consensus developed or how it affects interpretation.

Introduction to Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East and Beyond

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Royal Inscriptions ◽  
Royal Ideology ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter introduces the idea of temple renovation as a distinct literary topos and shows its close association with royal ideology. Both points are made with evidence drawn from a variety of historical and cultural contexts, ranging from ancient to modern. Next, the chapter surveys previous studies of temple renovation in ancient Near Eastern contexts and previews the contents of the chapters that follow. Finally, it discusses some methodological issues related to the present study, especially issues around the production and promulgation of royal inscriptions and biblical texts.

Concatenation in Ancient Near East Literature, Hebrew Scripture and Rabbinic Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-92
Author(s):  
Shamir Yona ◽  
Ariel Ram Pasternak
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Hebrew Scripture

Abstract This paper follows the development of concatenation from its early use in Ancient Near Eastern literature through its use in the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew Ben-Sira, and ultimately in Rabbinic literature. We demonstrate that the Rabbis adopted this rhetorical pattern for stylistic purposes and also used it as an editing device. The latter use of the rhetorical device in question is only rarely attested in the Hebrew Bible.

The Good, the God, and the Ugly: The Role of the Beloved Monster in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145
Author(s):  
Ryan S. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Near East ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Contemporary Speculative Fiction

Ancient Near Eastern texts teem with horrifying and grotesque beings that pose some significant threat to the cosmos, humanity, and its institutions. Adopting Noël Carroll’s definition, such beings are monsters: interstitial not only physiologically and ontologically, but also cosmically and morally. This essay takes a comparative and literary approach to beloved monsters in Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew Bible texts. It suggests that in Ugarit and Mesopotamia, such monsters play a crucial role in advancing the goals of antipathic heroes while maintaining the integrity of sympathetic deities. It then considers the beloved monster in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretations. Finally, the essay makes note of the phenomenon’s transformation in contemporary speculative fiction. The essay argues that the beloved monster in Ugarit and Mesopotamia keeps together a fragmented cosmos, while in the Hebrew Bible it refracts through the facets in a prismatic God.

Blessings and Curses in Deuteronomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Law ◽  
And Function ◽  
Ancient Texts

The law code of the book of Deuteronomy is capped with a series of blessings and curses that either promise reward or threaten harm upon the individuals subject to the Deuteronomic laws. While this method of divine encouragement to keep the commandments of God might seem surprising from a theological point of view, blessings and curses were an integral part of the legal, political, and religious life of the ancient Near East, found in a variety of ancient texts, including the Hebrew Bible, Neo-Assyrian treaties, and Northwest Semitic inscriptions. Placing the biblical blessings and curses within the larger context of this ancient Near Eastern material provides new insights into the background and function of the blessings and curses in the book of Deuteronomy, and in the Hebrew Bible more generally.

scholarly journals Bitenosh’s Orgasm, Galen’s Two Seeds and Conception Theory in the Hebrew Bible

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-63
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Medical Issues ◽  
Genesis Apocryphon

Abstract In the Genesis Apocryphon, Lamech worries that his son is illegitimate and accordingly confronts his wife about her fidelity. Bitenosh answers these accusations with a surprising response: she asks her husband to recall the sexual pleasure that she experienced during their intercourse. Scholars have clarified this rhetorical strategy by connecting the episode to Greco-Roman theories of embryogenesis, in which a woman’s pleasure during intercourse was taken to indicate conception. While this provides a convincing explanation for Bitenosh’s argumentation, in this essay I argue that rather than deriving these ideas from the Greco-Roman world, the conception theory which informed the Genesis Apocryphon is in fact consistent with notions that can already be found in the Hebrew Bible and the wider ancient Near East. By exploring the concept of conception in biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, I uncover a belief in the necessity for female pleasure during intercourse as well as the existence of female “seed.” These ancient authors were able to develop and promote significant reflections upon medical issues such as conception, and this is recalled in Bitenosh’s speech. This essay therefore has significant implications for understanding concepts of sex and conception in the Genesis Apocryphon, as well as in the Hebrew Bible and the wider ancient Near East more generally.

Ceramic Imagery in Ancient Near Eastern Literature

1990 ◽  
Vol 185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Polinger
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Technical Analysis ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
The Status ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
First Time

AbstractAncient Near Eastern literature includes numerous metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech referring to ceramics. This paper presents selected examples of Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Biblical texts using clay, empty or filled vessels, potsherds, potters and the tools of their trade, and potters′ quarters. By examining systematically for the first time the literary, art historical, and archaeological contexts for ceramic imagery, new light may be shed on the role and meaning of ceramics in the ancient Near East. Among the topics considered are: (1) the importance of ceramics in creation imagery; (2) the nature of ceramic death and destruction imagery; (3) ceramic imagery with cornucopial connotations; and (4) literary perceptions of clay, pottery, and the status of potters. The material assembled in this study adds significantly to the evidence gleaned from stylistic and technical analysis of ancient Near Eastern ceramics.

Prologue to Genesis (1, 1-11, 26): Prophetic Revelation, History, Myth or Metahistory?

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Михаил Анатольевич Скобелев
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Near East ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Book Of Genesis

В статье рассматриваются богословие, композиция и литературная форма сюжетов, входящих в состав Пролога книги Бытия (1, 1-11, 26). Во второй половине XIX - начале XX вв. в результате появления Документальной гипотезы и сопоставления Священного Писания с литературными памятниками Древнего Ближнего Востока большая часть сюжетов, составляющих Пролог, была объявлена мифами и древнееврейским фольклором (Ю. Велльгаузен, Г. Гунекель, Дж. Фрезер). Кроме выявленных ближневосточных параллелей, новому отношению к повествованиям Пролога книги Бытия способствовали: отсутствие в нём ясно выраженной исторической задачи и символичность изложения. Защищая традиционный взгляд на Пролог как на священную историю и пророческое откровение, епископ Кассиан (Безобразов) предложил рассматривать все библейские сюжеты, содержащие теофанию, как метаисторию. Протоиерей Сергий Булгаков, А. Ф. Лосев, Б. П. Вышеславцев, занимавшиеся феноменом мифотворчества, назвали библейское повествование о начале мироздания мифом, но в ином смысле, чем это делали Г. Гункель и Дж. Фрезер. Они обосновали новый положительный взгляд, согласно которому миф не есть выдумка или фантазия, а реальность, основанная на мистическом опыте. В статье анализируется каждый из перечисленных терминов: «история», «миф», «метаистория» применительно к Прологу, а также рассматривается возможность их согласования с традиционным церковным взглядом на эту часть книги Бытия. The article deals with the theology, composition and literary form of the narrations which constitute the prologue part of the book of Genesis (1, 1-11, 26). During the second half of the 19th and at the turn of the 20th cent., following the emergence of the Documentary hypothesis as well as the comparison of the Holy Scripture with the newly-discovered literary monuments of Ancient Near East, the greater part of the narrations that constitute the Prologue were labeled myths and ancient Hebrew folklore (J. Wellhausen, H. Gunkel, J. Frazer). In addition to the then detected Near Eastern parallels, this new attitude towards the narrations of the Prologue was fostered by its lack of a clearly expressed historical dedication and the symbolic form of their exposition. Defending the traditional view of the Prologue as sacred history and prophetic revelation, bishop Kassian (Bezobrazov) proposed to consider all the biblical narrations that contain theophanies as metahistorical. Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, A. F. Losev and B. P. Vysheslavtsev, who analyzed the phenomenon of myth-making, called the Biblical narration of the origins of the world a myth, but in a sense different from that proposed by Gunkel and Frazer. They have founded a new and positive conception according to which a myth is not fiction but rather a kind of reality based upon mystical experience. The author of the article analyzes each of the terms enumerated - «history», «myth», «metahistory» - in their use relating them to the Prologue; he also examines the possibility of their harmonizing with the traditional ecclesiastical view of this part of the book of Genesis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document