CHAPTER 5: PRACTICAL AND RITUALISTIC RESPONSES TO NATURAL CATASTROPHES AMONG PEOPLES OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST, INCLUDING ANCIENT ISRAEL

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-152
Author(s):  
Carolyn J. Sharp

Biblical narratives about ostensibly “local” barter (Abraham’s purchase of the cave at Machpelah), protection of battle spoils (Achan’s theft and subsequent execution), and commodification of labor and bodies (Ruth gleaning for hours and offering herself to Boaz) reveal much about ideologies of economic control operative in ancient Israel. The materialist analysis of Roland Boer provides a richly detailed study of Israelite agrarian and tributary practices, offering a salutary corrective to naïve views of Israelite economic relations. Highlighting labor as the most ruthlessly exploited resource in the ancient Near East, Boer examines the class-specific benefits and sustained violence of economic formations from kinship-household relations to militarized extraction. Boer’s erudite study will compel readers to look afresh at the subjugation of the poor and plundering of the powerless as constitutive features of diverse economic practices throughout the history of ancient Israel.


Author(s):  
T. M. Lemos

This chapter argues that violence was sometimes used to erase the personhood of foreigners not only in ancient Israel but in the wider ancient Near East. The discussion begins with an assessment of whether foreigners were considered to be legal and social persons, treating evidence from biblical texts, legal collections, royal inscriptions, treaty texts, reliefs, and other sources. The evidence found in these sources is mixed. While legal and social agency is often ascribed to foreigners, non-native individuals are frequently compared to animals and portrayed as being the victims of ritualized violence in ancient West Asian, ancient Egyptian, and ancient Israelite materials. The chapter contends that foreigners were persons but that their personhood was subject to erasure in warfare and in cases of transgression. Nonetheless, the categories of native and foreign were less central to how most violence was performed than were conceptions of masculinized domination and subordination.


Author(s):  
Eryl Wynn Davies

The chapter examines the Old Testament evidence concerning the nature of the trial procedure in ancient Israel. Although the evidence is limited in comparison with the abundance of material available in the ancient Near East, the laws in the Pentateuch and the narratives in the Old Testament do provide indirect evidence for the way in which the judicial system operated in Israel and Judah. The elders played a prominent role in trials at a local level, and it is probable that the main qualification for eldership was possession of landed property. Appeal against arbitrary decisions by the local assemblies could be made directly to the king, though, in practice, this responsibility was probably delegated to his officials. In cases where there were no witnesses present the matter could be directed to God for a verdict by means of a “trial by ordeal.”


1997 ◽  
Vol 116 (4) ◽  
pp. 722
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher ◽  
Moshe Weinfeld

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