Mesopotamia and the Bible PDF Download

Author: Mark W. Chavalas
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567569004
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The study of Syro-Mesopotamian civilization has greatly advanced in the past twenty-five years. In particular the renewed interest in Eastern (or 'Mesopotamian') Syria has radically altered our understanding of not only the ancient Near East, but of the Bible as well. With Syria east of the Euphrates becoming one of the most active areas of archaeological investigation in the entire Near East, the need for a synthesis of this research and its integration with the Hebrew Bible has greatly increased.This volume charts the state of our knowledge, following a general chronological flow, and will appeal not only to scholars of the ancient Near East but also to Biblical specialists interested in the historical and religious backgrounds to the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms.

Author: Alan Lenzi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Secrecy and the Gods is a comparative mythological study of the human reception and treatment of divine secret knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia and biblical Israel. The human royal council was the social model for ancient ideas about divine knowledge being secret - just as human kings had secrets so too did the gods. Diviners who received this knowledge from the gods in an on-going, ad hoc manner were an essential link between the divine assembly and the human royal council for whom such knowledge was intended. Scribes eventually adapted the ad hoc divinatory means of receiving divine communications to their culturally significant texts. By discursively asserting a historical connection between themselves and unique mediators with a close divine affiliation (the apkallus and Moses), the scribes constructed myths that legitimated their texts as divine revelation and claimed these were received in history through normal scribal channels. In this manner, scribes fixed the secret of the gods permanently among humans in textualized form that valorized their own position within society. Although the origin of divine secret knowledge was rooted in a common mythological idea of the divine assembly, its treatment was quite distinct. The Mesopotamians guarded divine secret knowledge through various scribal means, including the attachment of a Geheimwissen colophon to certain tablets (treated exhaustively), whereas biblical Israel published it openly. The contrast in treatment of divine secret knowledge was directly related to different mytho-political self-understandings: Mesopotamia's imperial aspirations versus biblical Israel's vassaldom. As vassals to Yahweh, the divine imperial king, the kings of Judah and Israel as presented in the biblical material were not to formulate secret orders; they were only to obey them.

Author: Walter Mattfeld
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557885302
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Scholarly proposals are presented for the pre-biblical origin in Mesopotamian myths of the Garden of Eden story. Some Liberal PhD scholars (1854-2010) embracing an Anthropological viewpoint have proposed that the Hebrews have recast earlier motifs appearing in Mesopotamian myths. Eden's garden is understood to be a recast of the gods' city-gardens in the Sumerian Edin, the floodplain of Lower Mesopotamia. It is understood that the Hebrews in the book of Genesis are refuting the Mesopotamian account of why Man was created and his relationship with his Creators (the gods and goddesses). They deny that Man is a sinner and rebel because he was made in the image of gods and goddesses who were themselves sinners and rebels, who made man to be their agricultural slave to grow and harvest their food and feed it to them in temple sacrifices thereby ending the need of the gods to toil for their food in the city-gardens of Edin in ancient Sumer.

Author: Richard J. Clifford
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 1589832191
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
The last fifty years have seen a dramatic increase of interest in the wisdom literature of the Bible, as scholars have come to appreciate the subtlety and originality of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes as well as of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. Interest has likewise grown in the wisdom literatures of the neighboring cultures of Canaan, Egypt, and especially Mesopotamia. To help readers understand the place of biblical wisdom within this broader context, including its originality and distinctiveness, this volume offers a collection of essays by Assyriologists and biblicists on the social, intellectual, and literary setting of Mesopotamian wisdom; on specific wisdom texts; and on key themes common to both Mesopotamian and biblical culture. --From publisher's description.

Author: Alexander Heidel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022611242X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Here is a complete translation of all the published cuneiform tablets of the various Babylonian creation stories, of both the Semitic Babylonian and the Sumerian material. Each creation account is preceded by a brief introduction dealing with the age and provenance of the tablets, the aim and purpose of the story, etc. Also included is a translation and discussion of two Babylonian creation versions written in Greek. The final chapter presents a detailed examination of the Babylonian creation accounts in their relation to our Old Testament literature.

Author: Tallay Ornan
Publisher: Saint-Paul
ISBN: 9783525530078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This book analyzes the history of Mesopotamian imagery form the mid-second to mid-first millennium BCE. It demonstrates that in spite of rich textual evidence, which grants the Mesopotamian gods and goddesses an anthropmorphic form, there was a clear abstention in various media from visualizing the gods in such a form. True, divine human-shaped cultic images existed in Mesopotamian temples. But as a rule, non-anthropomorphic visual agents such as inanimate objects, animals or fantastic hybrids replaced these figures when they were portrayed outside of their sacred enclosures. This tendency reached its peak in first-millennium Babylonia and Assyria. The removal of the Mesopotamian human-shaped deity from pictorial renderings resembles the Biblical agenda not only in its avoidance of displaying a divine image but also in the implied dual perception of the divine: according to the Bible and the Assyro-Babylonian concept the divine was conceived as having a human form; yet in both cases anthropomorphism was also concealed or rejected, though to a different degree. In the present book, this dual approach toward the divine image is considered as a reflection of two associated rather than contradictory religious worldviews. The plausible consolidation of the relevant Biblical accounts just before the Babylonian Exile, or more probably within the Exile - in both cases during a period of strong Assyrian and Babylonian hegemony - points to a direct correspondence between comparable religious phenomena. It is suggested that far from their homeland and in the absence of a temple for their god, the Judahite deportees adopted and intensified the Mesopotamian avoidance of anthropomorphic picorial portrayals of deities. While the Babylonian representations remained confined to temples, the exiles would have turned a cultic reality - i.e., the nonwritten Babylonian custom - into a written, articulated law that explicity forbade the pictorial representation of God.

Author: Stephen Bertman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195183649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
Modern-day archaeological discoveries in the Near East continue to illuminate man's understanding of the ancient world. This illustrated handbook describes the culture, history, and people of Mesopotamia, as well as their struggle for survival and happiness.

Author: Joan Aruz
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 0300208081
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Bringing together the research of internationally renowned scholars, Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age contributes significantly to our understanding of the epoch-making artistic and cultural exchanges that took place across the Near East and Mediterranean in the early first millennium B.C. This was the world of Odysseus, in which seafaring Phoenician merchants charted new nautical trade routes and established prosperous trading posts and colonies on the shores of three continents; of kings Midas and Croesus, legendary for their wealth; and of the Hebrew Bible, whose stories are brought vividly to life by archaeological discoveries. Objects drawn from collections in the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and the United States, reproduced here in sumptuous detail, reflect the cultural encounters of diverse populations interacting through trade, travel, and migration as well as war and displacement. Together, they tell a compelling story of the origins and development of Western artistic traditions that trace their roots to the ancient Near East and across the Mediterranean world. Among the masterpieces brought together in this volume are stone reliefs that adorned the majestic palaces of ancient Assyria; expertly crafted Phonecian and Syrian bronzes and worked ivories that were stored in the treasuries of Assyria and deposited in tombs and sanctuaries in regions far to the west; and lavish personal adornments and other luxury goods, some imported and others inspired by Near Eastern craftsmanship. Accompanying texts by leading scholars position each object in cultural and historical context, weaving a narrative of crisis and conquest, worship and warfare, and epic and empire that spans both continents and millennia. Writing another chapter in the story begun in Art of the First Cities (2003) and Beyond Babylon (2008), Assyria to Iberia offers a comprehensive overview of art, diplomacy, and cultural exchange in an age of imperial and mercantile expansion in the ancient Near East and across the Mediterranean in the first millennium B.C.—the dawn of the Classical age.

Author: Stephanie Dalley
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0199538360
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The stories translated here all of ancient Mesopotamia, and include not only myths about the Creation and stories of the Flood, but also the longest and greatest literary composition, the Epic of Gilgamesh. This is the story of a heroic quest for fame and immortality, pursued by a man of great strength who loses a unique opportunity through a moment's weakness. So much has been discovered in recent years both by way of new tablets and points of grammar and lexicography that these new translations by Stephanie Dalley supersede all previous versions. -- from back cover.

Author: Jeffrey Wickes
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520302869
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Ephrem the Syrian was one of the founding voices in Syriac literature. While he wrote in a variety of genres, the bulk of his work took the form of madrashe, a Syriac genre of musical poetry or hymns. In Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Jeffrey Wickes offers a thoroughly contextualized study of Ephrem’s magnum opus, the Hymns on Faith, delivered in response to the theological controversies that followed the First Council of Nicaea. The ensuing doctrinal divisions had tremendous impact on the course of Christianity and led in part to the development of a uniquely Syriac Church, in which Ephrem would become a central figure. Drawing on literary, ritual, and performance theories, Bible and Poetry shows how Ephrem used the Syriac Bible to construct and conceive of himself and his audience. In so doing, Wickes resituates Ephrem in a broader early Christian context and contributes to discussions of literature and religion in late antiquity.