Author: Roger S. Nam Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004224165 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
With the growing proliferation of literature concerning the social world of the Hebrew Bible, scholars continue to face the challenge of a proper understanding of ancient Israel’s economies. Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings is the first monographic study to use an anthropological approach to examine the nature of the economic life behind the biblical text. Through Karl Polanyi’s paradigm of exchange as a methodological control, this book synthesizes Semitic philology with related fields of Levantine archaeology and modern ethnography. With this interdisciplinary frame, Nam articulates a social analysis of economic exchange, and stimulates new understandings of the biblical world.
Author: Kyle H. Keimer Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000773248 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 823
Book Description
This volume presents a collection of studies by international experts on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society, economy, religion, language, culture, and history, synthesizing archaeological remains and integrating them with discussions of ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Driven by theoretically and methodologically informed discussions of the archaeology of the Iron Age Levant, the 47 chapters in The Ancient Israelite World provide foundational, accessible, and detailed studies in their respective topics. The volume considers the history of interpretation of ancient Israel, studies on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society and history, and avenues for present and future approaches to the ancient Israelite world. Accompanied by over 150 maps and figures, it allows the reader to gain an understanding of key issues that archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars have faced and are currently facing as they attempt to better understand ancient Israelite society. The Ancient Israelite World is an essential reference work for students and scholars of ancient Israel and its history, culture, and society, whether they are historians, archaeologists or biblical scholars.
Author: Benjamin D. Thomas Publisher: Mohr Siebeck ISBN: 9783161529351 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 538
Book Description
This study explores one of the oldest and most central issues of the Hebrew Bible -- the compositional history of 1--2 Kings. Its approach does not proceed from the assumption prevalent since the time of de Wette, namely, that the origins of 1--2 Kings should be explained through a process of Deuteronomistic literary redaction rooted in the Josianic reform. Rather, this study reads 1--2 Kings through the lens of other texts with similar genres existing in its historical context. More precisely, the texts under question belong to the genre of "chronography": kinglists, chronicles, and royal inscriptions, possessing similar or, in some cases, identical structures and motifs to those found in 1--2 Kings. This study includes a literary-critical analysis of every main structural feature of the regnal framework: regnal year totals, synchronisms, geographic filiations, naming the queen mother, source citations, death and burial formulae, regnal evaluations, royal predecessor-formula, and cultic reports. It also seeks to determine the extent of the original framework by mapping its opening and conclusion. The results of the study indicate that the framework's opening was in Solomon's account and its original climax was in Hezekiah's account and represented the latter as a royal YHWHist par excellence excellence, the restorer of order who limited sacrificial space to Jerusalem. The genealogical structure of this Hezekian History emerges from the Davidic royal ideology rooted in Jerusalem. There is no decisive indication that calls for the original framework structure's classification as Deuteronomistic or Josianic. The author of the framework wrote during the early-to-mid seventh century B.C.E. and reported the major historical events surrounding Hezekiah's reign, including the survival of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. -- in the B1 narrative -- as well as his centralizing reform.
Author: Peter Altmann Publisher: Mohr Siebeck ISBN: 9783161548130 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
Large-scale economic change such as the rise of coinage occurred during the Persian-dominated centuries (6th-4th centuries BCE) in the Eastern Mediterranean and ancient Near East. How do the biblical texts of the time respond to such developments? In this study, Peter Altmann lays out foundational economic conceptions from the ancient Near East and earlier biblical traditions in order to show how Persian-period biblical texts build on these traditions to address the challenges of their day. Economic issues are central for how Ezra and Nehemiah approach the topics of temple building and of Judean self-understanding, and economics are also important for other Persian-period texts. Following significant interaction with the material culture and extra-biblical texts, the author devotes special attention to the ascendancy of economics and its theological and identity implications as structuring metaphors for divine action and human community in the Persian period.
Author: Athalya Brenner-Idan Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0567701166 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
This volume brings together disparate views about biblical texts in the books of Samuel, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah and examines their influence in the life of contemporary communities, demonstrating how today's environments and disorders help readers to acquire new insights into such texts. The contributing scholars hail from different continents - from East Asia to the United States to Europe to South Africa and Israel - and count themselves as members of various Jewish and Christian traditions or secularist ways of life. But, in spite of their differences in location and community membership, and perhaps in the spirit of the times (2020 and its global discontents), they share preoccupations with questions of ethics in politics and life, 'proper' death, violence and social exclusion or inclusion. This volume offers readers a better understanding of how politics and faith can be melded, both in ancient and contemporary contexts, to serve the interests of certain classes and societies, often at the expense of others.
Author: Janling Fu Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0567679802 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 641
Book Description
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.
Author: Samuel L. Adams Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp ISBN: 0664237037 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Those who study the Bible are becoming increasingly attentive to the significance of economics when examining ancient texts and the cultures that produced them. This book looks at the socioeconomic landscape of Second Temple Judea, from the end of the Babylonian exile to the destruction of the temple by the Romans (532 BCE to 70 CE). Adams carefully examines key themes, paying special attention to family life, the status of women, and children, while engaging relevant textual and archaeological evidence. He looks at borrowing and lending and the burdensome taxation policies under a succession of colonial powers. In this pursuit, Adams offers an innovative analysis of economic life with fresh insights from biblical texts. No other study has specifically analyzed economics for this lengthy timeframe, especially in relation to these key themes. This important book provides readers with a helpful context for understanding religious beliefs and practices in the time of early Judaism and emerging Christianity.
Author: Roland Boer Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press ISBN: 1611645557 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 570
Book Description
The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel offers a new reconstruction of the economic context of the Bible and of ancient Israel. It argues that the key to ancient economies is with those who worked on the land rather than in intermittent and relatively weak kingdoms and empires. Drawing on sophisticated economic theory (especially the Régulation School) and textual and archaeological resources, Roland Boer makes it clear that economic “crisis†was the norm and that economics is always socially determined. He examines three economic layers: the building blocks (five institutional forms), periods of relative stability (three regimes), and the overarching mode of production. Ultimately, the most resilient of all the regimes was subsistence survival, for which the regular collapse of kingdoms and empires was a blessing rather than a curse. Students will come away with a clear understanding of the dynamics of the economy of ancient Israel. Boer's volume should become a new benchmark for future studies.
Author: Mary Katherine Yem Hing Hom Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1532646615 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
Assyria—the missing link in the superpower oppressor type in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament—still suffers from modern scholarly neglect. The Characterization of an Empire aims to alleviate this neglect while also elucidating the historical biblical books that convey characterizations of Assyrians. The narratological insights gained throughout this study contribute to biblical literary studies at rigorous, detailed, sometimes deep, and sometimes complex levels. Thus, this book offers to be not only a contribution to the general corpus of biblical literary studies, but also an expansion of our paradigms regarding the detail, depth, and complexity at which narratological intention and artistry function in the biblical text.
Author: Brad E. Kelle Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0190261161 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 610
Book Description
"The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible offers 36 essays on the so-called "Historical Books": Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, and 1-2 Chronicles. The essays are organized around four nodes: contexts, content, approaches, and reception. Each essay takes up two questions: (1) what does the topic/area/issue have to do with the Historical Books?" and (2) how does this topic/area/issue help readers better interpret the Historical Books?" The essays engage traditional theories and newer updates to the same, and also engage the textual traditions themselves which are what give rise to compositional analyses. Many essays model approaches that move in entirely different ways altogether, however, whether those are by attending to synchronic, literary, theoretical, or reception aspects of the texts at hand. The contributions range from text-critical issues to ancient historiography, state formation and development, ancient Near Eastern contexts, society and economy, political theory, violence studies, orality, feminism, postcolonialism, and trauma theory-among others. Taken together, these essays well represent the variety of options available when it comes to gathering, assessing, and interpreting these particular biblical books"--
Author: Roger S. Nam
Author: Kyle H. Keimer
Author: Benjamin D. Thomas
Author: Peter Altmann
Author: Athalya Brenner-Idan
Author: Janling Fu
Author: Samuel L. Adams
Author: Roland Boer
Author: Mary Katherine Yem Hing Hom
Author: Brad E. Kelle