Historiography and self-definition : Josephos, Luke-Acts, and apologetic historiography /
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For centuries scholars have recognized the apologetic character of the Hellenistic Jewish historians, Josephos, and Luke-Acts; they have not, however, adequately addressed their possible relationships to each other and to their wider cultures. In this first full systematic effort to set these authors within the framework of Greco-Roman traditions, Professor Sterling has used genre criticism as a method for locating a distinct tradition of historical writing, apologetic historiography. Apologetic historiography is the story of a subgroup of people which deliberately Hellenizes the traditions of the group in an effort to provide a self-definition within the context of the larger world. It arose as a result of a dialectic relationship with Greek ethnography. This work traces the evolution of this tradition through three major eras of eastern Mediterranean history spanning six hundred years: the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman.
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1 online resource (xiv, 500 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 394-426) and indexes. :
9789004266940 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jenseitshoffnung in Wort und Stein : Nefesch und pyramidales Grabmal als Phänomene antiken jüdischen Bestattungswesens im Kontext der Nachbarkulturen /
: 1 online resource. : Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-318) and index. : 9789047412939 : 0169-734X ; : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Secrecy and Concealment : Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions /
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This volume deals with secrecy and concealment in the history of mediterranean religions as pattern of social interaction. Secrecy is a powerful means in establishing identity and interaction as G. Simmel has demonstrated. Using his approach the scholars of this volume describe and explain the practical meaning of concealment in two different religious systems: in Egyptian and Greek polytheism and in Jewish, Christian, Gnostic and Shi'i monotheisms. This point of view reveals that all these religions shaped social norms concerning public and private aspects of the human self.
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Proceedings of a meeting held June 1-4, 1993, at the Werner Reimers-Stiftung, Bad Homburg, Germany. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004378872 :
0169-8834 ;
The Amorite dynasty of Ugarit : historical implications of linguistic and archaeological parallels /
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"In The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit Mary Buck takes a new approach to the field of Amorite studies by considering whether the site of Ugarit shares close parallels with other sites and cultures known from the Bronze Age Levant. When viewed in conjunction, the archaeological and linguistic material uncovered in this study serves to enhance our understanding of the historical complexity and diversity of the Middle Bronze Age period of international relations at the site of Ugarit. With a deft hand, Dr. Buck pursues a nuanced view of populations in the Bronze Age Levant, with the objective of understanding the ancient polity of Ugarit as a kin-based culture that shares close ties with the Amorite populations of the Levant. .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004415119
Der Midrasch zur Eschatologie aus der Qumrangemeinde (4QMidrEschata̳.̳b̳) : materielle Rekonstruktion, Textbestand, Gattung und traditionsgeschichtliche Einordnung des durch 4Q174...
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This volume deals with one of the oldest midrashim, the Eschatological Midrash from Qumran Cave 4. 4QMidrEschat, previously unknown, is preserved in at least two copies (4QFlorilegium, 4QCatena A) found at Qumran. A reconstruction of 4QFlorilegium and 4QCatena A is given in the first part of the book. The second part is a comparative analysis which shows that both manuscripts are copies of the same former work, 4QMidrEschat. The third part deals with the other exegetical Qumran texts, a definition of 4QMidrEschat's genre, its position among the Qumran literature, and its dating. 4QMidrEschat provides valuable information on Bible interpretation and eschatology among the Essenes in the first century BCE. 4QMidrEschat is of special significance because, according to recent studies, the Essenes are no longer to be regarded as a \'sect\', but as one of the most important Jewish groups of that time.
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On t.p. "a.b" is superscript.
Part of illustrative matter on 2 folded leaves in pocket. :
1 online resource (x, 235 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004350144 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The city gate in ancient Israel and her neighbors : the form, function, and symbolism of the civic forum in the southern Levant /
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"In The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors, Daniel A. Frese provides a wide-ranging portrayal of one of the most prominent social institutions in the kingdoms of the southern Levant during the Iron II period: the use of the city gate as a hub for numerous and diverse civic functions. The book provides an up-to-date description of the architecture of gate complexes based on archaeological evidence, and a systematic description of the many functions of the gate seen in hundreds of texts from the Hebrew Bible and the broader ancient Near East. The final chapters of the book discuss the conceptual significance of gates in Israelite culture, based on idiomatic and symbolic gate terminology in the Hebrew Bible".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004416673
Aramaic magic bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin : descriptive list and edition of selected texts /
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The collection of Aramaic magic bowls and related objects in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin is one of the most important in the world. This book presents a description of each object and its contents, including details of users and other names, biblical quotations, parallel texts, and linguistic features. Combined with the detailed indices, the present volume makes the Berlin collection accessible for further research. Furthermore, sixteen texts, which are representative of the whole collection, are edited. This book results from an impressive collaboration between Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene, and Ortal-Paz Saar, with further contributions by Matthew Morgenstern, Marco Moriggi, and Naama Vilozny, and will be of interest for all those engaged in the study of these fascinating objects.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004373686 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The religious aspects of war in the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome /
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The Religious Aspect of Warfare in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome is a volume dedicated to investigating the relationship between religion and war in antiquity in minute detail. The nineteen chapters are divided into three groups: the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome. They are presented in turn and all possible aspects of warfare and its religious connections are investigated. The contributors focus on the theology of war, the role of priests in warfare, natural phenomena as signs for military activity, cruelty, piety, the divinity of humans in specific martial cases, rituals of war, iconographical representations and symbols of war, and even the archaeology of war. As editor Krzysztof Ulanowski invited both well-known specialists such as Robert Parker, Nicholas Sekunda, and Pietro Mander to contribute, as well as many young, talented scholars with fresh ideas. From this polyphony of voices, perspectives and opinions emerges a diverse, but coherent, representation of the complex relationship between religion and war in antiquity.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004324763 :
1566-2055 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Palace ware across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape : social value and semiotic meaning /
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In Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape , Alice Hunt investigates the social and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware by its cultural audience in the Neo-Assyrian central and annexed provinces, and the unincorporated territories, including buffer zones and vassal states. Traditionally, Palace Ware has been equated with imperial identity. By understanding these vessels as a vehicle through which interregional and intercultural relationships were negotiated and maintained she reveals their complexity gaining a more nuanced view of imperial dynamics. Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape is the first work of its kind; providing in-depth analysis of the formal and fabric characteristic, production technology, and raw material provenance of Palace Ware, and locating these data within the larger narratives of power, presentation, symbol and meaning that shaped the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape.
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1 online resource (xx, 248 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004304123 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Manières de penser dans l'antiquité mediterranéenne et orientale : mélanges offerts à Francis Schmidt par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses amis /
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Francis Schmidt's works in various fields of religious studies (mainly ancient Judaism), can be characterized by three words: historiography, anthropological history, and comparatism. In that respect he placed himself in the continuation of previous French scholars, such as Maurice Halbwachs or Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Francis Schmidt also played an essential role in transmitting to a new generation of scholars the complex issues and debates concerning the Dead Sea scrolls and Qumranic research. The papers offered in this volume share all the same interest in ancient religions and the methodological devices previously mentioned. They offer a rare example of a large comparatism between Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian approaches of some essential social or intellectual issues, by some of the most competent specialists in each field.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047428633 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
He has opened Nisaba's house of learning : studies in honor of Åke Waldemar Sjöberg on the occasion of his 89th birthday on August 1st 2013 /
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In He has Opened Nisaba's House of Learning twenty-six scholars honor Åke Sjöberg, professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania and former editor of the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary . The twenty-one studies included focus on Mesopotamian wisdom literature, religious texts, cultural concepts, the history of writing, material culture, society, and law from the invention of writing to the Hellenistic period. The volume includes editions of several previously unpublished texts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004260757
Greek religion and culture, the Bible, and the ancient Near East /
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In the last decades there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between Greek religion andamp; culture and the Ancient Near East. This challenging book contributes greatly to this interest by studying the Near Eastern background of important Greek myths, such as those of the creation of the world and the first woman, the Flood, the Golden Fleece, the Titans and travelling seers, but also of the births of Attis and Asclepius as well as the origins of the terms 'paradise' and 'magic'. It also shows that, in turn, Greek literature influenced Jewish stories of divine epiphanies and that the Greek scapegoat myths and rituals contributed to the central Christian notion of atonement.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [357]-400) and index. :
9789047432715 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Geschenke und Steuern, Zölle und Tribute : antike Abgabenformen in Anspruch und Wirklichkeit /
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This book examines modes of economic contribution in the ancient world through taxes, tribute, or so-called gifts. Specialists in the field of the ancient Near East, Egypt, classical Greece, Rome, and Israel, joined by an economic anthropologist, present a fresh evaluation of the textual and archaeological evidence. A prime question explored is the extent to which these disparate sources complement or contradict each other. State-imposed transactions were often recorded with an ideological bias, much dependent on whether the donors and recipients were viewed as in- or outsiders. The present interdisciplinary approach supplies the basis for the ancient economic terminology of contribution, taking into account the specific cultural context, the language of 'international' policy, and the correlation between modern and ancient termini.
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Conference proceedings. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047422952 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Protest or propaganda : war in the Old Testament book of Kings and in contemporaneous ancient Near Eastern texts /
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In this study, the war stories from the Old Testament book of Kings are compared to ten extrabiblical texts. Narratological analysis is applied to deconstruct the ideology of the respective literary compositions. The Old Testament ideology of war seems to be neither typically Israelite, as Gerhardt von Rad put it, nor commonly Ancient Near Eastern, as Manfred Weippert thought it to be. This poses the question whether the reading experience of biblical war stories is so very different from, for instance, Assyrian royal inscriptions, both in terms of its literary value and its ideological bias. Narratological analysis turns out to be a strong tool for explaining the similarities and distinctive features of the respective texts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [689]-700) and indexes. :
9789047443414 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Scribal practices and approaches reflected in the texts found in the Judean desert /
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This monograph is written in the form of a handbook on the scribal features of the texts found in the Judean Desert (the Dead Sea Scrolls). It deals in detail with the material, shape, and preparation of the scrolls; scribes and scribal activity; scripts, writing conventions, errors and their correction, scribal signs; scribal traditions; differences between different types of scrolls (e.g., biblical and non-biblical scrolls), the possible existence of scribal schools, such as that at Qumran. In most categories, the analysis is meant to be exhaustive. The detailed analysis is accompanied by tens of tables as well as annotated illustrations and charts of scribal signs. The findings have major implications for the study of the scrolls and the understanding of their relationship to scribal traditions in Israel and elsewhere.
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1 online resource (xxi, 398 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 345-359) and indexes. :
9789047414346 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The city besieged : siege and its manifestations in the ancient Near East /
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Exploring the military, legal, social and literary aspects of ancient warfare, this study examines the multifaceted nature of the siege phenomenon in the Ancient Near East. The book is based on Akkadian and biblical (and, to lesser degree, Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hittite and Ugaritic) sources as well as on the depictions on reliefs from Assyrian palaces and Egyptian temples. The analysis incorporates lexical study and military thinking and focuses on the technology of warfare and human behavior in a state of emergency. This volume is a co-publication between Brill and The Hebrew University Magnes Press. \'...this book serves as an excellent overview of siege practices and their result as seen from the biblical and Mesopotamian perspective.\' Michael G. Hasel, Institute of Archaeology-Southern Adventist University
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Two printings were published in 2009; one had only the first 113 pages and was probably an error, and the other had 211 pages, with two additional chapters (4 and 5) which match the tables of contents (p. [x-xi) and bibliography and indexes. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047427568 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
On the art in the ancient Near East /
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This volume of collected essays brings together for the first time the range of Winter's pioneering studies related to Neo-Assyrian relief sculpture and seals, Phoenician and Syrian ivory and bronze production, and inter-polity connections across the various cultures of first millennium B.C.E. from the Aegean to Iran. Consistent threads are an emphasis on the potential for art historical analysis to yield 'history' in the broadest sense; the importance of making the theoretical frame of interpretation explicit; and the necessity of textual evidence being brought to bear upon elements of formal analysis and archaeological context. "These beautifully produced volumes bring together essays written over a 35-year period, creating a whole that is much more than the sum of its parts...No library should be without this impressive collection." J.C. Exum
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047425847
Aux origines des messianismes juifs : actes du colloque international tenu en Sorbonne, à Paris, les 8 et 9 juin 2010 /
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Les termes « messie » et « messianisme » recouvrent aujourd'hui une désignation exagérément large au regard de leur sens initial dans le judaïsme et le christianisme. Ils sont utilisés dans des contextes qui empruntent souvent inconsciemment aux modèles rhétoriques à l'oeuvre dans le judaïsme ancien et dans le christianisme primitif. Le livre s'intéresse à ces modèles qui caractérisent l'histoire intellectuelle du premier messianisme juif. Tout d'abord, l'émergence du messianisme est examinée à travers les modèles de divinisation du roi dans le Proche-Orient ancien (Égypte, Mésopotamie, culture cananéenne), et à travers l'évolution de l'idéologie royale dans l'Israël ancien. D'autre part, les premiers textes chrétiens ont mis en avant la fusion des attentes messianiques en une seule figure de messie (Jésus-Christ), mais la pluralité des figures messianiques semble prévaloir dans la littérature juive ancienne. ____________________________________ The words 'messiah' and 'messianism' are presently used in a too wide significance in comparison with their original meaning in Judaism and Christianity. Nevertheless, they often borrow unconsciously from rhetorical models at work in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. The book constitutes a series of studies on these models which characterize the intellectual history of the first Jewish messianism. Firstly, the birth of messianism is studied across the divinization of kings in Ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaanite culture) and secondly, the change of royal ideology in Ancient Israel to messianism. Thirdly, the first Christian texts have promoted the merging of messianic expectations in one messianic figure (Jesus-Christ), but the plurality of messiahs seem to prevail in early Jewish literature.
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1 online resource (xi, 240 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004251670 :
0083-5889 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Leisure, pleasure, and healing : spa culture and medicine in ancient eastern Mediterranean /
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The book deals with leisure, pleasure and healing at the thermo-mineral sites in the Levant since the biblical era throughout the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and early Muslim periods. It looks closely at the question of whether the spas, which are models for social interaction between pagans, Christians and Jews, served as sacred cult places or popular sites of healing. The main objectives of the book are as follows: • Clarifying the leisure-time activities at the spas based on Classical and Rabbinic literature, pilgrims' travel-books, Syriac and Arabic texts, the Geniza fragments, cartographic evidence, and archaeological findings. • Lightening the daily life, healing cults, medical recommendations and treatments. • Examining the social history of medicine at the curative baths.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047420514 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.