Canonisation as Innovation : Anchoring Cultural Formation in the First Millennium BCE /

: Drawing on case-studies from the first millennium BCE, this volume explores canonisation as a form of cultural formation. The book asks why and how canonisation works and thereby investigates the importance of the concept of anchoring to arrive at innovation in particular.
Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.
: 1 online resource. : Includes bibliographical references and index. : 9789004520264
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