Fictional Akkadian Autobiography
Fictional Akkadian Autobiography

Author: Tremper Longman

Publisher: Eisenbrauns

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780931464416

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That autobiography in ancient literature is fictional has long been recognized. The purpose of Longman's study is to delineate the genre of fictional autobiography in Akkadian texts with similar texts from other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Included are the texts of all relevant fictional Akkadian autobiographies, as well as an appendix containing English translations of them. The results of the study are of interest to Assyriologists, but also have implications for students of comparative literature and the Bible.

Royal Autobiography in the Book of Qoheleth
Royal Autobiography in the Book of Qoheleth

Author: Y. V. Koh

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-02-14

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 3110923157

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This book examines the literary genre(s) to which the book of Qoheleth belongs and on which it is modelled. It suggests that Qoheleth is best described as a royal autobiography based on the arguments of specific literary features of style and content, resemblance to various kinds of royal autobiographical narrative from the ancient Near East, and the existence, despite first impressions, of a coherent worldview. The analyses in this book cover various aspects from textual criticism, through aspects of vocabulary and style, to the interpretation of particular passages and the problem of making sense of the book as a whole.

The Book of Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes

Author: Tremper Longman

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780802823663

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In this contribution to The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Trevor Longman takes a canonical-Christocentric approach to the meaning of the fascinating but puzzling book of Ecclesiastes.

Piety and Politics
Piety and Politics

Author: Dale Launderville

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 0802845053

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Ancient kings who did not honor the gods overlooked an indispensable means for ruling effectively in their communities. In many traditional societies royal authority was regarded as a divine gift bestowed according to the quality of the relationship of the king both to God or the gods and to the people. The tension and the harmony within these human and divine relationships demanded that the king repeatedly strive to integrate the community's piety with his political strategies. This fascinating study explores the relationship between religion and royal authority in three of history's most influential civilizations: Homeric Greece, biblical Israel, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. Dale Launderville identifies similar, contrasting, and analogous ways that piety functioned in these distinct cultures to legitimate the rule of particular kings and promote community well-being. Key to this religiopolitical dynamic was the use of royal rhetoric, which necessarily took the form of political theology. By examining a host of ancient texts and drawing on the insights of philosophers, poets, historians, anthropologists, social theorists, and theologians, Launderville shows how kings increased their status the more they demonstrated through their speech and actions that they ruled on behalf of God or the gods. Launderville's work also sheds light on a number of perennial questions about ancient political life. How could the people call the king to account? Did the people forfeit too much of their freedom and initiative by giving obedience to a king who symbolized their unity as a community? How did the religious traditions serve as a check on the king's power and keep alive the voice of the people? This study in comparative political theology elucidates these engaging concerns from multiple perspectives, making Piety and Politics of interest to readers in fields ranging from biblical studies and theology to ancient history and political science.

A Time to Tell
A Time to Tell

Author: Eric S. Christianson

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1998-01-01

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9781850759829

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Using a variety of approaches from art criticism to structuralist analysis, this book draws out largely neglected narrative elements of Qoheleth's text, including the strategies of framing, autobiography and the 'use' of Solomon. In locating the self as the central concern of this narrative, Christianson shows that although Qoheleth passionately observes the world's transience, he desires that his own image be fixed and remembered. His story is thereby concerned with identity and the formation of character. In the guise of Solomon that concern is almost satirical and somewhat playful. Through the strategy of the frame narrative the complex relations of all such elements are brought into question, particularly the reader's relation to the framed material, as well as the relation of the framer to the one framed.

Between Fear and Freedom
Between Fear and Freedom

Author: Bob Prof. Dr. Becking

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9047406435

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Jermiah 30--31 remains an intruiging text. This monograph defends the thesis that these chapters are composed of ten Sub-Cantos and that they should be construed as a the conceptual coherence as based on the idea of divine changeability. Ancient near Eastern parallels help to map the mental framework of the ancient reader.

Reanimating Qohelet’s Contradictory Voices
Reanimating Qohelet’s Contradictory Voices

Author: Jimyung Kim

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9004381066

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Ecclesiastes, also known as Qohelet, is a fascinating text filled with intriguing contradictions, such as wisdom’s beneficial consequences, God’s justice, and wisdom’s superiority over pleasure. Under the paradigm of modernism, the contradictions in the book have been regarded as problems to be harmonized or explained away. In Reanimating Qohelet’s Contradictory Voices, Jimyung Kim, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s insights, offers an alternative reading that embraces the contradictions as they stand. For Kim, Qohelet’s or the protagonist’s contradictory consciousness is dialogically constructed by his contact with a complex web of discourses. Instead of harmonizing them or explaining them away, Kim identifies various dialogic voices available to Qohelet and demonstrates how those voices constitute Qohelet’s contradictory utterances and construct his unfinalizable identity.

Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East
Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East

Author: Matthew Neujahr

Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 193067581X

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This work provides an in-depth investigation of after-the-fact predictions in ancient Near Eastern texts from roughly 1200 B.C.E.–70 C.E. It argues that the Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek works discussed are all part of a developing scribal discourse of “mantic historiography” by which scribes blend their local traditions of history writing and predictive texts to produce a new mode of historiographic expression. This in turn calls into question the use and usefulness of traditional literary categories such as “apocalypse” to analyze such works.

Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context
Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context

Author: John H. Walton

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 1994-07

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780310365914

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This book surveys within the various literary genres (cosmologies, personal archives and epics, hymns, and prayers) parallels between the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern literature.

The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom
The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom

Author: Tremper Longman, III

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2017-08-22

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1493410202

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A Jesus Creed 2017 Old Testament Book of the Year Wisdom plays an important role in the Old Testament, particularly in Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Now in paperback, this major work from renowned scholar Tremper Longman III examines wisdom in the Old Testament and explores its theological influence on the intertestamental books, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and especially the New Testament. Longman notes that wisdom is a practical category (the skill of living), an ethical category (a wise person is a virtuous person), and most foundationally a theological category (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom). The author discusses Israelite wisdom in the context of the broader ancient Near East, examines the connection between wisdom in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, and deals with a number of contested issues, such as the relationship of wisdom to prophecy, history, and law.