Preliminary Material /Elias Bickerman -- THE DATE OF THE TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS /Elias Bickerman -- UNE QUESTION D' AUTHENTICITÉ : LES PRIVILÈGES JUIFS /Elias Bickerman -- LA CHARTE SÉLEUCIDE DE JÉRUSALEM /Elias Bickerman -- UNE PROCLAMATION SÉLEUCIDE RELATIVE AU TEMPLE DE JÉRUSALEM /Elias Bickerman -- UN DOCUMENT RELATIF A LA PERSÉCUTION D' ANTIOCH OS IV ÉPIPHANE /Elias Bickerman -- EIN JÜDISCHER FESTBRIEF VOM JAHRE 124 volumes Chr. (II Macc. 1, 1-9) /Elias Bickerman -- HÉLIODORE AU TEMPLE DE JÉRUSALEM /Elias Bickerman -- LES MACCABÉES DE MALALAS /Elias Bickerman -- THE WARNING INSCRIPTIONS OF HEROD'S TEMPLE /Elias Bickerman -- RITUALMORD UND ESELSKULT: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte antiker Publizistik /Elias Bickerman -- LA CHAÎNE DE LA TRADITION PHARISIENNE /Elias Bickerman -- THE MAXIM OF ANTIGONUS OF SOCHO /Elias Bickerman -- THE CIVIC PRAYER FOR JERUSALEM /Elias Bickerman -- BÉNÉDICTION ET PRIÈRE /Elias Bickerman -- THE ALTARS OF GENTILES A NOTE ON THE JEWISH “IUS SACRUM” /Elias Bickerman -- THE JEWISH HISTORIAN DEMETRIOS /Elias Bickerman -- INDEX OF SUBJECTS /Elias Bickerman.
Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.
Many a nation has walked God’s earth, has long enjoyed its good things, has come into being and passed away, without our knowing anything of its history, or even whether it had a history at all. For no nation has a history except one that makes history, that is to say, that influences the course of human development. It is with races as with individuals; none is kept in mind by posterity save those who have distinguished themselves by ideas that have modified the life of mankind, or (which comes to the same thing) have been pioneers in fresh fields of action. The greater the spiritual gain a nation has brought to the rest of the world, the longer and more steadily its life has flowed in the channels it was the first to make, the longer is its history told among them. The nations of history are those which have put forward, in one fashion or another, their claim to the dominion of the world. Thus we may fitly ask what claim it is that is made upon our interest by the history of the Jewish nation. And the answer will be, that nothing which excites our attention, or stirs us to admiration or imitation in the history of other nations, is here present in any large measure. Israel was always a small, nay, a petty nation, settled in a narrow space, never of any considerable importance in the political history of the East; it never brought forth a Ramses II, a Sargon, an Esarhaddon, an Asshurbanapal, a Nebuchadrezzar, or a Cyrus to bear its banner into distant lands. Yet, for all this, the history of Israel has, for us, an interest quite different from that of those other nations of antiquity. And if, as we see, Israel is far surpassed in martial glory by the peoples of the great empires, and by the Romans in their influence on the development of law, there are yet other points in which it must yield unquestioned precedence to other nations of antiquity. We do not find in Israel the same feeling for beauty as among the Greeks, who, like no nation before them or after, showed forth the laws of beauty in every sphere of intellectual life, and to this day, in such matters, stand forth in a perfection which has never again been attained, far less excelled. Among the Hebrews there is nothing analogous, nothing comparable to what we admire in the Hellenic people. It has no epic, nothing that can be compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, against which the Germans set the Nibelungen Lied, and the Finns the Kalewala; it has not the slightest rudiments of a drama—the Song of Songs and Job are not dramas. There is a school of lyrical poetry unsurpassed for all time, and the music that corresponds to it. But the bent towards science, which actuates the Greeks, is wholly lacking—wholly lacking the bent towards[2] philosophy. Nor was it ever eminent in ancient days, in the walks of commerce, enterprise and invention, by which, also, a nation may conquer the world; its intellectual life is absolutely one-sided, a one-sidedness that produces on us the effect of extreme singularity. But the attraction it has for us does not lie in this singularity. It is due, rather, to the circumstance that this small nation has exerted a far greater influence over the course of the history of the whole human race than the Greeks or Romans, that to us it has become typical in many more respects than they. Our present modes of thought and feeling, our lives and actions, are far more profoundly influenced by the world of thought and feeling which Israel brought to the birth, than by that of Greece or Rome. Our whole civilisation to-day is saturated with tendencies and impulses which have their origin in Israel. To be continue in this ebook...
“Everyone who cares about the human adventure will find new information and new angles of vision.”—Martin E. Marty, The New York Times Book Review This extraordinary work delves into the subject of religion in the prehistoric and ancient worlds—humankind’s earliest quests for meaning. From Neanderthal burials to the mythology of the Iron Age, to the religions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Israel, India, and beyond, it offers both an appreciation of the wide-ranging diversity of religious expression—and a consideration of the fundamental unity of religious phenomena. “Will arouse the interest of all historians of western religion, since it includes chapters on the religions of Canaan and Israel. However, the book must be read cover to cover if one wants to grasp the significance of its gigantic historical scope.”—Church History
Back cover: What did biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians of the 19th century consider "religion" and "history" to be? How did they understand these conceptual categories, and why did they study them in the manner they did? Analyzing the figures of Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Gunkel, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring framework not only for writings on the past but also for the writers of that past themselves.
Niels Peter Lemche focuses on the way Israelites understood themselves at different points in history--before, within, and after the monarchy. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Israel's rich history. Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines--such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary criticism--to illuminate the everyday realities and social subtleties these ancient cultures experienced. This series employs sophisticated methods resulting in original contributions that depict the reality of the people behind the Hebrew Bible and interprets these insights for a wide variety of readers.
