Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires
Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires

Author: Alan Lenzi

Publisher: Society of Biblical Literature

Published: 2014-06-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781589839977

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Advance your understanding of divination’s role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires. Features: Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studies Essays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empires Index of ancient sources

The Ancient Near East
The Ancient Near East

Author: Dr. John L. McLaughlin

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1426765509

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The cultures of the great empires of the ancient Near East from Egypt to Mesopotamia influenced Israel's religion, literature, and laws because of Israel's geographic location and political position situation. Anyone who wishes to understand the Old Testament texts and the history of ancient Israel must become familiar with the history, literature, and society of the surrounding kingdoms that at times controlled the region. Brief in presentation yet broad in scope, Ancient Near East will introduce students to the information and ideas essential to understanding the texts of the Old Testament while clarifying difficult issues concerning the relationship between Israel and its neighbors. Abingdon Essential Guides fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to the core disciplines in biblical, theological, and religious studies.

Ancient Divination and Experience
Ancient Divination and Experience

Author: Lindsay Gayle Driediger-Murphy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0198844549

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This volume sets out to re-examine what ancient people - primarily those in ancient Greek and Roman communities, but also Mesopotamian and Chinese cultures - thought they were doing through divination, and what this can tell us about the religions and cultures in which divination was practised. The chapters, authored by a range of established experts and upcoming early-career scholars, engage with four shared questions: What kinds of gods do ancient forms of divination presuppose? What beliefs, anxieties, and hopes did divination seek to address? What were the limits of human 'control' of divination? What kinds of human-divine relationships did divination create/sustain? The volume as a whole seeks to move beyond functionalist approaches to divination in order to identify and elucidate previously understudied aspects of ancient divinatory experience and practice. Special attention is paid to the experiences of non-elites, the perception of divine presence, the ways in which divinatory techniques could surprise their users by yielding unexpected or unwanted results, the difficulties of interpretation with which divinatory experts were thought to contend, and the possibility that divination could not just ease, but also exacerbate, anxiety in practitioners and consultants.

Divination as Science
Divination as Science

Author: Jeanette C. Fincke

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 157506426X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There is no doubt that Ancient Near Eastern divination is firmly rooted in religion, since all ominous signs were thought to have been sent by gods, and the invocation of omens was embedded in rituals. Nonetheless, the omen compendia display many aspects of a generally scientific nature. In their attempt to note all possible changes to the affected objects and to arrange their observations systematically for reference purposes, the scholars produced texts that resulted in a rather detailed description of the world, be it with respect to geography (the urban or rural environment on earth, or celestial and meteorological phenomena observed in the sky), biology (the outer appearance of the bodies of humans or animals, or the entrails of sheep), sociology (behavior of people) or others. Based on different divination methods and omen compendia, the question discussed during this workshop was whether the scholars had a scientific approach, presented as religion, or whether Ancient Near Eastern divination should be considered purely religious and that the term “science” is inappropriate in this context. The workshop attracted a large audience and lively discussion ensued. The papers presented in this volume reflect the focus of the sessions during the workshop and are likely to generate even more discussion, now that they are published.

Time and History in the Ancient Near East
Time and History in the Ancient Near East

Author: Lluis Feliu

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 861

ISBN-13: 1575068567

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In July, 2010, the International Association for Assyriology met in Barcelona, Spain, for 5 days to deliver and listen to papers on the theme “Time and History in the Ancient Near East.” This volume, the proceedings of the conference, contains 70 of the papers read at the 56th annual Rencontre, including the papers from several workshop sessions on “architecture and archaeology,” “early Akkadian and its Semitic context,” “ Hurrian language,” “law in the ancient Near East,” “Middle Assyrian texts and studies,” and a variety of additional papers not directly related to the conference theme. The photo on the back cover shows only a representative portion of the attendees, who were warmly hosted by faculty and students from the University of Barcelona.

Damqatum - Number 10 (2014)
Damqatum - Number 10 (2014)

Author: Francisco Céntola

Publisher: CEHAO

Published: 2014-12-31

Total Pages: 25

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Damqatum is a journal dedicated to the history and archaeology of the Near East, oriented to the general public.

Amos
Amos

Author: Göran Eidevall

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0300178786

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Notes -- Comments -- Reinterpretations of the Words of Amos (8:4-14) -- Introduction to 8:4-14 -- Notes -- Comments -- A Vision of Inescapable Destruction (9:1-4) -- Introduction to 9:1-4, the So-Called Fifth Vision -- Notes -- Comments -- The Last Doxology (9:5-6) -- Introduction to 9:5-6 -- Notes -- Comments -- The Turning Point (9:7-10) -- Introduction to 9:7-10 -- Notes -- Comments -- A Hopeful Epilogue (9:11-15) -- Introduction to 9:11-15 -- Notes -- Comments -- Notes -- Index of Subjects -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Index of Authors -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Index of Ancient Sources

Before Nature
Before Nature

Author: Francesca Rochberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-08-07

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 022675958X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

Ancient Prophecy
Ancient Prophecy

Author: Martti Nissinen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0198808550

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.

Religion and Ideology in Assyria
Religion and Ideology in Assyria

Author: Beate Pongratz-Leisten

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 1614514267

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Addressing the relationship between religion and ideology, and drawing on a range of literary, ritual, and visual sources, this book reconstructs the cultural discourse of Assyria from the third through the first millennium BCE. Ideology is delineated here as a subdiscourse of religion rather than as an independent category, anchoring it firmly within the religious world view. Tracing Assur's cultural interaction with the south on the one hand, and with the Syro-Anatolian horizon on the other, this volume articulates a "northern" cultural discourse that, even while interacting with southern Mesopotamian tradition, managed to maintain its own identity. It also follows the development of tropes and iconic images from the first city state of Uruk and their mouvance between myth, image, and royal inscription, historiography and myth, and myth and ritual, suggesting that, with the help of scholars, key royal figures were responsible for introducing new directions for the ideological discourse and for promoting new forms of historiography.