Centralizing the Cult

Centralizing the Cult PDF Author: Julia Rhyder
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 3161576853
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Back cover: In this work, Julia Rhyder examines the Holiness legislation in Leviticus 17-26 and cultic centralization in the Persian period. Rather than presuming centralization as an established norm, Leviticus 17-26 forge a distinctive understanding of centralization around a central sanctuary, standardized ritual processes, and a hegemonic priesthood.

Centralizing the Cult

Centralizing the Cult PDF Author: Julia Rhyder
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 3161576853
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Back cover: In this work, Julia Rhyder examines the Holiness legislation in Leviticus 17-26 and cultic centralization in the Persian period. Rather than presuming centralization as an established norm, Leviticus 17-26 forge a distinctive understanding of centralization around a central sanctuary, standardized ritual processes, and a hegemonic priesthood.

The Legislative Themes of Centralization

The Legislative Themes of Centralization PDF Author: Jeffrey G. Audirsch
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 162032038X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The centralization of the cult mandate in Deuteronomy has captivated scholars for over two centuries. Related to this mandate are five legislative themes--abrogation of idolatry, tithing, the Israelite festival calendar, judiciary officials, and the priesthood. Collectively, these themes are interwoven into the Deuteronomic social, political, and religious infrastructure. Interpreted through an exilic lens, this study examines the themes through the relevant literary strata in the Enneateuch. In doing so, the themes are identified as playing an instrumental role in the demise of the divided monarchy. It is through the demise of the divided monarchy that the book of Deuteronomy, especially the centralization mandate, takes on a new meaning--a utopian desire. Thus, the rhetorical strategy of centralization, once contrived to unify and purify the cult, actually leads to failure and serves as motivation for reform during the exilic period.

Text and Ritual in the Pentateuch

Text and Ritual in the Pentateuch PDF Author: Christophe Nihan
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1646021576
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible contain a significant number of texts describing ritual practices. Yet it is often unclear how these sources would have been understood or used by ancient audiences in the actual performance of cult. This volume explores the processes of ritual textualization (the creation of a written version of a ritual) in ancient Israel by probing the main conceptual and methodological issues that inform the study of this topic in the Pentateuch. This systematic and comparative study of text and ritual in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible maps the main areas of consensus and disagreement among scholars engaged in articulating new models for understanding the relationship between text and ritual and explores the importance of comparative evidence for the study of pentateuchal rituals. Topics include ritual textualization in ancient Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia; the importance of archaeology and materiality for the study of text and ritual in ancient Israel; the relationship between ritual textualization and standardization in the Pentateuch; the reception of pentateuchal ritual texts in Second Temple writings and rabbinic literature; and the relationship between text and ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Daniel K. Falk, Yitzhaq Feder, Christian Frevel, William K. Gilders, Dominique Jaillard, Giuseppina Lenzo, Lionel Marti, Patrick Michel, Rüdiger Schmitt, Jeremy D. Smoak, and James W. Watts.

Neither Cargo Nor Cult

Neither Cargo Nor Cult PDF Author: Martha Kaplan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822315933
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
In the 1880s an oracle priest, Navosavakadua, mobilized Fijians of the hinterlands against the encroachment of both Fijian chiefs and British colonizers. British officials called the movement the Tuka cult, imagining it as a contagious superstition that had to be stopped. Navosavakadua and many of his followers, deemed "dangerous and disaffected natives," were exiled. Scholars have since made Tuka the standard example of the Pacific cargo cult, describing it as a millenarian movement in which dispossessed islanders sought Western goods by magical means. In this study of colonial and postcolonial Fiji, Martha Kaplan examines the effects of narratives made real and traces a complex history that began neither as a search for cargo, nor as a cult. Engaging Fijian oral history and texts as well as colonial records, Kaplan resituates Tuka in the flow of indigenous Fijian history-making and rereads the archives for an ethnography of British colonizing power. Proposing neither unchanging indigenous culture nor the inevitable hegemony of colonial power, she describes the dialogic relationship between plural, contesting, and changing articulations of both Fijian and colonial culture. A remarkable enthnographic account of power and meaning, Neither Cargo nor Cult addresses compelling questions within anthropological theory. It will attract a wide audience among those interested in colonial and postcolonial societies, ritual and religious movements, hegemony and resistance, and the Pacific Islands.

Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations

Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations PDF Author: Benjamin D. Giffone
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 3161562380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description


Approaches to the 'Chosen Place'

Approaches to the 'Chosen Place' PDF Author: Rannfrid I. Thelle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0567547140
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Deuteronomy's command to restrict cultic practice to one "chosen place" has occupied a central position in scholars' understandings of the book and their reconstruction of Israelite political and religious history. The debates about the date of Deuteronomy, its proposed connections to "Josiah's reform", and, most profoundly, the "Deuteronomistic History (DH) hypothesis" have dominated study of the idea of "chosen place". These debates have, to a large extent, determined how we read Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets in general. Through a reading of key texts from these corpora, this book provides a new, textually grounded, perspective of the "chosen place."

Goddess on the Rise

Goddess on the Rise PDF Author: Philip Taylor
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824844513
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, the shrine of Ba Chua Xu, the Lady of the Realm, has become the most visited religious site in southern Vietnam, receiving more than a million visitors annually. Mother, benevolent creditor, healer, relationship advisor, business consultant, the Lady of the Realm is one of a group of goddesses whose shrines attract devotees from all corners of rural and urban society. Goddess on the Rise follows these pilgrims' pathways, taking readers on a journey through a cultural landscape of popular rites, beliefs, and exegesis into a world where female deities reign supreme. Philip Taylor's in-depth study of pilgrimage introduces readers to the practical expectations, passions, and controversies that surround the goddesses, bringing to life the effervescence, creativity, and flux of modern Vietnamese religion. He offers important insights into people's everyday experience of the profound economic, cultural, and social transformations underway in this socialist country.

A History of Ancient Israel and Judah

A History of Ancient Israel and Judah PDF Author: James Maxwell Miller
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664212629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
A significant achievement, this book moves our understanding of the history of Israel forward as dramatically as John Bright's A History of Israel, Martin Noth's History of Israel, and William F. Albright's From the Stone Age ot Cristianity did at an earlier period.

Deuteronomic Theology and the Significance of Torah

Deuteronomic Theology and the Significance of Torah PDF Author: Peter T. Vogt
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575065649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
One of the few areas of consensus in modern Deuteronomy scholarship is the contention that within the book of Deuteronomy there is a program of reform that was nothing short of revolutionary. Although there are divergent views regarding the specific details of this revolutionary program, most scholars agree that, in fundamental and profound ways, Deuteronomy was radical in its vision. This vision was expressed in key ideas: centralization of worship, secularization, and demythologization (of earlier traditions). However, Vogt argues that these ideas fail to account adequately for the data of the text of Deuteronomy itself. Instead, he claims, at the heart of Deuteronomic theology is the principle of the supremacy of Yahweh, which is to be acknowledged by all generations of Israelites through adherence to Torah. Thus, the book of Deuteronomy is in fact radical and countercultural but not in the ways that are usually adduced. It is radical in its rejection of ANE models of kingship and institutional permanence, in its emphasis on the holiness of life lived out before Yahweh, and in its elevation of Yahweh and his Torah. In the introductory chapter, the structure and ideology of the book are examined. Chapter 1 then examines some of the ways in which the theology of Deuteronomy has been understood, namely, in terms of centralization, secularization, and demythologization. Chapters 2–5 evaluate key texts that are used to support the idea that centralization, secularization, and demythologization are at the heart of the theology of Deuteronomy. An alternative reading of the texts is presented that highlights the supremacy of Yahweh and Torah. The final chapter investigates the theological and ideological implications of this alternative reading of key texts.

Saints and Their Cults

Saints and Their Cults PDF Author: Stephen Wilson
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521311816
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
This is a paperback edition of a collection of ten papers by different authors on the cult of saints, first published in hard covers in 1983. Six have been translated from French including a pioneering study by Robert Hertz, one of Durkheim's most eminent pupils. The editor provides a wide-ranging general and historical introduction, and a 100- page annotated bibliography covering material on the subject in all disciplines and in four main languages.