Author: Brian B. Schmidt
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9781575060088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Did the ancient Israelites perform rituals expressive of the belief in the supernaturalbeneficent power of the dead? Contrary to long held notions of primitive society and the euhemeristic origin of the divine, various factors indicate that the ancestor cult, that is, ancestor veneration or worship, was not observed in the Iron Age Levant. The Israelites did not adopt an ancient Canaanite ancestor cult that became the object of biblical scorn. Yet, a variety of mortuary rituals and cults were performed in Levantine society; mourning and funerary rites and longer-term rituals such as the care for the dead and commemoration. Rituals and monuments in or at burial sites, and especially the recitation of the deceased's name, recounted the dead's lived lives for familial survivors. They served broader social functions as well; e.g., to legitimate primogeniture and to reinforce a community's social collectivity. Another ritual complex from the domain of divination, namely necromancy, might have expressed the Israelite dead's beneficent powers. Yet, was this power to reveal knowledge that of the dead or was it a power conveyed through the dead, but that remained attributable to another supranatural being of non-human origin? Contemporary Assyrian necromancers utilized the ghost as a conduit through which divine knowledge was revealed to ascertain the future and so Judah's king Manasseh, a loyal Assyrian vassal, emulated these new Assyrian imperial forms of prognostication. As a de-legitimating rhetorical strategy, necromancy was then integrated into biblical traditions about the more distant past and attributed fictive Canaanite origins (Deut 18). In its final literary setting, necromancy was depicted as the Achille's heel of the nation's first royal dynasty, that of the Saulides (1 Sam 28), and more tellingly, its second, that of the Davidides (2 Kgs 21:6; 23:24).
Israel's Beneficent Dead
Author: Brian B. Schmidt
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9781575060088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Did the ancient Israelites perform rituals expressive of the belief in the supernaturalbeneficent power of the dead? Contrary to long held notions of primitive society and the euhemeristic origin of the divine, various factors indicate that the ancestor cult, that is, ancestor veneration or worship, was not observed in the Iron Age Levant. The Israelites did not adopt an ancient Canaanite ancestor cult that became the object of biblical scorn. Yet, a variety of mortuary rituals and cults were performed in Levantine society; mourning and funerary rites and longer-term rituals such as the care for the dead and commemoration. Rituals and monuments in or at burial sites, and especially the recitation of the deceased's name, recounted the dead's lived lives for familial survivors. They served broader social functions as well; e.g., to legitimate primogeniture and to reinforce a community's social collectivity. Another ritual complex from the domain of divination, namely necromancy, might have expressed the Israelite dead's beneficent powers. Yet, was this power to reveal knowledge that of the dead or was it a power conveyed through the dead, but that remained attributable to another supranatural being of non-human origin? Contemporary Assyrian necromancers utilized the ghost as a conduit through which divine knowledge was revealed to ascertain the future and so Judah's king Manasseh, a loyal Assyrian vassal, emulated these new Assyrian imperial forms of prognostication. As a de-legitimating rhetorical strategy, necromancy was then integrated into biblical traditions about the more distant past and attributed fictive Canaanite origins (Deut 18). In its final literary setting, necromancy was depicted as the Achille's heel of the nation's first royal dynasty, that of the Saulides (1 Sam 28), and more tellingly, its second, that of the Davidides (2 Kgs 21:6; 23:24).
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9781575060088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Did the ancient Israelites perform rituals expressive of the belief in the supernaturalbeneficent power of the dead? Contrary to long held notions of primitive society and the euhemeristic origin of the divine, various factors indicate that the ancestor cult, that is, ancestor veneration or worship, was not observed in the Iron Age Levant. The Israelites did not adopt an ancient Canaanite ancestor cult that became the object of biblical scorn. Yet, a variety of mortuary rituals and cults were performed in Levantine society; mourning and funerary rites and longer-term rituals such as the care for the dead and commemoration. Rituals and monuments in or at burial sites, and especially the recitation of the deceased's name, recounted the dead's lived lives for familial survivors. They served broader social functions as well; e.g., to legitimate primogeniture and to reinforce a community's social collectivity. Another ritual complex from the domain of divination, namely necromancy, might have expressed the Israelite dead's beneficent powers. Yet, was this power to reveal knowledge that of the dead or was it a power conveyed through the dead, but that remained attributable to another supranatural being of non-human origin? Contemporary Assyrian necromancers utilized the ghost as a conduit through which divine knowledge was revealed to ascertain the future and so Judah's king Manasseh, a loyal Assyrian vassal, emulated these new Assyrian imperial forms of prognostication. As a de-legitimating rhetorical strategy, necromancy was then integrated into biblical traditions about the more distant past and attributed fictive Canaanite origins (Deut 18). In its final literary setting, necromancy was depicted as the Achille's heel of the nation's first royal dynasty, that of the Saulides (1 Sam 28), and more tellingly, its second, that of the Davidides (2 Kgs 21:6; 23:24).
Guide to Reprints
Author: Albert James Diaz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Editions
Languages : en
Pages : 1220
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Editions
Languages : en
Pages : 1220
Book Description
The National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Union catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 710
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Union catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 710
Book Description
General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1955
Author: British Museum. Dept. of Printed Books
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English imprints
Languages : en
Pages : 1248
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English imprints
Languages : en
Pages : 1248
Book Description
Guide to Microforms in Print
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Microforms
Languages : en
Pages : 1050
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Microforms
Languages : en
Pages : 1050
Book Description
Bibliographia Anastatica
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Editions
Languages : un
Pages : 594
Book Description
A bimonthly bibliography of photomechanical reprints.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Editions
Languages : un
Pages : 594
Book Description
A bimonthly bibliography of photomechanical reprints.
Astral Magic in Babylonia
Author: Erica Reiner
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871698544
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Book Description
Erica Reiner offers a connection between Near Eastern material and their echoes in the West. a foundation for comparisons between the oriental cultures and gtheir echoes in the West. To provide a foundation for comparisons the Near Eastern material needs to be resented in reliable form. Reiner's sources are culled from such scientific texts as medicine, divination, and rituals, which are not usually included in anthologies of Mesopotamian texts and rarely available in translation..
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871698544
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Book Description
Erica Reiner offers a connection between Near Eastern material and their echoes in the West. a foundation for comparisons between the oriental cultures and gtheir echoes in the West. To provide a foundation for comparisons the Near Eastern material needs to be resented in reliable form. Reiner's sources are culled from such scientific texts as medicine, divination, and rituals, which are not usually included in anthologies of Mesopotamian texts and rarely available in translation..
Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library, 1911-1971
Author: New York Public Library. Research Libraries
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Library catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 586
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Library catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 586
Book Description
Astronomy Across Cultures
Author: Helaine Selin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401141797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 678
Book Description
Astronomy Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Astronomy consists of essays dealing with the astronomical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Polynesian, Egyptian and Tibetan astronomy, among others, the book includes essays on Sky Tales and Why We Tell Them and Astronomy and Prehistory, and Astronomy and Astrology. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate astronomical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401141797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 678
Book Description
Astronomy Across Cultures: A History of Non-Western Astronomy consists of essays dealing with the astronomical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Polynesian, Egyptian and Tibetan astronomy, among others, the book includes essays on Sky Tales and Why We Tell Them and Astronomy and Prehistory, and Astronomy and Astrology. The essays address the connections between science and culture and relate astronomical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels
Author: Alexander Heidel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226323985
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Cuneiform records made some three thousand years ago are the basis for this essay on the ideas of death and the afterlife and the story of the flood which were current among the ancient peoples of the Tigro-Euphrates Valley. With the same careful scholarship shown in his previous volume, The Babylonian Genesis, Heidel interprets the famous Gilgamesh Epic and other related Babylonian and Assyrian documents. He compares them with corresponding portions of the Old Testament in order to determine the inherent historical relationship of Hebrew and Mesopotamian ideas.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226323985
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Cuneiform records made some three thousand years ago are the basis for this essay on the ideas of death and the afterlife and the story of the flood which were current among the ancient peoples of the Tigro-Euphrates Valley. With the same careful scholarship shown in his previous volume, The Babylonian Genesis, Heidel interprets the famous Gilgamesh Epic and other related Babylonian and Assyrian documents. He compares them with corresponding portions of the Old Testament in order to determine the inherent historical relationship of Hebrew and Mesopotamian ideas.