The Politics of Ancient Israel

The Politics of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Norman Karol Gottwald
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664219772
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work offers a reconstruction of the politics of ancient Israel within the wider political environment of the ancient Near East. Gottwald begins by questioning the view of some biblical scholars that the primary factor influencing Israel's political evolution was its religion.

The Politics of Ancient Israel

The Politics of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Norman Karol Gottwald
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664219772
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work offers a reconstruction of the politics of ancient Israel within the wider political environment of the ancient Near East. Gottwald begins by questioning the view of some biblical scholars that the primary factor influencing Israel's political evolution was its religion.

The Politics of Ancient Israel

The Politics of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Norman K. Gottwald
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664232344
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this volume, Norman Gottwald reconstructs the politics of ancient Israel within the larger political environment of the ancient Near East. He questions the prevailing view that the Hebrew Bible, supported by archeological evidence when necessary, should be the primary source to diagram the evolution of Israel's political history. Along with a thorough and nuanced discussion of the matrix of ancient Near Eastern politics, Gottwald suggests how the monarchies of Israel and Judah developed. With imaginative and masterful insight, Gottwald tackles head-on the problems of religion, power, and politics in the history of ancient Israel. 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.

Images of Others

Images of Others PDF Author: Nathaniel B. Levtow
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this volume, Nathaniel Levtow articulately interacts with Mesopotamian and Israelite iconoclastic traditions, locating Israelite polemics against cult images among a spectrum of ancient West Asian literary genres and ritual practices that target the embodied deities of political opponents. Levtow argues that Israelite parodies of Mesopotamian iconic cult were not unique expressions of aniconic monotheism but assertions of Israelite political potency during and shortly after the Babylonian Exile. By interpreting Israelite icon parodies in this context, Levtow rejects the idea of "idolatry" as a static, native Israelite descriptive category and highlights the ability of Israelite writers to compose authoritative classifications of cult that profoundly influenced ancient and modern understandings of iconic worship practices. He concludes that biblical representations of iconic cult reveal dynamic acts of Israelite social formation and exemplify the enduring power of the cult image in ancient West Asian societies.

Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece

Ancient Israel and Ancient Greece PDF Author: John Pairman Brown
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Israelites and the Greeks formed "the first free societies, cultivating rain-watered fields around a fortified citadel, recording their words about the human situation in a widely-accessible alphabetic script." With a keen eye for both comparisons and contrasts, John Pairman Brown investigates relationships between ancient Israel and Greece. In this intriguing and engaging work, he addresses historical, religious, linguistic, and cultural connections between these Mediterranean cultures. With erudition and humility, the author illuminates both Israelite and Greek writings and cultures. He brings a vast knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean and its languages to these studies, which will startle and entice the reader back to the ancient texts.

A Concise History of Ancient Israel

A Concise History of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Bernd U. Schipper
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1646020278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book Here

Book Description
The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Concise History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of Israel and Judah from the late second millennium BCE to the beginning of the Roman period. Considering archaeological material as well as biblical and extrabiblical texts, Schipper argues that the history of “Israel” in the preexilic period took place mostly in the hinterland of the Levant and should be understood in the context of the Neo-Assyrian expansion. He demonstrates that events in the exilic and postexilic periods also played out differently than they are recounted in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In contrast to previous scholarship, which focused heavily on Israel’s origins and the monarchic period, Schipper’s history gives equal attention to the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, providing confirmation that a wide variety of forms of YHWH religion existed in the Persian period and persisted into the Hellenistic age. Original and innovative, this brief history provides a new outline of the historical development of ancient Israel that will appeal to students, scholars, and lay readers who desire a concise overview.

The Politics of Dead Kings

The Politics of Dead Kings PDF Author: Matthew J. Suriano
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161504730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
Revised thesis (doctoral)--University of California, Los Angeles.

The Beginning of Politics

The Beginning of Politics PDF Author: Moshe Halbertal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191689
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important continuity of sovereign power.--

The World of Ancient Israel

The World of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Society for Old Testament Study
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521423922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Get Book Here

Book Description
Encapsulating as it does research that has been undertaken on the sociological, anthropological and political aspects of the history of ancient Israel, this important book is designed to follow in the tradition of works in the series sponsored by The Society for Old Testament Study which began with the publication of The People and the Book in 1925. The World of Ancient Israel is especially concerned to explore in greater depth than comparable studies the areas and degrees of overlap between approaches to the subject of Old Testament research adopted by scholars and students of theology and the social sciences. Increasing numbers of scholars have recognised the valuable insights that can be gained from a cross-disciplinary approach, and it is becoming clear that the early biblical traditions about the formation of the Israelite state must be examined in the light of comparative anthropology if useful historical conclusions are to be drawn from them.

Politics in Ancient Israel

Politics in Ancient Israel PDF Author: Eben Scheffler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel

The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Roland Boer
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611645557
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel offers a new reconstruction of the economic context of the Bible and of ancient Israel. It argues that the key to ancient economies is with those who worked on the land rather than in intermittent and relatively weak kingdoms and empires. Drawing on sophisticated economic theory (especially the Régulation School) and textual and archaeological resources, Roland Boer makes it clear that economic “crisis†was the norm and that economics is always socially determined. He examines three economic layers: the building blocks (five institutional forms), periods of relative stability (three regimes), and the overarching mode of production. Ultimately, the most resilient of all the regimes was subsistence survival, for which the regular collapse of kingdoms and empires was a blessing rather than a curse. Students will come away with a clear understanding of the dynamics of the economy of ancient Israel. Boer's volume should become a new benchmark for future studies.