Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Susan Ackerman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300141785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
A synthetic reconstruction of women’s religious engagement and experiences in preexilic Israel “This monumental book examines a wealth of data from the Bible, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography to provide a clear, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of women’s religious lives in preexilic times.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University Throughout the biblical narrative, ancient Israelite religious life is dominated by male actors. When women appear, they are often seen only on the periphery: as tangential, accidental, or passive participants. However, despite their absence from the written record, they were often deeply involved in religious practice and ritual observance. In this new volume, Susan Ackerman presents a comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences. She examines the various sites of their practice, including household shrines, regional sanctuaries, and national temples; the calendar of religious rituals that women observed on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis; and their special roles in religious settings. Drawing on texts, archaeology, and material culture, and documenting the distinctions between Israelite women’s experiences and those of their male counterparts, Ackerman reconstructs an essential picture of women’s lived religion in ancient Israelite culture.

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel

Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Susan Ackerman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300141785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Get Book Here

Book Description
A synthetic reconstruction of women’s religious engagement and experiences in preexilic Israel “This monumental book examines a wealth of data from the Bible, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography to provide a clear, comprehensive, and compelling analysis of women’s religious lives in preexilic times.”—Carol Meyers, Duke University Throughout the biblical narrative, ancient Israelite religious life is dominated by male actors. When women appear, they are often seen only on the periphery: as tangential, accidental, or passive participants. However, despite their absence from the written record, they were often deeply involved in religious practice and ritual observance. In this new volume, Susan Ackerman presents a comprehensive account of ancient Israelite women’s religious lives and experiences. She examines the various sites of their practice, including household shrines, regional sanctuaries, and national temples; the calendar of religious rituals that women observed on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis; and their special roles in religious settings. Drawing on texts, archaeology, and material culture, and documenting the distinctions between Israelite women’s experiences and those of their male counterparts, Ackerman reconstructs an essential picture of women’s lived religion in ancient Israelite culture.

Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant

Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant PDF Author: Rainer Albertz
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575066688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 717

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Book Description
During the past several decades, family and household religion has become a topic of Old Testament scholarship in its own right, fed by what were initially three distinct approaches: the religious-historical approach, the gender-oriented approach, and the archaeological approach. The first pursues answers to questions of the commonality and difference between varieties of family religion and describes the household and family religions of Mesopotamia, Syria/Ugarit, Israel, Philistia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Gender-oriented approaches also contribute uniquely important insights to family and household religion. Pioneers of this sort of investigation show that, although women in ancient Israelite societies were very restricted in their participation in the official cult, there were familial rituals performed in domestic environments in which women played prominent roles, especially as related to fertility, childbirth, and food preparation. Archaeologists have worked to illuminate many aspects of this family religion as enacted by and related to the nuclear family unit and have found evidence that domestic cults were more important in Israel than has previously been understood. One might even conceive of every family as having actively partaken in ritual activities within its domestic environment. Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant analyzes the appropriateness of the combined term family and household religion and identifies the types of family that existed in ancient Israel on the basis of both literary and archaeological evidence. Comparative evidence from Iron Age Philistia, Transjordan, Syria, and Phoenicia is presented. This monumental book presents a typology of cult places that extends from domestic cults to local sanctuaries and state temples. It details family religious beliefs as expressed in the almost 3,000 individual Hebrew personal names that have so far been recorded in epigraphic and biblical material. The Hebrew onomasticon is further compared with 1,400 Ammonite, Moabite, Aramean, and Phoenician names. These data encompass the vast majority of known Hebrew personal names and a substantial sample of the names from surrounding cultures. In this impressive compilation of evidence, the authors describe the variety of rites performed by families at home, at a neighborhood shrine, or at work. Burial rituals and the ritual care for the dead are examined. A comprehensive bibliography, extensive appendixes, and several helpful indexes round out the masterful textual material to form a one-volume compendium that no scholar of ancient Israelite religion and archaeology can afford not to own.

The Origin and Character of God

The Origin and Character of God PDF Author: Theodore J. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190072555
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1097

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Book Description
Few topics are as broad or as daunting as the God of Israel, that deity of the world's three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who has been worshiped over millennia. In the Hebrew Bible, God is characterized variously as militant, beneficent, inscrutable, loving, and judicious. Who is this divinity that has been represented as masculine and feminine, mythic and real, transcendent and intimate? The Origin and Character of God is Theodore J. Lewis's monumental study of the vast subject that is the God of Israel. In it, he explores questions of historical origin, how God was characterized in literature, and how he was represented in archaeology and iconography. He also brings us into the lived reality of religious experience. Using the window of divinity to peer into the varieties of religious experience in ancient Israel, Lewis explores the royal use of religion for power, prestige, and control; the intimacy of family and household religion; priestly prerogatives and cultic status; prophetic challenges to injustice; and the pondering of theodicy by poetic sages. A volume that is encyclopedic in scope but accessible in tone, The Origin and Character of God is an essential addition to the growing scholarship of one of humanity's most enduring concepts.

Did God Have a Wife?

Did God Have a Wife? PDF Author: William G. Dever
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802863949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
This richly illustrated, non-technical reconstruction of "folk religion" in ancient Israel is based largely on recent archaeological evidence, but also incorporates biblical texts where possible.

The Religion of Ancient Israel

The Religion of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Patrick D. Miller
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664221454
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The historical and literary questions about ancient Israel that traditionally have preoccupied biblical scholars have often overlooked the social realities of life experienced by the vast majority of the population of ancient Israel. Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines -- such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism -- to illumine 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 scholarly insights for a wide variety of readers. Individually and collectively, these books will expand our vision of the culture and society of ancient Israel, thereby generating new appreciation for its impact up to the present.Patrick Miller investigates the role religion played in an expanding circle of influences in ancient Israel: the family, village, tribe, and nation-state. He situates Israel's religion in context where a variety of social forces affected beliefs, and where popular cults openly competed with the "official" religion. Miller makes extensive use of both epigraphic and artefactual evidence as he deftly probes the complexities of Iron Age culture and society and their enduring significance for people today.

Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah

Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah PDF Author: Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567032167
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This volume of essays draws together specialists in the field to explain, illustrate and analyze this religious diversity in Ancient Israel.

Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel

Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel PDF Author: Aaron Chalmers
Publisher: IVP Academic
ISBN: 9780830825455
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Aaron Chalmers gives students a unique introduction to the religious and social world of ancient Israel. The first part explores the major religious offices mentioned in the Old Testament, including prophets, priests, sages and kings. As well as considering what these key people said and did, the author traces the process through which one became recognized as a prophet, priest or sage, and where each of these offices were located in ancient Israel. The second part of the book focuses on the beliefs and practices of the common people--the group that made up the majority of ancient Israel s population.

Rediscovering Eve

Rediscovering Eve PDF Author: Carol Meyers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199734550
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women as strong and significant actors within their families and society.

Discovering Eve

Discovering Eve PDF Author: Carol Meyers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195362195
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society.

Families in Ancient Israel

Families in Ancient Israel PDF Author: Leo G. Perdue
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664255671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Four respected scholars of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism provide a clear portrait of the family in ancient Israel. Important theological and ethical implications are made for the family today. The Family, Culture, and Religion series offers informed and responsible analyses of the state of the American family from a religious perspective and provides practical assistance for the family's revitalization.