Translating Zephaniah in context

B.R. Willits
Original languageEnglish
QualificationPhD
Awarding Institution
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Vries, LJ, Supervisor
  • van Peursen, Willem, Supervisor
  • Wendland, E., Co-supervisor, External person
Award date13 May 2019
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Next Year in Jerusalem: Exile and Return in Jewish History

Edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon
Cover of Next Year in Jerusalem: Exile and Return in Jewish History
Series: Studies in Jewish Civilization
Copyright Date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh9w1wk
Pages: 324
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh9w1wk
 
 

Ben Sira’s Teaching on Friendship

Jeremy Corley
The purpose of this study is to elucidate Ben Sira’s teaching on friendship within the religious and cultural context of his time, in view of the Hellenistic emphasis on philia (“friendship”). While friendship is of contemporary interest, until recently there has been little research into the understanding of friendship in Second Temple Judaism. This study aims to fill the lacuna by focusing on the apocryphal/deuterocanonical Wisdom of Ben Sira (Sirach). In fact, no book of the Hebrew Bible says as much about friendship as does the Wisdom of Ben Sira. The book contains a new preface by the author.

English

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

9781951498139

Brown University

 

 

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Bureaucracy in the Bible: Attitudes toward Document-mediated Interaction in the Deuteronomistic History and Ancient Israel

Bureaucracy in the Bible: Attitudes toward Document-mediated Interaction in the Deuteronomistic History and Ancient IsraelPrice, Jason Ryan

During the 8th-7th centuries BCE, Israelite and Judahite society witnessed expanded applications of writing as a communication technology. In particular, the epigraphic record shows a stark rise in the usage of writing by state and military bureaucracies to manage bodies and economic matters across time and space. Previous scholarship has rarely considered how sectors of society may have perceived writing’s expansion in these administrative contexts. How did Israelites and Judahites think about and talk about the increase in bureaucratic writing? This dissertation seeks to answer this question by investigating administrative writing as depicted in biblical literature. It assesses the historical value of three biblical narratives where administrative documents mediate interaction between sovereign figures and other sectors of society. The three narratives include Gideon’s use of a name-list (Judg 8:14), David’s census (2 Sam 24:1-25), and Jehoash’s fiscal reforms (2 Kgs 12:4-16). Each narrative’s portrayal of writing is situated in its literary and historical contexts while also considered in the light of the epigraphic record, other biblical depictions of writing, the anthropology of documents and bureaucracy, and comparative ancient Near Eastern texts and artistic depictions of bureaucratic writing. Typically, such biblical portrayals of writing are valued in scholarship for what they might say about the extent of literacy in ancient Israel and Judah. This dissertation differs from previous scholarship by instead valuing these depictions for what they might say about attitudes towards document-mediated interaction. When the depictions of writing analyzed here are examined with a full consideration of the evidence, it can be argued that they reveal suspicious and anxious attitudes towards state-sponsored writing. Ultimately, it is argued that such negative attitudes stemmed from West Semitic political culture, which placed an emphasis on political action rooted in negotiation and persuasion. In this sociopolitical landscape, administrative documents could function as powerful symbols of coercion and domination. The three biblical narratives examined here suggest that writing’s increased usage in bureaucratic contexts of the 8th-7th centuries BCE thus generated distrust among some factions who had reservations about the growing centralization of the Judahite and Israelite states. 
Peer-Reviewed

Publication Date:
2020
Series:
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Permalink:
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xj3b51h
Local Identifier(s):
ProQuest ID: Price_ucla_0031D_19001
http://dissertations.umi.com/ucla:19001
Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m55196bn

 

Job's Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising

Southwood, Katherine E.
Thumbnail for Job's Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising

This book focuses on the expressions used to describe Job’s body in pain and on the reactions of his friends to explore the moral and social world reflected in the language and the values that their speeches betray.

A key contribution of this monograph is to highlight how the perspective of illness as retribution is powerfully refuted in Job’s speeches and, in particular, to show how this is achieved through comedy. Comedy in Job is a powerful weapon used to expose and ridicule the idea of retribution. Rejecting the approach of retrospective diagnosis, this monograph carefully analyses the expression of pain in Job focusing specifically on somatic language used in the deity attack metaphors, in the deity surveillance metaphors and in the language connected to the body and social status. These metaphors are analysed in a comparative way using research from medical anthropology and sociology which focuses on illness narratives and expressions of pain.

Job's Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising will be of interest to anyone working on the Book of Job, as well as those with an interest in suffering and pain in the Hebrew Bible more broadly.

English

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

9781000163414

Routledge

Stories of Sexual Violence as Boundary Markers in Early Jewish Reception of the Hebrew Bible

Stories of Sexual Violence as Boundary Markers in Early Jewish Reception of the Hebrew BibleSmith, Julianna Kaye

Stories of sexual violence are central to the Hebrew Bible. This dissertation examines three of those stories found in Gen 34, Gen 19 and Judg 19–20 through a feminist critical lens. The analysis of the three stories focuses on the politics of sexual violence at play in each of them. It argues that a primary function of these stories is marking out social boundaries betweenvarious communities. Furthermore, the dissertation traces the reception of the three stories in early Jewish literature. It finds that early Jewish writers recognized the boundary-setting function of the stories and engaged with them in their own contexts to explore communal boundaries. The dissertation demonstrates that the biblical and early Jewish writers’ use of stories of sexual violence as boundary markers is rooted in a larger phenomenon, historical and modern, of using stories of sexual violence to mark out boundaries.

Publication Date:
2022
Series:
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Permalink:
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/78v2m9nd
Local Identifier(s):
ProQuest ID: Smith_ucla_0031D_21238
http://dissertations.umi.com/ucla:21238
Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5hn2jbf

 

Ester – eine Gewaltgeschichte: Die Gewaltdarstellungen in der hebräischen und griechischen Esterüberlieferung

Helge Bezold
book: Ester – eine Gewaltgeschichte
  • Funded by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur

The Book of Esther tells the story of a plot to exterminate the Persian Jews and their great struggle against their enemies. This study locates these portrayals of violence in the Hellenistic epoch, in the Hasmonean period (second century BCE). It compares the Hebrew text with the two Greek Books of Esther, thus providing insights into a dynamic discourse of violence in Hellenistic and Roman literature.

 

Frontmatter


Publicly Available

I

Inhalt


Publicly Available

V

Vorwort


Publicly Available

IX

1 Einleitung


Open Access

1

2 Literarhistorische Grundlegung: Eine Gewaltgeschichte ohne Gewalt?


Open Access

27

3 EstMT: Von Vernichtung und Vergeltung


Open Access

85

4 Transformationen der Gewaltdarstellung in den griechischen Esterbüchern


Open Access

193

5 Ertrag und Ausblick


Open Access

255

6 Literaturverzeichnis


Open Access

 

Conflict and Consumption: Foodways, Practice, and Identity at New Kingdom Jaffa

Conflict and Consumption: Foodways, Practice, and Identity at New Kingdom JaffaDamm, Jacob C.

During the Late Bronze Age (c. 1640/1540 – 1100 BCE), the installation of Egyptian garrisons throughout the southern Levant made Egypto-Levantine interaction the primary discursive relationship defining cultural expression in the region. To date, focus has predominantly been on how elites navigated the new imperial system, a product of the types of data published by early modern excavations. To expand upon this past work and assess Egypto-Levantine interaction across a broader socio-economic spectrum, I utilize new data from the garrison site of Jaffa (modern Israel) in a practice-based analysis of garrison foodways. From archaeobotanical and ceramics data, I demonstrate human entanglements that occurred at the site over the course of more than three centuries of occupation, discussing how interaction unfolded on a day-to-day basis in the imperial periphery. Specifically, I articulate the presence of multiple communities of practice with roots in both Egyptian and Levantine modes of doing. At no point in the history of the site did one tradition dominate, but rather garrison foodways were a complex product of acceptance, accommodation, indifference, and rejection, resulting in a hybrid foodways inseparable from the colonial system. The greater part of food preparation was purely Levantine in character, likely signifying the entanglement of the local population in the sustenance of the colonial system. And yet, certain modifications to traditional Levantine foodways seem designed to accommodate Egyptian tastes. Other elements of foodways—namely ceramics production/consumption and beer production—attest to a complex cha�ne op�ratoire with roots in Egypt, with their expression suggesting a tension between top-down forces provisioning the garrison and local, bottom-up consumption practices. This especially manifests with dining practices, as shifting patterns in the use and appreciation of locally manufactured Egyptian-style or Levantine ceramics correlate with violent disruptions at the site. While it is not always possible to tie foodways to specific identities, they reveal a complex picture of mutual transformation that cannot be separated from the colonial context of the site, detailing entanglements between locals and imperial personnel wherein actors from all sides episodically drew upon foodways to navigate life in an unstable imperial periphery.

 

La bibliothèque électronique « Ukraïnica »

La bibliothèque électronique « Ukraïnica »

La bibliothèque électronique « Ukraïnica » rassemble plusieurs centaines d’ouvrages disponibles en ligne dont certains concernent l’histoire et l’archéologie de la mer Noire, principalement le territoire ukrainien. La navigation est facilitée par l’organisation thématique des ressources. Une recherche par titre est également possible.

Voici quelques thèmes :

Le nord de la mer Noire et de la mer d’Azov (Ier millénaire a.C. Ve s. p.C.)

Les anciens États du nord de la mer Noire

Le royaume du Bosphore

Chersonèse Taurique

Olbia du Pont

Nikônion

Tyras

 

Friday, July 28, 2023

Unseen Hands: Coffin Production at Akhmim, Dynasties 21-30

Unseen Hands: Coffin Production at Akhmim, Dynasties 21-30Johnston, Kea Marie

During the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, wealthy Egyptians were sent to theirafterlives in dazzlingly decorated and inscribed coffins nested like Russian dolls. Current understanding of these vessels for rebirth comes almost exclusively from analyses of Theban coffins, which focuses on dating the coffins primarily through changes in decorative layout. Local traditions outside of Thebes have been almost completely neglected and were assumed to be merely derivative of the Theban tradition. Thus, the work of non-Theban artists and scribes has typically been dismissed as "naive" or "provincial"--even though, in reality, very little is known about non-Theban coffin workshops, or about the training of the artists and scribes who worked in them.

A large number of coffins datable to post-New Kingdom pharaonic Egypt are thought tocome from the city of Akhmim, which lies two hundred kilometers north of Thebes. These Akhmim coffins present an excellent opportunity to characterize and evaluate a regional tradition. Sadly, the cemeteries of Akhmim were thoroughly plundered in the late 19th century, and the pillaged pieces were sold on the contemporary art market. Hence, until now, the Akhmim coffins have only been datable by means of stylistic comparisons to the Theban pieces. This dissertation builds a new typology for coffins from Akhmim, centered around the idea of workshops. It re-evaluates the Akhmim corpus, exploring the key questions of whether the artists were theologically trained and to what degree the scribes were literate. Part One provides the background framework required to understand the next two parts. It reviews the current literature and focuses attention on gaps in our understanding that this dissertation is designed to fill.

Part Two is a catalogue forming the core of this work that consists of an in-depthanalysis of the artistic and scribal hands on twenty-one coffins sets that can be tied to Akhmim by the owner's titles or by museum records of their acquisition--preferably by both. Each individual catalogue entry overviews the provenience and iconographic program of the pieces in a given set, and also provides a paleography of characters occurring on specific elements of the coffin set. An in-depth analysis of the artistic and scribal hands is then undertaken with the aim of answering the questions of how many scribes and artists worked on the individual items in the set, whether the items were decorated by the same people, and whether the scribes were also the artists.

The coffins in the Part Two catalogue are arranged in four broad sections based ongeneral characteristics of the decoration as well as rough dating derived from Theban typologies combined with Brech's typology of Akhmim coffins. At the end of each of these sections, the artistic and scribal hands on the coffins are compared with each other in order to hypothesize which pieces were made by the same artisans. The iconography and layout of the coffins in the section are compared with each other and with pieces in previous sections to propose one or more design patterns--defined as the common layout, selection and positioning of texts and vignettes, which typify products of the same workshop. Artists are then assigned to particular workshops, and the interrelationship between different workshops is discussed. Finally, knowledge of the characteristics of the hands of individual artists and the design patterns governing their products is applied to a large corpus of coffins with unsure or unknown provenience. If possible, these pieces are assigned to one of the workshops as previously defined.

The conclusion, Part Three, reviews and summarizes the results that emerged from thedetailed analysis in Part Two and explores further implications of these findings. In particular, the analysis of Part Two established that a local coffin industry flourished at Akhmim in the 21st Dynasty as well as the period between the late Third Intermediate Period and the Persian Period. During these times, workshops at Akhmim were small, multi-generational enterprises in which each coffin set was decorated by one or two people. Though in some cases there was division of labor between an artist and a scribe, on several coffin sets all the text and figural drawing were executed by the same person. The coffin decorators were likely affiliated with the Temple of Min at Akhmim. A comparison of similar vignettes on coffins of the same workshop reveals that artists were copying models and working from memory. The artists were probably not copying models of full scenes, however, since no two vignettes in the corpus are identical. The variations and substitutions of elements within the vignettes indicate that the artists knew and understood the mythology surrounding rebirth. Similarly, the texts on the coffins were created using a combination of memorization and copying. Captions and formulae were memorized, while specialized funerary texts were most likely copied. Whether the scribes understood what they were writing must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Two of the scribes can be shown to have been literate, one was certainly illiterate, and the rest seem to fall on a spectrum of partial literacy.

This study opens the door to studying regional coffin traditions at other sites andproposes a flexible methodology for doing so. It also builds a foundation for further study of the Akhmim corpus and for exploring how the Akhmim artists might have been connected to artists from elsewhere. Ideally, it challenges the idea that art in the Egyptian provinces was merely derivative of, and inferior to, art originating in Thebes.

Lucarelli, Rita
  
Suggested:
Johnston, K. M. (2022). Unseen Hands: Coffin Production at Akhmim, Dynasties 21-30. UC Berkeley. ProQuest ID: Johnston_berkeley_0028E_21365. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5gf84nd. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xp41156
Peer-Reviewed

Publication Date:
2022
Series:
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Permalink:
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3xp41156

 

Open Access Monograph Series: IBAES: Internet-Beiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie

[First listed in AWOL 14 October 2001. Most recently updated (new URLs) 28 July 2023]

IBAES: Internet-Beiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie
Die Reihe Internetbeiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie, kurz IBAES, wurde 1998 von Martin Fitzenreiter, Steffen Kirchner und Olaf Kriseleit als erste deutschsprachige ägyptologisch-sudanarchäologische Reihe gegründet, die im Internet veröffentlicht wird. Seit 2016 wird die Reihe von Steffen Kirchner und Gunnar Sperveslage betreut und herausgegeben. Ebenfalls 2016 wurde ein Advisory Board zur Qualitätssicherung der eingereichten Manuskripte eingerichtet.

IBAES-Bände erscheinen unregelmäßig, aber möglichst kurzfristig nach Manuskripteingang. Sie erscheinen online auf dieser Plattform sowie als gedrucktes Buch im Verlag Golden House Publishing von Wolfram Grajetzki in London.

IBAES soll eine zeitgemäße Form wissenschaftlichen Publizierens in der Altertumskunde sein. Ziel ist es, in möglichst kurzer Zeit und zu geringen Kosten Forschungsergebnisse aus der Ägyptologie, der Sudanarchäologie und benachbarten Fächern zu publizieren. Im Internet publizierte Ansichten und Daten sind außerdem mit verhältnismäßig geringem Aufwand überall reproduzierbar, was für traditionelle Publikationen aufgrund ihrer Verwahrung in Bibliotheken nicht immer zutrifft.

Die Publikationsform in IBAES orientiert sich an der in Printmedien. Die Referenz-Version des jeweiligen Textes ist im Format PDF (Portable Document Formate) in einem traditionellen Layout abgespeichert. Diese Version enthält Seitenzahlen, Abbildungen, Fußnoten und Literaturverzeichnisse wie in Printmedien üblich und kann nicht nachträglich verändert werden. Zusätzlich können Hilfsmittel eingefügt werden, die nur in elektronischen Medien möglich sind, wie die Verknüpfung von Textstellen mit Abbildungen, Einträgen in Belegtabellen oder mit anderen Websites. Außerdem können Texte oder Zusammenfassungen in HTML-Versionen abgespeichert werden, was einen schnellen Überblick im Browser ermöglicht. Die im Format PDF abgespeicherte Version ist die Referenz-Version der Publikation, auf die in jedem Fall zu verweisen ist. Textversionen in HTML, Ausdrucke auf Papier oder Abspeicherungen auf anderen Speichermedien sind nur Kopien, denen nicht der Rang der Originalpublikation zukommt. Die Herausgeber bürgen dafür, dass an der Referenz-Version keine späteren Veränderungen vorgenommen werden, so dass die hier niedergelegten Daten Dokumentencharakter besitzen

[1-24 downloadable]

IBAES I Die ägyptische Mumie - ein Phänomen der Kulturgeschichte 1998
IBAES II Geschlechterforschung - in der Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie 2000
IBAES III Statue und Kult.
Eine Studie der funerären Praxis an nichtköniglichen Grabanlagen der Residenz im Alten Reich
2001
IBAES IV Tierkulte im pharaonischen Ägypten 2003
IBAES V Genealogie - Realität und Fiktion von Identität 2005
IBAES VI Dekorierte Grabanlagen im Alten Reich - Methodik und Interpretation 2006
IBAES VII Das Heilige und die Ware. Zum Spannungsfeld von Religion und Ökonomie. 2007
IBAES VIII Die Baustufen I bis IV der Großen Anlage von Musawwarat es Sufra 2006
IBAES IX Demotische Epigraphik aus Dandara: Die demotischen Grabstelen 2008
IBAES X Das Ereignis - Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Vorfall und Befund 2009
IBAES XI Untersuchungen zum ägyptischen Staat des Alten Reiches und seinen Institutionen 2008
IBAES XII Dienstverpflichtung im Alten Ägypten während des Alten und Mittleren Reiches 2009
IBAES XIII Recherche sur la décoration des tombes thébaines du Nouvel Empire 2010
IBAES XIV Beobachtungen zur Entstehung des altägyptischen Staates 2011
IBAES XV Authentizität – Artefakt und Versprechen in der Archäologie 2014
IBAES XVI Gedanken und Materialien zur Frühgeschichte der Mathematik in Ägypten 2014
IBAES XVII Untersuchungen zur Ikonographie der Darstellungen der meroitischen Königsfamilie und zu Fragen der Chronologie des Reiches von Meroe 2015
IBAES XVIII Die hieratischen Besucher-Graffitidscheser-achetin Deir el-Bahari 2016
IBAES 19 Ägypten begreifen - Erika Endesfelder in memoriam 2017
IBAES 20 Allerhand Kleinigkeiten 2018
IBAES 21 Die Arbeiter der thebanischen Nekropole im Neuen Reich 2018
IBAES 22 Sigmund Freud und sein Buch Der Mann Moses
Eine kritische Würdigung aus ägyptologischer und anthropologischer Sicht
2019
IBAES 23 Pharos (Alexandria) - Insel der Gräber und Heiligtümer 2021
IBAES 24 Die frühen Inschriften Ägyptens - Eine Konkordanz der Nummerierungssysteme 2021
IBAES 25 Menschenköpfige Herzskarabäen im Kontext - Archäologie, Philologie und Kulturgeschichte 2022
IBAES 26 Early Egyptian Miscellanies - Discussions and Essays on Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt 2022