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The first comprehensive analysis of non-canonical influences—Jewish, non-Jewish, and early Christian—on the formation of the New Testament writings. In Apocryphal Prophets and Athenian Poets: Noncanonical Influences on the New Testament, Gregory R. Lanier presents in one volume an overarching compendium and analysis of over five hundred relevant instances of non-Old-Testament influence on the New Testament across three categories—Jewish, non-Jewish (mostly Greco-Roman), and early Christian (pre-canonical). The abundance of non-canonical influences on the New Testament testifies to the breadth of apostolic cultural engagement and the scope and pace of information exchange in the early Christian circles. This comprehensive work will allow scholars and students to give closer attention to the sheer complexity of the crisscrossing lines of direct and indirect influences on the New Testament Scriptures.

The IJBF is the only regularly published, truly international, Festschrift bibliography. Since 1983, more than 920,000 articles from more than 41,000 Festschriften, published between 1977 and 2022, have been catalogued.

The Tyndale Bible Dictionary features the work of 139 Bible scholars in more than 1,000 informative, in-depth articles. Thousands of cross-references enable users to find additional information and details about other topics that are most important to them. With hundreds of pictures, maps, and illustrations, and the very best evangelical scholarship on the Bible, this comprehensive, single-volume Bible dictionary is the principal book in the Tyndale Reference Library and will be an important addition to anyone's Bible reference collection.

Reconciling biblical and extrabiblical history The extrabiblical testimony surrounding Israel's early history is difficult to assess and synthesize. But numerous sources emerging from the ninth century BC onward invite direct comparison with the biblical account. In Ahab's House of Horrors: A Historiographic Study of the Military Campaigns of the House of Omri, Kyle R. Greenwood and David B. Schreiner examine the historical records of Israel and its neighbors. While Scripture generally gives a bleak depiction of the Omride dynasty, extrabiblical evidence appears to tell another story. Inscriptions and archeological evidence portray a period of Israelite geopolitical influence and cultural sophistication. Rather than simply rejecting one source over another, Greenwood and Schreiner press beyond polarization. They propose a nuanced synthesis by embracing the complex dynamics of ancient history writing and the historical difficulties that surround the Omri dynasty. Ahab's House of Horrors is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of biblical historiography and, specifically, to our understanding of 1–2 Kings and the Omri family.

This volume of essays honors Edward M. Cook, Ordinary Professor of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America. Cook is a leading figure in the vibrant and far-reaching field of Aramaic studies, and the essays reflect his range of interests, with lexical, linguistic, and literary analyses of dialects from the earliest inscriptions to the modern day. The essays are organized in four categories. The first focuses on the earliest attested Aramaic dialects; the second on Biblical Aramaic and texts from the Judean desert; the third on Aramaic translations of Scripture; and the fourth on poetic and religious texts from Late Antiquity. The volume concludes with a poem composed in Neo-Aramaic. Contributions from Andrew W. Litke, William Fullilove, Andrew D. Gross, Daniel E. Carver, Tarsee Li, Stephen M. Coleman, Martin G. Abegg, Jr., Aaron Koller, Peter Y. Lee, Michael Owen Wise, Christian M. M. Brady, Stephen A. Kaufman, Jerome A. Lund, Alexandra Lupu, Moshe J. Bernstein, Laura S. Lieber, Matthew Morgenstern, and Shawqi N. Talia.

Robert Koehl has long considered processions to have played an integral role in Aegean Bronze Age societies. Therefore, when assembling a volume to honor his retirement from Hunter College, contributing authors were asked to focus attention on this subject. Processions are a unique social phenomenon in that they engage large groups with a singular purpose or outcome, acting as a cohesive force in societies. Yet they are elusive both in Aegean art and texts, which has challenged the participants in this volume to approach the subject from various viewpoints, providing evidence of ritual and ceremonial places, pathways and practices, based on archaeological and, in one instance, textual evidence. Artistic depictions in a variety of media provide a means of identifying settings, participants and the possible roles they play, while specific ritual objects are the subject of some contributions, their context and imagery offering another means of enhancing our picture of processions. Papers concentrate mainly on evidence from Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, with additional perspectives from abroad, these geographic divisions forming the basic outline of the volume.  Download the following paper in Open Access: The Pylos Ta Series and the Process of Inventorying Ritual Objects for a Funerary Banquet - Thomas G. Palaima: Download

This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a diverse, international team of leading scholars whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. The fourth volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East covers the period from the end of the second to the middle of the first millennium BC, ca. 1100-600 BC, corresponding with Egypt's'Third Intermediate Period'. Fifteen chapters present the history of the Near East during'The Age of Assyria,'from the formative period of the Assyrian Empire to this influential state's disintegration. Several of the chapters discuss the challenges of reconstructing the sequence of local rulers and the various sources and diverse strategies harnessed in order to overcome these difficulties, notably for Egypt, for Elam, for Urartu and on northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia. This volume offers new and complementary perspectives on the history of northeastern Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East from the 11th to the 7th century BC.

Urmas Nõmmik untersucht die Anfänge der Erzelternerzählungen im Kontext der Königshöfe im alten Israel und Juda. Die mit Literar- und Redaktionskritik kombinierte Motivgeschichte bzw. Motivkritik erlaubt einen Einblick in die Verbindungen zwischen den ältesten Genesis-Texten, anderen alttestamentlichen Texten und den altorientalischen Hoftraditionen. Einzelne Jakoberzählungen in Gen 25•, 27•, 28• und 32• sowie ihre älteste Kombination im Zyklus Gen 25-33•, aber auch die Isaakerzählung in Gen 26• und die Lot-Sodom-Erzählung in Gen 19• liefern zahlreiche Motivverbindungen zu nordwestsemitischen und mesopotamischen Texten. Besonders sind aber die strukturellen Parallelen in alttestamentlichen (Gen, Num, 1-2 Sam, 1-2 Kön), hethitischen und mesopotamischen Überlieferungen hervorzuheben. Unter den letzten sticht zumal die Gilgamesch-Tradition heraus, die sich mehr oder weniger in den Jakob-, Isaak-, Rebekka- und Lot-Erzählungen widerspiegelt.

This commemorative publication for the Old Testament scholar Herbert Niehr (Tubingen) brings together 23 contributions that deal with the texts of the Old Testament from an exegetical or religious-historical perspective, as well as contributions that go'beyond the Old Testament'and examine the West Semitic cultural area philologically, iconographically and archaeologically and take a look at the so-called'environment of the Old Testament'. This takes into account Herbert Niehr's broad professional focus, whose research focuses on philology, history, literary history and religious history of ancient West Semitic cultures.

These volumes contain most of the papers of the late Jonas C. Greenfield written in English, with source and lexeme indexes, and is intended for scholars and students of the Ancient Near East, Aramaic, Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Semitic philology. Greenfield published numerous articles in a wide range of journals, some of them fairly inaccessible. He himself had begun to collect his papers, with the aim of revising and republishing them, when his sudden death intervened. It is the privilege of the editors, two close friends of Greenfield and one of his former students, to present this collection to the public. This collection shows the wealth, breadth, and creativity of Greenfield's substantial scholarship, as well as his desire to collaborate with his colleagues in academic pursuits. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004121706).

This thesis examines the development of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. and its contacts and trade relations with Phenicia, with particular reference to the site of Kuntillet'Agrud. The period of study covers the reign of the Nimsid dynasty (ca. 845-747 BC), with the northern kingdom particularly under kings Joash (802-787 BC) and Jeroboam II (787-747 BC) prospered and reached an unprecedented territorial expansion. This favored various political developments and power shifts between the Assyrian Empire, Aram-Damascus, Hamath, other Aramaic kingdoms and Israel. It should also be shown that the diplomatic and economic relations of the northern kingdom with the Phoenicians did not break off after the end of the preceding Omrid dynasty (ca. 882-845 BC), but continued and strengthened. It is important to use classic criteria for Phoenician influences, such as finds of volute capitals (Protoaeolian capitals) or ivories, and to show them through the analysis of additional archaeological and inscriptional findings, contacts and especially trade connections. The contacts in Kuntillet?A?rud, a site in Sinai, become clear. The inscriptions and wall paintings found there attest to Phoenician and Israelite influence on site. The location of Kuntillet'Agrud on the Gaza Strait, an ancient crossroads between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, the Phoenician influences and the connection to the Northern Kingdom led to an ongoing discussion about the function of the place, which is interpreted partly as a place of worship and partly as a trading base.

This Festschrift assembles 32 contributions devoted to K. Lawson Younger, Jr. by his colleagues and students from North America, Israel and Europe. In accordance with significant topics of his own scholarly oeuvre the articles focus on Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern studies. Among many other topics the relations of'Deuteronomy 13 and the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon'are explored as well as'Rituals in the Gideon Narrative (Judges 6-8)','Deities in the Ammonite Personal Names'and'the textual evidence for'The'Priests'of Ugarit'. Archaeological contributions focus on-to list just a few-'The Carmel in the Bronze and Iron Ages','Deer Antlers in Iron Age I Cultic Contexts at Tel Abel Beth Maacah'and the'Archaeological Evidence of Priests and Priesthood in Iron Age Israel and Judah'. Linguistic and cultural studies evaluate recent studies of Amorite and examine'East as Symbolic Space'and raise the question of'Aramaean Identity'in Iron Age Syria.

This volume honors Dennis G. Pardee, Henry Crown Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and one of the preeminent experts in Northwest Semitic languages and literatures, particularly Ugaritic studies. The thirty-seven essays by colleagues and former students reflect the wide range of Professor Pardee's research interests and include, among other topics, new readings of inscriptions, studies of poetic structure, and investigations of Late Bronze Age society.

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

Heracles is the quintessential ancient Greek hero. The rich and massive tradition associated with him encompasses myths of all kinds: quest myths, monster-fights, world-foundational myths, aetiological myths, philosophical myths, allegorical myths, and more. It informs and is informed by every genre and variety of Classical literature. The figure of Heracles opens windows onto numerous aspects of ancient religion, including those of cult, syncretism, Christian reception, the relationship between gods and heroes, and the intersection of religion with politics. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles is the first large-scale guide to Heracles, his myth-cycle the Twelve Labors, and, to the pervasive impact of the hero upon Greek and Roman culture. The first half of the volume is devoted to the lucid exposition and analysis of the ancient evidence, literary and iconographic, for Heracles'life and deeds. In the second half, the Heracles tradition is analyzed from a range of thematic perspectives, including the contrasting projections of the figure across the major literary genres and in art; the ways in which Greek communities and even Roman emperors exploited the figure in the fashioning of their own identities and for political advantage; his cult in Greece and Rome and its syncretism with that of the Phoenician Melqart; and Heracles'reception in later Western tradition. Presenting, in 39 chapters, the authoritative work of international experts in a clear and well-structured format, this volume provides a convenient reference tool for scholars and offers an accessible starting-point for students.

Der Kommentar bedient sich unterschiedlicher Zugänge und Methoden zur Erschließung des Mittelteils der Königebücher. Diese erscheinen dabei in neuem Licht, und zwar sowohl in diachroner wie in synchroner Hinsicht. Grundlegend ist eine detaillierte Textkritik, die häufig Lesarten aus der Septuaginta und der Vetus Latina denen aus der hebräischen Tradition vorzieht. Dies wiederum hat Folgen für die Chronologie der Könige von Israel und Juda. Zudem wird eine neue Theorie zur Entstehungs- und Kompositionsgeschichte dieses Teils der Königebücher entwickelt: Er verdankt sich großenteils einem nachexilischen'prophetischen Erzähler', der freilich auf ältere Legenden, namentlich über Elischa, zurückgriff und der Gesamtdarstellung die Gestalt gab, die sie heute hat.

This book presents a new model for understanding the collection of ancient kingdoms that surrounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea from the Cilician Plain in the west to the upper Tigris River in the east, and from Cappadocia in the north to western Syria in the south, during the Iron Age of the ancient Near East (ca. 1200 to 600 BCE). Rather than presenting them as homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like'the Aramaeans'or'the Luwians'living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. The Syro-Anatolian City-States sheds new light via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including archaeological site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence reveal a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book is the first to specifically characterize the Iron Age city-states of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, arguing for a unified cultural formation characterized above all by diversity and mobility and that can be referred to as the'Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex.'

Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first volume in this series, bringing together ten experts on ancient writing, languages and archaeology to present a set of diverse studies on the early development of alphabetic writing systems and their spread across the Levant and Mediterranean during the second and first millennia BC. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it sheds new light on alphabetic writing not just as a tool for recording language but also as an element of culture.

Unbinding Isaac takes readers on a trek of discovery for our times into the binding of Isaac story. Nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard viewed the story as teaching suspension of ethics for the sake of faith, and subsequent Jewish thinkers developed this idea as a cornerstone of their religious worldview. Aaron Koller examines and critiques Kierkegaard's perspective—and later incarnations of it—on textual, religious, and ethical grounds. He also explores the current of criticism of Abraham in Jewish thought, from ancient poems and midrashim to contemporary Israel narratives, as well as Jewish responses to the Akedah over the generations. Finally, bringing together these multiple strands of thought—along with modern knowledge of human sacrifice in the Phoenician world—Koller offers an original reading of the Akedah. The biblical God would like to want child sacrifice—because it is in fact a remarkable display of devotion—but more than that, he does not want child sacrifice because it would violate the child's autonomy. Thus, the high point in the drama is not the binding of Isaac but the moment when Abraham is told to release him. The Torah does not allow child sacrifice, though by contrast, some of Israel's neighbors viewed it as a religiously inspiring act. The binding of Isaac teaches us that an authentically religious act cannot be done through the harm of another human being. Download a Study Guide

Em perspectiva cristã e com levantamentos precisos, lapidados como peças arqueológicas por John Brigth, História de Israel é o recurso definitivo para estudantes e pesquisadores de Teologia e de Sagrada Escritura. Essa 7ª edição, que conta com nova tradução, revista e ampliada, é uma referência entre as maiores escolas teológicas do mundo. A obra aprofunda-se no processo de formação do Estado de Israel - História, Política e Religião, desde o período formativo do judaísmo, e discorre sobre os principais dados culturais da região. Outro ponto alto é o denso material bíblico fornecido pelo livro, além da própria visão teológica explicitada pelo autor. Inclui os prefácios às primeiras e terceiras edições (sem datas), às cartas cronológicas, e 16 mapas coloridos, além de introdução atualizada do tradutor da quarta edição norte-americana, o estudioso William P. Brown. A história de Israel é a história de um povo que começou a existir em determinada época como uma liga de tribos unidas em aliança com lahweh. Posteriormente, esta liga de tribos passou a existir como uma nação, em seguida como duas nações, e finalmente como uma comunidade religiosa. Esta comunidade religiosa sempre se distinguiu no seu meio como uma entidade cultural distinta. O fator característico que fez de Israel um fenômeno peculiar, que criou a sua sociedade e era um fator controlador de sua história foi, naturalmente, a religião. Por isso neste livro se estuda a história de Israel como um tema inseparável da sua religião. O gênero do relato histórico deve muito a John Bright, um dos mais importantes pesquisadores do mundo contemporâneo, que apresenta a fé como fator determinante para a compreensão do processo de formação de Israel. História de Israel continua sendo um padrão para as novas gerações de estudantes e pesquisadores do Antigo Testamento. A obra permanece um clássico na literatura da instrução teológica e bíblica.

Who were the ancient Phoenicians, and did they actually exist?The Phoenicians traveled the Mediterranean long before the Greeks and Romans, trading, establishing settlements, and refining the art of navigation. But who these legendary sailors really were has long remained a mystery. In Search of the Phoenicians makes the startling claim that the “Phoenicians” never actually existed. Taking readers from the ancient world to today, this monumental book argues that the notion of these sailors as a coherent people with a shared identity, history, and culture is a product of modern nationalist ideologies—and a notion very much at odds with the ancient sources.Josephine Quinn shows how the belief in this historical mirage has blinded us to the compelling identities and communities these people really constructed for themselves in the ancient Mediterranean, based not on ethnicity or nationhood but on cities, family, colonial ties, and religious practices. She traces how the idea of “being Phoenician” first emerged in support of the imperial ambitions of Carthage and then Rome, and only crystallized as a component of modern national identities in contexts as far-flung as Ireland and Lebanon.In Search of the Phoenicians delves into the ancient literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and artistic evidence for the construction of identities by and for the Phoenicians, ranging from the Levant to the Atlantic, and from the Bronze Age to late antiquity and beyond. A momentous scholarly achievement, this book also explores the prose, poetry, plays, painting, and polemic that have enshrined these fabled seafarers in nationalist histories from sixteenth-century England to twenty-first century Tunisia.

This textbook illustrates the'history of Israel'from the beginnings until the Bar-Kochba insurgence 132-135 AD. The knowledge, which is indispensable for exegesis and theology studies, is passed on by the author as a matter of course and in light of current research. He uses all available sources for his illustrations: next to the bible, archaeological findings, inscriptions and artwork have been considered; it is shown by means of example how the sources are to be interpreted and where the boundaries of reconstructing history lie. For this purposes, he introduces the latest findings of archaeological and historic research and links the results to biblical interpretations in a critical manner. This produces an impression of the history of ancient Israel in the context of the Southern Levant, which is often familiar, but also fresh and unexpected.

This volume makes use of diverse methods and approaches to offer fresh treatments of 1 Kings 16 - 2 Kings 16 both synchronically and diachronically. Among its major contributions are a detailed text-critical analysis that frequently adopts readings of the Old Greek and Old Latin and, at the same time, a reexamination of the variant chronologies for the kings of Israel and Judah that argues for the priority of the one in the Masoretic Text. The book presents a new theory of the compositional history of these chapters that ascribes them mostly to the hand of a postexilic'Prophetic Narrator'who reworked older legenda, especially about Elisha, and effectively shaped Kings into the work we have today.

In this comprehensive study, Professor Tappy rounds out the study of the Iron Age strata at Samaria that he began with the first volume of this work, published in 1992 (The Early Iron Age through the Ninth Century, HSS 44). Tappy's goal is to provide a thorough-going analysis of prior archaeologists'work at this important north Israelite site, with a view to providing a complete reconstruction of the depositional history of the site during the Iron Age. The two volumes together are important, not only for the history of the city of Samaria, but for the archaeological sequences of the Iron Age in northern Israel.

An English translation of Arman Akopian's comprehensive Introduction to Aramean and Syriac Studies, from the earliest appearances of Arameans in the historical record, through to the modern day.

Viele kulturelle Leistungen des antiken Griechenland wurden aus dem Osten übernommen. Iris von Bredow widmet sich nun erstmals der Frage nach dem Mechanismus dieses Kulturtransfers. Kleinteilige Gegenstände konnten die Griechen imitieren – für Monumentalarchitektur, Steinplastik, mythologische Narrationen, Vorstellungen über den Kosmos oder das Jenseits und vieles mehr sind jedoch besondere Rezeptionsgeschichten vorauszusetzen. Nur ein in einer östlichen Gesellschaft integrierter Grieche konnte durch Akkulturation und persönliche verbale Kontakte mit fremden Kulturträgern Kenntnisse erwerben, die nach ihrem Transfer die archaische Kultur in vielen Bereichen prägten. Bredow rekonstruiert anhand schriftlicher und archäologischer Quellen Kontaktsituationen für eine erfolgreiche Rezeption (z. B. Söldnertum, Handel, zivile Karrieren) und kann durch die Darstellung der politischen Geographie Syriens und Ägyptens in der Eisenzeit gleichzeitig die räumlichen und zeitlichen Parameter solcher Kontakte festlegen.

This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of ancient Israel—from the creation account to setting the stage for the New Testament era. This edition has been thoroughly revised, but maintains its focus on Old Testament texts as well as ancient Near Eastern literary and archeological sources to highlight the important modern controversies surrounding this part of Scripture. The work provides an up-to-date, conservative, evangelical position on matters relating to ancient Israel's history and is illustrated with over 600 figures, charts, and maps.

The book of Chronicles, the last book of the Hebrew Bible and a central historical book of the Christian Old Testament, has in recent decades gone from being “the Cinderella of biblical studies” to being one of the most researched books of the Bible. The anonymous author, often simply called “the Chronicler” by modern scholars, looks back at the old Israelite monarchy, before the Babylonian Exile, from his vantage point in the post-exilic early Second Temple Period, and attempts to “update” the older historiographies of Samuel and Kings in order to elucidate their meaning to the people of his own time. In The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, Yigal Levin does the same for the modern reader. He offers a brand-new translation and commentary on 2 Chronicles chapters 10-36, tracing the “sacred history” of the monarchy from the division of Solomon's kingdom to the final exile and return. Each chapter is translated from the original Hebrew into an English that is both faithful to the original and easy for the modern reader to follow. Extensive footnotes provide full explanations of the translator's choices and of linguistic and literary issues, taking note of alternative versions offered by a wide array of ancient and modern versions and translations. The comprehensive commentary on each section provides historical background and explains the text both on a literary and a historical level, making full use of the most up-to-date research on the text, literature, history, geography and on the archaeological background of the biblical world.The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is to be followed by The Chronicles of David and Solomon on 1 Chronicles 10 – 2 Chronicles 9, and then by The Chronicles of All Israel on the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1-9 and including comprehensive essays on the book of Chronicles, its time, purposes, methods and meanings.

Throughout its history, the Kingdom of Israel had strong connections with the Aramaean world. Constantly changing relations, from rivalry and military conflicts to alliances and military cooperation, affected the history of the whole Levant and left their marks on both Biblical and extra-Biblical sources. New studies demonstrate that Israelite state formation was contemporaneous with the formation of the Aramaean polities (11th-9th centuries BCE). Consequently, the Jordan Valley (and especially its northern parts and its extension to the valley of Lebanon) was a constantly changing border zone between different Iron Age polities. In light of that, there is a need to study the history of Ancient Israel not only from the'Canaanite'point of view but also within the political and cultural context of the Aramaean world. This volume brings together experts working in different fields to address the relations and interactions between Aram and Israel during the Early Iron Age (12th to 8th centuries BCE) through three main aspects: the first aspect, relates to the archaeology and the material culture of Aram and Israel, with a special focus on the Jordan valley as a political and cultural border zone. The material culture of the region is examined in its spatial as well as chronological context in order to discuss cultural traits as against political affiliation. The second aspect relates to the history of the Aramaean kingdoms highlighting the formation of territorial kingdoms in the Levant and the history of Israel in its Aramaean context. The third aspect relates to the question of historical memory especially as it was preserved in the biblical traditions. The place of the Aramaeans in the Biblical literature is discussed as a mean to clarify the construction of Israelite and Aramaic identity in a fluid cultural region.

In the early nineties, after Reinholds first publication »Die Beziehungen Altisraels zu den aramäischen Staaten in der israelitisch-judäischen Königszeit« an archaeological find came to light with the broken pieces of the early Aramaic written Têl Dan Stela, which has greatly illuminated the portrait of Aram and ancient history of Israel. The author offers a renewed overview to the Aramaean history on the foundation of the forced researches in the last 50 years. This begins with the early testifying of Aram in cuneiform sources of the 3rd/2nd Mill. B.C. from the Mesopotamian and Syrian area and ends with the decline of Aram-Damascus. The Volume incorporates a revised edition of the researches history and two excurses about the newest palaeographic results to the second line of the Bar-Hadad Stela of Aleppo in Syria on the base of precision photographs and computer-enhancements and presents a new transcription and translation of the Têl Dan Stela fragments. These are a certain basis to build on the royal line of sucession in Aram-Damascus and to illuminate their historical background in the Ancient Near East. Reinhold emphasizes, that the results of archaeology could always be adapted or replaced by recent discoveries; but he hopes that the «New Studies on Aram and Israel» will be served as a base for the future research of the Near Eastern Archaeology and History.

The history of David's Jerusalem remains one of the most contentious topics of the ancient world. This study engages with debates about the nature of this location by examining the most recent archaeological data from the site and by exploring the relationship of these remains to claims made about David's royal center in biblical narrative. Daniel Pioske provides a detailed reconstruction of the landscape and lifeways of early 10th century BCE Jerusalem, connected in biblical tradition to the figure of David. He further explores how late Iron Age (the Book of Samuel-Kings) and late Persian/early Hellenistic (the Book of Chronicles) Hebrew literary cultures remembered David's Jerusalem within their texts, and how the remains and ruins of this site influenced the memories of those later inhabitants who depicted David's Jerusalem within the biblical narrative. By drawing on both archaeological data and biblical writings, Pioske calls attention to the breaks and ruptures between a remembered past and a historical one, and invites the reader to understand David's Jerusalem as more than a physical location, but also as a place of memory.

Der Band enthält 24 Beiträge zur Geschichte und Sprache des Alten Testaments sowie zur hebräischen und griechischen Überlieferung des alttestamentlichen Textes. In chronologischer Hinsicht erstrecken sich die Beiträge von der Mitte des 2. Jt. v. Chr. (Archäologie und Texte von Taanach; Religionsreform von Pharao Echnaton), über die ältere Königszeit (Saul und David) bis in die Makkabäerzeit. In den Beiträgen zu Religion und Sprache werden die Bedeutung und Etymologie von Zebaoth und von hištaḥawa sowie die Weiterführung der Schwurformel in prophetischen Redewendungen und Grundzüge der Religion der Aramäer dargestellt. Die textgeschichtlichen Beiträge bieten einen Überblick zum Stand der Forschung und thematisieren einzelne Fragen wie die Standardisierung des hebräischen Textes, die Entstehung der Septuaginta, die Bedeutung des antiochenischen Textes. Schließlich werden mit Papyrus 967 und dem Kodex Vaticanus zwei wichtige Textzeugen in ihrer Bedeutung für die Textgeschichte sowie für die buchtechnische Entwicklung und für die Kanongeschichte vorgestellt.

A close look at Phoenician religion The Hebrew Bible contains a prohibition against divine images (Exod 20:2-5a). Explanations for this command are legion, usually focusing on the unique status of Israel's deity within the context of the broader Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds. Doak explores whether or not Israel was truly alone in its severe stance against idols. This book focuses on one particular aspect of this iconographic context in Israel's Iron Age world: that of the Phoenicians. The question of whether Phoenicians employed aniconic (as opposed to iconic) representational techniques has significance not only for the many poorly understood aspects of Phoenician religion generally, but also for the question of whether aniconism can be considered a broader trend among the Semitic populations of the ancient Near East. Features: More than fifty images and illustrations Examination of textual and archaeological evidence Application of art historical methods