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This study of the political history of Mesopotamia – today's Iraq and Syria – in the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) is the first comprehensive historical synthesis of this kind published in English after many decades. Based on numerous written sources in Sumerian and Akkadian – royal inscriptions, letters, law collections, economic records, etc. – and on up-to-date research, it presents the region's political history in a meticulous geographic and chronological manner. This allows the interested academic and non-academic reader an in-depth view into the scene of ancient Mesopotamia ruled by competing dynasties of West Semitic (Amorite) origin, with a complex web of political and tribal connections between them.

This volume comprehensively examines all texts dealing with social justice in the Prophecy of Amos. It also provides evidence of contemporary systemic social injustice. The volume then reflects on how biblical social justice is relevant to the contemporary quest for social justice. This volume demonstrates that irrespective of the hermeneutical challenges, the principles gleaned from the pages of the Hebrew Bible can dialogue effectively with modern issues and deduce living principles that could enable us to deal with issues that confront us today. It is thus a framework by which biblical social justice illuminates the contemporary quest for social justice.

On what basis are Gentile Christians justified and full inheriting members of Abraham's family? By being circumcised and keeping the Torah? Paul answers by reinterpreting the Abraham narrative in light of the Christ-event as a story of two siblings. True Abrahamic children are those whose Spirit-wrought life arises, as God promised Abraham, from the event of Christ-faith. Like Isaac, they receive the life-giving power of the Spirit that is tethered to God's promise and the event of eschatological faith. By contrast, those who, like Ishmael, are related to Abraham only by means of the flesh are slaves and not heirs.

In the narrow sense this volume deals with Egyptian military activity in the southern Levant, about 1300 to 1185 B.C. In the broad sense it provides a case study for the integration of historical, archaeological, and anthropological perspectives.Basing himself on a new comprehensive concordance of terms in Egyptian military accounts, the author starts with a contextual analysis of over thirty terms and clauses. With the Egyptian perception of events established, two chapters are devoted to the archaeological evidence for Egyptian presence, influence, and destruction at over forty site, regional, and socio-ethnic toponyms in the southern Levant. In conclusion, an unprecedented research paradigm is presented for the assessment of Egyptian military activity.This volume includes illustrations, maps, and an extensive bibliography essential to Near Eastern historians, sociologists, archaeologists, Egyptologists and biblical scholars.

This book offers a synopsis of the jewellery of the Near East from its beginnings until the end of the Achaemenid period. It includes 116 tables and 80 illustrations. The jewellery pieces are classified according to shape, and as far as possible, according to type, so that the complete variety and individuality, as well as the beauty of the ancient oriental jewellery is illustrated.Through the inclusion of jewellery presentation as well as jewellery descriptions in the poetry and other written traditions, it is intended to show the jewellery of those times in a cultural-historical connection.Das Buch bietet mit 116 gezeichneten Tafeln und 80 Abbildungen im Text einen detaillierten Überblick über den Schmuck des Vorderen Orients von den Anfängen bis einschliesslich der Zeit der Achaemeniden. Die Schmuckstücke werden innerhalb ihrer Zeit nach Schmuckformen und, so weit möglich, nach Typen geordnet, so dass die ganze Vielfalt, Eigenart, aber auch die Schönheit des altorientalischen Schmuckes deutlich wird.Durch die Einbeziehung von Schmuckdarstellungen sowie Schmuckschilderungen in Dichtung und anderen schriftlichen Überlieferungen wird versucht den Schmuck der jeweiligen Zeit in einen kulturhistorischen Zusammenhang zu stellen.

This book conducts a focused study of contradictions and coherence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The first section of this study examines the apparent disruption of congruity with regard to the vertical dimension of the Targum, that is, between the Torah (the Hebrew Vorlage) and the Targum (the Aramaic translation). The second section addresses the apparent disruption of congruity with regard to the horizontal dimension of the Targum, that is, within the boundaries of the TgPsJ corpus. Ultimately, this work suggests that the contradictions are given to resolution, once the greater context of biblical and Jewish tradition is taken into consideration.

Why does Jephthah's daughter weep? Readers have creatively imagined the causes of her tears as she weeps upon her betulim—usually translated virginity or maidenhood. But her menstrual cycle's relation to these terms is rarely mentioned. A child-oriented theoretical and methodological foundation and research with post-menarcheal girls provide new answers to oft-raised questions about Bat-Yiphtach's weeping and her agency. Through an in-depth philological review and a focus on the “excluded middle” of the child-adult binary, this translation and interpretation of the story contribute to the field of childhood studies and shows that menarche and menstruation play a larger role in the narrative than readers have realized.

This volume brings together essays written over two decades by a leading authority in the field. The collection includes 2 recent essays that are published here for the first time. The articles cover major aspects of the discussion of Jewish apocalypticism, in relation to the Hebrew bible, the New Testament and the Hellenistic-Roman world. Distinctive strengths of the volume include clusters of essays on the Sibylline oracles and on the relationship between apocalypticism and wisdom. A section of the book is devoted to studies on Daniel.This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

In The Rephaim: Sons of the Gods, Jonathan Yogev provides a new theory regarding the mysterious characters, known as'Rephaim,'in Biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature. The Rephaim are associated with concepts such as death and the afterlife, divinity, healing, giants and monarchy among others. They appear in Ugaritic, Phoenician and Biblical texts, yet it is difficult to pinpoint their exact function and meaning. This study offers a different perspective, along with full texts, detailed epigraphic analysis and commentary for all of the texts that mention the Rephaim, in order to determine their specific importance in societies of the ancient Levant.

From Revelation to Canon is a collection of essays that offers studies of texts, traditions, and themes from the Hebrew Bible and from the extra-biblical literature of the second-temple period.Included in it are studies of apocalypticism, the high priesthood, calendars and festivals, and a series of essays on aspects of 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. There is also a previously unpublished essay on the development of a canon of scripture in Judaism. The volume gathers in one place, papers that were originally published in several journals, volumes of essays, and Festschriften.This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This volume deals with historical and exegetical problems of the Abraham story in the book of Genesis. The first part describes the results of archaeological investigations at Hebron and Mamre in Southern Palestine including remarks on the status of the province of Judah in the first millennium BCE, especially in the Babylonian and Persian period. The second part presents exegetical comments on Genesis chapter 13 and 18. The concluding part of the volume relates the historical and exegetical aspects. The Abraham story is interpreted as a product of the Judaean people of the Babylonian and Persian Period.

This exploration of Genesis 38 in three interpretive writings shows how new meanings emerge through encounters between the biblical text and later Jewish communities.A literary reading within the canon suggests that the story of Judah and Tamar points to the morally ambiguous origins of David's lineage. Ancient Jewish exegesis, however, challenges this understanding. The Testament of Judah interprets Genesis 38 as the story of a warrior king's tragic downfall. Targum Neofiti develops it to illustrate the concept'sanctification of the (divine) Name'. and Genesis Rabbah portrays it as a series of providential events issuing in the royal and messianic lineage.Esther Marie Menn pioneers a fresh approach to the study of biblical interpretation by analyzing the relation between interpretative genre, altered plot structure, and cultural values.

This collection of papers is primarily concerned with transport by wheeled vehicle in antiquity. They shed much light on the construction of the vehicles, the ways their draught animals were harnessed and controlled, and the uses to which the equipages were put. The evidence discussed includes actual remains of vehicles and bridles, as well as figured and textual documents.Ridden animals and their gear also feature in this collection of papers.The Selected Writings of Mary B. Littauer and Joost H. Crouwel are important for all those interested in the cultures of the ancient Near East, Egypt and Cyprus and of Bronze Age Greece.

Scholars often explain Matthew's practice of applying non-messianic texts to the messiah by postulating a Christological hermeneutic. In Matthew's Non-Messianic Mapping of Messianic texts, Bruce Henning raises the question of how Matthew appliesmessianic texts to non-messianic figures. This neglected category challenges the popular view by stretching Matthew's paradigm to a broadly eschatological one in which disciples share in the mission of Jesus so as to fulfill Scriptural hopes. Using Cognitive Linguistics, this volume explores four case studies to demonstrate Matthew's non-messianic mapping scheme: the eschatological shepherd, the vineyard care-giver, temple construction imagery, and the Isaian herald. These reveal how Matthew's theology of discipleship as participating in Jesus'own vocation extends even to his hermeneutical paradigm of fulfillment.

In this volume, I. Tzvi Abusch presents studies written over a span of forty years prior to his retirement from Brandeis University in 2019. They reflect several themes that he has pursued in addition to his work on witchcraft literature and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Part 1 includes general articles on Mesopotamian magic, religion, and mythology, followed by a set of articles on Akkadian prayers, especially šuillas, focusing on exegetical and linguistic (synchronic) studies and on diachronic analyses. Part 2 contains a series of literary studies of Mesopotamian and biblical classics. Part 3 is devoted to comparative studies of terms and phenomena. Part 4 examines legal texts. The Harvard Semitic Studies series publishes volumes from the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Other series offered by Brill that publish volumes from the Museum include Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant and Harvard Semitic Monographs, https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications.

Cushites in the Hebrew Bible offers a reassessment of Cushite ethnographic representations in the biblical literature as a counterpoint to misconceptions about Africa and people of African descent which are largely a feature of the modern age. Whereas current interpretations have tended to emphasize unfavourable portraits of the people biblical writers called Cushites, Kevin Burrell illuminates the biblical perspective through a comparative assessment of ancient and modern forms of identity construction. Past and present modes of defining difference betray both similarities and differences to ethnic representations in the Hebrew Bible, providing important contexts for understanding the biblical view. This book contributes to a clearer understanding of the theological, historical, and ethnic dynamics underpinning representations of Cushites in the Hebrew Bible.

In The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4, Jaap Doedens offers an overview of the history of exegesis of the enigmatic text about the ‘sons of God', the ‘daughters of men', and the ‘giants'. First, he analyzes the text of Gen 6:1–4. Subsequently, he tracks the different exegetical proposals from the earliest exegesis until those of modern times. He further provides the reader with an evaluation of the meaning of the expression ‘sons of God'in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. In the last chapter, he concentrates on the message and function of Gen 6:1–4. This volume comprehensively gathers ancient and modern exegetical attempts, providing the means for an ongoing dialogue about this essentially complex and elusive passage.

In Philo of Alexandria and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and Arguments, a fresh and more complete image of Philo of Alexandria as a careful reader, interpreter, and critic of Greek literature is offered. Greek mythology plays a significant role in Philo of Alexandria's exegetical oeuvre. Philo explicitly adopts or subtly evokes narratives, episodes and figures from Greek mythology as symbols whose didactic function we need to unravel, exactly as the hidden teaching of Moses'narration has to be revealed by interpreters of Bible. By analyzing specific mythologems and narrative cycles, the contributions to this volume pave the way to a better understanding of Philo's different attitudes towards literary and philosophical mythology.

In Mittani Palaeography, Zenobia Homan analyses cuneiform writing from the Late Bronze Age Mittani state, which was situated in the region between modern Aleppo, Erbil and Diyarbakır. The ancient communication network reveals a story of local scribal tradition blended with regional adaptation and international political change, reflecting the ways in which written knowledge travelled within the cuneiform culture of the Middle East. Mittani signs, their forms, and variants, are described and defined in detail utilising a large digital database and discussed in relation to other regional corpora (Assyro-Mittanian, Middle Assyrian, Nuzi and Tigunanum among others). The collected data indicate that Mittanian was comparatively standardised – an innovation for the period – signifying the existence of a centralised system of scribal training.

This volume explores the intersection between historiography and related genres in antiquity. Papers cover the geographical range from China through the near east to the classical period in the Mediterranean. Topics addressed include the place in ancient Chinese historiography of philosophical argument; the nature and kind of historical text in the Hittite, Babylonian, Persian and biblical periods, including (for the first time) a full transliteration and translation of the Old Hittite story of Anum-hirbi and Zalpa, and a new interpretation of the Darius inscription at Behistun; and the relation of rhetorical stratagems and theory to Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. Contributors also consider the relationship between texts, including the war narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides, and the propriety of different schemes of generic classification.

This collection of essays treats the fundamental issue of the correlation of archaeology and texts in recreating the ancient Mediterranean world. Contributions from Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians address specific points of correlation, and their potential for future productive research in the Mediterranean.After an introduction to the issue of texts and archaeology, the essays treat concepts such as: site as text, artifactual contingency of meaning, correlating survey with documents, contextual independence of evidence, textual bases for archaeological approaches, and correlating faunal evidence with texts.This book will be of important use to archaeologists and historians of the Mediterranean, and scholars of archaeological research in historical archaeology in general.

The Hebrew Bible contains varying opinions concerning which cultic items or objects used in worship were appropriate for use within YHWHism and which were not. By analyzing every passage which mentions'high places'(bamot), sacred trees or poles (asherim), standing stones, altars, and cultic statuary, this study reveals that a remarkable diversity of cultic practices fell within the bounds of acceptability in ancient Israel. Also included are three chapters exploring the particular understandings of these items in the LXX, Vulgate, Targumim, and other early Jewish sources. Opposing the long-held generalization that use of these items was unanimously viewed by biblical authors as syncretistic, this study shows that, with the exception of cultic statuary, all of these items were, at one time or another, legitimate components of Israelite worship. Thus they provide witness to a diversity of theologies and ritual practices within YHWHism previously unappreciated.

In Wom(b)an: A Cultural-Narrative Reading of the Hebrew Bible Barrenness Narratives Janice Pearl Ewurama De-Whyte offers a reading of the Hebrew Bible barrenness narratives. The original word “wom(b)an” visually underscores the centrality of a productive womb to female identity in the ANE and Hebrew contexts. Conversely, barrenness was the ultimate tragedy and shame of a woman. Utilizing Akan cultural custom as a lens through which to read the Hebrew barrenness tradition, De-Whyte uncovers another kind of barrenness within these narratives. Her term “social barrenness” depicts the various situations of childlessness that are generally unrecognized in western cultures due to the western biomedical definitions of infertility. Whether biological or social, barrenness was perceived to be the greatest threat to a woman's identity and security as well as the continuity of the lineage. Wom(b)an examines these narratives in light of the cultural meanings of barrenness within traditional cultures, ancient and present.

Ve-Eileh Divrei David: Essays in Semitics, Hebrew Bible and History of Biblical Scholarship, covers the career of S. David Sperling, a well-known and respected Biblical scholar. It is divided into three sections representing the three foci of the author's work namely, Semitic philology, Bible, and the history of biblical scholarship. The chapters represent a remarkable 40 years of scholarship and convey deep knowledge of a range of topics that is rarely paralleled in today's scholarship. “These 22 (previously published) essays reflect a lifetime's contribution to the field of Semitic linguistics and philology … The treatments are rich in depth, and reflect serious engagement with the issues under discussion …” -Sandra Jacobs, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43.5 (2019)

In Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics, Abraham Winitzer provides a detailed study of the Akkadian Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1600 BC) omen collections stemming from extispicy, the most significant Mesopotamian divination technique for most of that civilization's history. Paying close attention to these texts'organizational structure, Winitzer details the mechanics responsible for their origins and development, and highlights key characteristics of a conceptual framework that helped reconfigure Mesopotamian divination into a literature in line with significant, new forms of literary expression from the same time. This literature, Winitzer concludes, represents an early form of scientific reasoning that began to appreciate the centrality of texts and textual interpretation in this civilization's production, organization, and conception of knowledge.

In Re-Imagining Abraham: A Re-Assessment of the Influence of Deuteronomism in Genesis Megan Warner revisits the tradition that Genesis was edited by editors sympathetic to the theology of the Deuteronomist. On the basis of close, contextual readings of the four passages most commonly attributed to (semi-)Deuteronomistic hands, Warner argues that editorial use of Deuteronomistic language and themes points not to a sympathy with Deuteronomistic theology but rather to a sustained project to review and even subvert that theology. Warner's ‘re-imagining'of Abraham demonstrates how Israel's forebear was ‘re-imagined'in the post-exilic context for the purpose of offering the returning exiles a way forward at a time when all the old certainties, and even continued relationship with Yahweh, seemed lost.