Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries

Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries
Author: Eckart Frahm
Publisher:
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2011
Genre: Akkadian language
ISBN: 9783868350562

The systematic study of written texts began, not in Biblical Israel or the classical world, but in ancient Mesopotamia. Nearly one thousand clay tablets from Babylonia and Assyria, dating from the eighth to the second century BCE, comprise the earliest substantial corpus of text commentaries known from anywhere in the world. Texts commented on by Mesopotamian scholars include literary works, rituals and incantations, medical treatises, lexical lists, laws, and, most importantly, omen texts. Frahm's book provides the first comprehensive study of the challenging and so far little studied Babylonian and Assyrian text commentaries. Topics discussed include the place of commentaries in the Mesopotamian philological tradition, cuneiform commentary types, hermeneutic techniques used by the ancient scholars, the sources of their explanations, the socio-cultural milieu of Mesopotamian commentary studies, canonization and the formation of the commentary tradition, the reception history of the Babylonian Epic of Creation, and the legacy of Babylonian and Assyrian hermeneutics. A complete catalogue of the commentaries and full editions of two typical examples complete the study, which is accompanied by a bibliography and ample indexes.

Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues

Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues
Author: Ulrike Steinert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2018-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501504878

The reconstruction of ancient Mesopotamian medical, ritual and omen compendia and their complex history is still characterised by many difficulties, debates and gaps due to fragmentary or unpublished evidence. This book offers the first complete edition of the Assur Medical Catalogue, an 8th or 7th century BCE list of therapeutic texts, which forms a core witness for the serialisation of medical compendia in the 1st millennium BCE. The volume presents detailed analyses of this and several other related catalogues of omen series and rituals, constituting the corpora of divination and healing disciplines. The contributions discuss links between catalogues and textual sources, providing new insights into the development of compendia between serialization, standardization and diversity of local traditions. Though its a novel corpus-based approach, this volume revolutionizes the current understanding of Mesopotamian medical texts and the healing disciplines of "conjurer" and "physician". The research presented here allows one to identify core text corpora for these disciplines, as well as areas of exchange and borrowings between them.

Before Nature

Before Nature
Author: Francesca Rochberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2020-08-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 022675958X

In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries

The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries
Author: Uri Gabbay
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004323473

In The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries Uri Gabbay offers the first detailed study of the well-developed set of technical terms found in ancient Mesopotamian commentaries. Understanding the hermeneutical function of these terms is essential for reconstructing the ancient Mesopotamian exegetical tradition. Using the exegetical terminology attested in the large corpus of Akkadian commentaries from the first millennium BCE, the book addresses the hermeneutics of the commentaries, investigates the scholastic environment in which they were composed, and considers the relationship between the terminology of commentaries and the divine authority of the texts they elucidate. The book concludes with a comparative study that traces links between the terminology used in Akkadian commentaries and that used in early Hebrew exegesis.

Text as Revelation

Text as Revelation
Author: Hanna Tervanotko
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2023-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567714098

Text as Revelation analyses the shift of revelatory experiences from oral to written that is described in ancient Jewish literature, including rabbinic texts. The individual essays seek to understand how, why, and for whom texts became the locus of revelation. While the majority of the contributors analyze ancient Jewish literature for depictions of oral and written revelation, such as the Hebrew Bible and the literature of the Second Temple era, a number of articles also investigate textualization of revelation in cognate cultures, analyzing Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek sources. With subjects ranging from Ancient Egyptian and Sibylline oracles to Hellenistic writings and the books of Isaiah, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, the studies in this volume bring together established and new voices reflecting on the issues raised by the interplay between writing and (divinatory) revelation.

Karduniaš. Babylonia under the Kassites 2

Karduniaš. Babylonia under the Kassites 2
Author: Alexa Bartelmus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 150150424X

Karduniaš, as the kingdom of the Kassites in Babylonia was called in ancient times, was the neighbor and rival of great powers such as Egypt, the Hittites, and Assyria. But while our knowledge of the latter kingdoms has made huge progress in the last decades, the Kassites have until recently been largely ignored by modern scholarship. Recently a number of scholars have embarked on research into different aspects of Late Bronze Age Babylonia. The desire to share the results of these new investigations resulted in an international conference, which was held at Munich University in July 2011. The presentations given at this meeting have been revised for publication in the current volume. This book gives an overview of current research on the Kassites and is the first larger survey of their culture ever. An invaluable introduction by Kassite expert Professor John A. Brinkman is followed by seventeen specialist contributions investigating different aspects of the Kassites. These include detailed historical, social, cultural, archaeological, and art historical studies concerning the Kassites from their first arrival in Mesopotamia, during the period when a Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylonia (c. 1500-1550 BC), and in the subsequent aftermath. Concentrating on southern Mesopotamia the contributions also discuss Kassite relations and presence in neighboring regions. The book is completed by a substantial bibliography and a detailed index.

Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature

Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature
Author: Abraham Winitzer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2017-07-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004347003

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.

Old Testament Cosmology and Divine Accommodation

Old Testament Cosmology and Divine Accommodation
Author: John W. Hilber
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2020-04-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532676239

In order to reconcile the discrepancies between ancient and modern cosmology, confessional scholars from every viewpoint on the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis agree that God accommodated language to finite human understanding. But in the history of interpretation, no consensus has emerged regarding what accommodation entails at the linguistic level. More precise consideration of how the ancient cognitive environment functions in the informative intention of the divine and human authors is necessary. Not only does relevance theory validate interpretative options that are inherently most probable within the primary communication situation, but the application of relevance theory can also help disentangle the complexities of dual authorship inherent in any model of accommodation. The results also make a salutary contribution to the theological reading of Scripture.

Archaeologies of Text

Archaeologies of Text
Author: Matthew T. Rutz
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782977694

Scholars working in a number of disciplines – archaeologists, classicists, epigraphers, papyrologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, Mayanists, philologists, and ancient historians of all stripes – routinely engage with ancient textual sources that are either material remains from the archaeological record or historical products of other connections between the ancient world and our own. Examining the archaeology-text nexus from multiple perspectives, contributors to this volume discuss current theoretical and practical problems that have grown out of their work at the boundary of the division between archaeology and the study of early inscriptions. In 12 representative case-studies drawn from research in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica, scholars use various lenses to critically examine the interface between archaeology and the study of ancient texts, rethink the fragmentation of their various specialized disciplines, and illustrate the best in current approaches to contextual analysis. The collection of essays also highlights recent trends in the development of documentation and dissemination technologies, engages with the ethical and intellectual quandaries presented by ancient inscriptions that lack archaeological context, and sets out to find profitable future directions for interdisciplinary research.

The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text

The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text
Author: Paul D. Mandel
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2017-05-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004336885

In The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text, Paul Mandel presents a comprehensive study of the words darash and midrash from the Bible until the early rabbinic periods (3rd century CE). In contrast to current understandings in which the words are identified with modes of analysis of the biblical text, Mandel claims that they refer to instruction in law and not to an interpretation of text. Mandel traces the use of these words as they are associated with the scribe (sofer), the doresh ha-torah in the Dead Sea scrolls, the “exegetes of the laws” in the writings of Josephus and the rabbinic “sage” (ḥakham), showing the development of the uses of midrash as a form of instruction throughout these periods.