Mesopotamian Civilization and the Origins of the New Testament

Mesopotamian Civilization and the Origins of the New Testament
Author: Robin Baker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2022-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009098942

Redefines conceptions of the New Testament's origins by illuminating the East's contribution to the formation of early Christology. This book provides a missing link between scholarship on the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East and scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity.

Mesopotamia and the Bible

Mesopotamia and the Bible
Author: Mark W. Chavalas
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2003-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567569004

The study of Syro-Mesopotamian civilization has greatly advanced in the past twenty-five years. In particular the renewed interest in Eastern (or 'Mesopotamian') Syria has radically altered our understanding of not only the ancient Near East, but of the Bible as well. With Syria east of the Euphrates becoming one of the most active areas of archaeological investigation in the entire Near East, the need for a synthesis of this research and its integration with the Hebrew Bible has greatly increased.This volume charts the state of our knowledge, following a general chronological flow, and will appeal not only to scholars of the ancient Near East but also to Biblical specialists interested in the historical and religious backgrounds to the Israelite and Judahite kingdoms.

Secrecy and the Gods

Secrecy and the Gods
Author: Alan Lenzi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

Secrecy and the Gods is a comparative mythological study of the human reception and treatment of divine secret knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia and biblical Israel. The human royal council was the social model for ancient ideas about divine knowledge being secret - just as human kings had secrets so too did the gods. Diviners who received this knowledge from the gods in an on-going, ad hoc manner were an essential link between the divine assembly and the human royal council for whom such knowledge was intended. Scribes eventually adapted the ad hoc divinatory means of receiving divine communications to their culturally significant texts. By discursively asserting a historical connection between themselves and unique mediators with a close divine affiliation (the apkallus and Moses), the scribes constructed myths that legitimated their texts as divine revelation and claimed these were received in history through normal scribal channels. In this manner, scribes fixed the secret of the gods permanently among humans in textualized form that valorized their own position within society. Although the origin of divine secret knowledge was rooted in a common mythological idea of the divine assembly, its treatment was quite distinct. The Mesopotamians guarded divine secret knowledge through various scribal means, including the attachment of a Geheimwissen colophon to certain tablets (treated exhaustively), whereas biblical Israel published it openly. The contrast in treatment of divine secret knowledge was directly related to different mytho-political self-understandings: Mesopotamia's imperial aspirations versus biblical Israel's vassaldom. As vassals to Yahweh, the divine imperial king, the kings of Judah and Israel as presented in the biblical material were not to formulate secret orders; they were only to obey them.

The Garden of Eden Myth

The Garden of Eden Myth
Author: Walter Mattfeld
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2010-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0557885302

Scholarly proposals are presented for the pre-biblical origin in Mesopotamian myths of the Garden of Eden story. Some Liberal PhD scholars (1854-2010) embracing an Anthropological viewpoint have proposed that the Hebrews have recast earlier motifs appearing in Mesopotamian myths. Eden's garden is understood to be a recast of the gods' city-gardens in the Sumerian Edin, the floodplain of Lower Mesopotamia. It is understood that the Hebrews in the book of Genesis are refuting the Mesopotamian account of why Man was created and his relationship with his Creators (the gods and goddesses). They deny that Man is a sinner and rebel because he was made in the image of gods and goddesses who were themselves sinners and rebels, who made man to be their agricultural slave to grow and harvest their food and feed it to them in temple sacrifices thereby ending the need of the gods to toil for their food in the city-gardens of Edin in ancient Sumer.

The Decline of Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization

The Decline of Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization
Author: Xina M. Uhl
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2016-07-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1477789324

It may be hard to wrap one’s head around how such a thriving people as the ancient Mesopotamians could fall. This volume offers readers a detailed overview of how this complex and intriguing people declined from their previous prosperity. Readers will journey through the ebb and flow of the civilization, taking in information about the various factors that ultimately worked against them. The text explains the natural causes, such as drought, the structural issues, and invasions that led to the downfall of a civilization that nevertheless offers a lasting legacy.

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
Author: Stephen Bertman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2005-07-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195183649

Modern-day archaeological discoveries in the Near East continue to illuminate man's understanding of the ancient world. This illustrated handbook describes the culture, history, and people of Mesopotamia, as well as their struggle for survival and happiness.

Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel

Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel
Author: Richard J. Clifford
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1589832191

The last fifty years have seen a dramatic increase of interest in the wisdom literature of the Bible, as scholars have come to appreciate the subtlety and originality of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes as well as of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon. Interest has likewise grown in the wisdom literatures of the neighboring cultures of Canaan, Egypt, and especially Mesopotamia. To help readers understand the place of biblical wisdom within this broader context, including its originality and distinctiveness, this volume offers a collection of essays by Assyriologists and biblicists on the social, intellectual, and literary setting of Mesopotamian wisdom; on specific wisdom texts; and on key themes common to both Mesopotamian and biblical culture. --From publisher's description.

The Treasures of Darkness

The Treasures of Darkness
Author: Thorkild Jacobsen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 1976-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300022913

" ... No one can plausibly deny that the religious development of the peoples of Canaan (and indeed of all the ancient world around the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus river) were affected by the cultural and religious developments in Mesopotamia, the centre of the region, and a fertile region second to none known in the world, on a par with the Nile, around which another major civilization arose. This is a text of history of Mesopotamia in its own right. By the time history gets back this far, the lines become very blurred, rather like parallel lines intersecting on the horizon. Literature, religion, archaeology, sociology, psychology -- all of these disciplines become intertwined in Jacobsen's text as he looks at Sumerian society. The book is organized with an introduction, then according to time divisions of fourth, third, and second millennia, then concludes with an epilogue into the first millennium, during which the Bible as we know it (and most ancient history such as is commonly known occurred) came to be"--Amazon.com.

Ancient Mesopotamia

Ancient Mesopotamia
Author: A. Leo Oppenheim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2013-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 022617767X

"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.