The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated

The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated
Author: Jacob Hoftijzer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789004093171

The book concerns the inscription written on wall plaster discovered in 1967 at Deir cAlla in the Jordan Valley, and published in 1976. Using new data and the discussions about the text available to date, it deals with six different aspects of study of the text, namely the archaeological context, the palaeography, the general interpretation as well as the interpretation of several separate passages, the language used, and its relation to Old Testament studies.

The Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla Re-Evaluated

The Balaam Text from Deir 'Alla Re-Evaluated
Author: Hoftijzer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004666354

The book concerns the inscription written on wall plaster discovered in 1967 at Deir cAlla in the Jordan Valley, and published in 1976. Using new data and the discussions about the text available to date, it deals with six different aspects of study of the text, namely the archaeological context, the palaeography, the general interpretation as well as the interpretation of several separate passages, the language used, and its relation to Old Testament studies.

Writings from Ancient Israel

Writings from Ancient Israel
Author: K. A. D. Smelik
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1991-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664253080

"On the walls of buildings . . . on leather and papyrus, Israelites living under the monarchy (1000-587 B.C.E.) penned or scratched texts ranging from food and crop inventories . . . to memorials. . . . Smelik . . . (has compiled these) remnants of early writing . . . in light of their historical, social, and biblical contexts".--Douglas A. Knight, Vanderbilt University.

'The Spirit of the Lord Came Upon Me'

'The Spirit of the Lord Came Upon Me'
Author: Lester L. Grabbe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2024-01-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567710718

Lester Grabbe here distills his wide body of work on the subject of prophecy. The volume considers prophecy in different cultural contexts across ancient Israel and surrounding areas. Beginning with a consideration of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, Grabbe then looks at it as phenomenon in the ancient near east, including Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. From this background in the immediate context of ancient Israel, Grabbe then widens the cultural lens to consider prophecy in more global environments, including Africa and the Americas, and recent examples of pseudo-biblical prophets such as Joseph Smith. In the final part of the book Grabbe then analyses these different prophetic types and forms, looking at the continuing traditions of prophecy alongside their ancient roots.

YHWH is King

YHWH is King
Author: Shawn W. Flynn
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004263047

Amidst various methodologies for the comparative study of the Hebrew Bible, at times the opportunity arises to improve on a method recently introduced into the field. In YHWH is King, Flynn uses the anthropological method of cultural translation to study diachronic change in YHWH’s kingship. Here, such change is compared to a similar Babylonian development to Marduk’s kingship. Based on that comparison and informed by cultural translation, Flynn discovers that Judahite scribes suppressed the earlier YHWH warrior king and promoted a creator/universal king in order to combat the increasing threat of Neo-Assyrian imperialism. Flynn thus opens the possibility, that Judahite scribes engaged in a cultural translation of Marduk to YHWH, in order to respond to the mounting Neo-Assyrian presence.

Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel

Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel
Author: Heath D. Dewrell
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2017-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646022017

Among the many religious acts condemned in the Hebrew Bible, child sacrifice stands out as particularly horrifying. The idea that any group of people would willingly sacrifice their own children to their god(s) is so contrary to modern moral sensibilities that it is difficult to imagine that such a practice could have ever existed. Nonetheless, the existence of biblical condemnation of these rites attests to the fact that some ancient Israelites in fact did sacrifice their children. Indeed, a close reading of the evidence—biblical, archaeological, epigraphic, etc.—indicates that there are at least three different types of Israelite child sacrifice, each with its own history, purpose, and function. In addition to examining the historical reality of Israelite child sacrifice, Dewrell’s study also explores the biblical rhetoric condemning the practice. While nearly every tradition preserved in the Hebrew Bible rejects child sacrifice as abominable to Yahweh, the rhetorical strategies employed by the biblical writers vary to a surprising degree. Thus, even in arguing against the practice of child sacrifice, the biblical writers themselves often disagreed concerning why Yahweh condemned the rites and why they came to exist in the first place.

Life on the Watershed

Life on the Watershed
Author: Eva Kaptijn
Publisher: Sidestone Press
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2009
Genre: Agriculture, Ancient
ISBN: 9088900299

The scarcity of water is a major problem in many parts of the Near East today and has been so in the past. To survive in such a region people should be able to structurally attain more water than rainfall alone can supply. The archaeology of this area should not only identify when people inhabited such a region and what the character of this habitation was, but also how people were able to survive in such a region and why they chose to live there in the first place. In this book these questions have been studied for the Zerqa Triangle; a region in the middle Jordan Valley around Tell Deir 'Alla (Jordan). By means of a detailed pedestrian archaeological survey the intensity of habitation of the region from the Neolithic to early modern periods is investigated. Efforts have been undertaken to reconstruct the agricultural practices in the various periods and simultaneously the means by which the different communities were able to practice agriculture; in other words, how did they irrigate the land? By focussing on the different social responses of communities, conclusions have been drawn on how and why people managed to create a living in this arid, but potentially very fertile region. This book not only contributes to the ongoing discussion of the archaeology of marginal areas, but also provides a huge amount of new data on the archaeology of the Jordan Valley, both in the form of newly discovered settlement sites from several different periods as well as remains from several more inconspicuous types of human activity present in the countryside.

The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam

The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam
Author: George H. van Kooten
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2008-05-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047433130

This volume deals with the pagan prophet Balaam who figures in the book of Numbers. By the very nature of his stature as a non-Israelite, pagan prophet, the figure of Balaam raises important questions with regard to the nature of prophecy and the relation between the Israelite God and the pagan nations. The conflicting stories and potent oracles of Balaam in Numbers 22-24 and other parts of the Jewish Scriptures prompted extensive reflection on this ambiguous figure. Thus the leading perspective developed in this volume is the often simultaneous praise and criticism of Balaam as a prestigious pagan prophet throughout ancient Judaism, early Christianity and the early Koranic commentaries. The papers are clustered in four sections which deal with (1) Balaam in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East, and comparable figures in Ancient Greece; (2) Balaam in Ancient Judaism; (3) Balaam in the New Testament & Early Christianity; and (4) Balaam in the Koran and early Koranic commentaries. The reception of this enigmatic figure can be characterized as the simultaneous praise and criticism of a pagan prophet. The book is particularly useful as it also contains Émile Puech’s newly reconstructed text, translation and commentary of the first combination of the Deir ‘Alla inscriptions which contain an excerpt of the book of the historical Balaam. Combined with the other papers, the volume pictures a fascinating continuum between paganism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Synchronic or Diachronic?

Synchronic or Diachronic?
Author: Johannes de Moor
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004497927

In Old Testament exegesis a gap is widening between the adherents of the "diachronic", historical-critical approach and those who out of dissatisfaction with both the results and the methods of this "classical" approach opt for a wide variety of "synchronic" approaches. The Ninth Joint Meeting of the Dutch "Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap" and the British "Society for Old Testament Study", held at Kampen 28-31 August 1994, brought together partisans from both camps who engaged in a most interesting and fruitful debate on one of the major methodological issues confronting modern O.T. scholarship. This volume contains the papers read as well as some reports from the workshops. With indices of texts and subjects.

The Finger of the Scribe

The Finger of the Scribe
Author: William M. Schniedewind
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 0190052481

One of the enduring problems in biblical studies is how the Bible came to be written. Clearly, scribes were involved. But our knowledge of scribal training in ancient Israel is limited. William Schniedewind explores the unexpected cache of inscriptions discovered at a remote, Iron Age military post called Kuntillet 'Ajrud to assess the question of how scribes might have been taught to write. Here, far from such urban centers as Jerusalem or Samaria, plaster walls and storage pithoi were littered with inscriptions. Apart from the sensational nature of some of the contents-perhaps suggesting Yahweh had a consort-these inscriptions also reflect actual writing practices among soldiers stationed near the frontier. What emerges is a very different picture of how writing might have been taught, as opposed to the standard view of scribal schools in the main population centers.