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The present volume collects eighteen essays exploring the history of ancient Near Eastern studies. Combining diverse approaches—synthetic and analytic, diachronic and transnational—this collection offers critical reflections on the who, why, and how of this cluster of fields. How have political contexts determined the conduct of research? How do academic agendas reflect larger social, economic, and cultural interests? How have schools of thought and intellectual traditions configured, and sometimes predetermined, the study of the ancient Near East? Contributions treating research during the Nazi and fascist periods examine the interpenetration of academic work with politics, while contri...
Ferment is the correct word by which to characterize current Jeremiah studies, a deep and broad stirring that relies on previous scholarship but that seeks to move beyond that scholarship in bold and new ways. This collection of fine essays not only reflects that ferment but in important ways contributes to it and advances the discussion. Most broadly, the current discussion seeks to move beyond the historical-critical categories of Sigmund Mowinckel and Bernhard Duhm and the classic formulation of three sources, A, B, and C. In Jeremiah as in other parts of biblical scholarship, the new questions concern the inadequacy of historical-critical readings of a positivistic kind and the prospect ...
The Name Command (NC) is usually interpreted as a prohibition against speaking Yhwh’s name in a particular context: false oaths, wrongful pronunciation, irreverent worship, magical practices, cursing, false teaching, and the like. However, the NC lacks the contextual specification needed to support the command as speech related. Taking seriously the narrative context at Sinai and the closest lexical parallels, a different picture emerges—one animated by concrete rituals and their associated metaphorical concepts. The unique phrase ns' shm is one of several expressions arising from the conceptual metaphor, election as branding, that finds analogies in high-priest regalia as well as in var...
The obvious riddles and difficulties in Exod 3:13–15 and Exod 6:2–8 have attracted an overwhelming amount of attention and comment. These texts make important theological statements about the divine name YHWH and the contours of the divine character. From the enigmatic statements in Exod 3:13–15, most scholars reconstruct the original form of the name as “Yahweh,” which is thought to describe YHWH’s creative power or self-existence. Similarly, Exod 6:3 has become a classic proof-text for the Documentary Hypothesis and an indication of different aspects of God’s character as shown in history. Despite their seeming importance for “defining” the divine name, these texts are an...
How is Yahweh to be differentiated from other deities? What is Yahweh's relationship to Israel in exile?".
Prepared by two of the best-known scholars doing research on the language and texts of the ancient city of Ugarit (modern Tell Ras Shamra), A Manual of Ugaritic was first published in French in 2004 in two volumes. Eisenbrauns is pleased to make it available now in a corrected and updated version, in one volume, with significant enhancements. This book comprises a historical introduction to the texts and language, an outline of the grammar of Ugaritic, a bibliography, facsimiles of a number of texts, and a glossary and text concordance—in short, everything that a student needs for entrée into the language. This English edition comes with digital access to a hyperlinked PDF version of the grammar, with color photos of all of the texts included in the book. The hyperlinks enable the reader to move easily from the discussion in the grammar to a copy of a text, to the color photo of the text, and back again, making the material easier to use for students and researchers.
Nearly 50 students, colleagues, and friends of Nicholas Postgate join in tribute to an Assyriologist and Archaeologist who has had a profound influence on both disciplines. His work and scholarship are strongly felt in Iraq, where he was the Director of the British School of Archaeology, in the United Kingdom, where he is Emeritus Professor of Assyriology in the University of Cambridge, and in the subject internationally. He has fostered close collaboration with colleagues in Turkey and Iraq, where he has been involved in archaeological investigation, always seeking to meld the study of texts with that of material remains. The essays embrace the full range of Postgate's interests, including government and administration, art history, population studies, the economy, religion and divination, foodstuffs, ceramics, and Akkadian and Sumerian language--in a word, all of ancient Mesopotamian civilisation.
While each of the previously known archives from the Third Dynasty of Ur has provided distinct views of Sumerian society, those from Iri-Saĝrig present an extraordinary range of new sources, depicting a cosmopolitan Sumerian/Akkadian city unlike any other from this period. In this publication, Marcel Sigrist and Tohru Ozaki present more than two thousand newly identified tablets, mostly from Iri-Saĝrig. This unique and extensive corpus elucidates the importance that Iri-Saĝrig represented politically, militarily, and culturally in Sumer. Although these tablets were not able to be cleaned, baked, or photographed, the authors’ transliterations are based on the original tablets, often afte...
Sixteen essays from the Albright conference held at the Johns Hopkins University charting the course of ancient Near Eastern studies in the twenty-first century. This landmark volume is essential reading for both students and scholars.