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Friendship in the Hebrew Bible
The first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew Bible Friendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross disciplinary interest in contemporary scholarship, has been largely ignored by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, possibly because of its complexity and elusiveness. Filling a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of biblical texts, Saul M. Olyan provides this original, accessible analysis of a key form of social relationship. In this thorough and compelling assessment, Olyan analyzes a wide range of texts, including prose narratives, prophetic materials, psalms, pre-Hellenistic wisdom collections, and the Hellenistic-era wisdom book Ben Sira. This in-depth, contextually sensitive, and theoretically engaged study explores how the expectations of friends and family members overlap and differ, examining, among other things, characteristics that make the friend a distinct social actor; failed friendship; and friendships in narratives such as those of Ruth and Naomi, and Jonathan and David. Olyan presents a comprehensive look at what constitutes friendship in the Hebrew Bible.
With the Loyal You Show Yourself Loyal
Contributors to this volume come together to honor the lifetime of work of Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. Essays by his students, colleagues, and friends focus on and engage with his work on relationships in the Hebrew Bible, from the marking of status in relationships of inequality, to human family, friend, and sexual relationships, to relationships between divine beings.
Biblical Mourning
A comprehensive analysis of the ritual dimensions of biblical mourning rites, this book also seeks to illuminate mourning's social dimensions through engagement with anthropological discussion of mourning, from Hertz and van Gennep to contemporaries such as Metcalf and Huntington and Bloch and Parry. The author identifies four types of biblical mourning, and argues that mourning the dead is paradigmatic. He investigates why mourning can occur among petitioners in a sanctuary setting evengiven mourning's death associations; why certain texts proscribe some mourning rites (laceration and shaving) but not others; and why the mixing of the rites of mourning and rejoicing, normally incompatible, occurs in the same ritual in several biblical texts.
Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible
"In this book, the author considers whether there are biblical texts that ascribe an implicit form of legal personhood as well as genuine legal rights to animals and, if so, which rights, to which animals in particular-domesticated, wild, both- and for what purpose? He also explores how the evidence of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) might contribute to contemporary debate about animal rights in the academy, in the courts, in the public square and in religious communities. Given the increasing interest in the status of animals in the Americas, Europe and across the world, the strides forward made in recent years by animal rights advocates in any number of countries and sub-national constituencies, and the fact that experts in the biblical field have mainly ignored the question of animal rights, while non-specialists in law or philosophy who argue on behalf of animals have tended to read the Hebrew Bible superficially and in an overly generalizing manner, an exploration of what the Hebrew Bible has to contribute to the question of animal rights is both timely and necessary"--
Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion
This volume assesses past, theoretically engaged work on Israelite religion and presents new approaches to particular problems and larger interpretive and methodological questions. It gathers previously unpublished research by senior and mid-career scholars well known for their contributions in the area of social theory and the study of Israelite religion and by junior scholars whose writing is just beginning to have a serious impact on the field. The volume begins with a critical introduction by the editor. Topics of interest to the contributors include gender, violence, social change, the festivals, the dynamics of shame and honor, and the relationship of text to ritual. The contributors engage theory from social and cultural anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ritual studies. Theoretical models are evaluated in light of the primary data, and some authors modify or adapt theory to increase its utility for biblical studies. The contributors are Susan Ackerman, Stephen L. Cook, Ronald Hendel, T. M. Lemos, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Carol Meyers, Saul M. Olyan, Rüdiger Schmitt, Robert R. Wilson, and David P. Wright.
Disability in the Hebrew Bible
Mental and physical disability, ubiquitous in texts of the Hebrew Bible, receive their first thoroughgoing treatment in this monograph. Olyan seeks to reconstruct the Hebrew Bible's particular ideas of what is disabling and their potential social ramifications. Biblical representations of disability and biblical classification schemas - both explicit and implicit - are compared to those of the Hebrew Bible's larger ancient West Asian cultural context, and to those of the later Jewish biblical interpreters who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study will help the reader gain a deeper and more subtle understanding of the ways in which biblical writers constructed hierarchically significant difference and privileged certain groups (e.g., persons with "whole" bodies) over others (e.g., persons with physical "defects"). It also explores how ancient interpreters of the Hebrew Bible such as the Qumran sectarians reproduced and reconfigured earlier biblical notions of disability and earlier classification models for their own contexts and ends.
Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel
During the last decade or so there has been a renewed interest in the study of cult and priesthood. The various individuals who have contributed essays to this volume are of both junior and senior rank and from both Christian and Jewish backgrounds. Certain essays represent the fruitful interchange that is now developing among historians of religion, anthropologists and biblical scholars. Others focus on parallels between aspects of Israelite religion and their counterparts in Canaanite and early Greek contexts. There are also contributions on the literary shape of the priestly law-code.
Household and Family Religion in Antiquity
The first book to explore the religious dimensions of the family and the household in ancient Mediterranean and West Asian antiquity. Advances our understanding of household and familial religion, as opposed to state-sponsored or civic temple cults Reconstructs domestic and family religious practices in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Israel, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, Emar, and Philistia Explores many household rituals, such as providing for ancestral spirits, and petitioning of a household's patron deities or of spirits associated with the house itself Examines lifecycle rituals – from pregnancy and birth to maturity, old age, death, and beyond Looks at religious practices relating to the household both within the home itself and other spaces, such as at extramural tombs and local sanctuaries
Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse
Sexual orientation is a topic of intense debate within America's religious traditions. These discussions have had a significant impact on the formation of public policy, as speakers who locate themselves squarely within religious traditions have articulated positions on both sides in recent arguments concerning gays in the military, civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, gay marriage, parenting and foster parenting, and benefits for partners of gay and lesbian employees of major corporations and institutions. This volume, which stems from a 1995 conference at Brown University, aims to promote both academic and public understanding of the different positions that exist on sexual orie...
Rites and Rank
Good and evil, clean and unclean, rich and poor, self and other. The nature and function of such binary oppositions have long intrigued scholars in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the opening chapters of Genesis, in which God separates day from night, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate throughout the Hebrew Bible. In this groundbreaking work melding critical exegesis and contemporary theory, Saul M. Olyan considers the prevalence of polarities in biblical discourse and expounds their significance for the social and religious institutions of ancient Israel. Extant biblical narrative and lega...
