Download or read book A Theocratic Yehud written by Jeremiah W. Cataldo and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a fresh reevaluation of Yehud in the Persian period, addressing in particular the dynamics of its relationship to the Persian imperial government.

Download or read book A Theocratic Yehud written by Jeremiah W. Cataldo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the variety of social-political reconstructions of Persian-period Yehud, one "consensus" stands out - one which states that the Jerusalem priesthood enjoyed a prominent level of authority, symbolized in the Jerusalem temple. Unfortunately, this leads easily into conclusions of a theocracy in Yehud. The problem, in part, is due to the immediate association of priests assumed to be authoritative with that of a theocratic governing structure. To address this problem, at least three aspects of Yehud's governing structure(s) require further attention: (1) the social implications of a particular governing structure within a society; (2) the developments of a society leading up to that governing structure; and (3) a clearly articulated definition of the term and concept of theocracy. Since many scholars appear to depend upon a theocratic "structure" or "spirit" at some point in their discussions of Persian-period Yehud, one would usualy expect to find a clear definition of theocracy. Instead, a hasty and ill-equipped definition that seems to avoid addressing the social and political complexities is often used. The conclusion is that no power or political vacuum appears to have existed allowing the priesthood to claim power in Yehud. The Persian empire did not allow territories to develop autonomous governing structures (Chapter 2). The social, economic, and political realms of Yehud functioned within the framework of Persian imperial administration (Chapter 3). And the term theocracy, when defined according to social-scientific requirements (Chapter 4), does not accurately describe the social-political context of Yehud during the Persian period (Chapter 5).

Download or read book An Intertextual Analysis of Zechariah 9 10 written by Suk Yee Lee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book conducts an in-depth study on the ideas about future salvation in Zechariah 9-10. In accommodation of the allusive character of the text, Lee uses the methodology of intertextual analysis to examine the markers in the text. Having established the moments of intertextuality, Lee investigates the sources and their contexts, analyzing how the intertexts are used in the new context of the host and exploring how the antecedents shape the reading of the later text. Thus, Lee argues that Zechariah 9-10 leverages earlier biblical material in order to express its view on restoration, which serves as a lens for the prophetic community in Yehud to make sense of their troubled world in the early Persian period, ca. 440 B.C. These two chapters envision the return of Yahweh who inaugurates the new age, ushering in prosperity and blessings. The earlier restoration expectations of Second Zechariah anticipate the formation of an ideal remnant settling in an ideal homeland, with Yahweh as king and David as vice-regent, reigning in Zion. The new commonwealth is not only a united society but also a cosmic one, with Judah, Ephraim, and the nations living together in peace.

Download or read book Breaking Monotheism written by Jeremiah W. Cataldo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a social-scientific analysis of Yehud and uses that analysis to construct a model through which to analyze later monotheistic religious developments.

Download or read book Biblical Terror written by Jeremiah W. Cataldo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. For biblical authors and readers, law and restoration are central concepts in the Bible, but they were not always so. To trace out the formation of those biblical concepts as elements in defensive strategies, Cataldo uses as conversational starting points theories from Zizek, Foucault and Deleuze, all of whom emphasize relation and difference. This work argues that the more modern assumption that biblical authors wrote their texts presupposing a central importance for those concepts is backwards. On the contrary, law and restoration were made central only through and after the writing of the biblical texts - in particular, those that were concerned with protecting the community from threats to its identity as the "remnant". Modern Bible readers, Cataldo argues, must renegotiate how they understand law and restoration and come to terms with them as concepts that emerged out of more selfish concerns of a community on the margins of imperial political power.

Download or read book The Social Groups behind the Pentateuch written by Jaeyoung Jeon and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2021-12-19 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reexamination of the Pentateuch in light of the complex social, religious, and political conflicts of the Persian period During the last several decades, scholars in pentateuchal studies have suggested new compositional models to replace the Documentary Hypothesis, yet no consensus has emerged. The ten essays in this collection advance the discussion by shifting the focus of pentateuchal studies from the literary stratification of different layers of the texts to the social, economic, religious, and political agendas behind them. Rather than limiting the focus of their studies to scribal and community groups within Persian Yehud, contributors look beyond Yehud to other Judahite communities in the diaspora, including Elephantine and the Samaritan community, establishing a proper academic context for setting the diverse voices of the Pentateuch as we now understand them. Contributors include Olivier Artus, Thomas B. Dozeman, Innocent Himbaza, Jürg Hutzli, Jaeyoung Jeon, Itamar Kislev, Ndikho Mtshiselwa, Dany Noquet, Katharina Pyschny, Thomas Römer, and Konrad Schmid.

Download or read book Wellhausen and Kaufmann written by Aly Elrefaei and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The controversy between Wellhausen and Kaufmann concerning the history of ancient Israel and the question of historical reconstruction has prompted this study. While Wellhausen’s hypothesis introduces a synthesis of the religious development of ancient Israel, Kaufmann’s work emphasizes the singularity of the Israelite religion. Their respective works, which represent the methodologies, presuppositions and the ideologies of their times, remain an impetus to further inquiry into the history of ancient Israel and its religion. Both Wellhausen and Kaufmann applied the historical-critical method, but were divided as to its results. They agree that the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is the primary source on which to base writing about the history of ancient Israel, but differ concerning the authority of its text. This book illustrates the real clash between Wellhausen and Kaufmann, with the aim of providing some basis for reaching a middle ground between these two poles. As becomes clear in this study, Wellhausen reconstructed the religion of Israel in the framework of its history. Kaufmann, by contrast, proposed that monotheism emerged in Israel as a new creation of the spirit of Israel.

Download or read book Shaping Israelite Identity through Prayers in the Book of Chronicles written by Kiyoung Kim and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the post-exilic Israelites’ destiny? What should they have hoped for? How could they actualize their desired community? This book discusses the identity of the post-exilic Israelite community by focusing on the unique rhetorical impetus in the book of Chronicles. Chronicles suggests a picture of the desired future Israel. Yet, the Chronicler does not call for a new identity, creation ex nihilo, from the community but calls for the restoration of the Israelites’ past identity by reporting the history of Israel and Judah. The restoration of their past identity can be actualized when members of the community fulfill portrayed roles and characteristics in Chronicles: worshiping, monotheistic believing, and praying, and Davidic citizenship. Further, recorded prayer plays a crucial role as Chronicles persuades its readers to render or exhibit those roles and characteristics. Prayer invites the community members to participate so that they transform past prayers into their own prayers. By doing so, the prayer participants perceive portrayed roles and characteristics and change their attitude. By rendering and exhibiting desired roles and characteristics, they eventually hope for and actualize a better community, the liturgical community.

Download or read book The Temple Administration and the Levites in Chronicles written by Yeong Seon Kim and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-07-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author explored sections on gatekeepers, treasures and tax collectors from the book of Chronicles in order to examine whether the selected passages can be used as a source to reconstruct the temple administration in the post-exilic period. The author concludes that the Chronicler's description of the temple administration, especially his incorporation of non-priestly cultic personnel among the Levites, must be considered to comprise an argument of an ideal temple administration. The Chronicler's ideal was grounded in his creative exegetical approaches to Pentateuchal traditions and his responses to the contemporary debate about the legitimate priesthood among different priestly circles.

Download or read book Biblical History and Israel S Past written by Megan Bishop Moore and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-17 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although scholars have for centuries primarily been interested in using the study of ancient Israel to explain, illuminate, and clarify the biblical story, Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle describe how scholars today seek more and more to tell the story of the past on its own terms, drawing from both biblical and extrabiblical sources to illuminate ancient Israel and its neighbors without privileging the biblical perspective. Biblical History and Israel s Past provides a comprehensive survey of how study of the Old Testament and the history of Israel has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. Moore and Kelle discuss significant trends in scholarship, trace the development of ideas since the 1970s, and summarize major scholars, viewpoints, issues, and developments.

Download or read book In the Beginning Was the State written by Adi M. Ophir and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the Pentateuch, it reads biblical narratives and codes of law as documenting formations of theopolitical imagination. Ophir deciphers the logic of divine rule that these documents betray, with a special attention to the place of violence within it. The book draws from contemporary biblical scholarship, while also engaging critically with contemporary political theory and political theology, including the work of Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Michael Walzer. Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present. Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.

Download or read book Not Scattered or Confused written by Mark McEntire and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebrew Bible displays a complicated attitude toward cities. Much of the story tells of a rural, agrarian society, yet those stories were written by people living in urban environments. Moreover, cities frequently appear in a negative light; the Hebrew slaves in the book of Exodus were forced to build cities, and the book of Samuel’s critique of monarchy assumes an urban setting that supports that monarchy. At the same, time Ezra-Nehemiah makes restoration of Jerusalem and its wall a holy priority, and Genesis 1–11 (and subsequent references to the primeval narrative) show a much more layered view of the dangers and opportunities of the urban context. As the world’s population continues to move into cities and we debate the impact on human life and the natural environment, it becomes increasingly important to know how the biblical writers understood the ways in which urban life enhances and disrupts human thriving. In this book, McEntire offers a comprehensive and hopeful understanding of the Bible and the city.

Download or read book Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9 10 written by Katherine Southwood and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Oxford, 2010.

Download or read book A Social Political History of Monotheism written by Jeremiah W. Cataldo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-03 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social-Political History of Monotheism, Cataldo shows how political concerns were fundamental to the development of Judeo-Christian monotheism. Beginning with the disruptive and devastating historical events that shook early Israelite culture and ending with the seemingly victorious emergence of Christianity under the Byzantine Empire, this work highlights critical junctures marking the path from political frustration to imperial ideology. Monotheism, Cataldo argues, was not an enlightened form of religion; rather, it was a cultic response to effluent anxieties pouring out from under the crushing weight of successive empires. This provocative work is a valuable tool for anyone with an interest in the development of early Christianity alongside empires and cultures.

Download or read book New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History written by Rannfrid I. Thelle and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History, colleagues, students, and friends of Hans M. Barstad offer essays in honour of his esteemed career in biblical studies. Contributions on prophecy include: the debate on prophets as historical figures, the biblical books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, and Micah, and issues of methodology and interpretation. Essays devoted to history address various historiographic issues as well as specific historical topics such as the monarchy in ancient Israel, the relationship of Judah to Edom, and the ritual of reading the law. In ways that reflect Hans Barstad’s innovative insights and methodological critiques, this collection of essays probes beyond the oft-trodden paths of biblical studies and challenges the status quo within the field.

Download or read book Remembering Biblical Figures in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods written by Diana V. Edelman and published by . This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social memory studies offer an under-utilised lens through which to approach the texts of the Hebrew Bible. In this volume, the range of associations and symbolic values evoked by twenty-one characters representing ancestors and founders, kings, female characters, and prophets are explored by a group of international scholars. The presumed social settings when most of the books comprising the TANAK had come into existence and were being read together as an emerging authoritative corpus are the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods. It is in this context then that we can profitably explore the symbolic values and networks of meanings that biblical figures encoded for the religious community of Israel in these eras, drawing on our limited knowledge of issues and life in Yehud and Judean diasporic communities in these periods. This is the first period when scholars can plausibly try to understand the mnemonic effects of these texts, which were understood to encode the collective experience members of the community, providing them with a common identity by offering a sense of shared past while defining aspirations for the future. The introduction and the concluding essay focus on theoretical and methodological issues that arise from analysing the Hebrew Bible in the framework of memory studies. The individual character studies, as a group, provide a kaleidoscopic view of the potentialities of using a social memory approach in Biblical Studies, with the essay on Cyrus written by a classicist, in order to provide an enriching perspective on how one biblical figure was construed in Greek social memory, for comparative purposes.

Download or read book The Persuasive Portrayal of David and Solomon in Chronicles written by Suk-Il Ahn and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the speeches and prayers in the David-Solomon narrative in Chronicles and seeks to demonstrate that the Chronicler's portrayal of David and Solomon attempts to establish the Yehudite community's identity. Is the covenantal relationship still valid in the Persian period? The author asserts that as a commitment to YHWH involving the worship of YHWH through the Jerusalem temple, the covenantal relationship between YHWH and Israel continues even into the Persian period. This study employs Kennedy's rhetorical method with the new categories of the narrative situation and the Chronicler's situation being used to further delineate his concept of the narrative situation. The Chronicler's portrayal of David and Solomon through speeches and prayers serves to persuade his audience of the significance of the Jerusalem temple, reformulating the Yehudite community identity as a cultic community in the Persian period.