Divination Politics And Ancient Near Eastern Empires PDF Download
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Author | : Alan Lenzi |
Publisher | : Society of Biblical Literature |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2014-06-02 |
Genre | : Religion |
ISBN | : 9781589839977 |
Download Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Advance your understanding of divination’s role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires. Features: Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studies Essays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empires Index of ancient sources
Author | : Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Stefan M Maul |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2024-07-15 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9781481308601 |
Download The Art of Divination in the Ancient Near East Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
You stars of Anu, I call on you! You stars of Enlil, turn to me! You stars of Ea, all of you together, gather around me! I have offered you a pure sacrifice, I have scattered pure incense to you, I have poured out pure beer for you. Eat what is pure, drink what is sweet! With these words, the Babylonians invoked the gods of the night as they prepared their sacrifices under a clear, starry sky. Discovering divine will was a part of everyday life for the people of the ancient Near East. Every state action and every military campaign was preceded by a king's meticulous ritual that petitioned the gods for a sure answer about the outcome of their endeavors. But royals were not alone in their quest. Wealthy merchants, simple craftsmen, poor widows--everyone wanted and needed certainty for future undertakings. Those who could afford it sacrificed a flawless sheep, whose liver was used by the diviner to determine the answer. Others sought guidance in oil and flour. The desire for certainty in the face of an unknown future unified all classes in the ancient world. Stefan M. Maul, a noted expert on ancient Near Eastern divination, offers an overview of this fascinating subject. Maul surveys the "art" of divination as it expanded from Sumerian roots to Babylonian mastery, cataloging its evolving methodology--from entrails to astrology--and the class of experts who performed it. He argues that the discernment of the will of the gods, though vital for political counsel, was far from a cynical ploy of the elite: at root this was a genuine attempt to unite Mesopotamian cultures under a common purpose. What seems to the post-Enlightenment world a mere superstition was, in its own way and to its own ends, a robust scholarly enterprise that lent these ancient peoples a sense of control over a world populated by fickle forces. These practices remind us that the desire to know the future is a part of what it means to be human, regardless of time or place.
Author | : Lindsay Gayle Driediger-Murphy |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 309 |
Release | : 2019 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0198844549 |
Download Ancient Divination and Experience Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This volume sets out to re-examine what ancient people - primarily those in ancient Greek and Roman communities, but also Mesopotamian and Chinese cultures - thought they were doing through divination, and what this can tell us about the religions and cultures in which divination was practised. The chapters, authored by a range of established experts and upcoming early-career scholars, engage with four shared questions: What kinds of gods do ancient forms of divination presuppose? What beliefs, anxieties, and hopes did divination seek to address? What were the limits of human 'control' of divination? What kinds of human-divine relationships did divination create/sustain? The volume as a whole seeks to move beyond functionalist approaches to divination in order to identify and elucidate previously understudied aspects of ancient divinatory experience and practice. Special attention is paid to the experiences of non-elites, the perception of divine presence, the ways in which divinatory techniques could surprise their users by yielding unexpected or unwanted results, the difficulties of interpretation with which divinatory experts were thought to contend, and the possibility that divination could not just ease, but also exacerbate, anxiety in practitioners and consultants.
Author | : Dr. John L. McLaughlin |
Publisher | : Abingdon Press |
Total Pages | : 166 |
Release | : 2012-10-01 |
Genre | : Religion |
ISBN | : 1426765509 |
Download The Ancient Near East Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
The cultures of the great empires of the ancient Near East from Egypt to Mesopotamia influenced Israel's religion, literature, and laws because of Israel's geographic location and political position situation. Anyone who wishes to understand the Old Testament texts and the history of ancient Israel must become familiar with the history, literature, and society of the surrounding kingdoms that at times controlled the region. Brief in presentation yet broad in scope, Ancient Near East will introduce students to the information and ideas essential to understanding the texts of the Old Testament while clarifying difficult issues concerning the relationship between Israel and its neighbors. Abingdon Essential Guides fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to the core disciplines in biblical, theological, and religious studies.
Author | : Lluis Feliu |
Publisher | : Penn State Press |
Total Pages | : 861 |
Release | : 2013-06-28 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1575068567 |
Download Time and History in the Ancient Near East Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
In July, 2010, the International Association for Assyriology met in Barcelona, Spain, for 5 days to deliver and listen to papers on the theme “Time and History in the Ancient Near East.” This volume, the proceedings of the conference, contains 70 of the papers read at the 56th annual Rencontre, including the papers from several workshop sessions on “architecture and archaeology,” “early Akkadian and its Semitic context,” “ Hurrian language,” “law in the ancient Near East,” “Middle Assyrian texts and studies,” and a variety of additional papers not directly related to the conference theme. The photo on the back cover shows only a representative portion of the attendees, who were warmly hosted by faculty and students from the University of Barcelona.
Author | : Krzysztof Ulanowski |
Publisher | : BRILL |
Total Pages | : 588 |
Release | : 2020-10-20 |
Genre | : Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | : 9004429395 |
Download Neo-Assyrian and Greek Divination in War Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Neo-Assyrian and Greek Divination in War is about practices which enabled humans contact the divine. These relations, especially in difficult times of military conflict, could be crucial in deciding the fate of individuals, cities, dynasties or even empires.
Author | : Jeanette C. Fincke |
Publisher | : Penn State Press |
Total Pages | : 187 |
Release | : 2016-06-14 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 157506426X |
Download Divination as Science Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
There is no doubt that Ancient Near Eastern divination is firmly rooted in religion, since all ominous signs were thought to have been sent by gods, and the invocation of omens was embedded in rituals. Nonetheless, the omen compendia display many aspects of a generally scientific nature. In their attempt to note all possible changes to the affected objects and to arrange their observations systematically for reference purposes, the scholars produced texts that resulted in a rather detailed description of the world, be it with respect to geography (the urban or rural environment on earth, or celestial and meteorological phenomena observed in the sky), biology (the outer appearance of the bodies of humans or animals, or the entrails of sheep), sociology (behavior of people) or others. Based on different divination methods and omen compendia, the question discussed during this workshop was whether the scholars had a scientific approach, presented as religion, or whether Ancient Near Eastern divination should be considered purely religious and that the term “science” is inappropriate in this context. The workshop attracted a large audience and lively discussion ensued. The papers presented in this volume reflect the focus of the sessions during the workshop and are likely to generate even more discussion, now that they are published.
Author | : Martti Nissinen |
Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Total Pages | : 804 |
Release | : 2019-10-08 |
Genre | : Religion |
ISBN | : 3110467763 |
Download Prophetic Divination Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Prophecy was a wide-spread phenomenon in the ancient world - not only in ancient Israel but in the whole Eastern Mediterranean cultural sphere. This is demonstrated by documents from the ancient Near East, that have been the object of Martti Nissinen’s research for more than twenty years. Nissinen's studies have had a formative influence on the study of the prophetic phenomenon. The present volume presents a selection of thirty-one essays, bringing together essential aspects of prophetic divination in the ancient Near East. The first section of the volume discusses prophecy from theoretical perspectives. The second sections contains studies on prophecy in texts from Mari and Assyria and other cuneiform sources. The third section discusses biblical prophecy in its ancient Near Eastern context, while the fourth section focuses on prophets and prophecy in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Even prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls is discussed in the fifth section. The articles are essential reading for anyone studying ancient prophetic phenomenon.
Author | : Francesca Rochberg |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 380 |
Release | : 2020-08-07 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 022675958X |
Download Before Nature Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.
Author | : Martti Nissinen |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 469 |
Release | : 2017 |
Genre | : Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | : 0198808550 |
Download Ancient Prophecy Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.