Memory in the Bible and Antiquity

Memory in the Bible and Antiquity PDF

Author: Stephen C. Barton

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9783161492518

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The volume brings together essays that explore the topic of memory and remembrance in the ancient world, taking into account the Hebrew Bible, ancient Judaism, the classical world, the New Testament and Early Christianity . The essays, which focus on a wide range of sources from antiquity, open up new questions about the social and religious function of memory. As a collection, they demonstrate how much social memory theory can contribute to the understanding of the ways ancient texts were, on the one hand, shaped by conventions of memory and, on the other hand, participated in and contributed to evolving strategies for reading 'the past'.Contributors:Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Stephen C. Barton, Benjamin G. Wold, Joachim Schaper, Erhard Blum, Hermann Lichtenberger, William Horbury, John M.G. Barclay, Doron Mendels, Anthony Le Donne, James D.G. Dunn, Martin Hengel, Ulrike Mittmann-Richert, Anna Maria Schwemer, Hans-Joachim Eckstein, Markus Bockmuehl

Textual Memory

Textual Memory PDF

Author: Jaqueline S. Du Toit

Publisher: Social World of Biblical Antiq

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 9781907534157

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In modern scholarship the Hebrew Bible represents a collection of books, perhaps even a library of books. Some think that it is a selection of ancient oral traditions that were eventually written down, edited and preserved. Others suggest that the biblical corpus resulted from a merging of regional libraries in ancient Palestine or was the outcome of the Hasmoneans' need to legitimize their rule by claiming ownership of a library of books originating in the Jerusalem temple. No matter how tantalizing these hypotheses are, the implications of a concrete understanding of the origins of the Bible as library or archive are not often fully appreciated by scholars. Textual Memory explores how various disciplines, including Assyriology, biblical studies, archival science and library history, have made sense of the thousands of collections of clay tablets and ancient written material discovered over the past two hundred years in the Middle East. And it raises the question whether the great libraries of Ashurbanipal and Alexandria, among others, are able to suggest models of how the Hebrew Bible came into being. Can the temple libraries in Mesopotamia or Egypt offer us any clues about who decided what should be preserved and why? What have ancient archival practices of careful selection, conservation, classification and dissemination of information to contribute to our understanding of the creation of the Hebrew Bible? Ultimately, this book is a historiographical synthesis of current scholarship on ancient Near Eastern archives and libraries from different disciplinary perspectives. Its purpose is to understand better how we should conceive of the Bible as religious tradition and literary heritage.

The Memory of the Eyes

The Memory of the Eyes PDF

Author: Georgia Frank

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2000-05-11

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780520924352

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Pilgrims in the deserts of Egypt and the holy land during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. often reported visiting holy people as part of their tours of holy places. This is the first comprehensive study of pilgrimage to these famous ascetics of late antique Christianity. Through an original analysis of pilgrim writings of this period, Georgia Frank discovers a literary imagination at work, one that both recorded and shaped the experience of pilgrimage to living saints. Taking an important new approach to these texts, Frank finds in them a record of the writers’ and readers’ spiritual expectations and uses these fresh insights to add substantially to our understanding of the purposes and practices of pilgrimage. Frank focuses in particular on two important and well-known early texts—The History of the Monks in Egypt (ca. 400) and Palladius’s The Lausiac History (ca. 420), situating these narratives in their literary, historical, and spiritual contexts. She compares these narratives to exotic travel writing and to tales of otherworldly journeys. Bringing in contemporary theory, she demonstrates the importance of sight as a means of spiritual progress and explores the relation between the function of sight in these narratives and in other expressions of visual piety in late antiquity Christianity, such as the veneration of relics and, eventually, icons. With its unique focus on the sensory dimensions of pilgrimage—especially visuality—this absorbing book widens our understanding of early Christian pilgrims and those who read their accounts. At the same time, it also sheds new light on the relation between religious experience and the senses, on literary representations of visual experience, and on the literature of pious travel.

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media PDF

Author: Tom Thatcher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0567678377

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The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media is a convenient and authoritative reference tool, introducing specific terms and concepts helpful to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Since the early 1980s, biblical scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture and ritual. Over time these theories have been combined with considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins, and rabbinics. The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a source of reference that offers clear definitions, and in-depth discussions of relevant terms and concepts, and the relationships between them. The volume begins with an overview of 'ancient media studies' and a brief history of research to orient the reader to the field and the broader research context of the book, with individual entries on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/ concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic, paying particular attention to its relevance for the study of the Bible and related literature

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity PDF

Author: Karl Galinsky

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 0198744765

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What and how do people remember? Who controls the process of what we call cultural or social memory? What is forgotten and why? People's memories are not the same as history written in retrospect; they are malleable and an ongoing process of construction and reconstruction. Ancient Rome provided much of the cultural framework for early Christianity, and in both the role of memory was pervasive. Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies. Moving beyond terms such as 'collective', 'social', and 'cultural memory' as standard tropes, the volume offers a selective exploration of the wealth of topics which comprise memory studies, and also features a contribution from a leading neuroscientist on the actual workings of the human memory. It is an importamt resource for anyone interested in Roman antiquity, the beginnings of Christianity, and the role of memory in history.

Memory and the City in Ancient Israel

Memory and the City in Ancient Israel PDF

Author: Diana V. Edelman

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2014-10-31

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1575067129

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Ancient cities served as the actual, worldly landscape populated by “material” sites of memory. Some of these sites were personal and others were directly and intentionally involved in the shaping of a collective social memory, such as palaces, temples, inscriptions, walls, and gates. Many cities were also sites of social memory in a very different way. Like Babylon, Nineveh, or Jerusalem, they served as ciphers that activated and communicated various mnemonic worlds as they integrated multiple images, remembered events, and provided a variety of meanings in diverse ancient communities. Memory and the City in Ancient Israel contributes to the study of social memory in ancient Israel in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods by exploring “the city,” both urban spaces and urban centers. It opens with a study that compares basic conceptualizing tendencies of cities in Mesopotamia with their counterparts in ancient Israel. Its essays then explore memories of gates, domestic spaces, threshing floors, palaces, city gardens and parks, natural and “domesticated” water in urban settings, cisterns, and wells. Finally, the studies turn to particular cities of memory in ancient Israel: Jerusalem, Samaria, Shechem, Mizpah, Tyre, Nineveh, and Babylon. The volume, which emerged from meetings of the European Association of Biblical Studies, includes the work of Stéphanie Anthonioz, Yairah Amit, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kåre Berge, Diana Edelman, Hadi Ghantous, Anne Katrine Gudme, Philippe Guillaume, Russell Hobson, Steven W. Holloway, Francis Landy, Daniel Pioske, Ulrike Sals, Carla Sulzbach, Karolien Vermeulen, and Carey Walsh.

Reading the Bible in Ancient Traditions and Modern Editions

Reading the Bible in Ancient Traditions and Modern Editions PDF

Author: Andrew B. Perrin

Publisher: SBL Press

Published: 2017-11-17

Total Pages: 746

ISBN-13: 0884142531

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A collection of essays commemorating the career contributions of Peter W. Flint An international group of scholars specializing in various disciplines of biblical studies—Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins—present twenty-seven new contributions that commemorate the career of Peter W. Flint (1951–2016). Each essay interacts with and gives fresh insight into a field shaped by Professor Flint’s life work. Part 1 explores the interplay between text-critical methods, the growth and formation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the making of modern critical editions. Part 2 maps dynamics of scriptural interpretation and reception in ancient Jewish and Christian literatures of the Second Temple period. Features Essays that assess the state of the field and reflect on the methods, aims, and best practices for textual criticism and the making of modern critical text editions Demonstrations of how the processes of scriptural composition, transmission, and reception converge and may be studied together for mutual benefit Clarification of the state/forms of scripture in antiquity and how scripture was extended, rewritten, and recontextualized by ancient Jewish and Christian scribes and communities

The Memoirs of God

The Memoirs of God PDF

Author: Mark S. Smith

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9781451413977

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This insightful work examines the variety of ways that collective memory, oral tradition, history, and history writing intersect. Integral to all this are the ways in which ancient Israel was shaped by the monarchy, the Babylonian exile, and the dispersions of Judeans and the ways in which Israel conceptualized and interacted with the divine-Yahweh as well as other deities.

Religions in Antiquity

Religions in Antiquity PDF

Author: Jacob Neusner

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2004-07-09

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 1592447430

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These essays were originally intended for presentation to Professor Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. Before his death, in March, 1965, he knew of our plans for this volume and was gladdened by them.... The editor hopes that these papers, many of which fruitfully utilize Goodenough's scholarship, may contribute to the critical discussion of some problems of concern to him during his lifetime. He can conceive no higher, nor more appropriate, act of reverence for the memory of a beloved teacher and friend. From the Foreword by Jacob Neusner

Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers

Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers PDF

Author: Adriane Leveen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-10-01

Total Pages: 35

ISBN-13: 1139466941

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In Memory and Tradition in the Book of Numbers, Adriane Leveen offers a rereading of the fourth book of Moses. Leveen examines how the editors of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to control understanding of the past and influence attitudes in the future. The book explores politics, collective memory and the strategies used by its priestly editors to convince the children of Israel to accept priestly rule. Leveen considers the dynamics of the transmission of tradition, memory and values in an atmosphere of crisis as a generation witnessed its parents die in the wilderness yet chose to live in the promised land in fulfilment of God's vision.