-PDF Download- The Conflict Myth And The Biblical Tradition EBOOK

The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition

Author: Debra Scoggins Ballentine

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0199370265

There are many ancient West Asian stories that narrate the victory of a warrior deity over an enemy, typically a sea-god or sea dragon, and his rise to divine kingship. In The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition, Debra Scoggins Ballentine analyzes this motif, arguing that it was used within ancient political and socio-religious discourses to bolster particular divine hierarchies, kings, institutions, and groups, as well as to attack others. Situating her study of the conflict topos within contemporary theorizations of myth by Bruce Lincoln, Russell McCutcheon, and Jonathan Z. Smith, Ballentine examines narratives of divine combat and instances of this conflict motif. Her study cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries as well as constructed time periods, focusing not only on the Hebrew Bible but also incorporating Mesopotamian, early Jewish, early Christian, and rabbinic texts, spanning a period of almost three millennia - from the eighteenth century BCE to the early middle ages CE. The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition advances our understanding of the conflict topos in ancient west Asian and early Jewish and Christian literatures and of how mythological and religious ideas are used both to validate and render normative particular ideologies and socio-political arrangements, and to delegitimize and invalidate others.

Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible

Author: Paul K.-K. Cho

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-02-07

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1108757545

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines the long-debated issue of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern myths. Using an innovative, interdisciplinary methodology that combines theories of metaphor and narrative, Paul Cho argues that the Hebrew Bible is more deeply mythological than previously recognized. Because the Hebrew Bible contains fragments of the sea myth but no continuous narrative, the study of myth in the Hebrew Bible is usually circumscribed to the level of motifs and themes. Cho challenges this practice and demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible contains shorter and longer compositions studded with imagery that are structured by the plot of sea myths. Through close analysis of key Near Eastern myths and biblical texts, Cho shows that myth had a more fundamental influence on the plot structure and conceptual framework of the Hebrew Bible than has been recognized.

God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea

Author: John Day

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-04-20

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1532692676

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Old Testament contains a number of interesting poetic references to God's conflict with a dragon, called by names such as Leviathan, Rahab or the twisting serpent, and with the sea. In this original contribution to the background and understanding of the Old Testament Dr Day undertakes a detailed and thorough examination of these allusions. Building on the discovery of the Ugaritic texts, he demonstrates a source for these references within Canaanite mythology. His study further explores the associations of the imagery. Sometimes in the Old Testament the dragon is associated with the creation of the world, or it becomes a symbol of a foreign nation, and in some references it is associated with divine conflict at the end of time.

The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Author: Arthur Allen Cohen

Publisher: New York : Harper & Row

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Cover title.

Creation and Destruction

Author: David Toshio Tsumura

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2005-06-23

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1575065630

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1989, David Tsumura published a monograph entitled The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2: A Linguistic Evaluation, in which he demonstrated that the oft-recited claim that the early chapters of Genesis betrayed a background or adaptation by Israel of mythological terms and/or motifs from other ancient Near Eastern literature could not be supported by a close examination of the linguistic data. Despite the book’s positive reception, the notion that the Chaoskampf motif lies behind the early chapters of Genesis continues to be rehearsed in the literature as if the data were incontrovertible. In this revised and expanded edition of the 1989 book, Tsumura carries the discussion forward. In part 1, the general thesis of the original work is restated in a significantly revised and expanded form; in the second part of this monograph, he expands the scope of his research to include a number of poetic texts outside the Primeval History, texts for which scholars often have posited an ancient Near Eastern mythological substratum. Among the questions asked are the following: What are the functions of “waters” and “flood” in biblical poetry? Do the so-called chaos dragons in the Old Testament, such as Leviathan, Rahab, and Yam, have anything to do with the creation motif in the biblical tradition? What is the relationship between these poetic texts and the Ugaritic myths of the Baal-Yam conflict? Are Psalms 18 and 29 “adaptations” of Canaanite hymns, as suggested by some scholars? Among the conclusions that Tsumura reaches are these: (1) The phrase tohû wabohû has nothing to do with the idea of a chaotic state of the earth. (2) The term tehôm in Gen 1:2 is a Hebrew form derived from the Proto-Semitic *tiham-, “ocean,” and it usually refers to the underground water that was overflowing and covering the entire surface of the earth in the initial state of creation. (3) The earth-water relationship in Gen 2:5–6 is different from that in Gen 1:2. In Gen 1:2, the earth was totally under the water; in Gen 2:5–6, only a part of the earth, the land, was watered by the ’ed-water, which was overflowing from an underground source. (4) The biblical poetic texts that are claimed to have been influenced by the Chaoskampf-motif of the ancient Near East in fact use the language of storms and floods metaphorically and have nothing to do with primordial combat.

Myths of Exile

Author: Anne Katrine Gudme

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1317501233

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Babylonian exile in 587-539 BCE is frequently presented as the main explanatory factor for the religious and literary developments found in the Hebrew Bible. The sheer number of both ‘historical’ and narrative exiles confirms that the theme of exile is of great importance in the Hebrew Bible. However, one does not do justice to the topic by restricting it to the exile in Babylon after 587 BCE. In recent years, it has become clear that there are several discrepancies between biblical and extra-biblical sources on invasion and deportation in Palestine in the 1st millennium BCE. Such discrepancy confirms that the theme of exile in the Hebrew Bible should not be viewed as an echo of a single traumatic historical event, but rather as a literary motif that is repeatedly reworked by biblical authors. Myths of Exile challenges the traditional understanding of 'the Exile' as a monolithic historical reality and instead provides a critical and comparative assessment of motifs of estrangement and belonging in the Hebrew Bible and related literature. Using selected texts as case studies, this book demonstrates how tales of exile and return can be described as a common formative narrative in the literature of the ancient Near East, a narrative that has been interpreted and used in various ways depending on the needs and cultural contexts of the interpreting community. Myths of Exile is a critical study which forms the basis for a fresh understanding of these exile myths as identity-building literary phenomena.

Creation and Chaos

Author: JoAnn Scurlock

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2013-10-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1575068656

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Hermann Gunkel was a scholar in the generation of the origins of Assyriology, the spectacular discovery by George Smith of fragments of the “Chaldean Genesis,” and the Babel-Bibel debate. Gunkel’s thesis, inspired by materials supplied to him by the Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern, was to take the Chaoskampf motif of Revelation as an event that would not only occur at the end of the world but had already happened at the beginning, before Creation. In other words, in this theory, one imagines God in Genesis 1 as first having battled Rahab, Leviathan, and Yam (the forces of Chaos) in a grand battle, and only then beginning to create. The problem with Gunkel’s theory is that it did not simply identify common elements in the mythologies of the ancient Near East but imposed upon them a structure dictating the relationships between the elements, a structure that was based on inadequate knowledge and a forced interpretation of his sources. On the other hand, one is not entitled to insist that there was no cultural conversation among peoples who spent the better part of several millennia trading with, fighting, and conquering one another. Creation and Chaos attempts to address some of these issues. The contributions are organized into five sections that address various aspects of the issues raised by Gunekl’s theories.

Greek Myth and the Bible

Author: Bruce Louden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0429828047

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Since the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Gilgamesh epic, we have known that the Bible imports narratives from outside of Israelite culture, refiguring them for its own audience. Only more recently, however, has come the realization that Greek culture is also a prominent source of biblical narratives. Greek Myth and the Bible argues that classical mythological literature and the biblical texts were composed in a dialogic relationship. Louden examines a variety of Greek myths from a range of sources, analyzing parallels between biblical episodes and Hesiod, Euripides, Argonautic myth, selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Homeric epic. This fascinating volume offers a starting point for debate and discussion of these cultural and literary exchanges and adaptations in the wider Mediterranean world and will be an invaluable resource to students of the Hebrew Bible and the influence of Greek myth.

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths

Author: John Heath

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-29

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0429663749

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths explores and compares the most influential sets of divine myths in Western culture: the Homeric pantheon and Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Heath argues that not only does the God of the Old Testament bear a striking resemblance to the Olympians, but also that the Homeric system rejected by the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a better model for the human condition. The universe depicted by Homer and populated by his gods is one that creates a unique and powerful responsibility – almost directly counter to that evoked by the Bible—for humans to discover ethical norms, accept death as a necessary human limit, develop compassion to mitigate a tragic existence, appreciate frankly both the glory and dangers of sex, and embrace and respond courageously to an indifferent universe that was clearly not designed for human dominion. Heath builds on recent work in biblical and classical studies to examine the contemporary value of mythical deities. Judeo-Christian theologians over the millennia have tried to explain away Yahweh’s Olympian nature while dismissing the Homeric deities for the same reason Greek philosophers abandoned them: they don’t live up to preconceptions of what a deity should be. In particular, the Homeric gods are disappointingly plural, anthropomorphic, and amoral (at best). But Heath argues that Homer’s polytheistic apparatus challenges us to live meaningfully without any help from the divine. In other words, to live well in Homer’s tragic world – an insight gleaned by Achilles, the hero of the Iliad – one must live as if there were no gods at all. The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths should change the conversation academics in classics, biblical studies, theology and philosophy have – especially between disciplines – about the gods of early Greek epic, while reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role of ancient myth in shaping a thoughtful life.