Egypt Canaan And Israel History Imperialism Ideology And Literature

The proceedings of the conference “Egypt, Canaan and Israel: History, Imperialism, Ideology and Literature” include the latest discussions about the political, military, cultural, economic, ideological, literary and administrative relations between Egypt, Canaan and Israel during the Second and First Millennia BC incorporating texts, art, and archaeology.

The proceedings of the conference “Egypt, Canaan and Israel: History, Imperialism, Ideology and Literature” include the latest discussions about the political, military, cultural, economic, ideological, literary and administrative relations between Egypt, Canaan and Israel during the Second and First Millennia BC incorporating texts, art, and archaeology.

"Gods against gods, men against men, each kind / against each other: Who is in the right? / Truly, which ones could ever conquer Death?" So Laeya--the Canaanite goddess Athirat masked in human form--asks after a crucial battle. Situated in the interimperial turmoil of the Late Bronze Age, Canaad follows this heroine's journey as it dovetails with that of Aqhat, a refugee from the Levantine coast. After tragedy casts Aqhat into the desert, a prophecy affords him the opportunity to slay three deities before the year's end and thereby become divine himself. Determined to right the wrongs of those responsible for his community's suffering, he and his companions join forces with Laeya, setting out to permanently revolutionize how mortals and gods interrelate--with consequences that even the gods cannot fathom. At once a speculative and historically attuned study of religion, Canaad brings the Ancient Near East to life in tangible and dramatic form, weaving together largely unknown histories and numerous fragmentary myths from a Canaanite perspective.

Israel and Empire introduces students to the history, literature, and theology of the Hebrew Bible and texts of early Judaism, enabling them to read these texts through the lens of postcolonial interpretation. This approach should allow students to recognize not only how cultural and socio-political forces shaped ancient Israel and the worldviews of the early Jews but also the impact of imperialism on modern readings of the Bible. Perdue and Carter cover a broad sweep of history, from 1300 BCE to 72 CE, including the late Bronze age, Egyptian imperialism, Israel's entrance into Canaan, the Davidic-Solomonic Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Maccabean Empire, and Roman rule. Additionally the authors show how earlier examples of imperialism in the Ancient Near East provide a window through which to see the forces and effects of imperialism in modern history.

This book looks back over thousands of years to explore the period in Egyptian history when the Bible identifies that Ancient Israel was resident in Egypt. It asks and answers one very simple question: What new things can we learn about this period of history if we treat the Bible as a valid historical document? Whereas this topic is often approached from either the perspective of the Bible or Egyptology, this work genuinely attempts to occupy the ground between the two. It uses Scripture like a torch carried into the deepest recesses of the established historical facts and theories concerning the late Middle Kingdom period, the Second Intermediate period, and the early New Kingdom period in Egyptian history. Along the way, it considers some of the latest discoveries, innovations, and theories from the world of Egyptology and unearths a trove of tangible points of connection. As such, the narrative forms a two-way perspective, where the biblical account illuminates stubbornly opaque moments in Egyptian history and chronology and where the meticulous work of Egyptologists provides appropriate additional background to the Bible. The result is a sharper perspective of an ancient account that has a surprisingly current application for us all.

For much of the history of both Judaism and Christianity, the Pentateuch—first five books of the Bible—was understood to be the unified work of a single inspired author: Moses. Yet the standard view in modern biblical scholarship contends that the Pentateuch is a composite text made up of fragments from diverse and even discrepant sources that originated centuries after the events it purports to describe. In Murmuring against Moses, John Bergsma and Jeffrey Morrow provide a critical narrative of the emergence of modern Pentateuchal studies and challenge the scholarly consensus by highlighting the weaknesses of the modern paradigms and mustering an array of new evidence for the Pentateuch’s antiquity. By shedding light on the past history of research and the present developments in the field, Bergsma and Morrow give fresh voice to a growing scholarly dissatisfaction with standard critical approaches and make an important contribution toward charting a more promising future for Pentateuchal studies.

In this book, Philip Zhakevich examines the technology of writing as it existed in the southern Levant during the Iron Age II period, after the alphabetic writing system had fully taken root in the region. Using the Hebrew Bible as its corpus and focusing on a set of Hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and instruments, this study synthesizes the semantic data of the Bible with the archeological and art-historical evidence for writing in ancient Israel. The bulk of this work comprises an in-depth lexicographical analysis of Biblical Hebrew terms related to Israel’s writing technology. Employing comparative Semitics, lexical semantics, and archaeology, Zhakevich provides a thorough analysis of the origins of the relevant terms; their use in the biblical text, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions; and their translation in the Septuagint and other ancient versions. The final chapter evaluates Israel’s writing practices in light of those of the ancient world, concluding that Israel’s most common form of writing (i.e., writing with ink on ostraca and papyrus) is Egyptian in origin and was introduced into Canaan during the New Kingdom. Comprehensive and original in its scope, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel is a landmark contribution to our knowledge of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel. Students and scholars interested in language and literacy in the first-millennium Levant in particular will profit from this volume.

Egypt, Judaism, and the history of the alphabet intersect in Deciphering The Proto-Sinaitic Script. From its initial appearance, in around the 18th century BC, the origins of proto–Sinaitic writing can be traced back to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, when it was somehow derived from the hieroglyphs, its parent–system. The importance of proto–Sinaitic lies in the fact that it represents the alphabet’s earliest developmental period—a kind of ‘missing link’ between the hieroglyphs and these early Semitic alphabets from which our own Latin one descends, by way of the Phoenician and Greek. However, up until now, proto-Sinaitic has remained for the most part undeciphered. The intriguing possibility of giving voice to a lost culture or civilization from thousands of years ago is tantalizing. Representing one of the most enticing problems in modern archaeology, the enigmatic allure surrounding ancient languages and the undeciphered scripts in which they are encoded is truly vexing. In his bold and original research, LeBlanc argues convincingly to have solved the mystery and uncovers some incredibly enthralling information about the people who invented it: The epigraphic evidence suggests that the Egyptianized Canaanites who first devised the proto–Sinaitic script were surprisingly instrumental in the formation of early Israelite culture and proto–Judaism.