Threshing Floors In Ancient Israel

Vital to an agrarian community's survival, threshing floors are also depicted in the Hebrew Bible as sites for mourning rites, divination rituals, cultic processions, and sacrifices. Jaime L. Waters examines these sacred functions and the various personnel active in the use and operation of the sites and shows that they were sacred spaces connected to Yahweh, under his control and subject to his power to bless, curse, and save, providing Israel a special ritual access to Yahweh.

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.

The Bible is the number one best-selling book of all time. No other literary work in history has ever held so many people captive to its claims. It is viewed as "God's word," an infallible moral guidebook, and a timeless provider of hope and comfort. But is there really any truth to these views? Is the Bible really worthy of all this fanfare? This book will reveal the ugly truth that the Bible is not at all what its fans think it to be. In fact, it is the very antithesis thereof. And this book will prove all of this by using the bible itself as its own refuter.

A fruitful reading strategy that reveals expansive meaning in Proverbs Interpreters often characterize Proverbs 10:1–22:16 as a dead-end of cold, disengaged dogma closed off from the realities of the world. In Genre and Openness in Proverbs 10:1–22:16, Suzanna R. Millar takes a different view, arguing that the didactic proverbs in these chapters are not dull and dry but are filled with poetic complexities open to many possible interpretations and uses. By incorporating paremiology, the technical study of the proverb genre, Millar sheds light on important debates such as character development, kingship, the connection between act and consequence, and the acquisition of wisdom. Features A clarification of the genre of the sayings in light of modern genre theory A linguistic analysis of how openness is generated in biblical proverbs An examination of the didactic use of proverbs to train the hearer’s mind

This substantially updated edition of a classroom standard provides students with an accessible introduction to the literature, history, and social context of the Old Testament. Written by two seasoned Old Testament professors, the book pays attention to methodology, archaeology, history, and literary genre and includes illustrations, sidebars, maps, and study questions.

Provides a description of the element or image, shows examples of how it is used in the biblical text, and presents photographs and maps that further illustrate the ideas.

Where Jerusalemś History Began.

After writing a book that affirmed science on a level that made many Christians uncomfortable, Pastor Bradley becomes an enigma by writing a book that affirms the supernatural on a level that makes many Christians uncomfortable. The Rush and the Rest is the product of a decade worth of studying and practicing the supernatural ways of the Holy Spirit. Bradley aims to take us deeper into the Scriptures than we have ever gone before with this one-part academic and one-part spiritual work. Regardless of where you are on the Christian journey, this book is bound to have something fresh for you.