Cultures Of Mobility Migration And Religion In Ancient Israel And Its World

This book examines the relationship between mobility, lived religiosities, and conceptions of divine personhood as they are preserved in textual corpora and material culture from Israel, Judah, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. By integrating evidence of the form and function of religiosities in contexts of mobility and migration, this volume reconstructs mobility-informed aspects of civic and household religiosities in Israel and its world. Readers will find a robust theoretical framework for studying cultures of mobility and religiosities in the ancient past, as well as a fresh understanding of the scope and texture of mobility-informed religious identities that composed broader Yahwistic religious heritage. Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World will be of use to both specialists and informed readers interested in the history of mobilities and migrations in the ancient Near East, as well as those interested in the development of Yahwism in its biblical and extra-biblical forms.

This volume is the most recent collective contribution of a group of biblical scholars and archaeologists who are engaged in an ongoing debate about the nature of family and household religion in ancient Israel and its environment. It is intended to complement the volume Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, edited by John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan, which grew out of a conference held at Brown University in 2005 on household and family religion in the ancient Mediterranean world, with an emphasis on cross-cultural comparison. Several meetings after the Brown conference carried the theme forward, and a fourth meeting at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in April 2009 emphasized theoretical and methodological challenges facing scholars of household and family religion (e.g., the conceptualization of family/household religion, the problem of identifying pertinent artifacts, and the difficulties inherent in using texts together with material evidence). This volume is a direct outgrowth of the Münster meeting. For both the meeting and the volume, the goal was to bring together a group of specialists in biblical studies, epigraphy, and archaeology who would utilize a variety of humanistic and social-scientific approaches to the data and would also be willing to engage in dialogue and debate; during the conference in Münster, there was much vigorous intellectual engagement. The essays published here reflect the energy of that conference and will contribute, both individually and collectively, to the advancement of our knowledge of Israelite family and household religion.

The relationship between religion, religious groups, and migration is an important topic of recent social science debate. Migration affects all aspects of the lives of those who have left their homes, including facets characterized as religious. Religion and religious identity are linked to social, cultural, and political issues, including integration, identity negotiation, diasporic community formation, interreligious dialogue, and religious pluralism. On the one hand, migration can change religious cultures, rituals, and traditions through the experience of mobility and the response of the host country. On the other hand, religious groups can encourage migration. In this context, new forms of transnational interaction and organization have emerged that contribute to the reformulation of community and identity. In some cases, such changes can lead to new conflicts and even trigger religious radicalization. This edited book consists of essays that bring together various perspectives on religious groups and their migration processes in different geographical regions. The aim is to empirically analyze the discourse and practices of national and transnational religious groups while investigating the relationship of religion and migration to political, historical, cultural, and social transitions. The book brings together academics and practitioners from different countries through interdisciplinary approaches that will be of interest to a wide readership of scholars and practitioners. Contents Religion, Religious Groups and Migration. - Deniz Coşan Eke and Eric M. Trinka “The World Is Without Shelter, Without Protector”: Buddhism, the Protection of Displaced People, and International Humanitarian Law. - Christina A. Kilby Borders within Borders: Superkilen as the Site of Assimilation. - Ehsan Sheikholharam The Role of Informational Asymmetry in Interfaith Communication During Conflict: A Game Theoretical Approach. - Serdar Ş. Güner and Nukhet A. Sandal In the Intersection of Religion, Identity, and Education: The Perceptions of Sunni Muslim Parents Regarding Islam Courses in Austria. - Ece Cihan Ertem Alevism as a political-theological concept and its Representation in Austria. - Deniz Cosan Eke The Role of Interreligious Dialogue and Outreach in Building Trust and Strengthening Social Inclusion in Europe: the case of Network for Dialogue. - Amjad Saleem and Aleksandra Djuric Milovanovic “Textual Placemaking and Migration Memories in Psalm 137”. - Eric M. Trinka

This book invites a close textual encounter with the first 11 chapters of Genesis as an intimate drama of marginalised peoples wrestling with the rise of the world’s first grain states in the Mesopotamian alluvium. The initial 11 chapters of Genesis are often considered discordant and fragmentary, despite being a story of beginnings within the context of the Bible. Readers discover how these formative chapters cohere as a cross-generational account of peoples grappling with the hegemonic spread of domesticated grain production and the concomitant rise of the pristine states of Mesopotamia. The book reveals how key episodes from the Genesis narrative reflect major societal revolutions of the Neolithic period in Mesopotamia through a three-fold hermeneutical method: literary analysis of the Bible and contemporary cuneiform texts; modern scholarship from archaeological, anthropological, ecological, and historical sources; and relevant exegesis from the Second Temple and rabbinical era. These three strands entwine to recount a generally sequential story of the earliest archaic states as narrated by non-elites at the margins of these emerging state spaces. The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1–11 provides a fascinating reading of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, appealing to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the Near East, as well as those working on ecological injustice from a religious vantage point.

Offering a reading of the intermarriage debate and expulsion of the foreign women in Ezra 9-10, this book engages with the production and performance of masculinities in this biblical text, shifting the focus away from the 'foreign women' to the men who are the primary actors in this work. This approach addresses the diversity of masculinities and the ways in which they are implicated in the production of power relations in the text. It explores the ‘feminized’ masculinity of the peoples-of-the-lands, the unstable masculinity of the golah, Ezra’s performance of penitential masculinity, and the rehabilitation of divine masculinity. The rejection of the marriages and the call for the expulsion of the women and children are addressed as sites on which masculinities and power relations are configured. In doing so, this book sheds light on how women and the traits and performances culturally ascribed to women, femininity and inferior masculinities, are appropriated to produce masculinities and negotiate power relations between men. It posits that the debate in Ezra 9-10 is not, ultimately, about the women themselves, but about bringing the masculinities, bodies and practices of dissenting men under the ‘management’ of those who wield the Torah in the narrative world of the text. Men, Masculinities and Intermarriage in Ezra-9-10 is of interest for scholars and students working on the Book of Ezra specifically, as well as the Hebrew Bible and its world more broadly. It is also a valuable study for those working on masculinities and gender in the biblical world and ancient Near East.

Notable Catholic interpreters of Scripture discern the guiding values of biblical interpretation at the brink of a new era for the church. Under the influence of Benedict XVI and Francis, Roman Catholics, whether lay or religious, have found renewed interest in studying sacred Scripture. Yet the church has also grown and faces new challenges in the new millennium. What does the future of Catholic biblical interpretation look like? And how ought the church’s rich heritage of biblical interpretation continue to influence it? This volume collects essays by some of the most influential voices in Catholic biblical scholarship today. Covering a variety of topics, from the Old Testament to the New Testament and biblical theology, the essays are united by a common goal: to hear the word of God and proclaim and apply it within the church. The authors pay special tribute to Marie-Joseph Lagrange. This nineteenth-century French Dominican led the way in blending critical methodology with respect for the Church’s authority in order to put scriptural study in service to the good of souls. Featuring diverse and authentically Catholic perspectives, The Future of Catholic Biblical Interpretation represents fresh purpose and direction for the church’s long and fruitful tradition of exegesis.

This book explores figurative images of the womb and the simile of a woman in labor from the Hebrew Bible, problematizing previous interpretations that present these as disparate images and showing how their interconnectivity embodies relationship with YHWH. In the Hebrew Bible, images of the womb and the pregnant body in labor do not co-occur despite being grounded in an image of a whole pregnant female body; the pregnant body is instead fragmented into these two constituent parts, and scholars have continued to interpret these images separately with no discussion of their interconnectivity. In this book, Langton explores the relationship between these images, inviting readers into a wider conversation on how the pregnant body functions as a means to an end, a place to access and seek a relationship with YHWH. Readers are challenged and asked to rethink how these images have been interpreted within feminist scholarship, with womb imagery depicting YHWH’s care for creation or performing the acts of a midwife, and the pregnant body in labor as a depiction of crisis. Langton explores select texts depicting these images, focusing on the corporeal experience and discussing direct references and allusions to the physicality of a pregnant body within these texts. This approach uncovers ancient and current androcentric ideology which dictates that conception, gestation, and birth must be controlled not by the female body, but by YHWH. The Womb and the Simile of the Woman in Labor in the Hebrew Bible is of interest to students and scholars working on the Hebrew Bible, gender in the Bible and the Near East more broadly, and feminist biblical criticism.

This unique volume on the Psalms is the final Hebrew Bible installment of the Texts@Contexts series. Each contribution provides a contextual reflection on a Psalm as chosen by the contributor. These contributions take account of the contributor's own personal context or the contexts of those around them, providing readings that are varied in geographical and linguistic scope, that reflect on pressing themes such as immigration, diversity, race, marginalized voices (such as those of adults with learning disabilities) and postcolonialism. Scholars also reflect on their own contexts of research and education. Taken together the contributions to this volume provide a sort of contextual commentary on the Psalms, gathering a wide range of voices and reflecting a diverse range of cultural afterlives of the Psalms.

The writers of the Bible depended on other sources for much of their work, including the pseudepigrapha, madeavailable here in two volumes

This book explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. The study treats the concept of divine knowledge as the embodied divine presence in its full historical and interpretive complexity by tracing the theme through a broad variety of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish sources, including Mesopotamian traditions of cultic statues, creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and later Jewish mystical testimonies. Orlov demonstrates that some biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts postulate that the theophany expresses the unique, corporeal nature of the deity that cannot be fully grasped or conveyed in some other non-corporeal symbolism, medium, or language. The divine presence requires another presence in order to be transmitted. To be communicated properly and in its full measure, the divine iconic knowledge must be "written" on a new living "body" which can hold the ineffable presence of God through a newly acquired ontology. Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism will provide an invaluable research to students and scholars in a wide range of areas within Jewish, Near Eastern, and Biblical Studies, as well as those studying religious elements of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and gender studies. Through the study of Jewish mediatorial figures, this book also elucidates the roots of early Christological developments, making it attractive to Christian audiences.