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"Mythology, Middle Eastern."
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When the gods were born : Greek cosmogonies and the Near East
\"Ancient Greece has for too long been studied in isolation from its Near Eastern neighbors. And the Ancient Near East itself has for too long been seen as an undifferentiated cultural monolith. Classics and Near Eastern studies, in our modern universities, continue to be separated by various disciplinary, linguistic, and ideological walls. Yet there is growing trend to dismantle these divides and look at the Greek world within its fullest geographical and cultural contexts. This book aims to bring the comparative study of Greek and Near Eastern cosmogonies to a new level. It analyzes themes such as succession myths, expressions of poetic inspiration, and claims to cosmic knowledge, as well as the role of itinerant specialists in the transmission of cosmogonies. Rather than compiling literary parallels from different periods and languages and treating the Near East as a monolithic matrix, the author focuses on the motifs specific to the Northwest Semitic tradition with which the Greeks had direct contact in the Archaic period. Focusing on Hesiod's Theogony, the Orphic texts, and their Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew counterparts, Carolina López-Ruiz avoids traditional diffusionist assumptions and proposes instead that dynamic cultural interaction led to the oral and intimate transmission of stories and beliefs.\"-From jacket.
Book
Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East
This book greatly enhances our knowledge of the interrelationship of Greek religion & culture and the Ancient Near East by offering important analyses of Greek myths, divinities and terms like 'magic' and 'paradise', but also of the Greek contribution to the Christian notion of atonement.
eBook
Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires
Advance your understanding of divination's role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East
This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires.
Features:
Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studiesEssays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empiresIndex of ancient sources
eBook
Founding gods, inventing nations
From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire.
eBook
Gods in the desert
Gods in the Desert explores the fascinating religious cultures of the ancient Near East. From the mysterious pyramids, tombs, and temples of Egypt to the powerful heroes, gods, and legends of Mesopotamia, Glenn Holland guides readers through the early religions that are the root of many of today's major faiths. Holland compares the religions of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine, including Israel and Judah, from the Neolithic era through the conquest of Alexander the Great. He provides a historical survey of each region, then discusses the gods, the rulers, the afterlife, and the worship rituals. This accessible overview makes clear how these religions converged and diverged, and are intimately connected to many of the religions we recognize today, sometimes in surprising ways.
eBook
A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology
The Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology covers sources from Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine and Anatolia, from around 2800 to 300 BC. It contains entries on gods and goddesses, giving evidence of their worship in temples, describing their 'character', as documented by the texts, and defining their roles within the body of mythological narratives; synoptic entries on myths, giving the place of origin of main texts and a brief history of their transmission through the ages; and entries explaining the use of specialist terminology, for such things as categories of Sumerian texts or types of mythological figures.
eBook
Creation and Chaos
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.
eBook
