Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible PDF Download

Author: Karel van der Toorn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032543
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
We think of the Hebrew Bible as the Book--and yet it was produced by a largely nonliterate culture in which writing, editing, copying, interpretation, and public reading were the work of a professional elite. The scribes of ancient Israel are indeed the main figures behind the Hebrew Bible, and in this book Karel van der Toorn tells their story for the first time. His book considers the Bible in very specific historical terms, as the output of the scribal workshop of the Second Temple active in the period 500-200 BCE. Drawing comparisons with the scribal practices of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, van der Toorn clearly details the methods, the assumptions, and the material means of production that gave rise to biblical texts; then he brings his observations to bear on two important texts, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah. Traditionally seen as the copycats of antiquity, the scribes emerge here as the literate elite who held the key to the production as well as the transmission of texts. Van der Toorn's account of scribal culture opens a new perspective on the origins of the Hebrew Bible, revealing how the individual books of the Bible and the authors associated with them were products of the social and intellectual world of the scribes. By taking us inside that world, this book yields a new and arresting appreciation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Author: Niv Allon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472583973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The modern view of the ancient Egyptian world is often through the lens of a scribe: the trained, schooled, literate individual who was present at many levels of Egyptian society, from a local accountant to the highest echelons of society. And yet, despite the wealth of information the scribes left us, we know relatively little about what underpinned their world, about their mentality and about their everyday life. Tracing ten key biographies, Ancient Egyptian Scribes examines how these figures kept both the administrative life and cultural memory of Egypt running. These are the Egyptians who ran the state and formed the supposedly meritocratic system of local administration and government. Case studies look at accountants, draughtsmen, scribes with military and dynastic roles, the authors of graffiti and literati who interacted in different ways with Pharaohs and other leaders. Assuming no previous knowledge of ancient Egypt, the various roles and identities of the scribes are presented in a concise and accessible way, offering structured information on their cultural identity and self-presentation, and providing readers with an insight into the making of Egyptian written culture.

Author: Niv Allon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009083791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This Element seeks to characterize the scribal culture in ancient Egypt through its textual acts, which were of prime importance in this culture: writing, list-making, drawing, and copying.

Author: Lindsey A. Askin
Publisher: Supplements to the Journal for
ISBN: 9789004372856
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
In Scribal Culture in Ben Sira Lindsey A. Askin explores scribal culture as a framework for analysing features of textual referencing throughout the Book of Ben Sira (c.200 BCE), revealing new insights into how Ben Sira wrote his book of wisdom.

Author: Philip Zhakevich
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1646021053
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
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.

Author: Anthony J Barbieri-Low
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295748894
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Although they existed more than a millennium apart, the great civilizations of New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1548-1086 BCE) and Han dynasty China (206 BCE-220 CE) shared intriguing similarities. Both were centered around major, flood-prone rivers--the Nile and the Yellow River--and established complex hydraulic systems to manage their power. Both spread their territories across vast empires that were controlled through warfare and diplomacy and underwent periods of radical reform led by charismatic rulers--the "heretic king" Akhenaten and the vilified reformer Wang Mang. Universal justice was dispensed through courts, and each empire was administered by bureaucracies staffed by highly trained scribes who held special status. Egypt and China each developed elaborate conceptions of an afterlife world and created games of fate that facilitated access to these realms. This groundbreaking volume offers an innovative comparison of these two civilizations. Through a combination of textual, art historical, and archaeological analyses, Ancient Egypt and Early China reveals shared structural traits of each civilization as well as distinctive features.

Author: Rodney Ast
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789042942868
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Scribes are paradoxically both central and invisible in most societies before the typographic revolution of the 15th century, witnessed by every manuscript, but often elusive as historical figures. The act of writing is a quotidian and vernacular practice as well as a literary one, and must be observed not only in the outputs of literary copyists or reports of their activities, but in the documents of everyday life. This volume collects contributions on scribal practice as it features on diverse media (including papyri, tablets, and inscriptions) in a range of ancient societies, from the Ancient Near East and Dynastic Egypt through the Graeco-Roman world to Byzantium. These discussions of the role and place of scribes and scribal activity in pre-typographic cultures both contribute to a better understanding of one of the key drivers of these cultures, and illuminate the transmission of knowledge and traditions within and between them.

Author: Mark Leuchter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567696162
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This volume is a concentrated examination of the varied roles of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel and Judah, shedding light on the social world of the Hebrew Bible. Divided into discussion of three key aspects, the book begins by assessing praxis and materiality, looking at the tools and materials used by scribes, where they came from and how they worked in specific contexts. The contributors then move to observe the power and status of scribal cultures, and how scribes functioned within their broader social world. Finally, the volume offers perspectives that examine ideological issues at play in both antiquity and the modern context(s) of biblical scholarship. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that no text is produced in a void, and no writer functions without a network of resources.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004375279
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
The volume The Materiality of Texts from Ancient Egypt contains nine contributions from well-known papyrologists, Egyptologists, archaeologists and technical specialists. They discuss the materiality of ancient writing and writing supports in various ways through methodological considerations and through practical case studies from the early Pharaonic to the Late Antique periods in Egypt, including Greek and Egyptian papyri and ostraca, inscriptions and graffiti. The articles in this volume present new approaches to the study of textual material and scribal practice, especially in the light of the ongoing development of digital techniques that uncover new information from ancient writing materials. The aim of the book is to encourage researchers of ancient texts to consider the benefits of using these new methods and technological resources.

Author: Foy Scalf
Publisher: Oriental Institute Press
ISBN: 9781614910381
Category : Book of the dead
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny! This book, edited by Foy Scalf, explores what the Book of the Dead was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and what happened to it.