Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature

Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist

David S. Vanderhooft, Abraham Winitzer

• Publisher: Eisenbrauns
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781575062723
• eBook ISBN:
  9781575068671
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

This volume, in celebration of Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, includes twenty-eight illuminating essays on ancient Near Eastern history and literature, which focus especially on the intersection of these fields. Contributors include one of Machinist's teachers, several of his students, and numerous colleagues and friends. These essays probe topics for which Machinist's work has often set new standards. And in the spirit of the honoree and his interests, these comparative studies encompass Babel, Bibel, and more. In them, Assyriologists contend with biblical cruxes and biblicists engage Assyriological research, while classicists and Hittitologists participate with considerations of their respective disciplines within a broad cross-cultural context. The volume is a must for anyone committed to the ongoing comparative study of the ancient Near East, and within that framework, the historical study of the Hebrew Bible.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1: Fearful Symmetry The Poetics, Genre, and Form of Tablet ILines 109–18 in the Poem of Erra
• Chapter 2: Menahem’s Reign Before the Assyrian Invasion (2 Kings 15:14–16)
• Chapter 3: Ethnicity in the Assyrian Empire: A View from the Nisbe
• Chapter 4: David and the Ark:A Jerusalem Festival Reflected in Royal Narrative
• Chapter 5: Creation and the Divine Spirit in Babel and Bible Reflections on mummu in Enūma eliš I 4and rûaḥ in Genesis 1:2
• Chapter 6: Niṣirti bārûti: une autre approche
• Chapter 7: NB Administrative Terminology and Its Influence in Biblical Literature: Hebrew החרא
• Chapter 8: Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Literatures
• Chapter 9: Between Elective Autocracy and Democracy: Formalizing Biblical Constitutional Theory
• Chapter 10: Prosperity and Kingship in Psalms and Inscriptions
• Chapter 11: Redactors, Rationalists,and (Bloodied) Rivers
• Chapter 12: “An Heir Created by Aššur”: Literary Observationson the Rassam Prism (A) of Ashurbanipal
• Chapter 13: Literary-Political Motifs in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions
• Chapter 14: Of Bears and Men: Thoughts on the End of Šulgi’s Reign and on the Ensuing Succession
• Chapter 15: A Hidden Anti-David Polemic in 2 Samuel 6:2
• Chapter 16: Beyond the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule
• Chapter 17: Psalm 22:16 and Its Sumerian and Akkadian Analogues
• Chapter 18: Do Ideas Travel Lightly?: Early Greek Concepts of Justice in Their Mediterranean Context
• Chapter 19: The Rod that Smote Philistia: Isaiah 14:28–32
• Chapter 20: Errant Oxen: Or: The Goring Ox Redux
• Chapter 21: Jephthah: Chutzpah and Overreach in a Hebrew Judge
• Chapter 22: The Remembrance of Kings Past: The Persona of King Ibbi-Sin
• Chapter 23: Hittite Gods in Egyptian Attire: A Case Study in Cultural Transmission
• Chapter 24: How Did Šulgi and Išbi-Erra Ascend to Heaven?
• Chapter 25: “War Crimes” in Amos’s Oracles against the Nations (Amos 1:3–2:3)
• Chapter 26: Grammar and Context: Enki & Ninhursag ll. 1–3 and a Rare Sumerian Construction
• Chapter 27: Towards a Biography of Kish: Notes on Urbanism and Comparison
• Index of Authors
• Index of Scripture