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Using the window of divinity to peer into the varieties of religious experience in ancient Israel,
The Origin and Character of God is a comprehensive reference work that explores the royal use of religion for power, prestige, and control; the intimacy of family and household religion; priestly prerogatives and cultic status; prophetic challenges to injustice; and the pondering of theodicy by poetic sages.
Sommario
- Chapter One: Introductory Matters
- Chapter Two: The History of Scholarship on Ancient Israelite Religion - A Brief Sketch
- Chapter Three: Methodology
- Chapter Four: El Worship
- Chapter Five: The Iconography of Divinity - El
- Section I: Methodology and Iconography
- Section II: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and Divine Images
- Section III: The Iconography of Ugaritic 'Ilu
- Section IV: The Iconography of Israelite El
- Chapter Six: The Origin of Yahweh
- Section I: The Meaning and Revelation of the Name Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible
- Section II: The Name Yahweh in Extra-Biblical and Epigraphic Sources
- Section III: The Geographic Origins of Yahwistic Traditions and the Debate Concerning
- Chapter Seven: The Iconography of Divinity - Yahweh
- Section I: The Iconography of Yahweh: Anthropomorphic and Theriomorphic Traditions
- Section II: The Iconography of Yahweh: Aniconic and Abstract Traditions
- Chapter Eight: The Characterization of the Deity Yahweh
- Part One: Yahweh as Warrior and Family God
- Section I: Yahweh as Divine Warrior
- Section II: Yahweh the Compassionate and Family Religion
- Chapter Nine: The Characterization of the Deity Yahweh
- Part Two: Yahweh as King and Yahweh as Judge
- Section I: Yahweh as King
- Section II: Yahweh as Judge
- Chapter Ten: The Characterization of the Deity Yahweh
- Part Three: Yahweh as Holy
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Info autore
Theodore J. Lewis is the Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit and co-author of Ugaritic Narrative Poetry. He is General Editor of the multi-volume Writings from the Ancient World translation series and the co-editor with Gary Beckman of Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion. He is former editor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Hebrew Annual Review. His research has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Riassunto
Few topics are as broad or as daunting as the God of Israel, that deity of the world's three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who has been worshiped over millennia. In the Hebrew Bible, God is characterized variously as militant, beneficent, inscrutable, loving, and judicious. Who is this divinity that has been represented as masculine and feminine, mythic and real, transcendent and intimate?
The Origin and Character of God is Theodore J. Lewis's monumental study of the vast subject that is the God of Israel. In it, he explores questions of historical origin, how God was characterized in literature, and how he was represented in archaeology and iconography. He also brings us into the lived reality of religious experience. Using the window of divinity to peer into the varieties of religious experience in ancient Israel, Lewis explores the royal use of religion for power, prestige, and control; the intimacy of family and household religion; priestly prerogatives and cultic status; prophetic challenges to injustice; and the pondering of theodicy by poetic sages.
A volume that is encyclopedic in scope but accessible in tone, The Origin and Character of God is an essential addition to the growing scholarship of one of humanity's most enduring concepts.
Testo aggiuntivo
Theodore Lewis's new book is a true magnum opus. It takes on the challenge of understanding ancient Israelite religion by focusing on how the Israelites conceptualized deity, more specifically, the god Yahweh and Yahweh's older relative, the Canaanite El. Lewis spares no effort to be comprehensive, taking in all the primary evidence from written texts and non-written archaeology and all the modern scholarship.... His coverage is lucid and systematic, and not simply descriptive, but a probing inquiry on many levels... paying close attention to both visual and written sources and their interplay, and demonstrating an acute awareness of the limits of our primary evidence.
