This volume contains the proceedings of two international meetings held by the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times (RIAB) in Ramat-Gan/Jerusalem (March 2017) and Leipzig (May 2018). Most of the papers relate to various aspects of the Aramaic epigraphy in different contexts with a second part of the volume dealing with Idumean ostraca. The papers will be of interest to ancient historians, archaeologists of the ancient Near East, scholars of Semitic and Biblical studies and the ancient Near East.

The Encyclopedia of Material Culture in the Biblical World (EBW) builds on the German "Standardwerk" Biblisches Reallexikon (BRL), edited by Kurt Galling 1937, second edition 1977 (2BRL). It is a reference book for biblical scholars, historians, and archaeologists. The EBW focusses on the material culture from the Neolithic Age to the Hellenistic period, giving attention to the material from the Bronze and Iron Ages, including the Persian period. The geographic regions covered by the entries include primarily the records of Palestine (= the Southern Levant) limited by (excl.) the southern fringe of Lebanon and Hermon (North), the Wadi al-Aris, the Sinai peninsula and North-Arabia (South), the Mediterranean Sea (West) and the Transjordanian desert (East). If appropriate to the entry, the neighboring evidence from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Mesopotamia is included. The Encyclopedia presents and documents the material culture based on the archaeological, epigraphical, and iconographical data in historical order and documents the state of current research. The entries do not only list or mention the most important material data, but try to synthesize and interpret it within the horizon of a history of Southern Levantine culture, economy, technical development, art, and religion. The EBW consists of around 120 articles and an introductory part pertaining to the chronology of the EBW, archaeology and cultural History, epigraphy, and iconography, written by specialists from 15 different countries.

This volume comprises the conference proceedings of the international and interdisciplinary meeting held in Leipzig from November 9 to 11, 2015. Scholars from different research areas present masks from Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Greece, mainly from the third to the first millennium BCE. The masks are analyzed from archaeological, iconographical, anthropological, philological, and theological perspectives. In many cases, the masks refer to gods, ancestors, spirits, and are used as a means to communicate between human beings and supernatural powers. Masks belong to the human condition and seem to be the international and intercultural answer to one of the most existential questions of human life. In addition, the volume includes an archaeological catalogue of the masks from Israel/Palestine of the Neolithic Age until the Persian Period.

The articles in this volume of collected essays, written over the last two decades and all revised, updated, and supplemented with unpublished material, are grouped around two themes: Divine Secrets and Human Imaginations. The first essays deal with the production, initiation, use and function, the abduction, repatriation, and the replacement of divine images, their outer appearance, and the many facets of the divine presence theology in Ancient Mesopotamia. The essays on the second topic deal with human imaginations, human constructs, and constructed memories, which assign meaning to the past or to things or experiences that are beyond human control. Thematically, several aspects of the human condition are examined, such as the ideas associated in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East with death, corporeality, enemies, disasters, utopias, and passionate love. "Berlejung's book is a gift to biblical scholarship, particularly to those of us outside the circle of continental scholarship. Its blend of deep erudition and broad intellectual horizons is simply inspiring, providing a feast for the scholarly imagination." Ronald Hendel in RBL 06/2022

This congress volume of the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times combines theoretical approaches to historical research on autonomy or independence in ancient cultures and then presents articles which study the subject using Aram and Israel in antiquity as examples. These articles show clearly how strongly Syria and Palestine were linked to one another and how they constituted one single cultural region which was connected by its economy, politics, language, religion, and culture.

This title presents a comprehensive and profound introduction to the literature and history of the Old Testament. Beginning with methods and sources, this Handbook looks at the Biblical text, archaeology, other texts, and iconography. It explores varying exegetical methods, including historical criticism, canonical approach, feminist, social scientific and liberation theology. Methods in archaeology, Hebrew epigraphic and iconography are also covered. The second section is devoted to the history and religious history of Ancient Israel. Introductory matters, such as fundamental terminology and definitions, ethnic identity, ancestors and the dead, geography and time reckoning are explicated before the book moves on to a historical survey from the Iron Age (c. 1200 BCE) to the early Roman period (ending about 63 CE). The heart of the book is a detailed survey of the Hebrew canonical books, section by section and book by book. The discussion for each book includes: biblical presentation and content; problems arising from the history of literary analysis and research; the origin and growth of the writing; the theology; and notes on reception history. This book will provide students with everything they need to study the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

The volume collects the papers of the International Conference on Disaster and Relief Management in Ancient Israel/Palestine, Egypt and the Ancient Near East held from the 4th of October to the 6th of October 2010 in Leipzig. Scholars from different fields are having a close look at the concepts of disasters in antiquity, their impact on society, possible dynamics and cultural dimensions. They give insights into their actual research on the destructivity and productivity of disasters, including the possibility that disasters were used as topoi in ideological, mythological and theological discourses. Their contributions in this volume represent a first step to a cultural history of disasters in antiquity.

The volume presents a collection of papers read during three workshops held in Leipzig (2016), Jerusalem (2017), and Vienna (2018). International scholars from different disciplines and methodological approaches explored gender-specific constructions of foreignness/strangeness in the Old Testament, Egypt, and Mesopotamia from their particular perspectives. They showed that when combined, strangeness/foreignness and gender can take on very different forms. Various processes of the "othering" of women are of importance, which differ from the "othering" of men. The contributions investigate specific questions, individual female figures and individual phenomena as model cases. The basic question was when, where, how and for what purpose the categories of foreignness and gender were connected and activated in literary tradition. The collection is a preliminary and basic work for further study of gender-specific concepts of foreignness/strangeness in the ancient Mediterranean cultures of the first millennium BCE.

This title provides a comprehensive and profound introduction to the literature and history of the Old Testament. Beginning with methods and sources, this Handbook looks at the Biblical text, archaeology, other texts, and iconography. It explores varying exegetical methods, including historical criticism, canonical approach, feminist, social scientific and liberation theology. Methods in archaeology, Hebrew epigraphic and iconography are also covered. The second section is devoted to the history and religious history of Ancient Israel. Introductory matters, such as fundamental terminology and definitions, ethnic identity, ancestors and the dead, geography and time reckoning are explicated before the book moves on to a historical survey from the Iron Age (c. 1200 BCE) to the early Roman period (ending about 63 CE). The heart of the book is a detailed survey of the Hebrew canonical books, section by section and book by book. The discussion for each book includes: biblical presentation and content; problems arising from the history of literary analysis and research; the origin and growth of the writing; the theology; and notes on reception history. This book will provide students with everything they need to study the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

This volume combines the papers held at the Minerva Center's "Research on Israel and Aram in Biblical Times" conference (Leipzig 2018) on the subject of writing and re-writing history by deliberate destruction in the regions of Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. An international group of scholars studies the subject using a multi-perspective and interdisciplinary approach. Archeological studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, and biblical studies focused on the destruction of ancient sites in Israel and Judah in the 1st millennium BC. The perspective of the defeated Israelites, Jerusalemites, and Judeans is described in detail in the Old Testament and in postbiblical literature and shows that the destructions in the past were a cultural and identity creator of the first magnitude. The longue duree of the practice of reshaping the past through the deliberate destruction of a cultural heritage in order to shape the present according to current interests becomes evident based on the Neo-Assyrian Empire's practice up to the modern era and is demonstrated by the example of the Arabian-Muslim conquest of Aram as well as current Turkish politics.