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Until very recently, the idea of ancient Jewish sciences would have
been considered unacceptable. Since the 1990s, Early Modern and
Medieval Science in Jewish sources has been actively studied, but
the consensus was that no real scientific themes could be found in
earlier Judaism. This work points them out in detail and posits a
new field of research: the scientific activity evident in the Dead
Sea Scrolls and early Jewish pseudepigrapha. The publication of new
texts and new analyses of older ones reveals crucial elements that
are best illuminated by the history of science, and may have
interesting consequences for it. The contributors evaluate these
texts in relation to astronomy, astrology, and physiognomy, marking
the first comprehensive attempt to account for scientific themes in
Second Temple Judaism. They investigate the meaning and purpose of
scientific explorations in an apocalyptic setting. An appreciation
of these topics paves the way to a renewed understanding of the
scientific fragments scattered throughout rabbinic literature. The
book first places the Jewish material in the ancient context of the
Near Eastern and Hellenistic worlds. While the Jewish texts were
not on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, they find a
meaningful place in the history of science, between Babylonia and
Egypt, in the time period between Hipparchus and Ptolemy. The book
uses recent advances in method to examine the contacts and networks
of Jewish scholars in their ancient setting. Second, the essays
here tackle the problematic concept of a national scientific
tradition. Although science is nowadays often conceived as
universal, the historiography of ancient Jewish sciences
demonstrates the importance of seeing the development of science in
a local context. The book explores the tension between the hegemony
of central scientific traditions and local scientific enterprises,
showing the relevance of ancient data to contemporary postcolonial
historiography of science. Finally, philosophical questions of the
demarcation of science are addressed in a way that can advance the
discussion of related ancient materials. Online edition available
as part of the NYU Library's Ancient World Digital Library and in
partnership with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
(ISAW).
The Invention of Hebrew is the first book to approach the Bible in
light of recent epigraphic discoveries on the extreme antiquity of
the alphabet and its use as a deliberate and meaningful choice.
Hebrew was more than just a way of transmitting information; it was
a vehicle of political symbolism and self-representation. Seth L.
Sanders connects the Bible's distinctive linguistic form--writing
down a local spoken language--to a cultural desire to speak
directly to people, summoning them to join a new community that the
text itself helped call into being. Addressing the people of Israel
through a vernacular literature, Hebrew texts reimagined their
audience as a public. By comparing Biblical documents with related
ancient texts in Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Babylonian, this book shows
Hebrew's distinctiveness as a self-conscious political language.
Illuminating the enduring stakes of Biblical writing, Sanders
demonstrates how Hebrew assumed and promoted a source of power
previously unknown in written literature: "the people" as the
protagonist of religion and politics.
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