God in Translation
Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World
By (author) Mark S. Smith
Hardback (Published)
(August 2008)
ISBN: 9783161495434
6.42 x 9.45 inches
Price: $239.00
In stock
Divinity in the ancient world included various expressions of cross-cultural recognition of deities. Several cases were political in their orientation, while other instances express religious values and cultural identity.
Mark S. Smith charts the many cases of deities recognized across cultures in the Late Bronze Age, Ancient Israel and early Judaism and the New Testament. This cross-cultural recognition took place in identifications or equations of deities of different cultures (for example, in lists of deities), and in representations of different deities of various cultures acting together (e.g., deities of different cultures serving as guarantors of and witnesses to international treaties). The context of ‘translatability of deities’ in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Israel supported international political relations. In the Iron Age, the worldview of regional deities on par with one another lost its intelligibility in the face of Neo-Assyrian empire ideology. In turn, Israel expressed its worldview of a single god powerful over all. As a result, biblical writers and scribes engaged in a sophisticated hermeneutics to mediate between older expressions of translatability embedded within its emergent monotheistic expressions. The Greco-Roman period witnessed an explosion in the types and genres of cross-cultural discourse about deities, and as a result, Jewish authors and some New Testament sources responded to this sort of discourse, sometimes negatively and at other times quite positively. Engagement with other cultures helped Israel come to understand its god.
Mark S. Smith, Born 1955; 1984-2000 taught at Saint Paul Seminary, Yale University and Saint Joseph’s University; since 2000 Skirball Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University; Visiting Professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
- By (author) Mark S. Smith
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Volume 95
Schriftgelehrte Traditionsliteratur
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Elephantine in Context
Studies on the History, Religion and Literature of the Judeans in Persian Period Egypt
Volume 155
Rhetoric and Hermeneutics
Approaches to Text, Tradition and Social Construction in Biblical and Second Temple Literature
Volume 130
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Eine Rekonstruktion der Redaktionsgeschichte der hinteren Sinaiperikope (Exodus 32-34) vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Pentateuchmodelle
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Die Bedingungen des Bundes
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Volume 140
Reading Prophetic Books
Form, Intertextuality, and Reception in Prophetic and Post-Biblical Literature
Volume 89
From the Reed Sea to Kadesh
A Redactional and Socio-Historical Study of the Pentateuchal Wilderness Narrative
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