This handbook presents an overview of the main approaches from social and cultural anthropology to the Hebrew Bible. Since the late 19th century, biblical scholarship has addressed issues and themes related to biblical stories from a perspective which could now be considered socio-anthropological. It is however only since the 1960s that biblical scholars have started to produce readings and incorporate analytical models drawn directly from social anthropology to widen the interpretive scope of the social and historical data contained in the biblical sources. The handbook is arranged into two main thematic parts. Part 1 assesses the place of the Bible in social anthropology, examines the contribution of ethnoarchaeology to the recovery of the social world of Iron Age Palestine and offers insights from the anthropology of the Mediterranean for the interpretation of the biblical stories.
Part 2 provides a series of case studies on anthropological themes arising in the Hebrew Bible. These include kinship and social organisation, death, cultural and collective memory, and ritualism. Contributors also examine how the biblical stories reveal dynamics of power and authority, gender, and honour and shame, and how socio-anthropological approaches can reveal these narratives and deepen our knowledge of the human societies and cultural context of the texts. Bringing together the expertise of scholars of the Hebrew Bible and Biblical Archaeology, this ethnographic introduction prompts new questions into our understanding of anthropology and the Bible.
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Hebrew Bible in Perspective – Emanuel Pfoh, National University of La Plata, Argentina
I. HISTORIOGRAPHIES, THEORIES AND METHODS
2. Anthropologists and the Bible – Adam Kuper, London School of Economics, UK
3. The Holy Land and the Bible in the Nineteenth Century – Eveline J. van der Steen, Liverpool University, UK
4. Phantoms, Factoids and Frontiers: Social Anthropology and the Archaeology of Palestine – Dermot Nestor, Australian Catholic University, Australia
5. Ethnographic and Ethnoarchaeological Insights to Interpret First-Millennium BCE Material Culture – Gloria London, University of Washington, USA
6. The Anthropology of the Mediterranean, the History of the Southern Levant and Biblical Studies – Emanuel Pfoh, National University of La Plata, Argentina
II. THEMES, APPROACHES AND INTERPRETATIONS
7. Kinship and Social Organisation in Ancient Palestine – Paula M. McNutt, St. Ambrose University, USA
8. The Many Forms and Foundations of Power and Authority in the Hebrew Bible – Victor H. Matthews, Missouri State University, USA
9. Economic Anthropology and the Hebrew Bible – Roger S. Nam, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, USA
10. Gender and Society in Ancient Israel – Carol Meyers, Duke University, USA
11. Anthropologies of the Hebrew Bible – Jan Dietrich, University of Aarhus, Denmark
12. Honour, Shame and Other Social Values in the Hebrew Bible – Philip Esler, University of Gloucestershire, UK
13. For Moses 'had indeed married a Cushite wife': Metaphors, Power, and Ethnicity in Numbers 12 – Katherine Southwood, University of Oxford, UK
14. Asymmetrical Reciprocal Exchange in the Book of Jonah – Jo-Marí Schäder, University of Pretoria, South Africa
15. Neither Divide nor Continuum: Orality and Literacy in the Hebrew Bible – Robert D. Miller II, The Catholic University of America, USA
16. Telling Tales: Biblical Myth and Narrative – Karolien Vermeulen, University of Antwerp, Belgium
17. A Social Anthropology of Biblical Memory – Niels Peter Lemche, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
18. Acts that Work, Texts that Work: Ritual in the Hebrew Bible – Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, University of Oslo, Norway
19. Shaman, Preacher, or Spirit Medium? The Israelite Prophet in the Light of Anthropological Models – Lester L. Grabbe, University of Hull, UK
20. The Anthropology of Food in Ancient Israel – Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, William Jessup University, USA
21. The Anthropology of Death in Ancient Israel – Kristine H. Garroway, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, USA
22. Spatiality and Territoriality: Power over Land and Power over People – Stephen C. Russell, City University of New York, USA
23. The Anthropology of Iconography in Ancient Palestine – Angelika Berlejung, University of Leipzig, Germany
Index of Authors
Index of Sources
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