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The opening chapter presents an overview of some of the historical-critical issues that shape a theological reading of the text. A better understanding of literary, historical, and social issues provides an interpretive control for theological articulation.
In the opening verses of the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah, King Cyrus exhorts the exiled Judeans to return to Jerusalem to restore worship in Jerusalem. It then narrates this restoration through the construction of the temple, the repair of the city walls, and the commitment to the written Torah. In this volume, Roger Nam offers a new and compelling argument regarding the theology of Ezra-Nehemiah: that the Judeans' return migration, which extended over several generations, had a totalizing effect on the people. Repatriation was not a single event, but rather a multi-generational process that oscillated between assimilation and preservation of culture. Consequently, Ezra-Nehemiah presents a unique theological perspective. Nam explores the book's prominent theological themes, including trauma, power, identity, community, worship, divine presence, justice, hope, and others – all of which take on a nuanced expression in diaspora. He also shows how and why Ezra-Nehemiah naturally found a rich reception among emerging early Christian and Jewish interpretive communities.
A retrospective look at the 1980 Dumbarton Oaks Symposium “Beyond Byzantium” noting its groundbreaking aspects, omissions, and the evolution of the field in subsequent years. A particular emphasis is the increasing breadth of topics in the study of the Byzantine Near East as scholarly interest has moved beyond primarily philological and religious topics. The community of scholars interested in these traditions has also changed. At the 1980 Symposium several presenters were clergy who came to the field via the study of biblical languages. Few were women. Today the field is much more diverse, with many active scholars who belong to Near Eastern Christian communities. Manuscripts are used to illustrate cultural exchanges among Eastern Christian traditions and to highlight issues of ownership and removal of cultural heritage from its original context. A particular emphasis is placed on liturgical manuscripts as a source of information about language acquisition.
This chapter presents new, annotated translations of the principal testimonia and fragments of Skylax of Karyanda (late 6th century BC), arranged as fourteen extracts. Skylax, we are told by Herodotos, was recruited by King Darius of Persia to explore the Indus. The chapter introduction assesses recent studies that trace the echoes of his travel narrative in Philostratos’ Life of Apollonios (3rd century AD) and suggest that Skylax descended the Ganges to the east coast of India, perhaps voyaging as far as Taprobane (Sri Lanka). A specially drawn map indicates the area within which he most likely travelled.
Biblical Aramaic and Related Dialects is a comprehensive, introductory-level textbook for the acquisition of the language of the Old Testament and related dialects that were in use from the last few centuries BCE. Based on the latest research, it uses a method that guides students into knowledge of the language inductively, with selections taken from the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and papyrus discoveries from ancient Egypt. The volume offers a comprehensive view of ancient Aramaic that enables students to progress to advanced levels with a solid grounding in historical grammar. Most up-to-date description of Aramaic in light of modern discoveries and methods. Provides more detail than previous textbooks. Includes comprehensive description of Biblical dialect, along with Aramaic of the Persian period and of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Guided readings begin with primary sources, enabling students learn the language by reading historical texts.
This chapter explores the effects of empire-building on both local economies and global connectivity, and the impact imperial expansion may have had on what one might call economic growth and complexity. It deals with agriculture and its development under imperial conditions. The chapter considers the impact of governance structures and taxation on ancient economies. By financing flood control and irrigation, and maintaining the bureaucracy to implement the projects, the dynasty benefited through taxation and power, but it also fostered agrarian development and social prosperity. The use of limited-purpose money in some spheres of exchange preceded all monetary systems of the Afro-Eurasian world of the mid-first millennium and helps to explain monetization as a path-dependent process. Taxation was one of the most important means of asserting and maintaining empire both financially and symbolically. Democracy was not long-lasting, but with the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, including Egypt, Greek urban culture, centered on civic interaction spread toward Central Asia and Egypt.
This chapter explains the geographical coverage of Christianity in the third century. It deals with Christians relations with the Roman state and the persecutions which formed a backdrop to the mental lives of many Christians even if physically they may have been little affected by them. The chapter describes the literary and intellectual life of third-century Christianity. Persecution of Christians by Roman officials had been in the course of the second century sporadic and unsystematic, and basically local in range, and is best seen in the context of the occasional harassment of many another exotic group equally regarded as deviant. By autumn 249 the emperor Decius was secured in power after his usurpation. Mani and his disciple missionaries, the narrow band of high achieving 'Elect' and their devoted faithful, the 'Hearers', had in the course of the third century made remarkable proselytizing progress both inside and outside the permeable boundaries of the Roman world, especially in the eastern empire.
In the Achaemenid period, when the Persian empire extended from Greece to Gandhara, a meeting between the east and the west had taken place. Indian soldiers in the Persian army fought on Greek soil, and Greeks such as Scylax made explorations in India for the Persians. The Greeks of Bactria under Diodotus gained their independence from the Seleucids as a result of open revolt or through a gradual transition to power. Diodotus I considered himself a saviour of the Greeks in Bactria, some of his coins include the title of Soter. On the other hand, coins of Pantaleon and Agathocles are rare in the western parts of Bactria. The policy initiated by Agathocles was followed by Menander. It is generally accepted that Menander was married to Agathocleia, probably a sister or daughter of Agathocles. After Menander there began the process of decline and fall of the Graeco- Bactrian and Graeco-Indian kings.
At the beginning of his History, for which he was gathering the material in the middle of the 5th century, the Greek writer Herodotus tells us what Persian men of learning had to say about the first confrontations of Europe and Asia. Modern scholars have varied greatly in the use they make of him for early Achaemenid history. The historians of Alexander the Great provide first-hand information about the Persian empire; and in particular it is to them that we owe our knowledge of the eastern Iranian lands as they first come into the light of recorded history. The whole of Western Asia as far as the Arabian desert was now under Persian suzerainty. The Persian satraps in the far western provinces of Asia Minor and Egypt were not involved in the clashes of rivals, though Oroites in Sardis took the opportunity to avenge an insult on the satrap of the Hellespontine region.
It was during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, after the Macedonians had overrun the western provinces of the Persian empire, that the eastern Iranian element became especially prominent in the Persian camp. The majority of the eastern Iranian troops had been mustered by Bessus, who after the Persian defeat quickly emerged as the most powerful of the Persian leaders under Darius III. After the assassination of the king, it was Bessus who assumed the royal prerogatives, and retired to his satrapy of Bactria to carry on the struggle against Alexander in eastern Iran. The complex and disturbed succession of the later Indo-Bactrian rulers was to a large extent the consequence of a far-reaching event. After the fall of the Kushan dynasty in AD 225, the provinces of Gandhara, Bactria and Sogdiana passed under the rule of Sasanian governors who bore the title of Kushanshah 'King of the Kushans'. This Persian administration continued until about AD 360.
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