In Pursuit of Meaning : : Collected Studies of Baruch A. Levine / / Baruch A. Levine; ed. by Andrew D. Gross.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Levine, Baruch A.,
• HerausgeberIn: Gross, Andrew D.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (996 p.)

In a career spanning almost five decades, Baruch Levine's numerous publications reflect his wide-ranging interests and areas of expertise in the study of the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Near East, and early Judaism. In Pursuit of Meaning brings together 51 of the most important articles that Professor Levine produced during his years at Brandeis University (1962-69) and New York University (1969-2000, emeritus 2000-). The first volume, containing 27 articles, focuses on the study of religion in the biblical and ancient Near Eastern worlds from a number of perspectives, ranging from close philological analysis of written sources to anthropological studies of ancient cultic practices. In the 24 articles of the second volume, Levine engages broader aspects of ancient Near Eastern society, from legal institutions of various types to larger societal forms of organization. This volume also contains some of his more incisive lexicographical and philological contributions to the study of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.The flavor of Prof. Levine's work is captured in this paragraph from his introduction to these two volumes:"Looking back, and reviewing my writings, I realize what it is that I have been seeking all along. I have been in pursuit of meaning, employing scholarly methods, primarily philology and semantics, to the exegesis of ancient Near Eastern texts, preserved in several languages, principally the Hebrew Bible. I regard language as the key to meaning. This conclusion would appear to be self-evident, and yet, philology is often sidelined in favor of engaging larger frameworks. Most of all, I challenge the notion that we already know the meaning of the words and clauses central to the texts under investigation, and may proceed directly to other considerations without first re-examining the smaller units. Again and again, that policy has resulted in flawed interpretation, and in missed opportunities for learning. This is not to say that scholars should stop at the smaller units, and, indeed, the tendency to do so has been largely responsible for the reaction against Semitic philology so noticeable since the latter part of the 20th century. It is our challenge to move outward from focal points to the circumference, from text to context, from content to structure."

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents Volume I: Religion -- Preface -- Introduction -- Abbreviations -- A. History of Religions -- Assyrian Ideology and Israelite Monotheism -- The Next Phase in Jewish Religion: The Land of Israel as Sacred Space -- B. Sources on Religion -- Ugaritic Descriptive Rituals -- The Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch -- The Descriptive Ritual Texts from Ugarit: Some Formal and Functional Features of the Genre -- Toward an Institutional Overview of Public Ritual at Ugarit -- Review of The Israelian Heritage of Judaism -- Leviticus: Its Literary History and Location in Biblical Literature -- Review Article: The Deir >Alla Plaster Inscriptions -- The Balaam Inscription from Deir >Alla: Historical Aspects -- The Plaster Inscriptions from Deir >Alla: General Interpretation -- The Temple Scroll: Aspects of its Historical Provenance and Literary Character -- A Further Look at the Mo'adim of the Temple Scroll -- C. Phenomenology of Religion -- On the Presence of God in Biblical Religion -- Prolegomenon to G. B. Gray's Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice -- Lpny YHWH-Phenomenology of the Open-Air-Altar in Biblical Israel -- Ritual as Symbol: Modes of Sacrifice in Israelite Religion -- The Cultic Scene in Biblical Religion: Hebrew >AL PĀNÂI ( על פני ) and the Ban on Divine Images -- An Essay on Prophetic Attitudes toward Temple and Cult in Biblical Israel -- The Language of Holiness: Perceptions of the Sacred in the Hebrew Bible -- Silence, Sound, and the Phenomenology of Mourning in Biblical Israel -- Offerings Rejected by God: Numbers 16:15 in Comparative Perspective -- When the God of Israel "Acts-Out" His Anger: On the Language of Divine Rejection in Biblical Literature -- D. Religious Themes -- Comparative Perspectives on Jewish and Christian History -- The Place of Jonah in the History of Biblical Ideas -- René Girard on Job: The Question of the Scapegoat -- The Four Private Persons Who Lost Their Share in the World to Come: The Judgment of m. Sanh. 10:2 -- Front matter 2 -- Table of Contents Volume II: Law, Society, and Language -- Abbreviations -- A. Law -- Capital Punishment -- Tracing the Biblical Accounting Register: Terminology and the Signification of Quantity -- In Praise of the Israelite Mišpāḥâ: Legal Themes in the Book of Ruth -- On the Origins of the Aramaic Legal Formulary at Elephantine -- On the Role of Aramaic in Transmitting Syro-Mesopotamian Legal Institutions -- The Various Workings of the Aramaic Legal Tradition: Jews and Nabateans in the Naḥal Ḥever Archive -- MULŪGU/MELÛG: The Origins of a Talmudic Legal Institution -- The Jewish Ketūbbāh as a 'Dialogue Document': The Continuity of a Cuneiform Tradition -- On the Semantics of Land Tenure in Biblical Literature: The Term <aḥuzzāh -- B. Society -- The Clan-Based Economy of Biblical Israel -- Some Indices of Israelite Ethnicity -- 'Seed' versus 'Womb': Expressions of Male Dominance in Biblical Israel -- Farewell to the Ancient Near East: Evaluating Biblical References to Ownership of Land in Comparative Perspective -- The Biblical "Town" as Reality and Typology: Evaluating Biblical References to Towns and Their Functions -- The View from Jerusalem: Biblical Responses to the Babylonian Presence -- C. Language -- Assyriology and Hebrew Philology: A Methodological Re-examination -- The CAD and Biblical Hebrew Lexicography: The Role of Akkadian Cognates -- The Semantics of Loss: Two Exercises in Biblical Hebrew Lexicography -- Hebrew (Postbiblical) -- The Language of the Magical Bowls -- Aramaic Texts from Persepolis -- From the Aramaic Enoch Fragments: The Semantics of Cosmography -- Lexicographical and Grammatical Notes on the Palmyrene Aramaic Texts -- Scholarly Dictionaries of Two Dialects of Jewish Aramaic