2. The Historical Framework Biblical and Scholarly Portrayals of the Past

Stavrakopoulou, Francesca; Barton, John

doi:10.1515/9781400880584-004

Cited by 2 publications

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“…I refer to the pre-exilic, historical religious traditions as "pre-Jewish" lived religion. We do not have any extensive direct textual sources for pre-exilic traditions,8 but they were likely a set of templeand sacrifice-oriented religious traditions focused on obtaining blessing and fertility similar to what we see elsewhere in the ancient Near East, in the Levant, and in the broader Mediterranean area in this period (Uehlinger 2019;Stavrakopoulou 2016;Stern 2006).9 Importantly, these lived religious traditions 4 See note 3. 5 For that reason, it does not make sense to fully change our nomenclature to "Judean" as some have suggested (contra Mason 2007).…”

Section: Contextualizing the Hebrew Bible The Formation Of Judaism mentioning

confidence: 99%

Destruction, Death, and Drama: Narratives of Religiocide in the Hebrew Bible

Feldt

2021

Numen

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This article analyzes active strategies for dismantling religion and discusses their role in religion demise. The aim is to throw light on how the dramatic and violent narratives of religion demolition stemming from different religious groups factor into processes and understandings of demise. I focus on religious change in the Hebrew Bible, analyzing aspects of two narratives that thematize an active dismantling of religious practices: (1) the story of the competition on Mount Carmel between the prophet Elijah and the Baʿal prophets in 1 Kings 18, involving the prophet’s mockery, denigration, and eventual killing of his religious opponents; and (2) the “reform” of King Josiah in 2 Kings 23 that involves the king instigating several different forms of destruction of religious objects and cult sites and the killing of priests deemed illegitimate. Analyzing how the dismantling activities are portrayed, I suggest that the dramatic narratives about dismantling religion form part of cultural memory in the Persian era, not in the eras they purport to depict. I discuss which roles dismantling strategies play in the narrative, and how they played a role in the identity building processes leading from ancient “Israelite” and “Judean” lived religion toward early forms of “Judaism” in the Persian era as performative group-internal communication supporting enclave characteristics. My key suggestion is that narratives about religion demolition should be taken into account in discussions of religious demise more broadly. Narratives of religion demolition are often spectacular, dramatic, and violent, and they can play important roles in forms of religious identity formation and cultural memory, especially by making apostasy appear risky within the in-group. Thus, they influence both processes of demise and understandings of religious demise in transformation processes.

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Section: Contextualizing the Hebrew Bible The Formation Of Judaism mentioning

confidence: 99%

Destruction, Death, and Drama: Narratives of Religiocide in the Hebrew Bible

Feldt

2021

Numen

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A pleasing odour for Yahweh

Gudme¹

2018

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This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine. In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.

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2. The Historical Framework Biblical and Scholarly Portrayals of the Past

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Destruction, Death, and Drama: Narratives of Religiocide in the Hebrew Bible

Destruction, Death, and Drama: Narratives of Religiocide in the Hebrew Bible

A pleasing odour for Yahweh

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