Description
Book SynopsisAncient cities served as the actual, worldly landscape populated by “material” sites of memory. Some of these sites were personal and others were directly and intentionally involved in the shaping of a collective social memory, such as palaces, temples, inscriptions, walls, and gates. Many cities were also sites of social memory in a very different way. Like Babylon, Nineveh, or Jerusalem, they served as ciphers that activated and communicated various mnemonic worlds as they integrated multiple images, remembered events, and provided a variety of meanings in diverse ancient communities.
Memory and the City in Ancient Israel contributes to the study of social memory in ancient Israel in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods by exploring “the city,” both urban spaces and urban centers. It opens with a study that compares basic conceptualizing tendencies of cities in Mesopotamia with their counterparts in ancient Israel. Its essays then explore memories of gates, domestic spaces, threshing floors, palaces, city gardens and parks, natural and “domesticated” water in urban settings, cisterns, and wells. Finally, the studies turn to particular cities of memory in ancient Israel: Jerusalem, Samaria, Shechem, Mizpah, Tyre, Nineveh, and Babylon. The volume, which emerged from meetings of the European Association of Biblical Studies, includes the work of Stéphanie Anthonioz, Yairah Amit, Ehud Ben Zvi, KÃ¥re Berge, Diana Edelman, Hadi Ghantous, Anne Katrine Gudme, Philippe Guillaume, Russell Hobson, Steven W. Holloway, Francis Landy, Daniel Pioske, Ulrike Sals, Carla Sulzbach, Karolien Vermeulen, and Carey Walsh.
Table of ContentsPart 1: Opening the Gates—An Introduction and Invitation to Join the Conversation about Cities and Memory
Ehud Ben Zvi
Cities of Glory and Cities of Pride: Concepts, Gender, and Images of Cities in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Israel
Stéphanie Anthonioz
Part 2: Crossing the Gates and Entering into the City (of Memory): Memories of Urban Places and Spaces
Testing Entry: The Social Functions of City-Gates in Biblical Memory
Carey Walsh
Inside-Outside: Domestic Living Space in Biblical Memory
Anne Katrine Gudme
Threshing Floors and Cities
Francis Landy
Palaces as Sites of Memory and Their Impact on the Construction of an Elite “Hybrid” (Local-Global) Cultural Identity in Persian-Period Literature
Kåre Berge
City Gardens and Parks in Biblical Social Memory
Diana Edelman
In Defense of the City: Memories of Water in the Persian Period
Karolien Vermeulen
Cisterns and Wells in Biblical Memory
Hadi Ghantous and Diana Edelman
Part 3: Individual Cities and Social Memory
Exploring Jerusalem as a Site of Memory in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
Ehud Ben Zvi
The Memory of Samaria in the Books of Kings
Russell Hobson
How to Slander the Memory of Shechem
Yairah Amit
Mizpah and the Possibilities of Forgetting
Daniel Pioske
Dislocating Jerusalem’s Memory with Tyre
Philippe Guillaume
Nineveh as Meme in Persian Period Yehud
Steven W. Holloway
“Babylon” Forever, or How To Divinize What You Want To Damn
Ulrike Sals
Building Castles on the Shifting Sands of Memory: From Dystopian to Utopian Views of Jerusalem in the Persian Period
Carla Sulzbach
Index of Authors
Index of Scripture
