Search results for ""author jill middlemas""

Although attempts to understand the growth of aniconism focus on the Pentateuchal legal material, scholars increasingly make reference to the prophetic literature to illuminate the debate. Jill Middlemas provides the first comprehensive analysis of the prophets with attention to rhetorical strategies that reflect anti-iconic thought and promote iconoclasm. After illuminating the idol polemics, which is the rhetoric most often associated with aniconism, she draws out how prophecy also exposes a reticence towards cultic symbols and mental images of Yahweh. At the same time the theme of incomparability as well as the use of metaphor and multiple imaging, paradoxically, reveal additional ways to express aniconic belief or the destabilization of a single divine image. Middlemas' analysis of prophetic aniconism sheds new light on interpretations of the most iconic expression in the Old Testament, the imago dei passages in Genesis, where God is said to create humanity in the divine image.

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The essays in this volume, which has emerged from the Persian Period Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature, explore biblical and comparative evidence to show how the Iron Age institutions of monarchy and temple shifted in both form and function in the Persian period. The weight given to the Davidic monarchy and Jerusalem temple in the historiography of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament invites a new examination of attitudes towards the same in Achaemenid Yehud in comparative perspective. The essays uncover new attitudes relating to the monarchy and cultic site as well as the influence, but also rejection of, Persian ideas and contribute to scholarly interest in the extent of Persian influence on the literature of ancient/biblical Israel. As such, the volume participates in, lays the groundwork for, and also shapes discussions of Persian period Yehud and its literature.

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