EXC 212 D2-12 - ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN AND BIBLICAL HISTORICAL MYTHS AND THEIR HISTORY OF RECEPTION

Basic data for this project

Description

The influence of Ancient Oriental historical myths is manifest in the Old Testament, whose authors were embedded in the widespread cultural traditions of the ancient Near East due to the manifold interdependencies of the various states. Examples of this are the Old Testament ideology of war, the “ban-theorem“ (i.e. the religious ideology of obliterating autochthonous cultures), among other things, and the kingship ideology. It is particularly interesting to see how the traditions were advanced in the Levant. The cultural transfer clearly took place on many different levels. On the one hand, the Judean state religion and the ideologies of war and kingship were closely connected to the Assyrian and Egyptian traditions, among others. On the state level, the influences can be analysed by comparing different official ancient Near Eastern king’s inscriptions and the Old Testament, and by also taking into account the results of archaeological research that play a role in this context. On the other hand, the level of the family is not to be neglected. The wars and deportations brought about close contacts with other peoples and cultures, even outside the local elites. The influence of foreign cultures, on the one hand, resulted in the prohibition of contract marriages and intermarriage, which was an attempt to safeguard one’s own identity. Within the intermarriages that were nevertheless contracted, on the other hand, the mutual influence of local myth traditions certainly did take place.