Saul M. Olyan's Books

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

Although seldom studied by biblical scholars as a discrete phenomenon, ritual violence is mentioned frequently in biblical texts, and includes ritual actions such as disfigurement of corpses, destruction or scattering of bones removed from a tomb, stoning and other forms of public execution, cursing, forced depilation, the legally-sanctioned imposition of physical defects on living persons, coerced potion-drinking, sacrificial burning of animals and humans, forced stripping and exposure of the genitalia, and mass eradication of populations. This book, the first to focus on ritual violence in the Hebrew Bible, investigates these and other violent rites, the ritual settings in which they occur, their various literary contexts, and the identity and aims of their agents in order to speak in an informed way about the contours and social aspects of ritual violence as it is represented in the Hebrew Bible.

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181

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190681918

ISBN 13

9780190681913

Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion

Essays in Retrospect and Prospect

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion

Essays in Retrospect and Prospect

By: Saul M. Olyan

This volume assesses past, theoretically engaged work on Israelite religion and presents new approaches to particular problems and larger interpretive and methodological questions. It gathers previously unpublished research by senior and mid-career scholars well known for their contributions in the area of social theory and the study of Israelite religion and by junior scholars whose writing is just beginning to have a serious impact on the field. The volume begins with a critical introduction by the editor. Topics of interest to the contributors include gender, violence, social change, the festivals, the dynamics of shame and honor, and the relationship of text to ritual. The contributors engage theory from social and cultural anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ritual studies. Theoretical models are evaluated in light of the primary data, and some authors modify or adapt theory to increase its utility for biblical studies. The contributors are Susan Ackerman, Stephen L. Cook, Ronald Hendel, T. M. Lemos, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Carol Meyers, Saul M. Olyan, Rüdiger Schmitt, Robert R. Wilson, and David P. Wright.

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231

Publisher

Society of Biblical Lit

Published Date

ISBN 10

1589836898

ISBN 13

9781589836891

Social Inequality in the World of the Text

The Significance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Social Inequality in the World of the Text

The Significance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

This volume consists of fifteen of the author's essays, including two that have never been published before. The essays date to the last decade and a half, and all reflect in some manner the author's ongoing interest in literary operations of classification and their social implications, particularly the production of distinctions which create social inequality in the world of the text, and have the potential to generate hierarchical social relationships in contexts where biblical texts might have had an impact on real people. In these essays, the author explores themes such as gender, sexuality, purity and pollution, sanctification, death and afterlife, foreignness, and disability with particular attention to the roles distinctions such as honored/shamed, feminine/masculine, mourning/rejoicing, unclean/clean, alien/native play in creating and perpetuating social differences in texts. Rites of status change such as circumcision, shaving, purification, burial or disinterment, sanctification and profanation of holiness are a focus of interest in a number of these essays, reflecting the author's on going interest in the textual representation of ritual. Most of the essays examine texts in their historical setting, but several also engage the early history of the interpretation of biblical texts, including the phenomenon of inner biblical exegesis. The essays are divided into five sections: Rites and Social Status; Gender and Sexuality; Disability; Holiness, Purity, the Alien; Death, Burial, Afterlife and their Metaphorical Uses. The author introduces each of the sections, contextualizing each essay in his larger scholarly project, reflecting on its development and reception and, in some cases, responding to his critics.

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242

Publisher

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published Date

ISBN 10

3647550248

ISBN 13

9783647550244

Biblical Mourning

Ritual and Social Dimensions

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Biblical Mourning

Ritual and Social Dimensions

By: Saul M. Olyan

A comprehensive analysis of the ritual dimensions of biblical mourning rites, this book also seeks to illuminate mourning's social dimensions through engagement with anthropological discussion of mourning, from Hertz and van Gennep to contemporaries such as Metcalf and Huntington and Bloch and Parry. The author identifies four types of biblical mourning, and argues that mourning the dead is paradigmatic. He investigates why mourning can occur among petitioners in a sanctuary setting even given mourning's death associations; why certain texts proscribe some mourning rites (laceration and shaving) but not others; and why the mixing of the rites of mourning and rejoicing, normally incompatible, occurs in the same ritual in several biblical texts.

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184

Publisher

OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191555886

ISBN 13

9780191555886

Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

In this book, the author considers whether there are biblical texts that ascribe an implicit form of legal personhood as well as genuine legal rights to animals and, if so, which rights, to which animals in particular-domesticated, wild, both- and for what purpose? He also explores how the evidence of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) might contribute to contemporary debate about animal rights in the academy, in the courts, in the public square and in religious communities. Given the increasing interest in the status of animals in the Americas, Europe and across the world, the strides forward made in recent years by animal rights advocates in any number of countries and sub-national constituencies, and the fact that experts in the biblical field have mainly ignored the question of animal rights, while non-specialists in law or philosophy who argue on behalf of animals have tended to read the Hebrew Bible superficially and in an overly generalizing manner, an exploration of what the Hebrew Bible has to contribute to the question of animal rights is both timely and necessary"--

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161

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0197609384

ISBN 13

9780197609385

Rites and Rank

Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Rites and Rank

Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult

By: Saul M. Olyan

Good and evil, clean and unclean, rich and poor, self and other. The nature and function of such binary oppositions have long intrigued scholars in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the opening chapters of Genesis, in which God separates day from night, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate throughout the Hebrew Bible. In this groundbreaking work melding critical exegesis and contemporary theory, Saul M. Olyan considers the prevalence of polarities in biblical discourse and expounds their significance for the social and religious institutions of ancient Israel. Extant biblical narrative and legal texts reveal a set of socially constructed and culturally privileged binary oppositions, Olyan argues, which instigate and perpetuate hierarchical social relations in ritual settings such as the sanctuary. Focusing on four binary pairs--holy/common, Israelite/alien, clean/unclean, and whole/blemished--Olyan shows how these privileged oppositions were used to restrict access to cultic spaces, such as the temple or the Passover table. These ritual sites, therefore, became the primary contexts for creating and recreating unequal social relations. Olyan also uncovers a pattern of challenge to the established hierarchies by nonprivileged groups. Converging with contemporary issues of power, marginalization, and privileging, Olyan's painstaking yet lucid study abounds with implications for anthropology, classics, critical theory, and feminist studies.

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203

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1400823560

ISBN 13

9781400823567

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

The first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew Bible Friendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross disciplinary interest in contemporary scholarship, has been largely ignored by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, possibly because of its complexity and elusiveness. Filling a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of biblical texts, Saul M. Olyan provides this original, accessible analysis of a key form of social relationship. In this thorough and compelling assessment, Olyan analyzes a wide range of texts, including prose narratives, prophetic materials, psalms, pre-Hellenistic wisdom collections, and the Hellenistic-era wisdom book Ben Sira. This in-depth, contextually sensitive, and theoretically engaged study explores how the expectations of friends and family members overlap and differ, examining, among other things, characteristics that make the friend a distinct social actor; failed friendship; and friendships in narratives such as those of Ruth and Naomi, and Jonathan and David. Olyan presents a comprehensive look at what constitutes friendship in the Hebrew Bible.

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206

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300184220

ISBN 13

9780300184228

Rites and Rank

Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Rites and Rank

Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult

By: Saul M. Olyan

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203

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Princeton University Press

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ISBN 10

1400823560

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9781400823567

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

Although seldom studied by biblical scholars as a discrete phenomenon, ritual violence is mentioned frequently in biblical texts. Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible is the first book to investigate violent rites, the ritual settings in which they occur, their various literary contexts, and the identity and aims of their agents in order to speak in an informed way about the contours and social aspects of ritual violence as it is represented in the Hebrew Bible.

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181

Published Date

ISBN 10

019068190X

ISBN 13

9780190681906

Biblical Mourning

Ritual and Social Dimensions

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Biblical Mourning

Ritual and Social Dimensions

By: Saul M. Olyan

A comprehensive analysis of the ritual dimensions of biblical mourning rites, this book also seeks to illuminate mourning's social dimensions through engagement with anthropological discussion of mourning, from Hertz and van Gennep to contemporaries such as Metcalf and Huntington and Bloch and Parry. The author identifies four types of biblical mourning, and argues that mourning the dead is paradigmatic. He investigates why mourning can occur among petitioners in a sanctuary setting evengiven mourning's death associations; why certain texts proscribe some mourning rites (laceration and shaving) but not others; and why the mixing of the rites of mourning and rejoicing, normally incompatible, occurs in the same ritual in several biblical texts.

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174

Publisher

Oxford University Press on Demand

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199264864

ISBN 13

9780199264865

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Friends and Family -- 2. Failed Friendship -- 3. Friendship in Narrative -- 4. Friendship in Ben Sira -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index of Passages -- Index of Subjects -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- X -- Y

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206

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Yale University Press

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ISBN 10

0300182686

ISBN 13

9780300182682

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

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Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

By: Saul M. Olyan

Although seldom studied by biblical scholars as a discrete phenomenon, ritual violence is mentioned frequently in biblical texts, and includes ritual actions such as disfigurement of corpses, destruction or scattering of bones removed from a tomb, stoning and other forms of public execution, cursing, forced depilation, the legally-sanctioned imposition of physical defects on living persons, coerced potion-drinking, sacrificial burning of animals and humans, forced stripping and exposure of the genitalia, and mass eradication of populations. This book, the first to focus on ritual violence in the Hebrew Bible, investigates these and other violent rites, the ritual settings in which they occur (e.g., the temple, the royal court, the battlefield), their various literary contexts (e.g., legal texts, narrative, visions, dreams and oracles), and the identity and aims of their agents in order to speak in an informed way about the contours and social aspects of ritual violence as it is represented in the Hebrew Bible. Violence, ritual violence, ritual, law, narrative, visions, dreams, oracles, ritual theory, social relationships, sacrifice"--

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165

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190681934

ISBN 13

9780190681937

Ravelstein

By: Saul Bellow

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Ravelstein

By: Saul Bellow

Encouraged by his friend, Chick, to write down his ideas about humankind, university professor Abe Ravelstein receives unexpected acclaim and bounty and invites Chick to join his his success, a situation that sparks a philosophical journey for both.

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304

Publisher

Wheeler Publishing, Incorporated

Published Date

ISBN 10

1568951272

ISBN 13

9781568951270

Book's by Saul M. Olyan

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion

Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion

Social Inequality in the World of the Text

Social Inequality in the World of the Text

Biblical Mourning

Biblical Mourning

Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible

Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible

Rites and Rank

Rites and Rank

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

Rites and Rank

Rites and Rank

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

Biblical Mourning

Biblical Mourning

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible

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Ravelstein

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