Debra Scoggins Ballentine

There are many ancient West Asian stories that narrate the victory of a warrior deity over an enemy, typically a sea-god or sea dragon, and his rise to divine kingship. In The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition, Debra Scoggins Ballentine analyzes this motif, arguing that it was used within ancient political and socio-religious discourses to bolster particular divine hierarchies, kings, institutions, and groups, as well as to attack others. Situating her study of the conflict topos within contemporary theorizations of myth by Bruce Lincoln, Russell McCutcheon, and Jonathan Z. Smith, Ballentine examines narratives of divine combat and instances of this conflict motif. Her study cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries as well as constructed time periods, focusing not only on the Hebrew Bible but also incorporating Mesopotamian, early Jewish, early Christian, and rabbinic texts, spanning a period of almost three millennia - from the eighteenth century BCE to the early middle ages CE. The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition advances our understanding of the conflict topos in ancient west Asian and early Jewish and Christian literatures and of how mythological and religious ideas are used both to validate and render normative particular ideologies and socio-political arrangements, and to delegitimize and invalidate others.

The Conflict Myth and the Biblical Tradition

T. M. Lemos

Jordan D. Rosenblum

Karen B. Stern

Contributors to this volume come together to honor the lifetime of work of Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. Essays by his students, colleagues, and friends focus on and engage with his work on relationships in the Hebrew Bible, from the marking of status in relationships of inequality, to human family, friend, and sexual relationships, to relationships between divine beings. Contributors include Susan Ackerman, Klaus-Peter Adam, Rainer Albertz, Andrea Allgood, Debra Scoggins Ballentine, Bob Becking, John J. Collins, Stephen L. Cook, Ronald Hendel, T. M. Lemos, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Carol Meyers, Susan Niditch, Brian Rainey, Thomas Römer, Jordan D. Rosenblum, Rüdiger Schmitt, Jennifer Elizabeth Singletary, Kerry M. Sonia, Karen B. Stern, Stanley Stowers, Andrew Tobolowsky, Karel van der Toorn, Emma Wasserman, and Steven Weitzman.

Debra Scoggins Ballentine

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