Lowell K. Handy

Steven Winford Holloway

Gösta Werner Ahlström

This is a volume of tributes and essays in memory of Gsta W. Ahlstrm, Professor of Old Testament in the Divinity School and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department of the University of Chicago. Nineteen essays written by former students and colleagues deal with the history and archaeology of Iron Age Palestine and the ancient Near East, the Deuteronomistic History, and the history of Old Testament studies. Six tributes read at his memorial service, his final bibliography and a list of the dissertations he chaired combine to yield a montage of the scholar as teacher, character, and friend.

Memorial Essays for Gösta W. Ahlström

The Pitcher is Broken

'Orientalism' refers both to the academic study of the Orient and to Western scholarship that clings to stock images of the timeless East and oriental despotism. This landmark collection of essays, the first in its field, is written by seasoned art historians, Assyriologists and biblical specialists; it is organized under four rubrics: 1. Intellectual and Disciplinary Histories identifies waymarks in the rise of Assyriology in America, shifting images of ancient Assyria in their cultural context, Smithsonian Institution exhibits of 'biblical antiquities' at the world's fairs of 1893 and 1895, the rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth century, Mari scholarship and its impact on biblical studies, and the ancient Near Eastern text anthology as genre (Foster, Frahm, Holloway Reid, Younger). 2. Visual Perspectives suggests itself as a corrective to the academic habit of conjuring a 'texted Orient'. Here are contributions that describe Assyrianizing engravings in the famous Dalziels' Bible Gallery, the reception of ancient Assyria in nineteenth-century England versus France, and artwork for twentieth-century American histories of Israel (Bohrer, Esposito, Long). 3. Of Harems and Heroines explores gender issues in the context of the figure of Semiramis and the idea of the harem in biblical research and Assyriology (Asher-Greve, Solvang). 4. Assyriology and the Bible offers essays that focus on specific figures (Josiah), texts (Genesis 28.10-22, the Uruk Prophecy), or periods (Persian period in biblical historiography) (Grabbe, Handy, Hurowitz, Scurlock). The volume includes a Bibliography of some 1000 items, an important resource.

Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible

Through sustained analysis of texts and visual sources, this volume traces the checkered career of Neo-Assyrian religious interaction with subject polities of Western Asia through both punitive measures and calculated diplomatic patronage.

Steven Winford Holloway

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