Transforming Literature into Scripture: Texts as Cult Objects at Ninevah and Qumran
ISBN: 9781315729121
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Humanities; Religion; Religious History;

Transforming Literature into Scripture examines how the early textual traditions of ancient Israel - stories, laws, and rituals - were transformed into sacred writings. By comparing evidence from two key collections from antiquity - the royal library at Nineveh and the biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls - the book traces the stabilisation of textual traditions in the ancient Near East towards fixed literary prototypes. The study presents a new methodology which enables the quantification, categorisation and statistical analysis of texts from different languages, writing systems, and media. The methodology is tested on wide range of text genres from the cuneiform and biblical traditions in order to determine which texts tend towards stabilised forms. Transforming Literature into Scripture reveals how authoritative literary collections metamorphosed into fixed ritualised texts and will be of interest to scholars across Biblical, Judaic and Literary Studies.

Russell Hobson is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney.

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