日本人学者による聖書考古学の研究書

This interdisciplinary volume is a ‘one-stop location’ for the most up-to-date scholarship on Southern Levantine figurines in the Iron Age. The essays address terracotta figurines attested in the Southern Levant from the Iron Age through the Persian Period (1200–333 BCE). The volume deals with the iconography, typology, and find context of female, male, animal, and furniture figurines and discusses their production, appearance, and provenance, including their identification and religious functions. While giving priority to figurines originating from Phoenicia, Philistia, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine, the volume explores the influences of Egyptian, Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and Mediterranean (particularly Cypriot) iconography on Levantine pictorial material.

This volume contains 4 papers focusing on terracotta figurines of the ancient Near East that were delivered at one of three sessions of the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Were there figurines in Yehud during the Achaemenid period, and in particular in Jerusalem? A positive answer to this question disproves the general consensus about the absence of figurines in Yehud, which is built on the assumption that the figurines excavated in Judah/Yehud are chronologically indicative for Iron Age II in this area (aside from a few typological exceptions). Ephraim Stern and others have taken this alleged absence of figurines as indicative of Jewish monotheism's rise. Izaak J. de Hulster refutes this `no figurines -> monotheism' paradigm by detailed study of the figurines from Yigal Shiloh's excavation in the 'City of David' (especially their contexts in Stratum 9), providing ample evidence for the presence of figurines in post-587/586 Jerusalem. The author further reflects on the paradigm's premises in archaeology, history, the history of religion, theology, and biblical studies, and particularly in coroplastics (figurine studies).

In honor of eminent archaeologist and historian of ancient Jewish art, Rachel Hachlili, friends and colleagues offer contributions in this festschrift which span the world of ancient Judaism both in Palestine and the Diaspora. Hachlili's distinctive research interests: synagogues, burial sites, and Jewish iconography receive particular attention in the volume. Archaeologists and historians present new material evidence from Galilee, Jerusalem, and Transjordan, contributing to the honoree’s fields of scholarly study. Fresh analyses of ancient Jewish art, essays on architecture, historical geography, and research history complete the volume and make it an enticing kaleidoscope of the vibrant field of scholarship that owes so much to Rachel.

These case studies offer new approaches to the analysis and interpretation of symbols in a variety of media and as expressed on a range of objects at different scales. This third volume in the Material Religion in Antiquity series stems from the First International Congress on the Archaeology of Symbols (ICAS I) that took place in Florence in May 2022. The archaeological process of reconstructing and understanding our past has undergone several reassessments in the last century, producing an equal number of new perspectives and approaches. The recent materiality turn emphasizes the necessity to ground those achievements in order to build fresh avenues of interpretation and reach new boundaries in the study of the human kind and its ecology. Symbols must not be conceived only as allegory but also, and perhaps mainly, as reason (raison d’être) and meaning (culture). They may be considered key elements leading to interpretation, not only in their physical manifestation but by being infused with the gestures, beliefs and intentions of their creators, created in a specific context and with a specific chaîne opératoire. In this volume a variety of case studies is offered, representing disparate ancient cultures in the Mediterranean and central Europe and the Near East. The thread that connects them revolves around the prominence of symbols and allegorical aspects in archaeology, whether they are considered as expressions of iconographic evidence, material culture or ritual ceremonies, seen from a multicultural perspective. This (and subsequent ICAS) volumes, therefore, aims to embrace all the different aspects pertaining to symbols in archaeology in a specific ‘place’, allowing the reader to deepen their knowledge of such a fascinating and multifaceted topic, by looking at it from a multicultural perspective.

An international array of twenty-six scholars contributes twenty-one essays to honor Ziony Zevit (American Jewish University), one of the foremost biblical scholars of his generation. The breadth of the honoree is indicated by the breadth of coverage in these twenty-one articles, with seven each in the categories of history and archaeology, Bible, and Hebrew (and Aramaic) language.