Search Results

This book examines not only the dynasty of Jehu within the narrative of 2 Kings, but also the broader context of the dynasties of Israel and Judah in the books of Kings and Samuel. It discusses religious aspects of kingship (such as anointing, divine election, and prayer) in both the Old Testament and in the literature of the ancient Near East. The book concludes that the Deuteronomistic editor, because of a deep concern that leaders be divinely chosen and obedient to Yahweh, sought to subvert the monarchical status quo by shaping the Jehuite narrative to emphasize that dynastic succession disastrously fails to produce righteous leaders.

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.

This book considers three mythological complexes that enjoyed a unique surge of interest in 20th-century European literature, art, and music. While many works deal with the literary use of myth—a subject of growing interest in recent decades—it is conspicuous that most of them ignore the three myths that are identified with the island of Crete and linked by the figure of the legendary King Minos: Europa and the bull (his parents), the minotaur (his stepson) and the labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus (his subjects). The book adduces the ideas of such precursors of modernism as Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to explain the revitalization of myth in the early twentieth century. It posits an essential distinction between “primary” and “secondary” myth: that is, myth that has been ironized beyond its original religious meaning and liberated for literary and artistic adaptation. To this end the work analyzes examples drawn from every realm of art—from fiction and poetry and drama to painting, sculpture, opera, and ballet—to explore the particular appeal of the three Cretan myths to the modern consciousness.

This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.

One of only a few women who ruled ancient Egypt as a king during its thousands of years of history, Tausret was the last pharaoh of the 19th dynasty (c.1200 bce), the last ruling descendent of Ramesses the Great, and one of only two female monarchs buried in Egypt's renowned Valley of the Kings. Though mentioned even in Homer as the pharaoh of Egypt who interacted with Helen at the time of the Trojan War, she has long remained a figure shrouded in mystery, hardly known even by many Egyptologists. Nevertheless, recent archaeological discoveries have illuminated Tausret's importance, her accomplishments, and the extent of her influence. This book combines distinguished scholars whose research and excavations have increased our understanding of the life and reign of this great woman. This book utilizes recent discoveries to correctly position Tausret alongside famous ruling queens such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra, figures who have long dominated our view of the female monarchs of ancient Egypt. The book brings together archaeological, historical, women's studies, and other approaches to provide a text that will be an important contribution to the literature of Egyptology.

It has been established by textual specialists, and is now becoming widely accepted, that Shakespeare revised many of his plays, including some of the most celebrated. But how were the great tragedies altered and with what effect? This book looks at the implications of Shakespeare's revisions for the reader and spectator alike and shows the playwright getting to grips with the problems of characterization and scene formation in such plays as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. The book carries its argument down, as it puts it, to the very tip of Shakespeare's quill pen. The book assesses recent textual scholarship on Shakespeare's revisions and illuminates the artistic impact of the revised texts and their importance for our understanding of each play's moral and metaphysical foundations.

The biblical account of the religious reforms of king Josiah is one of the most widely discussed texts in the Hebrew Bible. Scholars have long understood Josiah's destruction of Israelite cult objects and personnel to mark an essential break with Israel's polytheistic past and a foundational moment in the development of monotheism. The language of 2 Kgs 23 represents Josiah's reform as ritual, yet the text has never been systematically studied from a ritual perspective. Situating Josiah's defilement in the context of other Israelite rituals, it uncovers new fault lines in the text that reveal two compositional phases. An early account with parallels in priestly ritual texts and the Holiness Code promoted particular ambitions of the Josianic court, while a later, postmonarchic, Deuteronomistic version recast Josiah as the only king in Israel's history to fully appreciate the obligations and limitations imposed by Mosaic law. Utilizing language associated with Deuteronomy's war-ḥērem, the later author modeled Josiah on Joshua. Both [re]claimed the land from the clutches of the Canaanites and [re]established Israel as the place where Yahweh's law and priestly authority prevailed. This study challenges the widely held assumption that Josiah imposed Deuteronomic law in the late seventh century; it provides a more expansive picture of the holiness school and its engagement in literary production; and it points away from a Josianic, Deuteronomistic redaction of 2 Kgs 23, shedding new light on the composition of the book of Kings.

This study of British politics from 1760 to 1832 deals with the reasons why people went into politics, the functions of party and patronage and the balance of power between King, Lords, and Commons. George III is the central figure of the work and the author discusses the King's conception of his mission and his struggles with ‘that hydra faction’.

This book considers four concepts in a Biblical context: fathers, sons, brothers, kings. It then asks the questions: Does the predominantly masculine symbolism of the Biblical writings exclude women or overlook the riches of their spiritual life? If Christ is ‘the second Adam’ and the one on whom all Christian life must be patterned, then what about Eve? This book opens up the Bible's imagery for sex, gender, and kinship and does so by discussing its place in the central teachings of Christian theology: the doctrine of God and spirituality, Imago Dei and anthropology, Creation, Christology and the Cross, the Trinity, and eschatology.