Reconstructing the temple: the royal rhetoric of temple renovation in the ancient Near East and Israel
This text examines temple renovation as a rhetorical topic within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Unlike newly founded temples, which were celebrated for their novelty, temple renovations were oriented toward the past. Kings took the opportunity to rehearse a selective history of the temp...
| Summary: | This text examines temple renovation as a rhetorical topic within royal literature of the ancient Near East. Unlike newly founded temples, which were celebrated for their novelty, temple renovations were oriented toward the past. Kings took the opportunity to rehearse a selective history of the temple, evoking certain past traditions and omitting others. In this way, temple renovations were a kind of historiography. Andrew R. Davis demonstrates a pattern in the rhetoric of temple renovation texts: that kings in ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Syria and Persia used temple renovation to correct, or at least distance themselves from, some turmoil of recent history and to associate their reigns with an earlier and more illustrious past. |
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| Item Description: | Also issued in print: 2019. - Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on July 10, 2019) |
| ISBN: | 0190868996 |