Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Acculturation vs. internal development: framing the question with Mario Liverani

    Two poles of a false binary continue to play an inordinate role in the study of the history of ancient Israel and of Syria-Palestine. One pole attempts to explain the cultural (for example, the religious and political) history of a specific polity - for example, ancient Israel - with as little reference as possible to the impact of traits and trends that washed down the cultural slopes of contiguous societies over a same temporal frame; e.g., Iron Age Egypt, Philistia, Phoenicia, Damascus, Assyria, and Babylonia. Another pole attempts to explain the same history without remainder in terms of the features held in common with coeval contiguous polities. Nothing distinctive to see in a distinctive culture: move along. Parallelomania wins out by virtue of squatter's rights.

    A better though very partial formulation of the question: how do contiguous cultures in conflict acquire and assimilate into their own frameworks elements of another framework they dearly wish to oppose? How does that work? What if such assimilative processes are of paramount importance? Here is Liverani:

The History and Archaeology of the Ancient Levant: Formulating the Right Questions

    30 years ago, Mario Liverani delivered a lecture that outlined a research program for the disciplines of the history and archaeology of the Ancient Levant. The essay is also a masterful description of salient long-term trends that characterized Bronze and Iron Age Syria-Palestine. Published in Italian in a hard-to-find volume, it has not received the attention it deserves. Here, in translation, is how the essay begins:

Mario Liverani Bibliography Updated

Mario Liverani, the great Assyriologist, archaeologist, and historian of the Ancient Near East, retired last year from his position as Professor of History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Rome. He continues to revise his major works and publish new articles. For a 30 page updated bibliography, go here.