The concept of primeval waters (Tĕhôm) in the Hebrew Bible has been difficult to define, resulting in speculation over its identity as a deity, place, or monster. Previous scholarship has focused heavily on Tĕhôm's creation context to the exclusion of its ritual context. As a result, Tĕhôm has been unduly linked to the Mesopotamian Tiamat and interpreted as the embodiment of chaos and conflict. This research addresses the limitations of previous scholarship by examining all contexts of the Hebrew Bible's Deep and comparing them with references in ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Canaanite (Ugaritic) texts. Comparative methodology combined with a history of religions approach places the concept of primeval Deep in its ancient Near Eastern context as a source of deified power; this concept transforms into a demonized place of judgment in biblical tradition. Beginning with the ANE context for Tĕhôm,each chapter analyzes occurrences of primeval Deep under the following categories—Deification (2), Personification (3), Subjugation (4), and Demonization (5)—to show Tĕhôm's development from deity to deep (abyss).

Tĕhôm appears as a source of power and blessing in early texts of the Hebrew Bible, and its personification distinctly deifies ancient Israel's deity Yahweh rather than itself. Next, Tĕhôm's personification as subjugated monster symbolically represents ancient Israel's enemies and justifies Yahweh's power to judge or deliver. The motif of a subjugated Deep legitimates a subjugator's rule, justifies conquest, confers power to human representatives, and empowers ancient people to face their fears. Lastly, in subsequent text-communities of the DSS, LXX, and Targums, Tĕhôm becomes a demonized place of evil. Rabbinic literature expands traditions of Tĕhôm's origins and end time purposes to reflect apocalyptic interpretations of Jewish eschatology. Tĕhôm's fluidity as a concept allows it to grow and change according to the needs of its religious community. Despite its interpretive development, it remains a constant reminder and expression of ancient Israel's relationship to Yahweh. Ultimately, Tĕhôm's evolution from deity to deep reflects the creation of a distinct religious identity centered on Yahweh—the deity who transcends phenomena, situation, time, and place.

The inscriptions from Khirbet Beit Lei and Khirbet el-Q?m were originally situated in hewn burial caves in the southern Shephelah. Since their original publication in 1963 and 1970 respectively, new technologies have become available for photographing epigraphic material. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a technique that combines multiple light angles to facilitate enhanced views of the object. This dissertation uses new photographs as the basis for a fresh assessment of the cave inscriptions. Building upon previous paleographic and archaeological analyses of the inscriptions and their setting, this study presents an integrative analysis of the source and purposes of the inscriptions in context. Viewing the inscriptions as physical objects, the production and preservation of which involved numerous processes, each of which were socially and culturally informed, facilitates a more holistic treatment of the inscriptions. When the inscriptions are examined in the context of various classifications of inscribing, such as informal inscribing, ritual inscribing and mortuary inscribing, a number of themes emerge. The cave inscriptions represent commemorative inscribing, physically memorializing identities and events on the tomb walls. Overwriting and other repetitious inscribing illustrate the importance of the act of inscribing and hint at a ritual or performative use of writing. The unique combination of texts and images along with the burial setting and placement of the inscriptions betray an innovative use of both the content and the space. Given the context of conflict besetting the kingdom of Judah during much of the Iron Age IIB, there are multiple possibilities regarding the more specific impetus for the inscriptions. While it is not possible to ascertain whether or not the inscriptions were associated with the burial use of the tombs, this contextual study highlights the fact that the inscribers would have already been affiliated with the space and that they selected the tomb setting because the meaning of the space aligned with the purposes of the inscribing.

The following study examines Canaano-Akkadian, the unique cuneiform system used in the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (1550-1150 B.C.E.), as a diplomatic scribal code used in contexts of mediated diplomacy with Egypt. The methodologies presented draw upon recent work on the sociolinguistics of writing and script choice that best elucidate the genesis of this scribal system and its role in Egypt’s eastern empire. The classification of the language of the Canaanite Amarna Letters is still a matter of contention. The primary debate is whether or not the mixed Canaano-Akkadian forms are a reflection of a local dialect(s) of Akkadian, or a written scribal code––one that was quite distanced from the actual language underlying such messages.

Recent petrographic and paleographic analyses further complicate the correlation between language and writing in this corpus. Certain cuneiform scribes worked for multiple polities and, moreover, many tablets were created at quite a distance from the political centers generating this correspondence. For example, a number of letters were written at Egyptian administrative centers across the Levant and not at the local courts “sending” these messages. The Canaanite scribe emerges as the central figure in discussions of linguistic classification, as the language of these letters is a better reflection of scribal training during this period than what was actually spoken at local Canaanite courts. As such, there is a need for a reassessment of the scribal and administrative landscape of this period, and in particular, the system of scribes and messengers. This system of communication was a dynamic, complex process that entailed at the very least four linguistic layers: the spoken dialects of the original messages; Canaano-Akkadian, the scribal code of the written versions; the mediated reading of these letters once delivered, along with any additional socio-political or metapragmatic subtext; and the final translation into Egyptian.

The present study considers the metapragmatic, linguistic, orthographic, and rhetorical strategies employed by cuneiform scribes to bridge the geographic and cultural gulf between Canaanite polities and the royal court at Tell el-‘Amarna, Egypt. The Canaanite glosses and scribal marks resurface as unique evidence for how Canaanite scribes approached the problem of translation and linguistic “border-crossing” in these cross-cultural and multilingual exchanges. Such strategies added nuance and a metapragmatic commentary to guide the translation and interpretation of these letters and to ensure that they received a positive reception. The cuneiform script was not limited to a technological tool in such interactions, but entailed participation in a much larger cultural horizon—one shared by cuneiform scribes in Canaan and Egypt, who were the gatekeepers facilitating diplomacy throughout this period.

The relationship between tectonic environment and human activity has a long history that intimately involves the Ancient Near East and Levant. Texts from the third millennium onward attest to earthquake imagery while records of actual earthquakes cluster in two periods in the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods. The research first examines the relationship between the tectonic environment and earthquake imagery that is found amidst Storm-god imagery. Next, close attention is paid to the textual and archaeoseismic evaluation of earthquakes recorded in Middle and Neo-Assyrian texts and the extent to which historical information from these texts can inform a reconstruction of the earthquake's effects. Within the Levant, a detailed archaeoseismic evaluation of Iron IIB sites with purported mid-eighth century seismic damage suggests better methodological controls are needed to identify seismic damage in the archaeological record. A number of interdisciplinary approaches, including post-disaster housing, earthquake eyewitness accounts, and gender and vulnerability studies are applied to Amos in order to provide a fresh perspective on identifying earthquake imagery within the book. These approaches help reconstruct the socioeconomic, political, and religious effects of the earthquake mentioned in Amos and illustrate how his oracles and prophetic validity would have been authenticated through the earthquake. These approaches also shed new light on "social justice" texts within Amos and how the aftermath of an earthquake would have underscored, anew, the gap between the rich and poor.

The composition of Deut 27-28 is shaped by its ritual and performative function and by the narrative device of a script within a speech: the oral and ritual performance of the covenant ceremony by the Levites is framed within the speech-command of Moses. Studies of Deut 28 have largely focused on the textual tradition of this chapter and on its parallels with ancient near eastern treaties, and with the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon in particular. Many studies view Deut 28 as a collection of isolated units of curse lines disconnected from the ceremonial performance of the covenant ratification ceremony detailed in Deut 27. This is due in part to the commonly held view that chapter 27 is an interpolation and a later addition to the literary unit of 12-26 and 28. However, a re-examination of comparative ancient near eastern evidence and a fresh literary analysis of 27 suggests that chapters 27-28 form a unified whole. A text-centric approach to Deut 28 has left largely unexamined the oral and ritual performance described in Deut 27. Ratification of oaths and treaties in the ancient near east was performative and entailed speaking words of power and performing ritual acts such as the slaughter of an animal or the ceremonial breaking of weapons. Deut 27 also furnishes instructions for the erection of an altar, ritual sacrifices, and an oral recitation of “all the words of this torah” including the blessings and curses in chapter 28. This concept of oaths and treaties as scripts is explored using the Aramaic Sefire treaty as a test case. An analysis of the curse segment of the Sefire treaty shows syntactical features typical of spoken language, suggesting that the curse portion of the written treaty was shaped by oral recitation and/or an oral tradition of formulaic curse language. The text-centric approach to studies of Deut 28 has also hindered examination of parallels between treaties and ritual and performative texts, and especially incantations. A study of contiguities between Deut 27-28 and the Neo-Assyrian incantation series Maqlû and Šurpu reveals compelling thematic, linguistic, and formological parallels.

The Decalogue was a monumental text. This does not mean that the text was important, enduring, or carved on stone. Its monumentality rests not in any sense of size, permanence, or publicity, but rather in its ability to provoke communities to imagine together and make meaning. This study contends that the Decalogue was composed and depicted in the Hebrew Bible by drawing upon contemporary monumental discourse designed to provoke this kind of communal engagement.

In order to substantiate this argument, I have conducted a history of monuments and a history of monumentality. My history of monuments analyzes the Levantine “I Am” monuments of the Iron Age. These monuments were united by their function of reembodying the individual identified in their opening “I Am” statement. Once reembodied, this individual could address his audience in strategic ways so as to bring about social formation. This function was accomplished by much more than just the words of the monument’s inscription. My analysis also accounts for their deployment in space, their aesthetic features and medium, and the different ways in which communities interacted with them. I also analyze how these dimensions changed over time in order to periodize the monumentality of Levantine “I Am” monuments. While the function of these monuments remained stable during the few centuries during which they were employed in the Levant, the means of accomplishing it did not.

Using this history of Levantine “I Am” monuments as a backdrop, I turn to a history of the monumentality of the Decalogue. The Decalogue drew upon monumental discourse from these inscriptions in order to develop its own monumentality. It was depicted utilizing the monumental discourse of specific periods. Editorial strata within the biblical text point to shifting depictions of the Decalogue that align it with new periods of monumentality in the Levant. That is, not only was the Decalogue composed to act as a monument for its original audience, later editors also updated it to better match contemporary monumentalities and thus to remain meaningful to subsequent generations.

The covenant reading ceremonies in Joshua 8:30-35, 2 Kings 22-23, and Nehemiah 7:72b-8:18 betray a developing interplay between the people of Israel and the book of the law. These narratives are unique in the Hebrew Bible in presenting the oralization of a covenant document to a specific audience. Previous scholarship on these narratives has focused on reconstructing the source-critical history of each account and the historicity of the reported events. For the following study, Joshua 8:30-35 and 2 Kings 22-23 represent earlier pre-exilic and exilic traditions, while 2 Chronicles 34-35 and Nehemiah 8 illustrate later post-exilic perspectives. However, supplementing source-critical scholarship, narrative criticism is used to contribute a fresh view of the relationship that the narratives construct between the community of Israel and their authoritative text. This study analyzes the characterization of the people and the characterization of the book of the law, both within the broader context of ancient Near Eastern loyalty oaths and within the immediate context of the corpus of the Hebrew Bible. The sensory descriptions of the book of the law especially highlight how the textual artifact connects the particularized community of each respective narrative to the covenantal past of the Israelite people, while effectually executing that connection through differing loci of authority.

This literary analysis reveals that each reading ceremony narrative manipulates the material functions of the text and its locus of authority according to its own ideology. The historical trajectory presented by these narratives portrays the people of Israel as progressively more exclusive, while portraying the book of the law as increasingly more written and less oral. Joshua 8:30-35 and 2 Kings 22-23 demonstrate that during the exilic period, the book of the law could be authorized either as Mosaic tradition or as a prophetic word from God. By the post- exilic period, authorization through Mosaic discourse became pervasive. 2 Chronicles 34-35 and Nehemiah 8 illustrate this well-documented post-exilic phenomenon. In these narratives, by providing continuity between a particularized community and the Mosaic covenant, the book of the law stakes a claim that the true people of Yahweh are limited to the covenant reading ceremony participants.

This dissertation studies the history of the reception of the Psalm headings (also called the inscriptions, superscriptions, or titles) from the original Hebrew text into the main early versions of Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and Targumic Aramaic. This material has proven difficult for both ancient and modern scholars to fully understand, and the goal of this study is to see what ancient translators and copyists did when faced with such opaque texts—and, if possible, to ascertain what they thought of them. No similar study has yet been made, either in the scope of the versions used or the detail into which the evidence of the manuscript traditions has been described.

This study is organized into two main parts. Part One surveys the early versions, in sections organized by language (for most of these languages more than one translation or version was made). For each, relationships to other versions, notable figures involved in the translation or interpretation of the Psalms in that language, and the sources (important manuscripts and available critical editions) are delineated. The different scribal presentations of the actual text of the headings in manuscripts are discussed as well. This material provides both the context and the textual basis for the rest of the study. Part Two provides a synoptic edition of the texts of the Psalm headings themselves, organized by language and proximity to the original Hebrew. Specific English translations for the main text of all these versions are provided, as is a critical apparatus listing all important variants.

Two main treatments of the Psalm headings can be discerned in the early versions: accommodation or replacement. Accommodation, which seeks to maintain the headings inherited ultimately from Hebrew, can be either conservative (without additions or modifications) or free (the headings are flexible and may be amended). Replacement, the rarer treatment, involves the excision of the original headings from transmission and their replacement with theological material designed to guide the reader toward a proper understanding of the Psalm. These varied treatments attest to a range of opinion about the validity and function of the headings.

The golden calves are the most iconic of ancient Israel’s sins. And yet, scholarship focused on these images is scant and repetitive. Previous research has generally sought to determine how idolatrous these statues were according to modern standards, making the calves more theological constructs than ancient cultic objects.

I seek to expand our knowledge of Israel’s calves and the cultus surrounding them by investigating the often-overlooked Book of Hosea. This eighth century Minor Prophet is arguably the oldest written critique of the calves extant, making it the place to begin considerations of Israel’s calf cultus. However, Hosea’s writings on the calves are obscure, and rigorous philology is necessary to understand its three texts on the calves: Hosea 8:5-6, 10:5-6, and 13:2. This dissertation therefore examines these difficult passages and suggests new interpretations of them based on comparative Semitics and cultural comparisons with ancient Syria and Neo-Assyria. Special consideration is given to the role these objects played in Israelite society, with methodological insights taken from material studies and monumentality.

Overall, it is argued that Israel’s calf statues acted as equivalents to cultic statues in other polities. The Calf of Samaria (Hosea 8:6) was associated with the Yahweh of Samaria known from the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions. It interacted with Israel’s priests and kings through rituals and offerings. These rituals became key symbols of divine authorization for Israel’s last kings, who struggled to maintain their legitimacy as the Northern Kingdom collapsed. As the society continued to crumble, the weakening of Israel’s monarchy strained the cultus that it depended upon. The authors of Hosea thus used the downfall of Israel’s kings and kingdom to demonstrate the impotence of the calf statues, making their aniconic rhetoric not merely theological, but socially grounded.

The conclusion of this dissertation suggests that the aniconic reforms of Hezekiah were spurred in part by Israel’s downfall and the northern rhetoric surrounding it. The golden calves were thus forever associated with a sin that brought on divine abandonment, as opposed to the divine presence they were intended to mark.

This dissertation explores connections between early Iron Age alphabetic writing culture in the southern Levant (13th – 6th centuries) and Egyptian writing practices, both to posit the direct inheritance of various aspects of the former from the later and to shed light on documentary and writing practices in the southern Levant from the much well understood, and better materially attested, corpus of Egyptian. The dissertation combines anthropological and sociolinguistic views of writing, viewing writing as both human technology and visual communicative media, as broad theoretical frameworks for the investigation of writing as a “culture” and to provide some framework for beginning an investigating into its “origin” in the southern Levant.As human technology, written objects are here viewed as emblematic of the choices of actors in deliberate engagement with the material world. As such, epigraphs are viewed as material culture and themselves pieces of writing as a technological system. Thus, evidence is not limited to the epigraphs for their linguistic content but expands to include linguistic evidence related to writing and the evidence of writing associated material culture that shed light of the activity of writers (weights, seals, etc.). Aspects of production and use of materials are integral to understanding written objects as material culture. As such, linguistic, technological, and material data are brought together to describe the material processes of bringing a text into being, with a focus on the ways in which particular materials both index and generate socially significant meaning in the community of writers. As visual communicative media, written objects are here viewed as the creative products of writers who make distinct choices about the way in which a written object appears and how a text ultimately comes into being. As such, the letters on written objects become emblems of the techniques writers use, the postures they embody, and assumptions that they must make in constructing a written text. The method of drawing a letter (orthography; ductus), the final appearance of the letter (typography; allography), the use and integration of notation systems and associated symbols (numerical, metrological, and mathematical), the color and size of the letters (semiotics of typography), the direction of the letters, and the organizational plan of letters and written sigla (format and layout) are all valuable evidence for understanding writing culture as indwelt and shaped by writers themselves. These two aspects of writing culture undergird parts one (material) and two (practice) of the dissertation, respectively. The dissertation argues that Egyptian influence can be shown in both regards. From the material basis for writing, which includes the distinct writing lexicon (pen, ink, and palette) to the meaning and organization of visual aspects of writing, the influence of Egyptian writing culture on the communities responsible for proliferating the early alphabet at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennium was pervasive and original. Appreciating the depth and breadth of the influence of Egyptian writing practice on alphabetic writing communities in the southern Levant during Late Bronze and Iron ages encourages further inquiry into cross-cultural exchange between Egypt and the Levant at the level of literature and religion.