[Rezension von: Suriano, Matthew J., A history of death in the Hebrew Bible]
‘In the Hebrew Bible, the idea of the afterlife was inscribed on the body’. So argues Matthew Suriano in his 2018 monograph, A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. Suriano aims to combine archaeological interpretation of mortuary remains with the study of biblical literature in order to show that t...
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2020
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| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2020, Volume: 71, Issue: 2, Pages: 807-809 |
| Review of: | A history of death in the Hebrew Bible (New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018) (Peterson, Jesse)
A history of death in the Hebrew Bible (New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018) (Peterson, Jesse) A history of death in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford : Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2018) (Peterson, Jesse) |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | ‘In the Hebrew Bible, the idea of the afterlife was inscribed on the body’. So argues Matthew Suriano in his 2018 monograph, A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. Suriano aims to combine archaeological interpretation of mortuary remains with the study of biblical literature in order to show that the ancient Hebrew ‘conception of death was centered specifically on the treatment of the dead rather than their destiny’ (p. 2). This conception concerned not ‘the migration of an immortal soul to some otherworldly destination’, but rather it looked to bodies, bones, and the achievement of a certain status: ‘the biblical ideal was the status of ancestor, which provided the dead with a certain form of immortality’ (p. 2). In other words, if one’s bodily remains have been cared for properly, one thereby achieves the status of ancestor. Within this notion of death as the achievement of a status, Suriano also argues that death is (a) transitional and (b) relational. For ancient Judahites, death is not the all-at-once enterprise we commonly assume today. Rather, death is transitional: it is a process involving phases. Further, death is relational in that the important status—ancestor—‘was conditioned upon how the living interacted with the dead’ (p. 2). One could not achieve this status alone; one had to be treated properly after one’s own death in order to achieve it, and this depended upon one’s community. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/flaa092 |