Peter Altmann – författare

Food, drink, and feasting represent both the stuff of everyday life and potent symbols for worship, identity, and power since time immemorial and throughout the globe. However, the ways they exercise influence take shape in accordance with the realities and imaginations of distinct cultural settings. This volume provides an overview of the ways that these elements and motifs appear in the texts of Hebrew Bible in relation to its larger cultural and historical context. After considering food as a broader anthropological object of study, it discusses the features of regular provision in ancient Israel. Specific investigations include feasts, prohibitions, fasting, along with connections with sexuality, worship, and identity in relation to the foodways of the broader region.

Food, drink, and feasting represent both the stuff of everyday life and potent symbols for worship, identity, and power since time immemorial and throughout the globe. However, the ways they exercise influence take shape in accordance with the realities and imaginations of distinct cultural settings. This volume provides an overview of the ways that these elements and motifs appear in the texts of Hebrew Bible in relation to its larger cultural and historical context. After considering food as a broader anthropological object of study, it discusses the features of regular provision in ancient Israel. Specific investigations include feasts, prohibitions, fasting, along with connections with sexuality, worship, and identity in relation to the foodways of the broader region.

This volume brings together the work of scholars using various methodologies to investigate the prevalence, importance, and meanings of feasting and foodways in the texts and cultural-material environments of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. Thus, it serves as both an introduction to and explication of this emerging field. The offerings range from the third-millennium Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia to the rise of a new cuisine in the Islamic period and transverse geographical locations such as southern Iraq, Syria, the Aegean, and especially the southern Levant. The strength of this collection lies in the many disciplines and methodologies that come together. Texts, pottery, faunal studies, iconography, and anthropological theory are all accorded a place at the table in locating the importance of feasting as a symbolic, social, and political practice. Various essays showcase both new archaeological methodologies—zooarchaeological bone analysis and spatial analysis—and classical methods such as iconographic studies, ceramic chronology, cultural anthropology, and composition-critical textual analysis.

The book of Numbers has had something of a renaissance in scholarly engagement in recent years - and this careful and contemporary commentary by Altmann and Peres distils that conversation with sensitivity and rigour.The joint nature of this commentary by two authors from different contexts helps to illuminate Numbers for the contemporary reader, as it seeks to make God's word a source of blessing, nourishment and hope for all.The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary is designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text of the book of Numbers says and what it means. The Introduction to this commentary gives a concise but thorough treatment of its authorship, date, original setting and purpose.Following a structural Analysis, the Commentary takes the book of Numbers section by section, drawing out its main themes and also commenting on individual verses and problems of interpretation. Additional Notes provide fuller discussion of particular difficulties. In the new Old Testament volumes, the commentary on each section of the text is structured under three headings: Context, Comment and Theology. The goal is to explain the true meaning of the Bible and make its message plain.

The festive meal texts of Deuteronomy 12–26 depict Israel as a unified people participating in cultic banquets – a powerful and earthy image for both preexilic Judahite and later audiences. Comparison of Deuteronomy 12:13–27, 14:22–29, 16:1–17, and 26:1–15 with pentateuchal texts like Exodus 20–23 is broadened to highlight the rhetorical potential of the Deuteronomic meal texts in relation to the religious and political circumstances in Israel during the Neo-Assyrian and later periods. The texts employ the concrete and rich image of festive banquets, which the monograph investigates in relation to comparative ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography, the zooarchaeological remains of the ancient Levant, and the findings of cultural anthropology with regard to meals.

The festive meal texts of Deuteronomy 12–26 depict Israel as a unified people participating in cultic banquets – a powerful and earthy image for both preexilic Judahite and later audiences. Comparison of Deuteronomy 12:13–27, 14:22–29, 16:1–17, and 26:1–15 with pentateuchal texts like Exodus 20–23 is broadened to highlight the rhetorical potential of the Deuteronomic meal texts in relation to the religious and political circumstances in Israel during the Neo-Assyrian and later periods. The texts employ the concrete and rich image of festive banquets, which the monograph investigates in relation to comparative ancient Near Eastern texts and iconography, the zooarchaeological remains of the ancient Levant, and the findings of cultural anthropology with regard to meals.

Wie reagieren die zeitgenössischen biblische Texten auf die grundlegenden wirtschaftlichen Veränderungen der Perserzeit (6.-4. Jh. v.Chr.)? In dieser wirtschaftsgeschichtlich-orientierten Studie untersucht Peter Altmann die elementaren Wirtschaftskonzeptionen des alten Orients und früherer biblischer Texte, sowie die Sachkultur und außerbiblische Texte der Perserzeit um zu zeigen, wie biblische Texte aus der Perserzeit (Esra, Nehemia, Deuterojesaja, das Heiligkeitsgesetz) mit solchen wirtschaftlichen Phänomenen umgehen. Dabei rückt vor allem der Aufstieg wirtschaftlicher Konzepte und ihrer theologischen wie auch identitätsstiftenden Implikationen ins Zentrum.

Peter Altmann beantwortet in dieser Studie die schwierige Frage, warum die hebräische Bibel den Verzehr bestimmter Vögel verbietet, indem er diese Vögel in den Kontext ihres allgemeinen Auftretens in der Archäologie, den Texten und der Ikonographie im Vorderen Orient der Antike und innerhalb der Bibel selber setzt.

Der vorliegende Band untersucht biblische Speiseverbote in Bezug auf ihre Materialität, ihre Eigenschaft als vergleichbare kulturelle Objekte und ihren anthropologischen Charakter, indem er Beiträge aus archäologischer, anthropologischer und textueller Perspektive vereint, ebenso wie der der Altorientalistik.

In diesem Sammelband beleuchten die Beiträger die intellektuelle Auseinandersetzung mit Reichtum in der Hebräischen Bibel, in der griechischen philosophischen sowie der griechischen poetischen Literatur, in jüdischen Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit sowie in Schriften aus Qumran, den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der Alten Kirche.

Anna Angelini und Peter Altmann befassen sich mit zentralen Fragen zu den biblischen Speisegeboten und ihrer Bedeutung als Praktiken und Texte durch philologische, zooarchäologische, ikonografische und vergleichende altorientalische und griechisch-römische Perspektiven. Dabei untersuchen sie theoretische Rahmen, die in der modernen Auslegung verwendet werden, mögliche Ursprünge in Bezug auf die altisraelitische Religion und Gesellschaft, sowie die Verortung in Bezug auf die priesterliche Terminologie und die deuteronomische Tradition. Sie weiten den Untersuchungsbogen auf die Rezeption der Verbote des Zweiten Tempels sowohl in den Schriftrollen vom Toten Meer als auch in den griechisch-römischen Diskursen der ersten Jahrhunderte nach Christus aus. Mit ihren grundlegenden Studien liefern sie eine Annäherung an die Speisegebote, die den Weg für die Rekonstruktion ihres Entwicklungsweges in ihre heutigen Kontexte öffnet.