Reflection on knowledge is often assumed to emerge with Greek philosophy. Earlier and contemporary modes of thinking in the ancient Near East, including ancient Israel, are assumed to be archaic and often left out of the picture. Against this view, the authors in this volume aim to reconstruct the ancient modes of thinking that developed in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean regions and formed the conditions for developing more distinct forms of cultural and scientific knowledge.
Reflection on knowledge is often assumed to have emerged with Greek philosophy. Earlier and contemporary modes of thinking in the ancient Near East, including ancient Israel, are assumed to be archaic and often left out of the picture. Against this view, the contributors of this volume aim to reconstruct the ancient epistemologies, the »paradigms«, »discourses«, and »episteme«, that developed in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean region and formed the conditions for developing more distinct forms of cultural and scientific knowledge. In doing this, they include the search for second order thinking as part of ancient epistemologies: the capability to think about thinking, to adopt a theoretical attitude that involves the ability to reflect and self-reflect, to criticize and transcend the given, and to anticipate new realms by thinking outside the box. The ancient Near Eastern cultures were not characterized by a 'lukewarm mind' but they were capable, in their own cultural-specific ways, of unfolding epistemologies that included forms of second order thinking that may well be termed 'early philosophy'.
Table of contents:
Jan Dietrich Ancient Epistemologies. Some Preliminary Remarks on Common Features and Local Differences -
Marc Van De Mieroop What is Knowledge? A Babylonian Answer -
Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum Epistemic Things and Epistemic Infrastructures. Writing as an Experimental System in Ancient Mesopotamia -
Francesca Rochberg Cuneiform Knowledge and Natural Knowledge -
Ludwig D. Morenz Reader's Questions. Of the Art of Reading and Pilgrimage in the 12th Dynasty (Stele Liège I/630) -
Amr El Hawary Ancient Epistemologies? »Never did I know that which is not« - On Egyptian Onto-Epistemology -
Nili Shupak »Would I Had Unknown Phrases ... Not Maxims of Past Speech, Spoken by the Ancestors«. Tradition Versus Criticism in Egyptian Wisdom Literature and the Hebrew Bible -
Karen Gloy Hypotaxis versus Parataxis -
Christoph Horn The Epistemology of Wisdom in Ancient Neoplatonism -
Annette Schellenberg-Lagler »For the Lord Gives Wisdom« (Prov 2:6). God's Involvement in the Cognitive Processes of Humans according to the Hebrew Bible -
Katharine J. Dell »Even Though Those Who Are Wise Claim to Know, They Cannot Find It Out.« (Eccl 8:17) A Pendulum of Epistemological Perspectives in Ecclesiastes, as Contextualized in Greek Culture -
Mark Sneed The Relationship Between Qohelet's Pessimistic Anthropology and His Skeptical Epistemology -
Thomas Wagner Gaining Knowledge of Eternity. Cognition Processes in Mourning Rituals -
Dru Johnson Ritual and Pediatric Epistemology in the Hebrew Bible -
Esther Heinrich-Ramharter The Deed-Consequence-Relation in the Poetic Part of the Book of Job. General Law, Forward and Backward Principle - Some Logical Aspects -
Jaco Gericke »Come Let us Reason Together« (Isa 1:18) Belief Justification in the Hebrew Bible's Religious Language and the Comparative-Philosophical Question of Epistemological Commensurability
