Suchergebnisse

Die paradoxe Realität des Krieges mag sich jeder Definition entziehen, doch stellt der Krieg einen konstitutiven Aspekt der abendländischen Kultur dar und eröffnet in historischer Perspektive ein weites Spannungsfeld verschiedener Wissensmodelle und Traditionen. Einerseits als Kunst oder gar als Wissenschaft behandelt, andererseits als bloße technische Fertigkeit beschrieben, erscheint Krieg als immer neue Konfiguration unterschiedlichster Formen und Diskurse. Schon Clausewitz bemerkte, dass alle Definitionen eher unbefriedigend seien, denn der Krieg sei ein »lebendiger, reagierender Gegenstand«, dessen Systematik nur schwer mit dem Schematismus der Künste und der Wissenschaften verglichen werden kann. So will die Tagung »Krieg in Worten« den Wechselwirkungen von Krieg und seinen spezifischen Wissensformen nachgehen, die den Kriegsdiskurs von der griechisch-römischen Antike bis zur frühneuzeitlichen Wissenskonfigurierung begleitet und charakterisiert haben. Dabei soll insbesondere versucht werden, der schriftlichen Dimension des Diskurses über den Krieg nachzugehen, innerhalb dessen eine Antike erst konstruiert wird. Denn die Auseinandersetzung mit einer exemplarischen, normierenden und immer gültigen Antike hat sich einer erhöhten Symbolizität gerade in dem Moment bedient, in dem die technologischen Entwicklungen Fortschritte versprachen, die die Kriegsprozesse radikal zu verändern drohten. Somit wird Krieg im Sinne von »Transformationen der Antike« als Kreuzungspunkt unterschiedlicher Disziplinen und Methoden verstanden. Although the paradoxical reality of war may elude any definition, it represents a constitutive dimension of Western culture which, when seen in a historical perspective, exposes an area of productive tension between various traditions and models of knowledge. Sometimes treated as an art or even a science, sometimes described as a mere technical capability, war represents a constantly renewable configuration of a wide range of forms and discourses. Clausewitz himself observes that no single ...

Cover -- Titel -- Preface -- Table of Contents -- I: Wisdom and Gods as the Foundation of Morality in Ancient World -- JAN DIETRICH: Wisdom in the Cultures of the Ancient World: A General Introduction and Comparison -- JAN ASSMANN: Tugenden und Pflichten nach altägyptischen Morallehren -- II: Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Texts -- YORAM COHEN: Why "Wisdom"? Copying, Studying, and Collecting Wisdom Literature in the Cuneiform World -- ALAN LENZI: "Counsels of Wisdom" as "White-Collar" Wisdom in First Millennium Ancient Mesopotamia -- HERBERT NIEHR: Weisheit in den Königsepen aus Ugarit -- III: Comparative Studies of Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Texts -- NOGA AYALI-DARSHAN: "Do not Open your Heart to Your Wife or Servant" (Khasheshonqy 13:17): A West-Asiatic Antecedent and its Relation to Later Wisdom Instructions -- DANIEL BODI: Two Animal Proverbs in Ahiqar and in Aesop on Human Relationships: Mercilessness and Sharing -- ENRIQUE JIMÉNEZ: An Almost Irresistible Target: Parodying the Theodicy in Babylonian Literature -- IV: Moral Teaching in the Book of Job -- EDWARD L. GREENSTEIN: Proverbs and Popular Sayings, Real or Invented, in the Book of Job -- DOMINICK S. HERNÁNDEZ: The Expression of Moral Judgments through Imagery in Job and Ancient Near Eastern Literature -- LUDGER SCHWIENHORST-SCHÖNBERGER: "Jetzt aber hat mein Auge dich geschaut" (Ijob 42,5): Gibt es im Ijobbuch eine Lösung des Problems auf der Ebene des Bewusstseins? -- V: Questions of Theodicy in the Ancient Near Eastern World -- ALEXANDRA VON LIEVEN: "Ich habe nicht befohlen, dass sie Unrecht tun": Das Theodizee-Problem im Alten Ägypten -- THOMAS KRÜGER: Morality and Religion in Three Babylonian Poems of Pious Sufferers -- T.M. OSHIMA: When the Godless Thrives and a Wolf Grows Fat: Explaining the Prosperity of the Impious in Ancient Mesopotamian Wisdom Texts.

What is the role of religious aspects in legitimizing or delegitimizing violence? The articles of this volume provide an important contribution to this crucial social and scholarly debate. Analysing a broad spectrum of case studies from antiquity, they focus on religious justifications or evaluations of recommended, performed, or forbidden acts of violence - regardless of the question of their historicity. Not only late antiquity and Christianity are considered, but also pre-Christian Greek and Roman civilizations, Judaism, literary myth, and atheism. The case studies cover the period from the fifth century BCE to the fifth century CE and a broad geographical scope extending from Gaul to Israel and Egypt. This volume offers new insights into a highly topical issue

The oldest mode of transport - the rafting of timber over a distance of two hundred kilometres on the Mediterranean already mentioned in the Old Testament - was also practised in the Roman Age with the aid of sails before the wind. The crews must have had at their disposal the necessary equipment, complete with the necessary lodgings and food supplies. In Mesopotamia, rafts kept afloat with inflated animal skins were used. The Roman legionaries used on their expeditions robust floating bridges to cross rivers. The Romans also rafted tree trunks to Lower Rhenish regions on the Rhine and its tributaries. Cooperative rafters' (ratiarii) associations are known to have existed in the Rhône region. In the sources on Roman law, approximately a dozen Digest passages are concerned with rafting. Some mention navis and ratis together; in other cases, the jurists applied regulations pertaining to navis also to rafts. The strict liability of mariners for the loss of transport goods or the belongings of passengers accordingly also applied to rafters. The authority held by captains of seagoing and inland vessels likewise applied for the head of a raft crew. The jurists moreover debated over the agency of natural forces on rafts and the claim to the retrieval of a stranded raft. Unlike sect. 867 of the German civil code, however, the person entitled to retrieve the raft not only had to recompense the losses caused by the search for and removal of the raft, but also (unjustifiably) those caused by its stranding (i.e. by force majeure). The Praetor's Edict moreover contained threats of punishment for pirate attacks on ships and rafts and defended the freedom to use the shipping routes on inland waterways and the open sea, also for rafts. As tree trunks loosely bound together to form a raft do not become essential components of a uniform object, the ownership of and nonpossessory pledge on individual trunks remained in force; their existence was verified with the aid of notches (raft marks).