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[German Version] The Phoenician personal name Sanchuniaton (“Sakun has given”) appears in Greek in passages from the writers Porphyry and Philo of Byblos quoted by the church father Eusebius of Caesarea ( Praep. I 9.20f., 24–29; X 9.12–16). He is said to have been a Phoenician priest from the time before the Trojan War, cited by Philo Byblius as vouching the Phoenician tradition he records and for its great antiquity. Philo Byblius is claimed to have translated Sanchuniaton’s work on Phoenician history from Phoenician into Gre…

[German Version] I. The State of Israel – II. History – III. Society I. The State of Israel The formal full name, State of Israel (Heb. Medinat Yisrael), calls attention to the spatial divergence between the political entity and the geographical and historical Erets Israel (Land of Israel, Palestine and its linguistic equivalents). Israel is located in southwest Asia, on the southern stretch of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In its northern half, inland from the shore, is the coastal area and further east are the hills, from n…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Legal History I. Religious Studies Trial by ordeal is a means of decision-making as to the guilt or innocence of a suspect in legal cases where there is no available evidence or testimony, and where no guilty plea has been entered. In place of an oath, but in ¶ line with the inherent logic of the oath, a conditional self-curse was sometimes employed; this would apply in cases where, for example, a slave was disqualified from a hearing under oath, and a divin…

[German Version] (“Black Hill”), an ancient fortified hill in Cilicia. Together with the neighboring fortress Domuztepe, it dominates the overland route from northern Syria and Cilicia to Central Anatolia across the Anti-Taurus mountain range. Now a Turkish city, it lies roughly 100 km northeast of Adana. Following the discovery of the archaeological site in 1946, excavations uncovered the upper and lower city on the Karatepe from 1947 onward. A considerable stir was caused by the Phoenician and Hieroglyphic-Luwian inscriptions on the door-jamb orthostats of the southwest and northeast gates and by the Phoenician inscription on the statue of the weather god in the open courtyard behind the southwest gate. The texts are nearly identical; the Phoenician inscription on the statue of the weather god shows slight modifications. The original language of these inscriptions is Old Anatolian/Indo-European Luwian, while the Phoenician version is regarded as a translation, in parts as an interpretation. The inscriptions describe King Azitawada's good deeds for the inhabitants of the land of Adana, his political hegemony, the construction of the city named after him on the Karatepe, and the establishment of temples and cults. This is followed by imprecations against anyone who should obliterate the inscription as well as by pleas for the blessing of the king. The city's Luwian pantheon consists of weather gods, the moon god, the sun god, the stag god, and the circle of all the gods to whom a corresponding Phoenician deity is assigned in the Phoenician version of the inscription. Particularly worthy of mention among these are the Baal of heaven, El, creator of the earth, the sun god of the underworld, and Baal Krntryš. Further Hieroglyphic-Luwian inscriptions from the southwest gate are preserved merely in fragments. All inscriptions are dated to the late 8th or early 7th c…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies There are two basic types of interact

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion Unity, uniqueness and simplicity are considered God’s incommunicable properties. In philosophy of religion unity was originally thought of as the One, as the ground supporting the many in their multiplicity and difference. Thus unity was conceived as the timeless and spaceless ground and numerical beginning of the cosmos with its multiplicity of beings. In Plato’s teaching about ideas, unity as the One transcends the plurality of ideas, and has ontological pr…

[German Version] While Canaanites are already mentioned in the Mari correspondence (mid-18th cent. bce), the place name Canaan appears for the first time in the inscription of Idrimi of Alalach (1500 bce). According to the Amarna correspondence (mid-14th cent. bce), Canaan constituted an Egyptian province with the major localities Gaza and Beth-Shean, encompassing Palestine andLebanon as far as Beirut. The Old Testament still reflects Canaan as a designation for Palestine in the 1st millennium bce (Gen 10:19; 37; Num 34:2–12; cf. Deut 1:7). “Canaan” as a theological and literary concept in the OT is to be distinguished from this political and administrative term. Canaan is personified as one of the four sons of Ham (Gen 10:6) and, according to Gen 10:15–18, as the father of Sidon (i.e. the Phoenicians [Phoenicia]) and Heth (i.e. the Hittites [Asia Minor]), who were joined secondarily by the peoples who inhabited pre-Israelite Palestine (such as the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivvi…

[German Version] In order to understand the title שֹׁפֵט/šopeṭ, fundamental to the office of judge, reference should be made to the institution of the šāpiṭu in Mari in the 18th century bce and to the office of the Suffetes among the Phoenicians and in Carthage from the 6th century bce…