Books by Timothy Hogue
Cambridge University Press, 2023
The Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments, is usually analysed as a text. Within th... more The Decalogue, commonly known as the Ten Commandments, is usually analysed as a text. Within the Hebrew Bible, however, it is depicted as a monument– an artifact embedded in rituals that a community uses to define itself. Indeed, the phraseology, visual representations, and ritual practices of contemporary monuments used to describe the Ten Commandments imbue them with authority. In this volume, Timothy Hogue, presents a new translation, commentary, and literary analysis of the Decalogue through a comparative study of the commandments with inscribed monuments in the ancient Levant. Drawing on archaeological and art historical studies of monumentality, he grounds the Decalogue's composition and redaction in the material culture and political history of ancient Israel and ancient West Asia. Presenting a new inner-biblical reception history of the text, Hogue's book also provides a new model for dating biblical texts that is based on archaeological and historical evidence, rather than purely literary critical methods.
Articles by Timothy Hogue
Religions, 2025
Studies of ancient Israelite religion have long assumed that texts played some role in its public... more Studies of ancient Israelite religion have long assumed that texts played some role in its public expression. This role is often reconstructed using depictions in the Hebrew Bible and ritual texts from neighboring regions or the Bronze Age Levant. However, no such ritual texts have been uncovered in the Iron Age Levant. Nevertheless, an analysis of architecturally embedded texts alongside their associated assemblages makes it possible to reconstruct ancient Levantine ritual practices and the roles of texts within them. As components of built environments, texts drew attention to particular areas, directing traffic along particular routes and halting it at waypoints. Texts of various genres occasionally prescribe specific ritual actions to carry out at these waypoints. Even texts lacking prescriptions were often accompanied by iconography depicting ritual practices or functional artifacts implying them. Analyzing architectural, textual, iconographic, and artifactual evidence together allows us to reconstruct ritual sequences performed in ancient built environments. This article demonstrates this method using case studies derived from four Iron Age Levantine sites: Karatepe, Karkemish, Kuntillet ʿAjrud, and Deir ʿAlla.
From Zaphon to Zion: The Redaction of Psalm 20
Journal of Biblical Literature, 2025
Since the discovery of an alternate version of Ps 20 in Papyrus Amherst 63 XII, 11–19, the psalm ... more Since the discovery of an alternate version of Ps 20 in Papyrus Amherst 63 XII, 11–19, the psalm has been the subject of multiple redaction-critical studies and historical reconstructions. Recent scholarship has used these two texts to reconstruct a northern Israelite hymn underlying them both. In this article, I use methods derived from inner-biblical discourse and ideological redaction criticism to shift focus from what was original to the poem to what was changed and why. Instead of further reconstructing the Israelite context for the original poem’s composition, I aim to reconstruct the Judahite context for its redaction. Editorial work on the poem was carefully marked using known scribal techniques. Replacements and insertions in the poem were carried out strategically to introduce Judahite ideological fixtures while simultaneously preserving the structure of the original Israelite poem and some of the north’s traditions. The result was a pan-Israelite text imagining the integration of the two communities in Judah. I argue that the most likely context for such a redactional enterprise was among the mixed scribal community that emerged in Judah after the fall of the Northern Kingdom.
Avar, 2024
1 Kgs 12:25-33 is composed of two significant layers-an earlier stratum that may be based on an I... more 1 Kgs 12:25-33 is composed of two significant layers-an earlier stratum that may be based on an Israelite royal inscription and a later, likely Judahite redaction. These can be disentangled based on a redaction critical approach rooted in studies of compilational and editorial practices attested in biblical and Cuneiform sources. Though the final text is often analyzed as an idol polemic, the Israelite strata suggest that Jeroboam is not depicted as constructing idols but rather pilgrimage outposts. This is borne out by the use of bovine iconography to direct ritual movement at other Levantine sites, as well as the broader Near Eastern practice of establishing pilgrimage networks in order to project political authority over multiple settlements, knitting them together into a kingdom. Accordingly, this article argues that the Israelite text depicted Jeroboam creating a pilgrimage network to performatively bring his Israel into being. Participating in this pilgrimage was a performance of Israelite identity. The Judahite redaction disavowed this by othering key aspects of the Israelite material culture depicted in the text. The final text is thus an example of identity politics rather than an idol polemic.
Levant, 2022
territoriality and monuments in the ancient Near East
Performative territoriality in the ... more territoriality and monuments in the ancient Near East
Performative territoriality in the Iron Age Levant
Conclusion: the king takes the stage, the audience takes a bow
Acknowledgements
References
Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Licensing Reprints & Permissions View PDF View EPUB
Abstract
In the 9th century BC, Levantine polities performatively expressed territoriality by strategically utilizing the spatial discourse of royal monuments. Specifically, Levantine rulers erected complementary monuments in both their core cities and frontier cities to transmit a central praxis and perspective to the periphery. This practice drew on earlier Levantine traditions of using monuments to demarcate ceremonial theatres that functioned as zones for political transformation. Most importantly, these 9th century monuments departed from earlier traditions by distributing the presence of both the king and his patron deity to multiple locations within his claimed territory. They thus created relationships between the denizens of diverse settlements and the king and his deity. By creating a shared political and religious experience, the monuments performatively brought forth concepts of a territorial polity centred on a single king, deity and capital city. This allowed these kings to express sovereignty over entire regions as opposed to collections of individual settlements.
Manuscript and Text Cultures, 2022
The Bar-Rakib Palace Inscriptions from Zincirli have received relatively little attention from ph... more The Bar-Rakib Palace Inscriptions from Zincirli have received relatively little attention from philologists and archaeologists alike because of their predictable and derivative content. However, these monuments provide an unparalleled insight into the monumentalization of text in the Iron Age Levant. As might be expected, Bar-Rakib’s Aramaic inscriptions and reliefs repeat themes and tropes from other monuments. They also were strategically deployed at the site so as to interact with nearby monuments left by earlier rulers. What has received less attention is the fact that Bar-Rakib’s monuments also shared many artistic tropes with small finds from Zincirli, including letters, incantation plaques, seals, and amulets. These correspondences suggest that monumental texts functioned by appropriating aspects of personal artifacts to be used on a communal scale. By projecting not only prestige but also intimacy, Bar-Rakib’s inscriptions invited their audience to interact with them in imaginative ways. As the audience related to the monumental texts through acts of reading, viewing, and ritual, they would in turn reconfigure their own relationships to other communicative media, places, each other, and the polity as a whole. It was this ability to relate to communities and thus reshape them that made a text monumental in the Iron Age Levant. This was accomplished through the strategic juxtaposition of text with visual and performative media in particular spatial contexts.
With Apologies to Hazael: The Counter-monumentality of the Tel Dan Stele
Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, 2021
The Tel Dan Stele is an essential piece of evidence for reconstructing Iron Age Levantine monumen... more The Tel Dan Stele is an essential piece of evidence for reconstructing Iron Age Levantine monumentality. Not only can we reasonably reconstruct the circumstances of the stele’s production, the circumstances of its discovery also provide important clues as to its later reception. In particular, it is clear from the stele’s broken state and reuse at Dan that it was utilized in counter-monumental practice. The stele was intentionally destroyed when the Israelites conquered Dan and its pieces were reused as building materials in the city’s gateway. Both the stele’s destruction and its reuse in the gate’s reconstruction were patterned performances, allowing the Israelites to perform their defeat of Aram before the Danites. These actions constituted a ritual forgetting of the ideology formerly afforded by the stele: the dominance of Hazael and the kingdom of Aram-Damascus. Thus embedded in counter-monumental practice, the stele was transformed into an ephemeral symbol of Aram-Damascus’ defeat.
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2019
The practice of opening monumental inscriptions with a first-person pronoun was popularized by th... more The practice of opening monumental inscriptions with a first-person pronoun was popularized by the Iron Age Syro-Anatolian polities, who inherited the tradition from the Hittites. The first-person pronoun evoked the commissioner’s voice and even their image, especially in Hieroglyphic Luwian iconography and its adaptations. These monumental texts materialized an imagined encounter with their commissioners that was initiated by the phrase “I am.” The first-person opening thus became the operative element of the text’s monumentality. The text only functioned as a monument in light of the speaker identified by the pronominal opening. This study presents a history of the practice and especially its employment relative to monumental images. This reveals that the formula had an overlapping but ultimately separable function from that of images, allowing it to imbue texts with monumentality in a variety of contexts. This apparently made the formula an attractive object of adaptation during the Iron Age, leading to its diffusion throughout the greater Levant and in Mesopotamia.
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 2019
Previous translations of the Katumuwa inscription have either rendered the first verbal phrase (q... more Previous translations of the Katumuwa inscription have either rendered the first verbal phrase (qnt ly) “I commissioned for myself” or “I acquired for myself.” No scholars have yet defended the possibility that it simply means “I made.” In fact, this is likely the case given the typical monumental rhetoric of Northwest Semitic and Hieroglyphic Luwian monumental inscriptions. A comparison with verbs of monumenting in Hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions in particular suggests that the monumenting phrase in the Katumuwa inscription was calqued on a Luwian phrase. This difference is significant because it reveals an important aspect of the inscription’s monumentality and the Syro-Anatolian conception of the stele. The stele that Katumuwa created was not understood merely as the inscribed object. Rather, the monument was the conjunction of material object, ritual engagement, and the resultant manifestation of the monument’s commissioner. There was no monument apart from Katamuwa, whose voice was preserved in the inscription and whose presence could be reactivated through ritual. Therefore, Katumuwa did in fact “create” the stele as he spoke through it to his monument’s users.
This article is available online at the link provided. Alternatively, feel free to contact me for an offprint.
Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentlische Wissenschaft, 2018
Previous rhetorical analyses of language alternation in Ezra have been limited by their focus on ... more Previous rhetorical analyses of language alternation in Ezra have been limited by their focus on bilingualism. This study will propose a new approach to the poetics of Ezra 1-7 in light of more recent sociolinguistic research concerning diglossia and language ideology. The writer of Ezra used literary code-switching to juxtapose contrasting linguistic variants that suggested particular ideological postures. By alternating between Hebrew, Official Aramaic, and a vernacular variety of Aramaic, the writer created a literary reflection of the diglossia that characterized Achaemenid Judah. He sequenced his code-switching so as to mirror the Judeans’ transition from a diaspora community to a stabilized minority and the ideological negotiations that accompanied that transition. In so doing, he provided linguistic points of reference for the audience to use in projecting themselves into those negotiations. The writer’s code-switching thus reflects the Judeans’ return from exile and invites the audience to accept their new symbolic homeland.
Chapters in Edited Volumes by Timothy Hogue
The Joy of Propaganda: Pleasure and Power in the Palaces of Assyria and Israel
Understanding Power in Ancient Egypt and the Near East, Vol. 2: Manifestations and Responses (edited by Shane Thompson and Jessica Tomkins)
This chapter argues that power (understood as a social cognitive process) can be motivated by aff... more This chapter argues that power (understood as a social cognitive process) can be motivated by affective experiences like pleasure. Moreover, in some cases ancient elites designed built environments to elicit pleasure and thus motivate acceptance of their ideologies. This study begins by exploring this phenomenon in the context of the Assyrian palaces at Nimrud. The Assyrian kings Assurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III designed their palaces to highlight engagements with visual art, monumental architecture, music, food, and drink to promote submission on the part of those visiting. Significantly, archaeological and epigraphic evidence suggests that Israelite elites who participated in feasts in Assyrian palaces emulated those practices at Samaria and Jezreel. This chapter argues that this emulation signals a positive appraisal of Assyrian power strategies. Even if the Israelite elite did not always submit to Assyrian power, they apparently viewed its enaction positively enough to imitate and reenact it at home. By foregrounding joy as a response to imperial power rather than fear, this chapter offers a new approach to ancient power relations, suggesting that entertainment and affect were central to imperial strategies and their reception in the Levant.
From the Monumental to the Mundane: A Material Engagement Approach to Power in the Ancient Levant
Power in the Ancient Near East (edited by Shane Thompson and Jessica Tomkins), 2025
This chapter reanalyzes power relations in the ancient Levant utilizing material engagement theor... more This chapter reanalyzes power relations in the ancient Levant utilizing material engagement theory. Power is produced by assemblages of interacting human and nonhuman agents, including the one perceived as holding power as well as those subject to it and the materials that facilitate their interactions. Power is the potential to motivate these interactions by prompting the human participants in power relations to attach value to them. In short, power emerges when interactions are made to matter. Social psychologists label this process motivated social cognition. I apply this theory to the ancient Levant in two case studies: the Kerak Inscription and Lachish Letter 3. The Kerak Inscription was set up as a southern companion to the Mesha Stele in Dibon. Interactions with the Kerak Inscription performed an ideology of a territorial Moab and a collective identity subject to the prescriptions of Dibon. Power was thus enacted through interactions with the statue itself, and not necessarily the human king to whom power was ascribed. In the Lachish letter, a low-rank soldier passionately defended his literacy to his commanding officer. In so doing, he reified that commander’s power as well as the ideological prescriptions of the court at Jerusalem as represented by the standardized written language. Though the soldier perceived himself as subject to these other agents, he was the one enacting their power in this case through engagements with his letter and writing implements. In both cases, power emerged from motivated material engagements; it was not something simply exercised from above by those humans and institutions perceived as wielding it.
Monumentality, community, public spaces and social agency in the Iron Age Levant
Community and Rerpesentation: Collective Spaces, Monumentality, and Political Agency in Pre-Modern States. Edited by Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia, 2025
The Languages of Ancient Israel and Judah: A Sociolinguistic Reappraisal
The Ancient Israelite World. Edited by Kyle Keimer and George Pierce., 2022
This chapter analyzes the languages of ancient Israel as material practices embedded within socia... more This chapter analyzes the languages of ancient Israel as material practices embedded within social networks. Utilizing methods from the sociolinguistics of writing, I refocus inquiry on the practice of languaging in ancient Israel as a description of linguistic features. Written language is not simply a representation of linguistic features, but a complex practice that requires specific materials, tools, technical skills, human resources, and contexts. As such, writing is typically prescribed and proscribed in many ways by the institutions that control all these resources. It is thus inextricable from ideological processes. These processes can be reconstructed using social network analysis. Prior to the 8th century BCE, writing in Israel was diverse and reflective of different elites claiming and negotiating power in the region. During the 8th century BCE, a standardized form of Israelite writing appeared as part of the larger political program of the Nimshide dynasty. The Nimshides transformed writing in both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Even after the fall of the kingdom of Israel at the end of the 8th century, the transmission of technologies and more importantly specialists perpetuated this system in Judah, where it took on a new and distinct form.
Enchant the Sabbath Day to Make it Holy: Conjuration and Performativity in Exodus 20:8-11
New Perspectives on Ritual in the Biblical World. Edited by Laura Quick and Melissa Ramos. The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (New York: T & T Clark), 2021
Though often translated as though it described a commemorative practice, the command in Exodus 20... more Though often translated as though it described a commemorative practice, the command in Exodus 20:8 to זכור את-יום השבת “remember the day of the Sabbath” actually expresses an ancient ritual of enchantment. Translations of zkwr as “remember” downplay the performative aspects of the verb. The cultures of the ancient Near East viewed ritual practice as actually bringing about new realities rather than merely commemorating or otherwise indicating them. To zkr an entity thus meant more than simply “remembering” as a passive cognitive activity; rather it involved actually making that entity present, conjuring it. This can be borne out through a comparative study of zkr in other ritual texts from the Levant – the Great Zukru Festival of Bronze Age Emar and the monumental inscriptions of Iron Age Zincirli. This comparative study will then revisit the use of this term relating to the Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible. This analysis will be couched within a theoretical consideration of ritual performativity and enchantment. Set against this backdrop, the command to zkwr the Sabbath cannot refer to a representational act of commemoration alone. Rather, this was a command to enchant the Sabbath – to make it into a time when the boundaries between human and divine were vague and the presence of Yahweh could be manifested among his worshippers.
Book Reviews by Timothy Hogue
Review of "Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East" by Andrew Knapp
Reading Religion, 2019
Hebrew Higher Education 21, 2019
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Books by Timothy Hogue
Articles by Timothy Hogue
Performative territoriality in the Iron Age Levant
Conclusion: the king takes the stage, the audience takes a bow
Acknowledgements
References
Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Licensing Reprints & Permissions View PDF View EPUB
Abstract
In the 9th century BC, Levantine polities performatively expressed territoriality by strategically utilizing the spatial discourse of royal monuments. Specifically, Levantine rulers erected complementary monuments in both their core cities and frontier cities to transmit a central praxis and perspective to the periphery. This practice drew on earlier Levantine traditions of using monuments to demarcate ceremonial theatres that functioned as zones for political transformation. Most importantly, these 9th century monuments departed from earlier traditions by distributing the presence of both the king and his patron deity to multiple locations within his claimed territory. They thus created relationships between the denizens of diverse settlements and the king and his deity. By creating a shared political and religious experience, the monuments performatively brought forth concepts of a territorial polity centred on a single king, deity and capital city. This allowed these kings to express sovereignty over entire regions as opposed to collections of individual settlements.
This article is available online at the link provided. Alternatively, feel free to contact me for an offprint.
Chapters in Edited Volumes by Timothy Hogue
Book Reviews by Timothy Hogue