This chapter builds on Ibn Sallām’s application of several terms that have become part and parcel of the mounting intertextual lexicon. At the root of these terms, the cases that invite their application, there is a desire to possess what could be another person’s property. The chapter draws attention to the increasing reference to the literary vocation, ḥirfat al-adab. More pivotal are the self-institutionalized philologists and critics, the experts, who act as arbiters and speak therefore for the public regarding what is happening in the literary market. Even if they act as advocates for one poet against another, they usually have recourse to a justification that, in the case of al-Āmidī, for example, blames al-Buḥturī for taking over, akhadha, too many verses from Abū Tammām’s poetry; this blame is only a stepping stone to the process of accusing the latter of invading the poetry of obscure poets. A terminological lexicon appeared in the form of instructive manuals that would soon become the subject of further detraction or redirection.

In this chapter, we will explore Israel’s book of worship – Psalms. These “songs,” collected over hundreds of years, nevertheless convey timeless expressions of Israel’s faith. This Old Testament collection has been organized into five books, and many of the individual psalms have titles, musical notations, or historical details.

Scholarship in the discipline of form criticism has furthered our understanding of how the original materials (sources behind the present texts) may have functioned in Israel’s life situations (German, Sitz im Leben). In general, we can identify larger categories of praise and lament, and of individual and corporate psalms. Specific forms include hymns, communal and individual laments, thanksgiving songs, and royal psalms. Thus, for example, the form of lament corresponds to a crisis situation; a royal psalm form is situated in events surrounding the king. These forms, preserved and presented as the collected psalms, represent an overview of Israel’s religious worldview. We will not necessarily observe statements of strict monotheism, but we will hear Israel “sing” of Yahweh, who alone is worthy of praise.

This chapter explores the three levels of material constitution presented in the Part of Animals: (a) elemental powers, (b) uniform and (c) nonuniform animate parts, in order to answer the question whether uniform materials that go into the constitution of animal bodies are produced for the sake of the organism. My answer is negative. At the bottom level, we encounter inanimate mixtures, not just elemental powers, that possess all the non-elemental material properties that may then be used by an animal nature. Aristotle’s chemistry (in the GC and Meteorology) exploits non-teleological processes that explain the dispositions of uniform material bodies. Such materials are then used by animal natures, through the teleological process of concoction, for the constitution of uniform and nonuniform parts of their bodies: the animal kind works within the confines set by the non-elemental material properties. This helps locate the difference between mixis and pepsis (concoction) and to understand why these conceptual tools are used in different contexts by Aristotle.

On the Parts of Animals (PA) is our main source for Aristotle’s explanations of animal character. This he locates in the qualities of an animal’s blood (or it’s analogue), whether it is hot, cold, thick, then, turbid, or pure (PA II.2, 651a16). This chapter sets out the main debate about character in Aristotle’s biological writings, whether it is formal or material, and argues that it is part of an animals’ material nature. While the materials existing in the blood vessels are not put there for the purpose of underlying character, they are often utilised for this end, displaying a complex coordination of material and formal natures. The chapter ends with a detailed analysis of which fluid elements in the body are responsible for underlying character and at which point they emerge in the digestive process. This further clarifies the relationship between animal bodies, nutritive processes, and the character potentials animals possess.

The nundinal and intercalary cycles were probably intended to operate with great regularity, and scholars often assume that they did so. Ancient calendars, however, were often managed calendars, and officials often intervened in their operations for a variety of purposes. There is virtually no evidence for the nundinal cycle, but the pontiffs, who were in charge of the calendar, intercalated with some irregularity. One can also find traces of criticism of pontifical practice, which was often conducted in terms of speculation about ideal political orders and the gods. In this way, it reveals a long-term tension between ideals and the actual conduct of public and cultic activity.

This chapter examines the essential links between antiquarianism, the writing of histories, and jurisprudence, for all were concerned in varying degrees with clarifying the essential nature of institutions and with ordering the rules associated with them. Roman writers produced a history of the calendar which they tied to other crucial institutions and to the lunar and solar cycles. Close examination reveals that they knew only of the calendar that governed the republic’s last centuries and that they wrote of its links to celestial phenomena through the lens of Caesar’s reform and the resulting Julian calendar. In this way, core features of the structure of the republican calendar, such as its intercalary and nundinal cycles, remain unaddressed.

The main questions posed at the beginning of this study can be tentatively answered as follows.

In Parts of Animals IV.10 Aristotle compares the human anatomy to the anatomy of other blooded, live-bearing animals with regard to their external, nonuniform parts. Of all these animals, Aristotle states, human beings alone have hands and arms instead of front-legs due to their erect posture. He associates the erect posture with human beings’ alleged divine nature, exhibited in their intellectual capacities. This poses two challenges that Aristotle addresses in the remainder of PA IV.10: first to show how most distinctive features of the human body (e.g. broad chests, fleshy buttocks, big feet, hands) can ultimately be traced back to the erect posture and second to account for the assumed connection between upright posture and intellectual capacities. Regarding the latter point the present chapter shows why, according to Aristotle, unimpaired thinking requires the upright posture and why the upright posture again requires a certain proportion between the upper and the lower bodily part.

First and Second Kings continue the stories of monarchic rule. Textual sources from the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires aid us considerably in the historical reconstruction of these centuries, but we will quickly observe that a religious agenda is central. First, the narrative accounts are connected by a recurring literary formula that evaluates each king – not primarily on political and military achievements but on the basis of that king’s faithfulness to Yahweh. Insertions of the so-called Elijah and Elisha cycles further demonstrate a concern to emphasize prophetic authority, which demands exclusive loyalty to Yahweh.

Second, content bears out the overriding religious motivation. For example, Solomon is associated with the great wisdom tradition in Israel. Nevertheless, for these biblical authors success is measured by obedience to Yahweh, and Solomon’s devotion to Yahweh is compromised because of his many wives and religious unfaithfulness. His downfall is also Israel’s – the United Monarchy is divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Religious unfaithfulness, exhibited by most of the kings, accounts for the fall of Israel to the Assyrians in 722 bceand of Jerusalem (Judah) to the Babylonians in 586 bce.

In Rome, as elsewhere in the ancient world, formal timekeeping practices were deeply embedded in views about the proper relationship between political orders, the surrounding world, and the powers that governed them. Ancient polities were cultic communities, and central practices within them were aimed at securing the favor of gods who were linked in various ways to events in the visible world. Rites were the chief instruments for securing this favor, but they rested on rules, either written or oral, that were intended to ensure their proper performance. At a more fundamental level, however, were ideas and assumptions, some more coherent and explicit than others, about the ways that the world worked. Here, it was widely assumed that polities should function in some form of alignment with rhythms that were revealed in the heavens.

We have already encountered prophets in the historical books. We will look now at four of the Old Testament’s writing prophets: Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. Eighth-century Israel witnessed increased accessibility to writing and an expanded role for the prophet. The recurrent phrase, “Thus says Yahweh” (messenger formula), epitomizes the primary role of the prophet as a messenger speaking on behalf of God.

Sources from Mari in the eighteenth century bceand others from seventh-century Assyria verify the antiquity of divination practices, of which prophecy is a type. Israel demonstrated opposition to certain divination practices, but its prophets consistently delivered messages from Yahweh, distinguished by their ethical and moral vision. Of the three basic types of Old Testament prophetic speech, prophecies are the most common and represent messages to an individual or corporate entity. Utterances are the confessions or prayers of the prophet to God, and narratives offer historical details corresponding to the prophet. Two important features will become evident as we explore the content of these books: covenant loyalty to Yahweh and the international extent of Yahweh’s authority.