earticle

영어

The present study purports to find out the types of religious knowledges portrayed in the ancient Near Eastern texts and to analyze how to use them in maintaining the power. The rites and rituals in the ancient Neat functioned characteristically in their own boundaries. They were managed by the specialists with special knowledges. Sociology names these specialists as religious specialists or religious intellectuals. In the ancient Near East, extispicy, astrology, and magic were categorized as bārûtu, skills of diviners, but can be branded as religious knowledges from the sociological perspective. These religious knowledges can be regarded as the results of observation of earthly and celestial phenomena, the basis of today’s mathematics and science. Religious specialists used these knowledges to interpret the divine will, while kings referred them to make crucial political decision. In order to understand religious knowledges in proper, the analysis of the religious references is prerequisite. Today’s big data business consider the volume, variety, and velocity of data being important elements. Similarly, the ancient Near Eastern religious specialists circulated rapidly various vast data. The data were utilized to make political decisions and were stored in royal archives to be retrieved and referred in case of necessity.

한국어

본 연구는 고대근동의 문서들을 통해 종교적 지식의 유형을 발견하고 이들이 정책결정 과정이나 권력의 유지에 어떻게 사용되었는지를 분석한다. 종교적 지식은 왕이 획득한 권력을 합법화하는데 도움을 주었을 뿐 아니라 그가 권력을 유지하는 방편으로도 사용되었다. 따라서 본 연구의 주목적은 빅데이터로서의 종교적 지식이 권력의 형성과 유지에 어떻게 사용되었는지를 분석하고 고찰하는 것이다.