Enchanted Substances: Water, Dirt , and Air in Ancient Hebrew and West Asian Writings
Enchanted Substances: Water, Dirt , and Air in Ancient Hebrew and West Asian Writings
From ancient myths and divination literature to ritual practices, we understand that water, dirt, and air were substances imbued with magic of life, death, affliction, and transformation. These ancient enchantments attach both to the material world of lived religion and to the textualized categories, symbols, and linguistic fabulations of literary worlds. In this talk, we will explore water, dirt, and air in several Hebrew and West Asian writings, ultimately to help us reorient our understandings of familiar stories like the garden of Eden and the scene of divine theophany in the book of Job. As we take inventory of this unique magico-materiality in the Hebrew Bible, we may also begin to tell a richer, more complex story about our inherited ecological imaginations.
Ingrid Lilly is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Wofford College (Spartanburg, SC). Her current research focuses on a philology of medicine, illness, and embodiment in ancient Hebrew and Mesopotamian writings, and she has published on a broad range of historical topics, such as prophecy, gender, spirit possession, and material philology. Dr. Lilly has previously taught at Western Kentucky University, the Graduate Theological Union, San Francisco Theological Seminary, and in the Middle East Studies Department at Georgia State. She loves sea kayaking, cross-country skiing, van camping, creative nonfiction, and socializing by a warm fire.