Frank Ritchel Ames is Professor of Medical Informatics and Coordinator of

Ethics Curriculum at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

He is a contributor to and co-editor of Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric,
Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts; Foster Biblical Scholarship:
Essays in Honor of Kent Harold Richards; and Interpreting Exile: Displacement
and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts (all from Society of Biblical
Literature).
Jacob L. Wright is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Candler School of
Theology, Emory University. He is the author of the Templeton awardwinning
Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (de Gruyter)
and co-editor of Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and
Modern Contexts (Society of Biblical Literature).

Kelle
Ames
Wright

Society of Biblical Literature

ANCIENT ISRAEL AND ITS LITERATURE

Brad E. Kelle is Professor of Old Testament and Director of the M.A. in

Religion Program at Point Loma Nazarene University. He is the author of Ancient
Israel at War 853586 B.C. (Osprey), co-author of Biblical History and Israels Past:
The Changing Study of the Bible and History (Eerdmans), and co-editor of Writing
and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts and
Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts
(both from Society of Biblical Literature).

Warfare, Ritual, and Symbol in Biblical and Modern Contexts

Questions about ritual and symbolism related to war in the Hebrew

Bible abound: What wartime rituals were performed and why? What
constitutes a symbol in war? How did rituals and symbols function
before, during, and after campaigns and battles? What effects did
they have on insiders? on outsiders? In what ways did symbols and
rituals function as instruments of war, the formation of states, and
social reintegration? To answer these and other pertinent questions,
this volume offers fourteen scholarly explorations of the social
determinants of rituals and symbols of escalation, preparation,
and aggression, as well as rituals and symbols of de-escalation,
perpetuation, and commemoration of war.

Warfare, Ritual, and Symbol

in Biblical and Modern
Contexts
Edited by
Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames,
and Jacob L. Wright