Preface

Back to top: Preface

Substantive aims

The title of the website indicate its two major aims.

(1) “Mesopotamian religion” is a transparent term, while “spirituality” needs some explanation: it points in a hermeneutic direction, in the sense that it seeks for the deeper motivation and inspiration behind what comes to be crystallized in specific cultural institutions and ideologies.

(2) The “Bible” is also, quite obviously, wholly transparent as a term and as a concept. What is specific to our website is that we look at the Bible as the document of a culture that can help illuminate, because of its very structural contrast, the Mesopotamian mindset and its actual implementation.

Back to top: Preface

Methodology

The website intends to serve as a bibliographical resource, in a form of an anotated bibliography, in a distinctive way.

1. We focus on special aspects of the broader theme indicated in the title, and we do so by concentrating on specific core topics which characterize consecutive editions. The titles discussed in the bibliography are thus chosen in function of each core topic, and will remain accessible in each subsequent edition. It is thus a growing resource, that integrates over time a variety of different core topics, interrelated both substantively and digitally.
2. This explicit interrelationship among the data is articulated in a distinctive digital format, that sees the various levels of analysis as planes of a coherent structural system. This is based on a distinctive website theory, sketched in Cybernetica Mesopotamica and to be developed at length in the website entitled Digital Discourse.

Back to top: Preface

The current version

The current version is Edition 1. Currently available in a Beta release, it will open soon for public access, and will then be closed and archived.

This first edition takes as its core topic the content of a book, to which it serves as companion. The book being available only in a printed format, it does not lend itself well to the digital interrelationship among planes that is the main goal of our methodology. To make up for this limitation, an extensive summary of the book is provided in the website; also, an equally extensive set of notes is included, each note referring to an individual sections within the book.

Future editions are envisaged, similarly dedicated to core topics which will be developed in digital format from the start. They will be thoroughly integrated in the website, which will thus grow apiece and coherently.

Back to top: Preface

The “Four Banks”

This website is part of cluster of websites, for which 4banks.net serves as a main hub. In turn, this is part of a larger research project, entitled Cybernetica Mesopotamica.

As such, the material covered here should be seen as interacting with the other websites in the cluster , in the measure in which they will be available for public access.

Back to top: Preface

The Editorial Board

The Editorial Board includes colleagues who share our interst in the overall goals of the project. While not responsible for the routine operation or, of course, for the individual opinions expressed in the website, they are apprised of any major decision regarding the aims and structure of the website. Thus they help to ensure the scholarly quality of the content and to steer us in the proper direction when undertaking future new editions. To them we, the editors, are most grateful.

Back to top: Preface

The contributors

The website is of course a broadly based enterprise, with a number of contributors who have taken active part in both the structuring of the wbsite and its contents. One will find more about them under authorship.