Overview

Knowledge and Rhetoric in Medical Commentary is intended for historians of medicine and interpretation, and explores the dynamic between scholastic rhetoric and medical knowledge in ancient commentaries on a Mesopotamian Diagnostic Handbook. In line with commentators’ self-fashioning as experts of diverse disciplines, commentaries display intertextuality involving a variety of lexical, astronomical, religious, magic, and literary compositions, while employing patterns of argumentation that resist categorization within any single branch of knowledge. Commentators’ choices of topics and comments, however, sought to harmonize atypical language and ideas in the Handbook with conventional ways of perceiving and describing the sick body in therapeutic recipes. Scholastic rhetoric—supposedly unfettered to any discipline—served in fact as a pretext for affirming current forms of medical knowledge.

Full Product Details

Author:   John Wee
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   49
Weight:   0.953kg
ISBN:  

9789004417540

ISBN 10:   9004417540
Pages:   493
Publication Date:   30 December 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

I. Knowledge and Rhetoric in Medical Commentary Preface Acknowledgements Contents (Two Volumes) List of Figures Medical Text Labels and Abbreviations Format and Translation Issues Glossary I.1 Introduction to the Sa-gig Commentaries  I.1.1 The Situatedness of Commentaries  I.1.2 The Diagnostic Handbook Sa-gig and Its Serialization  I.1.3 Serialized Variants and Their Interpretation  I.1.4 The Presentation of Alternatives in Text Series and Commentaries Chapter Two: Commentary and Scholastic Rhetoric I.2.1 Commentary Designations and Scribal Actors  I.2.1.1 “Glossary” (ṣâtu)  I.2.1.2 “Oral Lore” (šūt pî)  I.2.1.3 “Readings” (malsûtu)  I.2.1.4 “Questionings” (mašʾaltu)  I.2.1.5 “From the Mouth of the Ummânu-scholar” (ša pî ummâni)  I.2.1.6 Patterns of Commentary Designations I.2.2 Textual Sources of Authority  I.2.2.1 Lexical Text Citations  I.2.2.2 Narratival Intertextuality I.2.2 Forms of Argumentation  I.2.3.1 Two-Member Arguments  I.2.3.2 Multiple Member Arguments  I.2.3.3 Single Member Arguments I.2.4 Exemplar and License in Scholastic Hermeneutics Chapter Three: Commentary and Medical Knowledge I.3.1 Epistemic Progression in Medical Practice and Texts  I.3.1.1 The Therapeutic Tradition  I.3.1.2 Structuring the Diagnostic Handbook I.3.2 Harmonizing Texts and Phenomena  I.3.2.1 Knowledge Assumptions in Topic Choice  I.3.2.2 The Pericope and Omissions from Topics  I.3.2.3 Comment Choice and Argument as Pretext I.3.1 Habits of Use and the Cuneiform Handbook I.4 Conclusion: Scholasticism and the Boundaries for Interpretation Appendix One: Embedded Variants in the Diagnostic Handbook Sa-gig Appendix Two: Transliterations of Medical Texts Bibliography Index of Excerpts (Two Volumes) II. Mesopotamian Commentaries on the Diagnostic Handbook Sa-gig Preface Acknowledgements Contents (Two Volumes) Medical Text Labels and Abbreviations Format and Translation Issues Chapter One: Edition of the Sa-gig Commentaries II.1.1 Commentary Sa-gig 1A II.1.2 Commentary Sa-gig 1B II.1.3 Commentary Sa-gig 1C II.1.4 Commentary Sa-gig 1D II.1.5 Commentary Sa-gig 1–3 II.1.6 Commentary Sa-gig 3A II.1.7 Commentary Sa-gig 3B II.1.8 Commentary Sa-gig 3C II.1.9 Commentary Sa-gig 4A II.1.10 Commentary Sa-gig 4B II.1.11 Commentary Sa-gig 4C II.1.12 Commentary Sa-gig 5 II.1.13 Commentary Sa-gig 7A II.1.14 Commentary Sa-gig 7B II.1.15 Commentary Sa-gig 7Ca II.1.16 Commentary Sa-gig 7Cb II.1.17 Commentary Sa-gig 7Cc (?) II.1.18 Commentary Sa-gig 10 & 11 II.1.19 Commentary Sa-gig 13+ II.1.20 Commentary Sa-gig 14 II.1.21 Commentary Sa-gig 18 II.1.22 Commentary Sa-gig 19 II.1.23 Commentary Sa-gig 21 & 22a II.1.24 Commentary Sa-gig 23 II.1.25 Commentary Sa-gig 29 II.1.26 Commentary Sa-gig 34 II.1.27 Commentary Sa-gig 36 II.1.28 Commentary Sa-gig 39 II.1.29 Commentary Sa-gig 40A II.1.30 Commentary Sa-gig 40B Chapter Two: Commentary Notations II.2.1 Disjunction Sign II.2.2 “The Case of / Where” (ša) II.2.3 “Which It Said” (ša iqbû) II.2.4 “As in” (libbû) II.2.5 “Complement to” (IGI / pāni) II.2.6 “(Points) to” (ana) II.2.7 “The Usual (Meaning)” (kayyān) II.2.8 Other Notations Photographs Bibliography Index of Excerpts (Two Volumes)

Reviews

"""The two-volume work of John Z. Wee is a welcome new contribution to the discussion of Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform commentaries—an at times complex and, to readers unaware of its intricacies, often opaque textual genre, mainly known from the late time of Cuneiform Culture. (...) The first volume addresses not only Assyriologists but also scholars interested in the history of medicine and the history of interpretation and science. The study presented here includes a great many detailed discussions and presentations of interrelated issues within Mesopotamian commentary literature particularly in relation to the DH and its structure, as well as the context of these commentaries and their arguments in respect to their use and institutional background. Volume two provides the relevant data, presenting a collective edition of all commentaries on the DH so far known. This offers the particular advantage of making all relevant data accessible in a printed, citable form together with detailed philological commentaries and discussions on difficult or peculiar words and phrases."" - Eric Schmidtchen, Université de Genève, in Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVIII N° 3-4 (2021). ""In short, John Wee’s Knowledge and Rhetorical in Medical Commentary in an erudite and refreshing analysis of Sa-gig and its commentaries. Although a highly specialized subject, some of his broader observations about serialization, canonization, textual sources of authority, and embedded variants may be helpful for folks in religious studies thinking about so-called canon, interpretive practices and textual sources of authority, and the boundaries in the ancient world of what we often designate science and literature."" - William Brown, in The Biblical Review, 2021."

The two-volume work of John Z. Wee is a welcome new contribution to the discussion of Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform commentariesan at times complex and, to readers unaware of its intricacies, often opaque textual genre, mainly known from the late time of Cuneiform Culture. (...) The first volume addresses not only Assyriologists but also scholars interested in the history of medicine and the history of interpretation and science. The study presented here includes a great many detailed discussions and presentations of interrelated issues within Mesopotamian commentary literature particularly in relation to the DH and its structure, as well as the context of these commentaries and their arguments in respect to their use and institutional background. Volume two provides the relevant data, presenting a collective edition of all commentaries on the DH so far known. This offers the particular advantage of making all relevant data accessible in a printed, citable form together with detailed philological commentaries and discussions on difficult or peculiar words and phrases. - Eric Schmidtchen, Universit de Genve, in Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVIII N 3-4 (2021).

Author Information

John Z. Wee, Ph.D. (2012), Yale University, is Assistant Professor of Assyriology at the University of Chicago. He is author of books and articles on medicine and astronomy in Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman antiquity, and editor of The Comparable Body (Brill, 2017).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions