The Lectures of Dr. David Neiman on Ancient Civilizations
Videos of the lectures of Dr. David Neiman were recorded by his daughter, producer/director Becky Neiman, in the year 2000. Many segments are available on the DrDavidNeiman YouTube channel including complete lectures. Videos are also available for purchase through direct download on this website or through Amazon.com.
Cradles of Civilization
This lecture series by Dr. David Neiman outlines the rise of the earliest civilizations in the West including Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Phoenicia and Egypt. The development of cities allows for the diversification and specialization of society and with the invention of writing, history begins. Dr. Neiman tells the history of the old Babylonian empire of Hammurabi and outlines the mathematical innovations developed at that time that are part of our live to this day. Dr. Neiman's analysis of ancient Egypt's culture, geography and politics gives a new level of insight into one of the world's greatest civilizations.
Discovering Genesis
The Book of Genesis (or Bere’shit in the Hebrew Bible) is a fascinating account of ancient Israel’s earliest traditions regarding both its origins as a people and the origins of the natural and human world it experienced. In the eight-part series Discovering Genesis, the late David Neiman, professor of Jewish theology at Boston College, expertly guides you through the book’s first chapters—from the story of creation to the Tower of Babel—to examine how the Biblical writers grappled with the fundamentall questions and mysteries of the shared human experience: Where do we come from? Who are we? What makes us different? How did civilization come about? Why do we die? Drawing on recent findings in Biblical studies, ancient history and archaeology, Dr. Neiman also reveals the cultural, historical and linguistic context in which the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the Flood were originally written and understood. In the final lectures of this series, Dr. Neiman examines the life of Abraham the Partriarch and places his story into a political and historical context.