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The author uses a literary-theological approach to argue that the main theme of the combined Gideon-Abimelech narrative is a theological one, where the narrator demonstrates Yahweh's supreme power and contrasts it with the absence of Baal, the representative of foreign gods. While the Gideon narrative focuses on Yahweh and the illustration of his power and contrasts it with Gideon's limited capacities, the Abimelech narrative demonstrates Baal's absence, Baalism's disastrous potential, and Yahweh's continued control over the events. Hence Gideon's victory over the Midianites and Abimelech's kingship serve only as the tangible instruments by which a single abstract theological theme becomes narratable.
Ancient Jewish writings combine interpretive narratives of Israel’s sacred history with legal prescriptions for a divinely ordered way of life. Two ancient Jewish societies have left us extensive textual corpora preserving interpenetrating legal and narrative interpretive teachings: the sectarian community of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sage-disciple circles of the early Rabbis. This book comprises studies that explore specific aspects of the interplay of interpretative, narrative, and legal rhetoric with an eye to pedagogic function and social formation for each of these communities and for both of them in comparison. It addresses questions of how best to approach these writings for purposes of historical retrieval and reconstruction by recognizing the inseparability of literary-rhetorical textual analysis and a non-reductive historiography.
Creation conjures emotion and thereby shapes how we think and act. People fear snakes and enclosed spaces, and delight in well-watered landscapes. Language about nature evokes these emotional meanings and their consequences. We may construe nature as a mother to enhance love of creation and motivate care for our common home. Mother nature becomes a caregiving source of life rather than an inert resource. Alternatively, we may focus on the dangers or uselessness of a swamp so that we may drain it and plant crops. Creation and the ways we speak about it reflect and shape emotion and influence behavior. Every reference to the natural word in biblical literature involves some emotional resonance...
Life from the Dead is an in-depth study of the incredible endurance of the Jewish people in history despite ongoing systematic and unrelenting efforts to effect their genocide. The survival of the Jewish people is notk, however, merely a testimony to their own resiliency or ingenuity. It is a testimonmy to the utter faithfulness of their God to maintain the integrity of the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Your faith in God will be enriched as you read these dramatic subjects: Daily Prayer, As Good as Dead, Can These Bones Live?, The God-Wrestler, From the Pit to the Palace, A Resurrected Nation, By My Spirit, Says the Lord, Mashiach: Life from the Dead. The God of Israel is the ruler over death and life. As such, he can heal the sick and restore the terminally ill to life, and in the end, he will keep faith with the righteous who are in the dust of the earth by bringing them forth to life from the dead in the resurrection. Life from the Dead will build you faith in God's power to triumph over death and to bring abundant life to all those who put their trust in him.
In Dialogue on Monarchy in the Gideon-Abimelech Narrative, Albert Sui Hung Lee applies Bakhtin’s dialogism to interpret the “unfinalized” dialogue on monarchical ideologies in the Gideon–Abimelech narrative. Lee associates a wide scope of Bakhtinian concepts with the dual images of the protagonists and the unique literary features of the dialogical narrative to illustrate the dialogue of genres as well as that of ideological voices, wherein the pro- and anti-monarchical voices constantly interact with each other. Studying archaeological evidence and literary examinations of prophetic books together, Lee explores the narrative redactor’s intention of engaging both remnant and deportee communities in an unfinalized dialogue of different forms of polity for the restoration of their unity and prosperity in exilic and post-exilic contexts.
In this book Martyn Smith addresses the issue of God's violence and refuses to shy away from difficult and controversial conclusions. Through his wide-ranging and measured study he reflects upon God and violence in both biblical and theological contexts, assessing the implications of divine violence for understanding and engaging with God's nature and character. Jesus too, through his dramatic actions in the temple, is presented as one capable of exhibiting a surprising degree of violent behavior in the furtherance of God's purposes. Through a reappropriation of the ancient Christus Victor model of atonement, with its dramatic representation of God's war with the Satan, Smith proposes that Christian understanding of both God and salvation has to return to its long-neglected past in order to move forward, both biblically and dynamically, into the future.
An essential collection of C. Clifton Black’s best essays on the theology of the New Testament Clift Black is well known and widely loved for his exegetical acuity, his theological seriousness, his pastoral kindness, and the most delightful sense of humor in the biblical studies guild. All these qualities are amply displayed in these thirty essays written across four decades of his career, including four essays that are published here for the first time. Biblical Theology: Essays Exegetical, Cultural, and Homiletical represents the fruit of a lifetime of studying, preaching, praying, training pastors, walking in the light, and laughing in the valley of the shadow of death. Black’s keen mind and pastoral heart make this volume a rich contribution to the field of biblical theology.
Explores the practices and rituals associated with magic and divination among the ancient Israelites as documented in the Old Testament.
Nigosian explores the diverse literary antecedents of the Old Testament as well as the Apocrypha -- books excluded from the canonical Hebrew text but included in the Septuagint.