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John S. Kloppenborg gives a detailed analysis of one of the most difficult of Jesus' parables, the parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1-12; Gospel of Thomas 65). He examines the ways in which Christians have typically read and mis-read the parable, and places the parable firmly in the context of the practices of ancient viticulture. The author models a new approach to the interpretation of the parables of Jesus. First, he critically engages the history of interpretation of the text, inquiring into the ideological interests that the parable has engaged during the history of its use in Christian churches and in political discourse. Second, he reconstructs the social world in which the parable was...
This book offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of the Jews of Egypt, who constituted an important ethnic minority ever since they first appeared in the country. As part of the Greek-speaking ruling class, the Jews played an active role in the political, social and cultural life of Ptolemaic Egypt. Drawing on old and new documentary papyri supplemented by literary and epigraphic evidence, Szántó’s book focuses on reconstructing an overall picture of the Egyptian Jewish Diaspora and discusses different aspects of their life: onomastics, military life, social and legal position, religious customs and anti-Judaism. The incorporation of non-Greek (Aramaic and Egyptian) textual evidence into the research is innovative and offers new perspectives on certain topics whose understanding was previously limited. Szántó provides a diverse picture of Jewish life and demonstrates how the Jews integrated into Graeco-Egyptian society and, at the same time, preserved their ethnic identity.
This is the first study of the royal women who ruled in the Mediterranean in the latter first century BC, in a symbiotic relationship with the Roman government. Several are discussed, with the most prominent being Cleopatra Selene (the daughter of the famous Cleopatra VII of Egypt) and Salome, the sister of Herod the Great.
As the ruler of Judea from 76 to 67 B.C.E., Queen Salome Alexandra (ca. 141 B.C.E.-67 B.C.E.) appointed the kingdom's high priest, led its men in battle, subjugated neighboring kings, and stopped the religious violence that plagued her society. Presiding over Judea's greatest period of peace and prosperity, she shaped the Judaism of Jesus' day as well as our own. Virtually unknown today, Queen Salome remained so unique that historians have largely ignored her rather than try to explain the perplexing circumstances that brought her to power. This volume recreates Queen Salome's fascinating life and the time in which she lived--an age when women ruled the Middle East.
Eastward Bound looks at travel and travelers in the medieval period. An international range of distinguished contributors offer discussions on a wide range of themes, from the experiences of Crusaders on campaign, to the lives of pilgrims, missionaries and traders in the Middle East. It examines their modes of travel, equipment and methods of navigation, and considers their expectations and experiences en route. The contributions also look at the variety of motives--public and private--behind the decision to travel eastwards. Other essays discuss the attitudes of Middle-Eastern rulers to their visitors. In so doing they provide a valuable perspective and insight into the behavior of the Europeans and non-Europeans alike.
As the prototypical exemplar of modern visual technology, photography was once viewed as a way to enable vision to bypass imagination, producing more reliable representations of reality. But as an achievement of technological modernity, photography can also be seen as a way to realize a creation of the imagination more vividly than can painting or drawing. Photography and Imagination investigates, from diverse points of view focusing on both theory and practice, the relation between these two terms. The book explores their effect on photography’s capacity, through various forms and modalities of imaginative investments and displacements, to affect even reality itself.
This volume of essays on Ben Sira is a Festschrift on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Prof. Nuria Calduch-Benages. The volume gathers the latest studies on Ben Sira's relationship with other Jewish traditions. With a variety of methods and approaches, the volume explores Ben Sira's interpretation of received traditions, his views on the prevailing issues of his time, and the subsequent reception of his work.
The first economic history of ancient Egypt employing a New Institutional Economics approach and covering the entire pharaonic period, 3000-30 BCE.
In The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 C.E., Menahem Mor offers a detailed account on the Bar Kokhba Revolt in an attempt to understand the second revolt against the Romans. Since the Bar Kokhba Revolt did not have a historian who devoted a comprehensive book to the event, Mor used a variety of historical materials including literary sources (Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin) and archaeological sources (inscriptions, coins, military diplomas, hideouts, and refuge complexes). The book reviews the causes for the outbreak while explaining the complexity of the territorial expansion of the Revolt. Mor portrays the participants and opponents as well as the attitudes of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. He exposes the Roman Army’s part in Judaea, the Jewish leadership and the implications of the Revolt.
This exploration of cultural resilience examines the complex fate of classical Egyptian religion during the centuries from the period when Christianity first made its appearance in Egypt to when it became the region's dominant religion (roughly 100 to 600 C.E. Taking into account the full range of witnesses to continuing native piety--from papyri and saints' lives to archaeology and terracotta figurines--and drawing on anthropological studies of folk religion, David Frankfurter argues that the religion of Pharonic Egypt did not die out as early as has been supposed but was instead relegated from political centers to village and home, where it continued a vigorous existence for centuries. In ...