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A rich collection of essays by twenty-eight of Professor G W Anderson's students, colleagues and successors in Edinburgh, and associates at home and abroad in the worl of Hebrew and Biblical Studies presented in the year of his 80th birthday
Nicholas Ellis examines the interplay present in early Jewish literature between authors' theological assumptions on divine agency in evil and their readings of biblical testing narratives. Ellis takes as a starting point the Epistle of James , and compares this early Christian work against other examples of ancient Jewish interpretation. Ellis shows how varying perspectives on the divine, satanic, and human roles of testing exercised a direct influence on the interpretation of popular biblical testing narratives such as Abraham and Isaac, Job, and the Trials in the Wilderness. Read in light of the broader Jewish literature, Ellis argues that the theology and hermeneutic found in the Epistle of James as such relate to divine testing are closely paralleled by the so-called 'Rewritten Bible' tradition. Within James' cosmic drama, God stands as righteous judge, with the satanic prosecutor indicting both divine integrity and human religious loyalty.
To mark the retirement of John F. A. Sawyer, Professor of Religious Studies in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, colleagues and former students from around the world have contributed studies on his areas of interest: the study of Hebrew, the books of the Jewish Bible, and the culture and traditions of Judaism. The essayists consider not simply the origin of the meaning of word and text, but also the many and strange ways in which word and text become transposed, re-oriented and often enough traduced by later interests and purposes. The roll call of scholars reads: Philip Alexander, Francis Andersen, Graeme Auld, Calvin Carmichael, Robert Carroll, David Clines, Richard Coggins, Jon Davies, Philip Davies, James Dunn, John Elwolde, John Gibson, Graham Harvey, Peter Hayman, Dermot Killingley, Jonathan Magonet, Robert Morgan, Takamitsu Muraoka, Christopher Rowland, Deborah Sawyer, Clyde Curry Smith, Max Sussman, William Telford, Marc Vervenne, Wilfred Watson, Keith Whitelam and Isabel Wollaston.
These essays from the doyen of Moses studies focus on issues primarily in Pentatuchal/Hexateuchal research. The volume, containing several papers previously unpublished, forms a companion volume to Coats's 'Moses: Heroic Man, Man of God'. Together the two volumes comprise the whole of Coats's unique and wide-ranging investigations of the figure of Moses.
Modern linguistics is a relative newcomer in the scientific world, and text-linguistics, or discourse analysis, is one of its youngest disciplines. This fact has inclined many toward scepticism of its value for the Hebraist, yet much benefit is thereby overlooked. In this work, the author examines recent contributions to Hebrew text-linguistics by Niccacci, Andersen, Eskhult, Khan, and Longacre, evaluating them against a twofold standard of theoretical and methodological integrity, and clarity of communication. An extensive introduction to one particularly promising model of text analysis (from Longacre's tagmemic school) is given, and a step-by-step methodology is presented. Analyses according to this model and methodology are given of seven extended text samples, each building on the findings of the previous analyses: Judg. 2; Lev. 14.1-32; Lev. 6.1-7.37; parallel instructions and historical reports about the building of the Tabernacle, from Exodus 25-40; Judg. 10.6-12.7; and the book of Ruth in its entirety. Considerable attention is given to the question of text-linguistics and reported speech.
This book is a reader-friendly treatment of the Joseph story--one of the most popular tales in the Bible. Instead of the usual interpretation as an Horatio Alger success story, the text proposes that we are presented with a cautionary tale of high achievement and the pursuit of success. In the context of the larger biblical narrative, Joseph's short-term success leads to the enslavement of his descendants and the centuries-long derailment of the destiny of the Children of Israel. The self-limiting nature of the pursuit of power is just one of the themes illuminated in this work.
Due in large measure to its unique literary genre, the Song of Songs has been interpreted in diverse ways. According to AndrŽ LaCocque, this supports the notion that the issue with which any reader of the Song must come to grips is, first and foremost, a hermeneutical one.
A rich collection of innovative studies on Judah and Judaism in the postexilic age, by Davies, Garbini, Carroll, Clines, Baltzer, Marinkovic, Van Rooy, Carter, Willi, Japhet, Washington, Smith-Christopher, Judd, Grabbe and the editors. An important book in an increasingly important area of biblical research. This is the second volume of papers reflecting the work of Persian Period Group of the SBL. It is a rich collection of innovative studies on Judah and Judaism in the postexilic age, by Davies, Garbini, Carroll, Clines, Baltzer, Marinkovic, Van Rooy, Carter, Willi, Japhet, Washington, Smith-Christopher, Judd, Grabbe and the editors. This will be regarded as an important book in a field of cardinal importance for scholars of the Hebrew Bible.