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Historically, the Bible has been used to drive a wedge between the spirit and the body. In this provocative book, David Carr argues that it can--and should--do just the opposite. Sexuality and spirituality, Carr contends, are intricately interwoven: when one is improverished, the other is warped. As a result, the journey toward God and the life-long engagement with our own sexual embodiment are inseparable. Humans, the Bible tells us, both male and female, were created in God's image, and eros--a fundamental longing for connection that finds abstract good in the pleasure we derive from the stimulation of the senses--is a central component of that image. The Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, affirms erotic passion, both eros between humans and eros between God and humans. In a sweeping examination of the sexual rules of the Bible, Carr asserts that Biblical "family values" are a far cry from anything promoted as such in contemporary politics. He concludes that passionate love--our preoccupaton therewith and pursuit thereof--is the primary human vocation, that eros is in fact the flavoring of life.
Formerly known by its subtitle "Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft und Grenzgebiete", the International Review of Biblical Studies has served the scholarly community ever since its inception in the early 1950's. Each annual volume includes approximately 2,000 abstracts and summaries of articles and books that deal with the Bible and related literature, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, Non-canonical gospels, and ancient Near Eastern writings. The abstracts - which may be in English, German, or French - are arranged thematically under headings such as e.g. "Genesis", "Matthew", "Greek language", "text and textual criticism", "exegetical methods and approaches", "biblical theology", "social and religious institutions", "biblical personalities", "history of Israel and early Judaism", and so on. The articles and books that are abstracted and reviewed are collected annually by an international team of collaborators from over 300 of the most important periodicals and book series in the fields covered.
During the past decade, the period from the 7th century B.C.E. and later has been a major focus because it is thought to be the era when much of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was formed. As a result, there has also been much interest in the historical developments of that time and specifically in the status of Judah and its neighbors. Three conferences dealing roughly with a century each were organized, and the first conference was held in Tel Aviv in 2001; the proceedings of that conference were published as Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period. The second volume was published in early 2006, a report on the conference held in Heidelberg in July 2003: Judah and the Judeans in ...
The Achaemenid period (550-330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored--yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period. This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.
The silence of God is a recurring theme in modern reflection. It is not only addressed in theology, religious studies and philosophy, but also in literary fiction, film and theatre. The authors show that the concept of a silent deity emerged in the ancient Near East (including Greece). What did the Ancients mean when they assumed that under circumstances their deities remained silent? What reasons are discernable for silence between human beings and their gods? For the first time the close interrelation between the divine and the human in the revelatory process is demonstrated here on the basis of a wealth of translated ancient texts. In an intriguing epilogue, the authors explore the theological consequences of what they have found.
In this study, Andrew Tobolowsky offers a new approach to biblical descriptions of the tribes of Israel as the "sons of Jacob". He reveals how shifting assumptions about early Israelite history and the absence of references to Jacob in most accounts of the tribes make it unlikely that this understanding was part of early tribal discourse. Instead, drawing on extensive similarities between the role Jacob's children plays in the biblical narrative and the role that shared descent from figures such as Hellen and Herakles play in the construction of ancient Greek histories, Andrew Tobolowsky concludes that the "tribal-genealogical" concept was first developed in the late Persian period as a tool for the production of a newly integrated, newly coherent account of a shared ethnic past: the first continuous biblical vision of Israelite history from Adam to the fall of Jerusalem and beyond.
A new association for the study of the Septuagint was formed in South Africa recently. The present collection is a compilation of papers delivered at the first conference of this association, as well as other contributions. The volume addresses issues touching on the Septuagint in the broad sense of the word. This includes the Old Greek text (Daniel, Proverbs, Psalms and Lamentations) as well as the reception of the LXX (NT, Augustine and Jerome, etc.). A few contributions that may be regarded as miscellanea are nevertheless related to matters Septuagintal (Aristeas, Peshitta, Eunochos).
In the last two decades, research on the Book of the Twelve has shown that this corpus is not just a collection of twelve prophetic books. It is rather a coherent work with a common history of formation and, based upon this, with an overall message and intention. The individual books of the Book of the Twelve are thus part of a larger whole in which they can be interpreted in a fruitful manner. The volume The Book of the Twelve: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation features 30 articles, written by renowned scholars, that explore different aspects regarding the formation, interpretation, and reception of the Book of the Twelve as a literary unity.
In Israel in Egypt scholars in different fields explore what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world. For generations of Jews from antiquity to the medieval period, the land of Egypt represented both a place of danger to their communal religious identity and also a haven with opportunities for prosperity and growth. A volume of collected essays from scholars in fields ranging from biblical studies and classics to papyrology and archaeology, Israel in Egypt explores what can be known of the experiences of the many and varied Jewish communities in Egypt, from biblical sources to the medieval world.
Reconciling biblical and extrabiblical history The extrabiblical testimony surrounding Israel's early history is difficult to assess and synthesize. But numerous sources emerging from the ninth century BC onward invite direct comparison with the biblical account. In Ahab's House of Horrors: A Historiographic Study of the Military Campaigns of the House of Omri, Kyle R. Greenwood and David B. Schreiner examine the historical records of Israel and its neighbors. While Scripture generally gives a bleak depiction of the Omride dynasty, extrabiblical evidence appears to tell another story. Inscriptions and archeological evidence portray a period of Israelite geopolitical influence and cultural sophistication. Rather than simply rejecting one source over another, Greenwood and Schreiner press beyond polarization. They propose a nuanced synthesis by embracing the complex dynamics of ancient history writing and the historical difficulties that surround the Omri dynasty. Ahab's House of Horrors is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of biblical historiography and, specifically, to our understanding of 1–2 Kings and the Omri family.