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Before the Bible reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work, but the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible, but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Drawing on new methods from...
Before the Bible argues that a key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. Newman demonstrates that scriptures were formed because of the intertwined relationship of worship practices, learned sages who interpreted scripture, and the ongoing performance of scriptural tradition.
In this Festschrift, James Kugel's creative scholarship in biblical interpretation provides the inspiration for a wide-ranging collection of essays that treat the history of Jewish and Christian scriptural interpretation from antiquity to the present
In Johann Jakob Wettstein's Principles for New Testament Textual Criticism Silvia Castelli investigates the genesis, development, and legacy of Wettstein’s criteria for evaluating New Testament variant readings. Wettstein’s guidelines, the Animadversiones et cautiones, are the first well-organized essay on New Testament text-critical methodology, first published in the Prolegomena to his New Testament in 1730 and republished with some changes in 1752. In his essay, Wettstein presents a new text-critical method based on the manuscripts’ evidence and on the critic’s judgment. Moving away from the authority invested in established printed editions, Wettstein’s methodology thus effectively promotes and enhances intellectual freedom. The second part of this volume offers a critical text and an annotated English translation of Wettstein’s text-critical principles.
The study of the Bible has long included a literary aspect with great attention paid not only to what was written but also to how it was expressed. The detailed analysis of biblical books and passages as written texts has benefited from the study of literature in classical philology, ancient rhetoric, and modern literary criticism. This volume of the Lexham Methods Series introduces the various ways the study of literature has been used in biblical studies. Most literary approaches emphasize the study of the text alone—its structure, its message, and its use of literary devices—rather than its social or historical background. The methods described in Literary Approaches to the Bible are focused on different ways of analyzing the text within its literary context. Some of the techniques have been around for centuries, but the theories of literary critics from the early 20th century to today had a profound impact on biblical interpretation. In this book, you will learn about those literary approaches, how they were adapted for biblical studies, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
In Adam’s Dust and Adam’s Glory, Nicholas A. Meyer challenges the scholarly reconstruction of a traditional theological framework of creation, fall, and restoration in order to comprehend the pessimistic anthropologies of the Hodayot and the letters of Paul. Meyer argues that too little notice has been paid to the fact that this literature problematizes ordinary humanity by way of original humanity—its sexuality, its earthly physicality, its spiritual-moral frailty—and that these texts look not for the restoration of human nature as determined in creation, but rather for its transformation. Setting aside the traditional threefold framework, the author offers an innovative and comprehensive reading of the use of traditions of anthropogony, including the glory of Adam and the image of God, in this literature.
In 1946 the first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries was made near the site of Qumran, at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Despite the much publicized delays in the publication and editing of the Scrolls, practically all of them had been made public by the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the first discovery. That occasion was marked by a spate of major publications that attempted to sum up the state of scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, including The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (OUP 2000). These publications produced an authoritative synthesis to which the majority of scholars in the field subscribed, granted disagreements in detail. A decade or so later, The Oxfo...
This volume contains the proceedings of the international conference held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in July 2008 in honor of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As indicated by its title “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture,” the aim of the conference was to move beyond the strict confines of conventional scholarship and to explore new avenues of research, including the examination of the place of the findings from the Judean Desert in contemporary culture. The book is divided into five main sections: (1) the Identity and History of the Community; (2) the Qumran “Library”: Origins, Use, and Nature (2a. Biblical Texts; 2b. Biblical Interpretation; 2c. Sectarian and Non-Sectarian Literature; 2d. Sectarian vis-à-vis Rabbinic Halakha); (3) Christianity in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls; (4) Gender at Qumran; and (5) New Perspectives (5a. Methodological Approaches; 5b. Educational Approaches).
Jobymon Skaria, an Indian St Thomas Christian Scholar, offers a critique of Indian Christian theology and suggests that constructive dialogues between Biblical and dissenting Dalit voices – such as Chokhamela, Karmamela, Ravidas, Kabir, Nandanar and Narayana Guru – could set right the imbalance within Dalit theology, and could establish dialogical partnerships between Dalit Theologians, non-Dalit Christians and Syrian Christians. Drawing on Biblical and socio-historical resources, this book examines a radical, yet overlooked aspect of Dalit cultural and religious history which would empower the Dalits in their everyday existences.