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Millions of Christians read the Bible not only to know what happened in ancient biblical times but also to find God’s message to them. Consequently, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. However, scholars have observed that over the past two hundred years, biblical interpretation in the West has traditionally focused mainly on studying what the text meant. For Western biblical scholars, the study of what the Bible means to readers today falls within the realm of theological studies rather than biblical studies. In contrast, Asian biblical interpretation is holistic, studying both what the text meant and what it means. Interestingly, this book demonstrates that long before any mod...
In his latest addition to the esteemed Anchor Bible Commentaries, scholar Gary Knoppers examines one of the most neglected books of the Old Testament and established its importance as a key to understanding the nation of Israel. Who were the Israelites? Was Israel's first king, Saul, a hero or a disaster? Was David a gifted and accomplished leader or a murderer and a cheat? Did Solomon preside over the most glorious epoch in Israelite history or did he lead the nation into a fateful decline? In I Chronicles, the distinguished scholar Gary Knoppers addresses these questions through a thoughtful and exacting reading of one of the last books of the Hebrew Bible. He shows that Chronicles, which ...
This book addresses typology of Late Antique and Byzantine art and architecture in eight wide-ranging contributions from an international group of scholars. A dialogue between type and its ultimate source, archetype, surpasses issues of formalism and conventional chronological narratives to suggest a more nuanced approach to typology as a systematic and systemic classification of types in the visual landscape of the pagans, Jews, and Christians. Set against the contemporaneous cultural context, select examples of Mediterranean material culture confirm the great importance of type-and-archetype constructs for theoretical discourse on architecture and visual arts. Contributors are Anna Adashinskaya, Jelena Anđelković Grašar, Jelena Bogdanović, Čedomila Marinković, Marina Mihaljević, Ljubomir Milanović, Cecilia Olovsdotter, and Ida Sinkević.
Bring a cultural-studies toolkit to bear on the world's most interpreted text The study of the Bible has adapted to the full range of analytical tools available to theologians, scholars, and researchers of every stripe. The marriage between cultural studies and Biblical studies has been especially fruitful, increasingly producing rich and provocative engagements with Biblical texts and contexts. Students of the Bible stand to profit significantly from a volume which illustrates the value of cultural studies approaches by putting these theories into practice. American Standard meets the needs of these students with a series of lively essays working through cultural-studies readings of specifi...
Icons of Space: Advances in Hierotopy brings together important scholars of Byzantine religion, art, and architecture, to honour the work of renowned art historian Alexei Lidov. As well as his numerous publications, Lidov is well known for developing the concept of hierotopy, an innovative approach for studying the creation of sacred spaces. Hierotopy and the related concepts of ‘spatial icons’ and ‘image-paradigms’ emphasize fundamental questions about icons, including what defines them as structures, spaces, and experiences. Chapters in this volume engage with the overarching theme of icons of space by employing, contrasting, and complementing methods of hierotopy with more traditi...
This text claims that Chronicles provides a distinct perspective on much of Israel's past, especially the monarchy. The author discusses how the chronicler's introduction to the people of Israel redefines Israel itself; explains and defends the transition from Saul to David; and shows how the Davidic-Solomonic monarchy was not only a time of incomparable achievement and glory, but also the period during which the nations most important public institutions--the Davidic dynasty, the Jerusalem Temple, the priests, and the Levites--took formative shape. This text also systematically employs the Dead Sea Scrolls to reconstruct the biblical author's text. In doing so, the author reveals how Chronicles is related to and creatively drawn from many earlier biblical books, and presents a look at its connections, in both compositional style and approach, to the historical writings of ancient Mesopotamia and classical Greece.
In this latest addition to the esteemed Anchor Bible series, scholar Gary Knoppers examines one of the most neglected books of the Hebrew Bible and establishes its importance to understanding the nation of Israel. What was the place of the monarchy in the history of ancient Israel? Was Israel's first king Saul a hero or a disaster? Was David a highly gifted leader and accomplished king or a murderer and a cheat? Did Solomon preside over the most glorious epoch in Israelite history or did he lead the nation into a fateful decline? Knoppers show how the Bible itself contains a variety of fascinating perspectives on major events and characters. One of the most misunderstood books of the Bible, ...
The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests future directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters (such as Adam, Eve, David and Jesus) and themes (like Creation, Hell, and Apocalyptic) in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres (for example, film, comics, and Jazz); and "lived" examples (such as museums and theme parks). The Handbook concludes with a section taking stock of methodologies and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of both the Bible and its role in American popular culture.