You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A collection of all published Ammonite inscriptions in one volume. Each entry is accompanied by a complete bibliography, a physical description and details about its location, a photograph and/or drawing, relevant linguistic information, and a history of the inscription's interpretation.
This book forms a contribution to the vexing question of the origin and growth of the Targum to the Prophets. It provides an in-depth analysis of the Targum of Judges on the basis of new materials (unpublished manuscripts), a new tool (bilingual concordance) and a new method (analysis of consistency). A critical review of previous research concerning the Targum's origin and growth is followed by an analysis and collations of many Western manuscripts, a systematic comparison of the Targum with the ancient translations, a study of its exegetical traditions and a thorough examination of its consistency. On this basis it is suggested that the Targum assumed its basic form in the second century CE, due to the emergency of the rabbinic tradition, but outside the context of the synagogue.
Where do the origins of the rabbinic movement lie, and how might evidence from the early rabbinic literature be made to reveal those origins? In order to shed light on the early social formation of the rabbinic guild of masters, Lightstone brings the theoretical and methodological insights of socio-rhetorical analysis to examine Mishnah, the first document authored by the early rabbinic movement and its principal object of study for several centuries. He argues that the enshrinement of Mishnah served to model, via its pervasive rhetoric, the principal authoritative guild expertise that qualified and marked one as a member of the rabbinic guild. Furthermore, he establishes the social and hist...
Discusses the centrality of dreams and the dreamworld to Apuleius' Metamorphoses, and uses the dreamworld of the work to investigate second-century beliefs about dreams, particularly those regarding religious transformation. Through this investigation, Gollnick (U. of Waterloo) offers an historical background on the contemporary psychological interest in dreams and dream interpretation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Is it possible to write an artistically respectable and theoretically convincing religious novel in a non-religious age? Up to now, there has been no substantial application of theological criticism to the works of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan, the two most important Canadian novelists before 1960. Yet both were religious writers during the period when Canada entered the modern, non-religious era, and both greatly influenced the development of our literature. MacLennan’s journey from Calvinism to Christian existentialism is documented in his essays and seven novels, most fully in The Watch that Ends the Night. Callaghan’s fourteen novels are marked by tensions in his theology of Catholic humanism, with his later novels defining his theological themes in increasingly secular terms. This tension between narrative and metanarrative has produced both the artistic strengths and the moral ambiguities that characterize his work. Faith and Fiction: A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan is a significant contribution to the relatively new field studying the relation between religion and literature in Canada.
The Bible has always been vital to Jewish religious life, and it has been expounded in diverse ways. Perhaps the most influential body of Jewish biblical interpretation is the Midrash that was produced by expositors during the first five centuries CE. Many such teachings are collected in the Babylonian Talmud, the monumental compendium of Jewish law and lore that was accepted as the definitive statement of Jewish oral tradition for subsequent generations. However, many of the Talmud’s interpretations of biblical passages appear bizarre or pointless. From Sermon to Commentary: Expounding the Bible in Talmudic Babylonia tries to explain this phenomenon by carefully examining representative p...
In The Hebrew Bible: A Millennium, manuscripts, texts, and methods applied in Hebrew Bible studies are considered through time. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Cairo and European Genizot, as well as Late Medieval Biblical Manuscripts are examined.
The 'pivot pattern' is a unique type of chiasmus, a linguistic pattern characterized by an inversion of the internal order of a phrase or passage. The main idea is found primarily at its pivot, while its elements, normally of an uneven number, are distributed on both sides of the pivot in a mirrored symmetry. Klaus undertakes here to compile a 'grammar' of the pattern, and to characterize, exemplify and differentiate its various forms.
The essays in Sacred Texts and Disparate Interpretations shed new light on core themes in Qumran studies, such as the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, history of the Qumran community, Hebrew philology and paleography, Wisdom and religious poetry.
Did the evangelist Mark write two versions of his gospel? According to a letter ascribed to Clement of Alexandria, Mark created a second, more spiritual edition of his gospel for theologically advanced Christians in Alexandria. Clement’s letter contains two excerpts from this lost gospel, including a remarkably different account of the raising of Lazarus. Forty-five years of cursory investigation have yielded five mutually exclusive paradigms, abundant confusion, and rumours of forgery. Strangely, one of the few things upon which most investigators agree is that the letter’s own explanation of the origin and purpose of this longer gospel need not be taken seriously. Mark’s Other Gospel...