The three Nathan narratives in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, are given detailed consideration in this fascinating study. A persuasive attempt is made to reconstruct the original form of the traditions and to trace the modifications made to them before they were finally accepted into the Succession Narrative. The original Nathan, a court official and chief spokesman for the Jebusite group, sought a working compromise between the original Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem and its new Israelite settlers. After accepting service under King David, Nathan tried to secure the best he could for the Jebusites in this new situation. When this tradition was expanded, modified and theologized, the consistent Nathan of early tradition became a complex character, and almost appears as a dual personality: the diplomatic court prophet of the original narrative became an outspoken prophet of Yahweh in the ''theological'' accounts of his activities.
This collection of essays arises from the lively discussions in the Formation of the Book of Isaiah Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature. The essays exhibit the diversity that has always been present in the Seminar. Each contributor has a unique perspective and thus extends the frontiers of research on the book of Isaiah. Yet, taken as a whole, the essays fall into two broad groups, being either ''objective'' in their approach to the text-embracing historical-critical method or a synchronic approach in which text rather than reader is the focus-or ''postmodern'', in the sense that meaning is in no small degree located in what the reader does. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Mark Biddle, David Carr, Edgar Conrad, Chris Franke, Kathryn Pfisterer Darr, Rolf Rendtorff, Gerald Sheppard, Benjamin Sommer, Gary Stansell, and Roy Wells.
This Festschrift honours one of today''s leading scholars of early Judaism and Christian origins. Twenty-two essays by internationally renowned scholars reflect the pioneering contribution of Geza Vermes in the fields of Dead Sea Scrolls, Targums and Rabbinics and New Testament.
Berlinerblau argues that in order to procure reliable historical information about ''popular religious groups'' (such as women, non-privileged economic strata, heterodox elements) we must search for what he calls ''implicit evidence'': mundane details regarding the vow which the biblical writers tacitly assumed and hence unknowingly bequeathed to posterity. By piecing together these strands of implicit evidence the author attempts to reconstruct the basic norms of the Israelite votive system. In so doing, he explains why certain ''popular religious groups'' were attracted to this particular practice.
This collection of inter-related essays argues that the way in which Chronicles incorporates and develops material from Samuel-Kings offers an analogy for the way in which the final edition of Exodus was produced. Embedded within the text of Exodus there is an earlier Deuteronomistic version recoverable from the reminiscences of the exodus in Deuteronomy. This, it is suggested, is the most objective method available for recreating the literary history of Exodus and must constitute the first stage in any analysis of Exodus. Already, it produces some surprisingly radical results.
W.M.L. de Wette (1780-1849) was not only one of the founders of modern Old Testament criticism. His loss and recovery of Christian faith, his dismissal from his post in Berlin in 1819 on political grounds and his long subsequent exile in Basel left their mark upon his work in New Testament ethics, dogmatics and aesthetics. This first modern critical study of de Wette''s life and work evaluates his achievements in the context of his own times and asesses their importance on modern biblical scholars.
This book explores the social roles of women as portrayed within the book of Proverbs, as well as the character archetypes and patriarchal ideologies which undergird the sages'' portrayal. Using feminist folklore methodologies and performance studies, the author explores an alternative paradigm for understanding women''s relationship to wisdom traditions in the ancient near east, using parallel texts, later midrash and extrabiblical re-presentations of biblical women associated with wisdom. The author demonstrates that women were culturally authorized ''performers'' of the family based wisdom traditions of teaching, economic problem solving, and care giving, and that these roles provided them with a platform to use their acknowledged wisdom in public roles.
Martin Noth argued that in the books of Joshua-Kings could be seen the work of a single, purposeful author or historian-a hypothesis which, although close to becoming one of those rare ''assured results of critical scholarship'', has recently encountered criticism. Nelson observes that Noth''s historian has a ''disturbing tendency to fall apart in the hands of those who work with him''. In this comprehensive study of the question, he attempts to put on a solid critical foundation the increasingly popular theory that the Deutoronomistic History is a product of a two-stage literary process.
John Eaton, well known for his Psalms commentary, here offers a new model of commentary-writing. The psalms treated are those exalting God''s Torah (Psalms 1, 19, 119) and those proclaiming his kingship (93, 97, 99). A detailed examination is made of the treatment of these psalms by selected exegetes from Delitzsch to the present. General conclusions are then drawn for such questions as dating, text, unity, meaning, piety, theology, and relation to prophecy. Both groups of psalms are found to contain great riches of religious insight and experience, which exegetes have rarely come within range of appreciating. Several important interpreters are only superficially known outside their own language group; the present study seeks to remedy this.
Joshua 24 has long been recognized as a crucial chapter for source-critical studies and for the reconstruction of Israel''s early history. The present volume summarizes and evaluates previous (often contradictory) efforts to explain Joshua 24 on the basis of literary criticism, the role of covenant concepts in Israel''s history writing, form-critical comparisons with treaty texts, archaeological approaches to the Shechem traditions, structural analysis and textual criticism. ''...[a] comprehensive and formidably documented volume ...'' Christopher T. Begg, Old Testament Abstracts.
In this rich and elegantly presented interdisciplinary study, the theme is the impact of iron technology on the material and cultural life of ancient Israel. The author argues that iron itself and the processes of ironworking functioned as dominant cultural symbols, conveying meanings about significant transformations that established Israel''s social and religious identity. This wide-ranging monograph is particularly valuable for its integration of material about ironworking in traditional African societies, anthropological theories on symbolism and archaeological information on the development of iron technology in the Near East.
Daniel 2-7 are noteworthy chapters in the Bible, partly because they are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew and partly because the early Greek translation of those chapters, known to us as the Septuagint, is quite different from the Aramaic text that we have. This book highlights and analyzes the differences by exploring the effectiveness of each version as a piece of narrative. A new appreciation of the craft of the Aramaic narrative is one result. Another is an enhanced understanding of how biblical narrative handles symbolism. Through this study the reader also gains insight into differing circles of wisdom in Persian times, each giving rise to a textual tradition still accessible to us.
Into the Hands of the Living God is Lyle Eslinger''s second study of Deuteronomistic literature. This book is devoted to studies of key texts (Joshua 1-9; Judges 1-2; 1 Samuel 12; 1 Kings 8; 2 Kings 17) or concepts (the success/failure of the conquest; the exile and theodicy) in these narratives. Eslinger''s readings are unorthodox and challenging, both for readers from the communities of faith and for critical scholarship. The Deuteronomistic narratives are here shown to be far from being a vindication of the ways of God at Israel''s expense. Rather, in these narratives God, no less than Israel''s leaders, has his hands soiled in the machinations that end in Babylon. What the Deuteronomistic history offers is, rather, dispassionate analysis of the problems, some unavoidable, that predetermined the failure of the covenant relationship. The collection of carefully worked out close readings of the biblical text in this volume provides a new critical vantage point from which one can reassess conventional historical-critical readings of these colourful books.
A reader-oriented approach provides a substantially new angle of vision on Psalm 18 and Psalms study in general. Reader-based interpretation is compared to conventional methodologies by means of four separate analyses of Psalm 18: a textual study, a form-critical explication, a rhetorical study, and an experimental reader-oriented study involving the following strategies. Initially, the components of the text are considered as networks of signals for the reader. Secondly, the text''s speech acts are isolated and typified. Thirdly, the ancient and contemporary contexts for the reading of the psalm are examined. The reader-oriented study culminates in two perspectives upon Psalm 18. The psalm may be read as a ritual speech act performed by the community of ancient worshippers, or as a lyric poem that each contemporary reader experiences by identification with the speaker. The concluding chapter reviews each of the methodologies, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, as well as interrelationships among methods.
This tribute to Albert Pietersma of the University of Toronto is offered by a highly distinguished international panel of scholars, including John W. Wevers, Takamitsu Muraoka, Anneli Aejmelaeus, Emanuel Tov, Johan Lust, Robert A. Kraft, Johann Cook, Arie van der Kooij, Moises Silva and Claude E. Cox. The focus of the volume is on the Old Greek Psalter and its significance for biblical research and related disciplines, where it marks a definitive statement of research questions and issues in this increasingly important area of biblical textual studies.
Nahum Sarna''s distinctive and original scholarship has taken in a wide range of subject areas from work on Genesis and the Psalms to his Jewish Bible commentary and the English translation of the Ketuvim. At first Assistant Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the 1950s, he was Dora Golding Professor of Bible at Brandeis University from 1965 to his retirement. This collection of 22 essays reflects Professor Sarna''s breadth of interests, with contributions from the late Gershon Cohen on the Hebrew Crusade Chronicle and the Ashkenazic tradition; Judah Goldin on Reuben; Moshe Greenberg and Jonas Greenfield on the work of the Jewish Publication Society''s Ketuvim translators; and Shemaryahu Talmon on fragments of a Psalms scroll from Masada.
Old Testament prophecy and wisdom are two of the main themes with which Norman Whybray, formerly of the University of Hull, has concerned himself in his highly productive and innovative scholarly career. In honour of his seventieth birthday,a distinguished international group of scholars have expressed their personal and professional admiration for him with essays that Are particularly rich And significant. The roll-call of contributors reads: Brenner, Brueggemann, Cazelles, Clements, Clines, Coggins, Crenshaw, Eaton, Gelston, Gordon, Goulder, Grabbe, Jeppersen, Knibb, Mayes, Mettinger, Soggin and Williamson.
Narrative, rhetorical, ideological and sociological methods reveal an intricately related set of meanings in 2 Kings 11-12.
Drawing on ancient rhetorical principles, this work brings a novel approach to the exploration of the literary dynamics of the books of Chronicles. Contrary to those who have viewed the Chronicler as ploddy and dull, Duke maintains that the Chronicler understood the historiographical demands of his day. Utilizing traditions, genealogical material, speeches of authoritative characters and paradigmatic portrayal of events and characters, and moving from a cautious inductive presentation of his thesis to a more propositional form of argumentation, the Chronicler retold the story of Israel with skill and artistry.
The introduction, translation and commentary on the Temple Scroll by Johann Maier has been thoroughly revised and updated by the author for its English edition, taking account of improvements in readings, and, among other recent secondary literature, the English translation of Yadin''s edition, to which cross-references are given. Students of Second Temple Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular, will at last have a convenient English edition of this most important document from Qumran.
This work is a cross-disciplinary study of Israel''s first ''capital city'' from topographical, archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Challenging William F. Albright''s claim that the ancient city is to be identified with Tell el-Ful, the book develops the case for a location instead at modern Jeba, 9 km north-east of Jerusalem, a site-change that bears important consequences for several scholarly theories relating to Gibeah. Among these are the inquest into the historicity and literary composition of the story of the ''Outrage of Gibeah'' (Judg. 19-21) and the origins and nature of Saul''s kingship (1 Sam. 9-15). Both of these texts are treated thoroughly as preparation for a concluding investigation into the meaning of the prophet Hosea''s references to Israel''s sins ''in the days of Gibeah''.
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
The author analyses the various conversations that occur between the characters in the Jonah narrative and the ''conversation'' that occurs between the text and its readers. The study opens with an introduction to the field of conversation analysis, with a focus on one feature of conversation analysis-that a fundamental structure in the organization of language is adjacency pairs (for example, question/answer and invitation/refusal). Person notes how complex the adjacency pairs in the Jonah narrative are, and shows how they contribute to the narrative elements of plot, characterization, atmosphere and tone. He then refines reader-response theory (especially that of Wolfgang Iser) and provides a reader-response commentary on the book. The study ends with an analysis of the history of the interpretation of the book of Jonah, demonstrating how the structures of adjacency pairs in the narrative have been successfully and unsuccessfully interpreted.
This synthetic study has two primary tasks. The first is to elucidate the structure of the book of Zechariah. But in order to do this, a satisfactory method of analysis must be found. Thus the author begins by drawing up suitable literary criteria that will help to frame a reliable way of proceeding. The method is then tested on the book of Zechariah, and the results are compared with those of other biblical scholarship. Although this is a study in ''rhetorical criticism'', it approaches the text from the standpoint of the authors'' and redactors'' intentions. The result is a convincing and wide-ranging analysis of the various and complex structural patterns of Zechariah.
This collection of essays in honour of Professor Robert Davidson celebrates a number of notable achievements of this outstanding Scottish churchman and scholar. It is published for the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, but it also marks his retirement from full-time university teaching and nods in the direction of his having been the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1990-91). The guiding principle governing this collection of essays is the notion of the Bible as the generator of other texts and cultural productions. The contributors are drawn from Davidson''s wide range of colleagues and former students and focus on many different aspects of this generative force within the Bible itself and in materials related to it. Contributors include A.G. Auld, J.M.G. Barclay, E. Best, J.C.L. Gibson, W. Johnstone, H.A. McKay, J.K. Riches, and the editor, among others.
At the Images of Empire colloquium held in Sheffield in 1990, an international team of scholars met to explore some of the conflicting images generated by the Roman Empire. The articles reflect interests as diverse as those of the scholars themselves: Roman history and archaeology, Jewish Studies, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament and Patristics are all represented. All are focused on a single theme, the importance of which is increasingly recognized, not only for the historian, but for everyone interested in the political complexities of our post-imperial world.
The myths of Genesis are the foundation for hundreds of texts written at later diachronically distinct and datable periods. Seven texts-Genesis itself, Genesis Rabbah, Pirke deRabbi Eliezer and mediaeval compilations-are examined here, with five interrelated questions in focus: Can structuralist theory be applied usefully to societies conscious of history and change? What is the relationship between continuity and trasformation as a mythological tradition develops diachronically? What role does diachronic development within a myth play in relation to its underlying structure? What is the synchronic structure of Israelite (or rather, biblical) myth? Are there identifiable patterns of transformation and continuity between biblical myth and the three diachronically distinct levels of rabbinic myth?
This is a volume of tributes and essays in memory of G
During the last decade or so there has been a renewed interest in the study of cult and priesthood. The various individuals who have contributed essays to this volume are of both junior and senior rank and from both Christian and Jewish backgrounds. Certain essays represent the fruitful interchange that is now developing among historians of religion, anthropologists and biblical scholars. Others focus on parallels between aspects of Israelite religion and their counterparts in Canaanite and early Greek contexts. There are also contributions on the literary shape of the priestly law-code.
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