This book is the second volume in John Meier's masterful trilogy on the life of Jesus. In it he continues his quest for the answer to the greatest puzzle of modern religious scholarship: Who was Jesus? To answer this Meier imagines the following scenario: "Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic were locked up in the bowels of the Harvard Divinity School library... and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended...." A Marginal Jew is what Meier thinks that document would reveal....
This book is the second volume in John Meier's masterful trilogy on the life of Jesus. In it he continues his quest for the answer to the greatest ...
A History of the Synoptic Problem, by David Laird Dungan, is an accessible, academic study of a question that has needled readers of the New Testament since before the Bible was canonized: How does one reconcile the different accounts of Jesus's life given by the four gospels? Today the most highly publicized answer to this question is the one offered by John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar, who seek to reconcile the differences among the gospels by designating some events and statements in the gospels historically true and others false. There are lots of other ways to explore...
A History of the Synoptic Problem, by David Laird Dungan, is an accessible, academic study of a question that has needled readers of the New Te...
An explosive survey of the whole Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) that cuts against the grain of common assumptions by suggesting that the Bible developed as a written tradition rather than as an oral one. Author Brian Peckham is a Jesuit priest and biblical scholar.
An explosive survey of the whole Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) that cuts against the grain of common assumptions by suggesting that the B...
In this provocative, intelligent, and highly original addition to the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, Susan R. Garrett argues that angel talk has never been merely about angels. Rather, from ancient times until the present, talk about angels has served as a vehicle for reflection on other fundamental life questions, including the nature of God's presence and intervention in the world, the existence and meaning of evil, and the fate of humans after death. In No Ordinary Angel, Garrett examines how biblical and other ancient authors addressed such questions through their...
In this provocative, intelligent, and highly original addition to the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, Susan R. Garrett argues that angel talk ...
Divination, the use of special talents and techniques to gain divine knowledge, was practiced in many different forms in ancient Israel and throughout the ancient world. The Hebrew Bible reveals a variety of traditions of women associated with divination. This sensitive and incisive book by respected scholar Esther J. Hamori examines the wide scope of women's divinatory activities as portrayed in the Hebrew texts, offering readers a new appreciation of the surprising breadth of women's "arts of knowledge" in biblical times. Unlike earlier approaches to the subject that have viewed prophecy...
Divination, the use of special talents and techniques to gain divine knowledge, was practiced in many different forms in ancient Israel and throughout...
This comprehensive exploration of language and literacy in the multi-lingual environment of Roman Palestine (c. 63 B.C.E. to 136 C.E.) is based on Michael Wise's extensive study of 145 Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean contracts and letters preserved among the Bar Kokhba texts, a valuable cache of ancient Middle Eastern artifacts. His investigation of Judean documentary and epistolary culture derives for the first time numerical data concerning literacy rates, language choices, and writing fluency during the two-century span between Pompey's conquest and Hadrian's rule. He explores...
This comprehensive exploration of language and literacy in the multi-lingual environment of Roman Palestine (c. 63 B.C.E. to 136 C.E.) is based on Mic...
Works created in the period from the Babylonian conquest of Judea through the takeover and rule of Judea and Samaria by imperial Persia reveal a profound interest in the religious responses of individuals and an intimate engagement with the nature of personal experience. Using the rich and varied body of literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible, Susan Niditch examines ways in which followers of Yahweh, participating in long-standing traditions, are shown to privatize and personalize religion. Their experiences remain relevant to many of the questions we still ask today: Why do bad things...
Works created in the period from the Babylonian conquest of Judea through the takeover and rule of Judea and Samaria by imperial Persia reveal a profo...
A novel approach to Israelite kinship, arguing that maternal kinship bonds played key social, economic, and political roles for a son who aspired to inherit his father's household
Upending traditional scholarship on patrilineal genealogy, Cynthia Chapman draws on twenty years of research to uncover an underappreciated yet socially significant kinship unit in the Bible: "the house of the mother." In households where a man had two or more wives, siblings born to the same mother worked to promote and protect one another's interests. Revealing the hierarchies of the maternal...
A novel approach to Israelite kinship, arguing that maternal kinship bonds played key social, economic, and political roles for a son who aspired t...
The first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew Bible
Friendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross disciplinary interest in contemporary scholarship, has been largely ignored by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, possibly because of its complexity and elusiveness. Filling a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of biblical texts, Saul M. Olyan provides this original, accessible analysis of a key form of social relationship. In this thorough and compelling assessment, Olyan analyzes a wide range of texts, including prose narratives,...
The first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew Bible
Friendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross di...
