..". an important contribution to current literary concerns with the ideologies of texts... " --Society of Old Testament Study Book List

..". she points the way into as yet little-explored territory, broadly engaging literary theory as well as ideological criticism... she moves beyond both narrowly historical and exclusively text-centered criticism... " --Theology Today

..". Bal has given us both a coruscating feminist critique of biblical scholarship and a fund of provocative exegetical insights... required reading for anyone who wants to know where serious biblical...

"In this almost painfully beautiful book... Fishbane... explores the question of the kind of canon, privileged status, or Logos, the Torah actually has for the post-modern Western Jew. " Theology Today

"A book well worth reading." The Jerusalem Post

"This wonderful volume documents the intellectual and spiritual odyssey of one of North America s foremost Jewish biblical scholars." Shofar

" Polzin's] book... will profoundly affect biblical scholarship for at least a generation." --Frank Kermode

" A] suggestive and rich book, written in a clear and witty style." --Marc Z. Brettler, The Journal of Religion

"Literary commentary at its best." --Adele Berlin

"In sum, this volume is a thoughtful exploration of both the past and the future of philanthropic theory. Recommended highly... " --Library Journal

" Together, these thoughtful essays convey both the scope and complexity of the moral, philosophical, and practical issues surrounding the sources, methods, and consequences of philanthropy." --The Journal of American History

Andrew Carnegie enjoined his fellow millionaires "to help those who will help themselves." Do the rich of today have responsibilities toward society in the use of their wealth for the public good? Commentators...

..". a superb example of modern Orthodox Jewish biblical interpretation." --Interpretation

"This detailed and intriguing work represents years of thought and meticulous analysis as well as a fresh reading of several familiar prophetic narratives found in the OT." --The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

..". this book contains well-argued and thoughtful literary readings... Simon is thoroughly versed in the secondary literature but has managed to write a volume accessible to both scholars and informed general readers..." --Choice

Noted biblical scholar Uriel Simon undertakes a...

Informed by literary theory and Homeric scholarship as well as biblical studies, Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode sheds new light on the Hebrew Bible and, more generally, on the possibilities of narrative form. Robert S. Kawashima compares the narratives of the Hebrew Bible with Homeric and Ugaritic epic in order to account for the "novelty" of biblical prose narrative. Long before Herodotus or Homer, Israelite writers practiced an innovative narrative art, which anticipated the modern novelist's craft. Though their work is undeniably linked to the linguistic tradition of...

..". brilliant... Polzin's] splendid work deserves consideration by all serious students of 2 Samuel." --The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

The figure of David is the focus of Polzin's provocative new reading of 2 Samuel. Polzin makes a strong case for a complex yet coherent picture of the monarchy within Israelite theology as he demonstrates the literary artfulness and ideological sophistication of the Deuteronomic History.

In From Metaphysics to Midrash, Shaul Magid explores the exegetical tradition of Isaac Luria and his followers within the historical context in 16th-century Safed, a unique community that brought practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into close contact with one another. Luria's scripture became a theater in which kabbalists redrew boundaries of difference in areas of ethnicity, gender, and the human relation to the divine. Magid investigates how cultural influences altered scriptural exegesis of Lurianic Kabbala in its philosophical, hermeneutical, and historical perspectives....

Herbert Blau here reflects on performance as it moved from the theatricalized activism of the sixties into the theoretical activism of the eighties. The essays theorize rather than formulate an ideological program. Blau takes risks at the speculative edge of thought. The Eye of Prey is comprised of diverse subject matter: love and mourning, play and aging, radical feminist and homosexual discourse, the politics of representation, comedy since the Absurd, Barthes and Beckett, Beckett and Derrida--a critique of certain aspects of postmodern thought and performance, and in particular the...

Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to develop in unexpected ways. Main themes explored here include the ironizing of foreign...