This book presents a full picture of the weight system of Iron Age Judah, based on archaeological finds, historical sources and biblical texts. This book offers a complete picture of the weight system of Iron Age Judah, involving a careful study of the typology, date, context, weight standards, inscription and function of hundreds of weights (with a full catalogue). As against the common view, the author suggests that all the weights belong to one system based on one basic sheqel standard. The weights are mostly not 'royal weights' and have nothing to do with Josiah's reform. The 'sheqel...

In this collection of essays-many of them here published in English for the first time-the distinguished Norwegian Old Testament scholar, Magne S3/4b, investigates the complex and variegated history of traditions constituting the literature of the Old Testament. Professor S3/4b provides tradition-historical studies of particular texts (such as the 'revelation' of God's name in Exodus and passages presenting the early preaching of Isaiah) and of particular theological themes (such as the priestly theology in the Pentateuch and the relation of apocalyptic to prophecy and wisdom), as well as...

In this close reading of a text central to the story of David, the author, using the tools of linguistic pragmatics and poetics, exposes the text's promotion of a prophetic-based ideology, through a polemical rhetoric that polarizes David and Yahweh around the opposed notions of king (melek) and leader (nagid). He then goes on to analyse the context, in ancient Near Eastern royal ideology and in Samuel, for how the text develops this opposition, and finally reflects on its promulgation of the supreme mediacy of the prophetic word.

By a poetic analysis of Isaiah 34-35 as a single poem, the reading explores in depth its imagery, themes and structure. Attention to detail is combined with wide-ranging discussions of reading and interpretation, which revolve around the contrasting, and strangely interrelated, scenes of destruction (nightmare) and restoration (dream) found in the two parts of the poem. The poem emerges as an integral part of Isaiah, which is treated as a single work. The consistency is revealed in parallel terms, images and structure. Implications of the analysis and mode of reading for the whole of...

'Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence' examines the book of Joshua as a construction of national identity. This pioneering New Historicist analysis shows how the Deuteronomist used war oracle language and epic historical lore to negotiate sociopolitical boundaries. It asserts that text and context interacted in a programme consolidating King Josiah's authority in the wake of Assyrian imperial collapse. The book argues that the conquest narrative is not simple 'us against them' propaganda but a complex web of negotiations defining identity and otherness. The analysis draws on Foucault's...

Keefe's analysis dismantles the androcentric and theological assumptions which have determined the dominant reading of Hosea's metaphor of Israel as the adulterous wife of God. It shows how the projection of symbolic associations of women with nature, sexual temptation and sin have anachronistically determined this metaphor as referring to Israel's apostasy in a lurid 'fertility cult'. Against this reading, Keefe's study considers Hosea 1-2 in the context of the association of sexual transgression and social violence in biblical literature; in this light, Hosea's symbol of Israel as an...

This collection of essays by notable scholars offers a unique, multi-faceted approach to the understanding of the Garden story. Starting with the motifs, context, structure and language of the biblical text itself, the chapters trace the Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions, and developments in literature and iconography. This is an invaluable book for students and scholars of biblical studies, theology, literature, art history and the psychology of religion.

This wide-ranging investigation of the priestly cultic texts from Exodus 25 onwards explores the coherence and theology of the priestly writing, utilizing insights from anthropology and recent biblical scholarship. Through a carefully worked out set of laws and institutions, the priestly authors sought to order Israel's life before God in a sustainable and satisfying way. This is a valuable contribution to the growing number of studies concerned to understand and recover this neglected part of the Bible.

This book explores a variety of biblical texts in order to clarify and better understand the relationship between the individual and the community in ancient Israel. Although much of the argument is focused upon Deuteronomy and the deuteronomistic history, other pentateuchal and prophetic texts are also probed. In particular, certain instances of divine retribution that are corporate in nature are explored, and it is argued that such punishments are quite common and completely understandable of the basic theological ideas that are operative in such cases. The examination turns to other...

Until recently Leviticus has been read, especially in Christian circles, as part of a 'priestly' work with a predominantly prescriptive and ritualistic agenda. In this volume of papers read at a colloquium held in honour of Mary Douglas at Lancaster University in 1995, experts in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish law, comparative law, classical literature and social anthropology raise challenging questions about the composition, context and purpose of the book. Can it be read as an autonomous literary unit? How significant are its unique ethical insights? Is it law or narrative? Does it reflect...