Although the Hebrew Bible as a whole is centered on God and God s relations with Israel, the character of God appears in most biblical stories only indirectly. How are modern readers to make sense of this paradox? God as an Absent Character in Biblical Hebrew Narrative establishes a set of literary methods that both academic and non-academic readers can use to understand the character of God, who is the single most important character in Hebrew Bible narrative and, strangely, absent from the majority of it."

Most of Paul s letters, especially First Corinthians, were written in the context of conflict with troublemaking opponents and the social dilemma at the Lord s Supper in Corinth. First Corinthians provides a unique glimpse into the social custom of the Christian congregation in a Greaco-Roman environment during the early years of the Christian Church. Much effort has gone into reconstructing what happened at the Lord s Supper and the social issues that were involved. More recently, attention has focused on the Corinthian congregation itself and how Paul solved the issue of idol food and...

Matthew: Poet, Historian, Dialectician offers a thorough and systematic display of the logic by which Matthew traces and defends the transformation of Judaism into Christianity. The present commentary carefully follows the course of Matthew s many and complex arguments as well as his extraordinary use of New Testament Greek. This book is of utmost importance for anyone interested in the New Testament, philosophy, theology, philosophy of religion, Bible studies, or Bible as literature."

Wilderness in many parts of the globe is under considerable threat from human development. This has important ramifications not only for fauna and flora but also for human well-being. Wilderness in the Bible addresses this ecological crisis from a biblical and theological perspective. It first establishes the context of a biblical study of wilderness and then passes to an analysis of the attitudes towards in the canonical biblical record. This provides the biblical basis for the development of a theology of wilderness for the twenty-first century. The Australian wilderness is taken as...

While providing exciting research opportunities, the New Testament s use of the Old Testament continues to create interpretive difficulties. Although Matthew s use of the Old Testament generated much scholarly discussion throughout the historical-critical period, during the contemporary period specific interest in Matthew s Old Testament usage seemed to decrease. Recently, however, many powerful analytical approaches have come to the fore in biblical studies, including various text-centered methods such as textlinguistics (also known as discourse analysis). This book applies one specific type...

In Configurations of Rape in the Hebrew Bible, Frank M. Yamada explores the compelling similarity among three rape narratives found in the Hebrew Scriptures. These three stories the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34), the rape of an unnamed concubine (Judges 19), and the rape of Tamar, daughter of David (2 Samuel 13) move through the same plot progression: an initial sexual violation of a woman leads to escalating violence among men, resulting in some form of social fragmentation. In this intriguing study, Yamada draws from the disciplines of literary and narrative criticism, feminist biblical...

The history of scholarship narrates a complicated past for the interpretation of the -Shepherd Discourse- in the Fourth Gospel. Both the internal and contextual integrity of John 9:39-10:21 have been compromised by a misapplied analogy dividing the passage into a parable and explanation structure, and by reading models that favor historical approaches. As a result, the images and figures encountered in the discourse have not been allowed their full imaginative impact and the tendency is to look outside the Gospel for their referents and explanations. The meaning of the -Shepherd Discourse-...

Revelation 19:11-21 is a passage rich in symbol and allusion, much of which proves elusive for interpreters restricting themselves to Old Testament references. However, when Greco-Roman history and mythology are examined, new possibilities are discovered. Revelation 19 in Historical and Mythological Context analyzes the Roman triumph and the Parthian threat as sources for the colorful imagery in Revelation 19, ultimately exploring the Nero redivivus myth as the nexus between the two and a key for unlocking the passage. Paradox and parody are important themes in this technical though...

A Word Fitly Spoken explores significant poetic devices within the four alphabetic acrostic psalms found in Book I of the Psalter. The majority of scholarly opinion has been that these acrostics are poetically and artistically deficient due to the writers and editors preoccupation with the alphabetic pattern. In contrast to this view, A Word Fitly Spoken proposes that the acrostic pattern contributes to, rather than detracts from, the poetic artistry of these psalms. In an effort to promote a holistic, canonical reading of the four acrostic poems within Book I of the Psalter,...