The encounter between interpretation and history in the writings of Josephus provides the conceptual framework for this collection of essays. The contributions in this volume, which were presented at an international colloquium entitled "Josephus: Interpretation and History" held in Dublin in 2004, are united, not by a single view of Josephus, but by the question of historical method, both ancient and modern. These essays take up aspects of a problem basic to all researchers who would use Josephus for historical purposes, namely: What is the relationship between narratives and history?...

This publication on the Jewish community of Rome in ancient times provides interesting information about the development of the Jewish presence in the Capital of the Roman Empire and the cultural links this community created with the Diaspora and Eretz-Israel.

This volume represents the first attempt to study Slavonic pseudepigrapha collectively as a unique group of texts that share common theophanic and mediatorial imagery crucial for the development of early Jewish mysticism.

This book examines four texts: 1 Enoch, 4QInstruction, Matthew and 2 Enoch. A common idea in these texts, which blend sapiential and apocalyptic elements, is that the revealing of wisdom to an elect group inaugurates the eschatological period. The emphasis on "revealed wisdom" is essentially apocalyptic, but facilitates the uptake of motifs, forms and language from the sapiential tradition and is important in explaining the fusion of the two traditions. In addition, revealed wisdom often has creational associations and this has significance for the notion of ethics in these texts. The book...

This volume publishes papers delivered at the Second International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books (Papa, Hungary). This conference dealt with the Books of the Maccabees. As such, this was the most extended discussion of these books that ever took place at a scholarly meeting. The volume contains articles on the textual forms, traditions, theology and ideology of the books, and demonstrates the books' relationship with the contemporary literature of early Judaism.

This book provides an overview of the current debate about the early Enoch literature and its place in ancient Judaism, especially in relation to the Torah of Moses and to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This volume considers a major shift among Jewish sages during the Second Temple period, from an earthly to an otherworldly focus. It compares the perspectives of figures like Qoheleth and Ben Sira with the eschatological vision of 4QInstruction.

This book offers a fresh understanding of how Isaiah was translated into Greek, arguing that the translator attempted a cohesive representation of Isaiah for his Greek-speaking co-religionists, utilizing interpretative ploys applied to Homer by the Alexandrian grammatikoi.

This volume contains the proceedings of the third international conference on the deuterocanonical literature organised by the Shime'on Centre in Papa, Hungary. Renowned international scholars of the field treat questions of text in the Book of Ben Sira, the underlying traditions and theological questions. In the first part, the authors deal with introductory problems of the complex oeuvre of Ben Sira; the second main part of the volume focuses primarily on the wisdom part of book; finally, the reader will find papers dealing with particular pericopae of the Praise of the Fathers section of...

Inspired by the perspective of Critical Spatial Theory, this book offers a fresh interpretation of the conception of the Land of Israel in the early second century CE apocalypse 2 Baruch.