Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Biblical Studies - General

Concise, convenient and comprehensive: this handy dictionary will inform and enlighten all who want to understand how the Bible came together, the history of the various texts behind it, the versions in which it has appeared, the process of editing and compilation, and the different methods of interpretation that have developed over the centuries. Much of this material can be found in larger reference works and commentaries, but most students and lay people find that most of these books are written by scholars for scholars, which means the reader can feel bogged down in too much technical...

This volume will unpack the seven allegations proposed by Scot McKnight in his article 'Calling Jesus Mamzer' in the inaugural volume of The Journal for the Historical Jesus (Volume 1.1 2003: 73-103).

Each essay will explore the historicity of each accusation and what they tell us about Jesus. McKnight and Modica propose that by examining these specific allegations, one can begin to comprehend a neglected dimension of historical Jesus studies, namely, that Jesus can be understood by what his opponents (critics) say of him. They contend that such an approach offers, as Malina...

Still at the Margins is a review of developments within biblical studies over the last fifteen years, since the publication of the groundbreaking book, Voices from the Margins (1995, ed. Sugirtharajah). Bringing together disparate marginal voices in one volume for the first time, Still at the Margins represents an important new piece of collaborative scholarship. There have been volumes which have looked at specific marginal voices, such as black or feminist biblical hermeneutics, but there has been no single volume which aims to address all the marginal voices. More importantly, Still...

In the first of four volumes on A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Lester Grabbe presents a comprehensive history of Yehud - the Aramaic name for Judah - during the Persian Period. Among the many crucial questions he addresses are: What are the sources for this period and how do we evaluate them? And how do we make them 'speak' to us through the fog of centuries? This first volume, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah offers the most up to date and comprehensive examination of the political and administrative structures; the society and economy; the...

Jonathan G. Campbell provides an introduction to eight sectarian manuscripts from among the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls that can loosely be called the 'Exegetical Texts'. He examines their contents, background, genre, and significance and he provides a history of the relevant research. The Exegetical Texts constitute a particularly diverse strand of sectarian compositions among the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls. For this reason, the eight documents are treated in turn in more or less equal measure, with two introductory chapters to set the scene and a conclusion drawing the discussion to a close....

The Book of Psalms is one of the most frequently cited books in the New Testament. The Synoptic Evangelists seem to read the Psalms not primarily as prayers but as prophecies of the future. They discovered in its language prophecies concerning the life and ministry of Jesus and attempted to show how Jesus' life was prefigured in the Psalms. Samuel Subramanian examines the topic within the broader use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, that of the prophetic reading of the Psalms in the Synoptic Gospels and in the context of Second Temple Judaism. Although others have treated...

This volume includes ten new studies, most of which were originally presented at the 14th World Congress of Jewish Studies, held in Jerusalem in 2005.

The studies all deal with the changes that occurred in the Land of Israel during the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, from the 6th through the 4th centuries BCE.

For convenience, the studies are divided into three categories: archaeological, epigraphic and historical, though many of them are actually more interdisciplinary. Most of them deal with either the province of Judah, Idumea or the interaction between the two,...

The form and function of the 'synagogue' in the first century CE has been the focus of a great deal of recent scholarly discussion. A previous generation of scholars would have perceived a reference to a synagogue in a New Testament text as a monolithic institution with clearly defined functions principally involving worship. More recent scholarship has questioned many of these assumptions, pointing out that in the first century CE 'synagogue' should be understood as a reference to a gathering and not a building. Similarly, it is noted that many of the reconstructions of what...

The ten studies in this book explore the phenomenon of public memory in societies of the Graeco-Roman period. Mendels begins with a concise discussion of the historical canon that emerged in Late Antiquity and brought with it the (distorted) memory of ancient history in Western culture. The following nine chapters each focus on a different source of collective memory in order to demonstrate the patchy and incomplete associations ancient societies had with their past, including discussions of Plato's Politeia, a "site of memory" of the early church, and the dichotomy existing between the...

The book is, primarily, a linguistic investigation into the possibility that the Johannine farewell discourse is the product of multiple hands. L. Scott Kellum uses the latest linguistic tools and applies them to the very old question of unity. In doing so, he accesses a large portion of Continental scholarship that is currently unavailable to English speakers. He concludes, on linguistic and literary grounds, that John 13:31-16:33 (the so-called farewell discourse) was written by one man at, essentially, one time.

The occurrence of treaties throughout the Ancient Near East has been investigated on a number of occasions, generally in order to resolve certain questions arising in the biblical field. As a result of that focus, the existence of a similar institution in a number of different cultures has not been treated as a problem in itself. Generally the existence of treaties throughout the area has been taken for granted, or a simple borrowing model has been used to explain how similar forms came to be used in different cultures. Why forms were similar across the area has not been probed....