Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Biblical Studies - History & Culture

How did Israel become a people? Is the biblical story accurate? In what sense, if any, is the biblical story true? Are the origins of these ancient people lost in myth or is there hope to discovering who they were and how they lived? These questions divide students and scholars alike.

While many believe the "Conquest" is only a fable, this book will present a different view. Using biblical materials and the new archaeological data, this title tells how the ancient Israelites settled in Canaan and became the people of Israel.

The stakes for understanding the history of ancient...

The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world and its implications continue to be topics that fire the popular imagination and engender scholarly discussion and controversy. This volume provides balanced and judicious treatments of the various facets of these topics from a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective. It provides nuanced examinations of ancient ritual, exploring the various meanings that human sacrifice held for antiquity, and examines its varied repercussions up into the modern world.

The book explores evidence to shed new light on the origins...

Stefanos Mihalios examines the uses of the hour in the writings of John and demonstrates the contribution of Danielic eschatology to Johns understanding of this concept. Mihalios begins by tracing the notion of an eschatological time in the Old Testament within expressions such as in that time and time of distress, which also appear in the book of Daniel and relate to the eschatological hour found in Daniel. Mihalios finds that even within the Jewish tradition there exists an anticipation of the fulfillment of the Danielic eschatological time, since the eschatological hour appears in the...

Norton-Piliavsky places Paul's work within the context of ancient Jewish literary practice, bridging the gap between textual criticism and social history in contemporary discussions.

The author argues that studies of ancient Jewish exegesis draw on two distinct analytical modes: the text-critical and the socio-historical. He then shows that the two are usually joined together in discussions of ancient Jewish literature arguing that as a result of this commentators often allow the text-critical approach to guide their efforts to understand historical questions. Norton argues that...

This study considers the historical, cultural, and literary significance of some of the most important Ancient Near East (ANE) texts that illuminate the Hebrew Bible. Christopher B. Hays provides primary texts from the Ancient Near East with a comparison to literature of the Hebrew Bible to demonstrate how Israel's Scriptures not only draw from these ancient contexts but also reshape them in a unique way.

Hays offers a brief introduction to comparative studies, then lays out examples from various literary genres that shed light on particular biblical texts. Texts about ANE law...