At the 2006 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Prophetic Texts in their Ancient Contexts section devoted a session to the theme "The Aesthetics of Violence." Participants were invited to explore multiple dimensions of prophetic texts and their violent rhetoric. The results were rich-- engaging discussion of violent images in ancient Near Eastern art and in modern film, as well as advancing our understanding of the poetic skill required for invoking terror through words.

This volume collects those essays as well as others especially commissioned for its...

Empire and Exile explores the impact of Babylonian aggression upon the book of Jeremiah by calling attention to the presence of the empire and showing how the book of Jeremiah can be read as resistant responses to the inevitability of imperial power and the experience of exile. With the insight of postcolonial theory, resistance is framed in these readings as finding a place in the world even though not controlling territory and therefore surviving social death. It argues that even though exile is not prevented, exile is experienced in the constituting of a unique place in...

• This text is the work of two highly respected biblical scholars
• It explores the rich and complex reception history of the last six Minor Prophets in Jewish and Christian theology and exegesis

This redaction-critical study interprets the reasons for judgment in Amos 2.6-16 in the literary context of each of the redactional compositions which, it is argued, underlie the Amos-text. It is proposed that the Amos-text is both a theological work and a tractate of social criticism. In earlier redactional compositions the dominant reasons for judgment concern mistreatment of the weak. In the later redactional compositions these are overshadowed, in terms of length of text, by more theological reasons for judgment; however, these strengthen, rather than weaken, the force of the older...