Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Sacred Writings

An explosive survey of the whole Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) that cuts against the grain of common assumptions by suggesting that the Bible developed as a written tradition rather than as an oral one. Author Brian Peckham is a Jesuit priest and biblical scholar.

The authors seek to identify the recurrent tensions, the blatant points of emphasis, the recurring indications of conflict and polemic. Framing the issue of the disposition of the Scriptural heritage in broad terms, they describe what characterizes the Gospels and the Mishnah, the letters of Paul and the Tosefta. In other words, if they take whole and complete the writings of first and second century people claiming to form the contemporary embodiment of Scripture's Israel and ask what they all stress as a single point of insistence, the answer is self-evident. Nearly every Christianity and...

The papers in this volume revolve around the history of the influence exerted by the person of Moses and the traditions associated with him. They deal not only with the function of the figure of Moses in the Pentateuch, the salvation in the Red Sea and the final day of Moses' life, but also with the way Moses was received in the Deuteronomic history, the Psalms, the Book of Jeremiah, the Septuagint, in Qumran, early Jewish extra-biblical literature, the New Testament and the Early Church.

This book is a comprehensive treatment of prophecy and revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It examines the reconfiguration of biblical prophecy and revelation, the portrait of prophecy at the end of days, and the evidence for ongoing prophetic activity.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State is the first book dedicated solely to the question of how we can learn political history from the Qumran scrolls. This English edition of Hanan Eshel's 2004 Hebrew publication updates that earlier work with more recent scholarship, now also including English-language resources.

Beginning in 2004, De Gruyter publishes the Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature - Yearbook (DCLY) in cooperation with the International Society for the Study of Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature. The Society is devoted to the study of the books of the Greek Bible (Septuagint), not contained in the Hebrew Bible, and to later Jewish literature, comprising approximately the time between the 3rd century B.C.E. and the 1st century C.E. The yearbooks contain the papers of the international conferences held by the Society.

Volumes from 2004 to 2009 are available online....

Die Septuaginta und die hebraische Bibel bezeugen eine eigenstandige Uberlieferung der Erzahlung von "Daniel in der Lowengrube" (Dan 6) in verschiedenen Kulturkreisen. Obwohl beide Fassungen der gleichen Handlungslinie folgen, weisen zahlreiche Differenzen auf ihre Eigenstandigkeit hin. In den hier anknupfenden Theoriebildungen zur Textgeschichte wird die Prioritat von Dan^MT 6 ebenso wie die von Dan^LXX 6 favorisiert, sodass ein methodischer Neuansatz nahe liegt: beide Texte sind a priori als gleichwertig zu betrachten. Im Zentrum der Untersuchung steht eine detaillierte...

Although in Second Temple literature we find a variety of songs concerned with the future of Jerusalem, little attempt has been made to analyse these comparatively as a generic group. In this study, three songshave been selected on the basis of their similarity in style, ideas and their apparent original composition in Hebrew.The texts have been subjected to a literary analysis both individually and then comparatively.

What makes the Book of Revelation so hard to understand?

How does the Book of Revelation fit into Judaism and the beginning of

Christianity?

John W. Marshall proposes a radical reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation of John, viewing it as a document of the Jewish diaspora during the Judean War. He contends that categorizing the Book as "Christian" has been an impediment in interpreting the Apocalypse. By suspending that category, solutions to several persistent problems in contemporary exegesis of the Apocalypse are facilitated. The author thus undertakes a...

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...

In the Image of God: A Feminist Commentary on the Torah is a unique blend of traditional Judaism and radical feminism and is a groundbreaking commentary on the Bible, the central document of Jewish life.

Since the Book of Chronicles is increasingly studied on its own, and not as a copy of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2, this study treats the various aspects and themes of this rich document. It provides an analysis of specific texts and topics uncovering the Chronicler's permanent creativity to transform Israel's tradition(s) into a new theological and ideological system of its own.

For the majority of scholars, the Animal Apocalypse is a militant text, a piece of pro-Maccabean propaganda. This text, however, develops theological reflections that are distinctly different from a justification of an armed struggle. Its themes are even incompatible with the Maccabean movement. It is impossible to condemn the Second Temple and, at the same time, mobilise people for a fight in order to purify that very Temple. After dealing with text-critical issues, this work challenges the thesis that the text is military propaganda through the use of narrative and historical...

Moshe Aberbach (1924-2007) was a leading educator and scholar in Jewish studies, specialising in the field of Jewish education in the talmudic period. This book draws on a representative selection of his writings over a fifty year period, and includes essays on Saadia Gaon and Maimonides, coverage of biblical and talmudic studies, and discussions of the roots of religious anti-Zionism and of the Lubavitch messianic movement in the context of similar movements in Jewish history.

Focusing on the history of Jewish education and linking the Roman destruction of the Jewish state in 70...

This book explores the conflicting perceptions that Christians held of the meaning and significance of Jewish books at the beginning of the 16th century - a time when, following their general expulsion from many countries and territories, there were fewer Jews in western and central Europe than in the previous thousand years. The book tells the story of the so-called "Pfefferkorn affair": a tenacious campaign led by the German Johann Pfefferkorn - previously a Jew and converted to Christianity - to confiscate and burn all Jewish post-biblical literature in the Holy Roman Empire in the years...

Blending the deep traditions of Jewish humanism with modern philosophical expressions, this book argues that Jewish values are not fixed propositions embedded in written form that can be easily handed off from one generation to the next.

Drawing on more than three hundred Hebrew roots, the author shows that Jewish thought employs Hebrew concepts and categories that are altogether distinct from those that characterize the Western speculative tradition. Among the key categories that shape Jewish thought are holiness, divinity, humanity, prayer, responsibility, exile, dwelling, gratitude, and language itself.
While the Hebrew language is central to the investigation, the reader need not have a knowledge of Hebrew in order to follow it. Essential reading for students and scholars of Judaism, this book will also be of value to...

Best-selling book on the Scrolls, updated to reflect current scholarship and recent debates

The premier Dead Sea Scrolls primer ever since its original publication in 1994, James VanderKam's Dead Sea Scrolls Today won the Biblical Archaeology Society's Publication Award in 1995 for the Best Popular Book on Biblical Archaeology. In this expanded and updated edition the book will continue to illuminate the greatest archaeological find in modern times.

While retaining the format, style, and aims of the first edition, the second edition of The Dead...

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls brought to light the richest collection of early Jewish writings ever retrieved from the ancient world, including copies of biblical writings centuries older than other surviving manuscripts. Their gradual publication unleashed a flurry of research and considerable speculation. One such area of speculation concerns the understanding of sexuality in the ancient Jewish world.

William Loader here investigates every document of potential relevance for understanding ancient attitudes towards sexuality, aside from the biblical writings -- and there...