Canonicity, Setting, Wisdom in the Deuterocanonicals

Canonicity, Setting, Wisdom in the Deuterocanonicals
Author: Géza G. Xeravits
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2014-09-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110392542

The volume publishes papers read at the tenth International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, Budapest, 2013. The authors explore various aspects of this literature, with pre-eminent emphasis on their relation to diverse early Jewish texts and traditions; their reactions on Hellenism; and the way they treated as a canonical collection within their history of interpretation.

The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha

The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha
Author: Gerbern S. Oegema
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190689668

The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha addresses the Old Testament Apocrypha, known to be important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches, non-canonical for other churches, and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, essays focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook acts as an authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time carves out future directions of study. This Handbook offers an overview of the various Apocrypha and relevant topics related to them by presenting updated research on each individual apocryphal text in historical context, from the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods to the early Roman era. The essays provided here examine the place of the Apocrypha in the context of Early Judaism, the relationship between the Apocrypha and texts that came to be canonized, the relationship between the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, Qumran, the Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, as well as their reception history in the Western world. Several chapters address overarching themes, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, theology and ethics, gender and the role of women, and sexual ethics.

Notions of Time in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Notions of Time in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Author: Stefan Beyerle
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 706
Release: 2021-12-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110705478

A comprehensive investigation of notions of "time" in deuterocanonical and cognate literature, from the ancient Jewish up to the early Christian eras, requires further scholarship. The aim of this collection of articles is to contribute to a better understanding of "time" in deuterocanonical literature and pseudepigrapha, especially in Second Temple Judaism, and to provide criteria for concepts of time in wisdom literature, apocalypticism, Jewish and early Christian historiography and in Rabbinic religiosity. Essays in this volume, representing the proceedings of a conference of the "International Society for the Study of Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature" in July 2019 at Greifswald, discuss concepts and terminologies of "time", stemming from novellas like the book of Tobit, from exhortations for the wise like Ben Sira, from an apocalyptic time table in 4 Ezra, the book of Giants or Daniel, and early Christian and Rabbinic compositions. The volume consists of four chapters that represent different approaches or hermeneutics of "time:" I. Axial Ages: The Construction of Time as "History", II. The Construction of Time: Particular Reifications, III. Terms of Time and Space, IV. The Construction of Apocalyptic Time. Scholars and students of ancient Jewish and Christian religious history will find in this volume orientation with regard to an important but multifaceted and sometimes disparate topic.

Various Aspects of Worship in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Various Aspects of Worship in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Author: Géza G. Xeravits
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110466562

The volume contains papers read at the International Conference of the ISDCL, held in Budapest in 2015. The contributors explore various aspects of worship as reflected in the literature of Judaism from the Second Temple period to Late Antiquity. The volume provides a fresh reading of various crucial issues especially within Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Rabbinic literature, Gnostic traditions, and the emerging synagogue. The papers analyse texts and artefacts that reveal how various groups of Judaism understood the concept of worship—a pre-eminent form of expressing religious identity and interpreting fundamental traditions.

Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Author: Jeremy Corley
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-05-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 311041693X

This volume explores the fundamentals of intertextual methodology and summarizes recent scholarship on studies of intertextuality in the deuterocanonical books. The essays engage in comparison and analysis of text groups and motifs between canonical, deuterocanonical and non-biblical texts. Moreover, the book pays close attention to non-literary relationships between different traditions, a new feature of research in intertextuality.

Between Wisdom and Torah

Between Wisdom and Torah
Author: Jiseong James Kwon
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2023-05-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3111069575

Previous scholars have largely approached Wisdom and Torah in the Second Temple Period through a type of reception history, whereby the two concepts have been understood as signifiers of independent, earlier “biblical” streams of tradition that later came together in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, largely under the process of a so-called “torahization” of wisdom. Recent studies critiquing the nature of wisdom and wisdom literature as operative categories for understanding scribal cultures in early Judaism, as well as newer approaches to conceptualizing Torah and authorizing-compositional practices related to the Pentateuchal texts, however, have challenged the foundations on which the previous models of Wisdom and Torah rested. This volume, therefore, brings together several essays that aim to reexamine and rethink the ways we can describe the developments of texts categorized as “Wisdom” that proliferated during the Second Temple Period and whose contents point to an engagement with a “Torah” discourse. By asking anew the question of whether “Wisdom” was transformed by/into “Torah” during this period, this volume offers reformulations on the discursive space between Wisdom and Torah through analyzing new identifications, confluences, and transformations.

Turning Proverbs towards Torah: an Analysis of 4Q525

Turning Proverbs towards Torah: an Analysis of 4Q525
Author: Elisa Uusimäki
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2016-05-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004313419

In Turning Proverbs towards Torah, Elisa Uusimäki offers the first monograph on the early Jewish wisdom text 4Q525 from Qumran. Following the reconstruction of the fragmentary manuscript, Uusimäki analyses the text with a focus on the reception and renewal of the Proverbs tradition and the ways in which 4Q525 illustrates aspects of Jewish pedagogy in the late Second Temple period. She argues that the author was inspired by Proverbs 1-9 but sought to demonstrate that true wisdom is found in the concept of torah. He also weaved dualistic elements and eschatological ideas into the wisdom frame. The author's intention, Uusimäki argues, is to form the audience spiritually, encouraging it to trust in divine protection and blessings that are bestowed upon the pious.

Understanding Texts in Early Judaism

Understanding Texts in Early Judaism
Author: József Zsengellér
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2022-03-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110768534

This volume remembers Géza Xeravits, a well known scholar of deuterocanonical and Qumran literature. The volume is divided into four sections according to his scholarly work and interest. Contributions in the first part deal with Old Testament and related issues (Thomas Hiecke, Stefan Beyerle, and Mattew Goff). The second section is about the Dead Sea Scrolls (John J, Collins, John Kampen, Peter Porzig, Eibert Tigchelaar, Balázs Tamási and Réka Esztári). The largest part is the forth on deuterocanonica (Beate Ego, Lucas Brum Teixteira, Fancis Macatangay, Tobias Nicklas, Maria Brutti, Nuria, Chalduch-Benages, Panc Beentjes, Ben Wright, Otto Mulder, Angelo Passaro, Friedrich Reiterer, Severino Bussino, Jeremy Corley and JiSeong Kwong). The third section deals with some cognate literature (József Zsengellér and Karin Schöpflin). The last section about the Ancient Synagogue has the paper of Anders Kloostergaard Petersen. Some hot topics are discussed, for example the Two spirits in Qumran, the cathegorization of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the authorship and antropology of Ben Sira, and the angelology of Vitae Prophetarum.

Wisdom Commentary: Tobit

Wisdom Commentary: Tobit
Author: Michele Murray
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 081468114X

Blindness by bird excrement, seven husbands murdered by a love-sick demon, a father with the corpses of his sons-in-law interred in the backyard, and a magical fish. These farcical elements make the book of Tobit a striking work of humorous fiction in a long Jewish tradition of storytelling. But it is more than just an entertaining read. We might well laugh, but we cannot laugh too hard, for we also sympathize with the characters’ sincere struggles to understand God’s plan for their lives. This commentary considers the book of Tobit through a specifically feminist lens, discoursing on topics fundamental to the human experience in the story, such as grief, death, family relationships, belonging to a minority community, disability issues, and contending with why bad things happen to good people.

Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John

Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John
Author: Dustin R. Smith
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2024-04-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

This volume contends that the Gospel of John presents the most thorough and robust Wisdom Christology of all the New Testament books. Wisdom Christology—the christological concept that applies the roles, characteristics, and functions of God’s personified wisdom to the man Jesus Christ—is displayed to be skillfully interwoven throughout all twenty-one chapters of the Fourth Gospel, starting with the famous prologue. In response to the prevailing tendency among interpreters to project postbiblical understandings of Jesus from the fourth- and fifth-century church councils back into the Gospel of John, this volume shows that a more fitting context emerges from Jewish Wisdom literature. By situating the Johannine Jesus in his first-century Jewish context, readers can appreciate John’s commitment to monotheism and Jesus’ role as the Father’s highly empowered human agent, fully embodying Lady Wisdom.