Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity

Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
Author: Karina Martin Hogan
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2017-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0884142078

Engage fourteen essays from an international group of experts There is little direct evidence for formal education in the Bible and in the texts of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. At the same time, pedagogy and character formation are important themes in many of these texts. This book explores the pedagogical purpose of wisdom literature, in which the concept of discipline (Hebrew musar) is closely tied to the acquisition of wisdom. It examines how and why the concept of musar came to be translated as paideia (education, enculturation) in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Septuagint), and how the concept of paideia was deployed by ancient Jewish authors writing in Greek. The different understandings of paideia in wisdom and apocalyptic writings of Second Temple Judaism are this book's primary focus. It also examines how early Christians adapted the concept of paideia, influenced by both the Septuagint and Greco-Roman understandings of this concept. Features A thorough lexical study of the term paideia in the Septuagint Exploration of the relationship of wisdom and Torah in Second Temple Judaism Examination of how Christians developed new forms of pedagogy in competition with Jewish and pagan systems of education

Cultures and Contexts of Jewish Education

Cultures and Contexts of Jewish Education
Author: Barry Chazan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2017-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783319515854

This book examines the history of Jewish education from the Biblical period to the present. It traces how Jews have formally and informally transmitted their culture and worldview over the years, with particular attention to the shift from premodernity to modernity and to the unique opportunities and challenges of contemporary American Jewish education. Its authors combine historical background and insight with educational expertise to provide a robust portrait of the cultures and contexts of Jewish education and address possibilities for the future.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature
Author: Samuel L. Adams
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1119158273

A comprehensive introduction to ancient wisdom literature, with fascinating essays on a broad range of topics. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature is a wide-ranging introduction to the texts, themes, and receptions of the wisdom literature of the Bible and the ancient world. This comprehensive volume brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging voices to offer a variety of perspectives on the “wisdom” biblical books, early Christian and rabbinic literature, and beyond. Varied and engaging essays provide fresh insights on topics of timeless relevance, exploring the distinct features of instructional texts and discussing their interpretation in both antiquity and the modern world. Designed for non-specialists, this accessible volume provides readers with balanced coverage of traditional biblical wisdom texts, including Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes; lesser-known Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom; and African proverbs. The contributors explore topics ranging from scribes and pedagogy in ancient Israel, to representations of biblical wisdom literature in contemporary cinema. Offering readers a fresh and interesting way to engage with wisdom literature, this book: Discusses sapiential books and traditions in various historical and cultural contexts Offers up-to-date discussion on the study of the biblical wisdom books Features essays on the history of interpretation and theological reception Includes essays covering the antecedents and afterlife of the texts Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion series, the Companion to Wisdom Literature is a valuable resource for university, seminary and divinity school students and instructors, scholars and researchers, and general readers with interest in the subject.

Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation

Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation
Author: Alex Fogleman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009377426

Presents a new history of the rise and development of catechesis in Latin Patristic Christianity that foregrounds core questions of knowledge, faith, and teaching. This book focuses on the critical relationship between teaching and epistemology

Before the Bible

Before the Bible
Author: Judith H. Newman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2018-08-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190212225

Before the Bible reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work, but the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible, but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that the key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding this revelatory phenomenon. The book considers the entwinement of prayer and scriptural formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive tradition in accounts of how the Bible came to be.

Lived Wisdom in Jewish Antiquity

Lived Wisdom in Jewish Antiquity
Author: Elisa Uusimäki
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567697983

Moving away from focusing on wisdom as a literary genre, this book delves into the lived, embodied and formative dimensions of wisdom as they are delineated in Jewish sources from the Persian, Hellenistic and early Roman eras. Considering a diverse body of texts beyond later canonical boundaries, the book demonstrates that wisdom features not as an abstract quality, but as something to be performed and exercised at both the individual and community level. The analysis specifically concentrates on notions of a 'wise' person, including the rise of the sage as an exemplary figure. It also looks at how ancestral figures and contemporary teachers are imagined to manifest and practice wisdom, and considers communal portraits of a wise and virtuous life. In so doing, the author demonstrates that the previous focus on wisdom as a category of literature has overshadowed significant questions related to wisdom, behaviour and social life. Jewish wisdom is also contextualized in relation to its wider ancient Mediterranean milieu, making the book valuable for biblical scholars, classicists, scholars of religion and the ancient Near East and theologians.

James among the Classicists

James among the Classicists
Author: Sigurvin Lárus Jónsson
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2021-06-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3647564842

This book gives attention to the language and style of the letter of James, with a hypothesis about its rhetorical purpose in mind. It focuses on what we can learn about the author of James, by reading the text in light of a guiding research question: How does the author establish and assert authority? The letter builds literary authority for a number of purposes, one of which is to address socioeconomic disparity, a major concern for the author. The author of James presents a speech-in-character in the shape of a letter to establish his ethos (Ch. 2), employing vocabulary and style to signal his education implicitly (Ch. 3 & 4) and includes himself in the categories of sage, teacher and exegete explicitly (Ch. 5). From this standpoint, the author can address the rich as equals, rebuke them and admonish both rich and poor to receive God's wisdom (Ch. 6). The comparison with ancient literary criticism shows that the categories at play are the same. The insight that language and ethos are inseparable categories in antiquity provides us with renewed ways to interpret the literary production of early Christianity. Both James and 'the Classicists' present a competing epic in the context of the early imperium, the former with an Israelite piety that is superior to contemporary economic and moral categories and the latter with the supremacy of Greek culture as a foundation for Rome. The letter of James emerges as a document that builds educational ethos as a balance against the rich and powerful, a strategy that calls for a revision of both its rhetoric and socio-economic situation.

The Studia Philonica Annual XXXI, 2019

The Studia Philonica Annual XXXI, 2019
Author: David T. Runia
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0884144208

Studies on Philo and Hellenistic Judaism from experts in the field The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. This volume includes articles on allegory, Platonic interpretations of the law, rhetoric, and Philo’s thoughts on reincarnation. Features: Articles on aspects of Hellenistic Judaism written by scholars from around the world Comprehensive bibliography and book reviews

Jesus and the Nations

Jesus and the Nations
Author: Cedric E. W. Vine
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2022-08-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666732486

Jesus’s command to disciple all the nations in Matt 28:19 has provided a powerful catalyst for cross-cultural mission for the past two thousand years. But what does this command mean in the context of Matthew’s narrative? Cedric E. W. Vine proposes an understanding of Matthean discipleship and mission that builds on Richard Bauckham’s open-audience thesis in The Gospels for All Christians (1998) and his own The Audience of Matthew (2014). Vine argues from a biblical theology perspective that Matthew’s pervasive and consistent application of the nation-directed identities of prophet, righteous person, student-teacher, wise man, and scribe to the followers of Jesus reveals a concern less with defining community boundaries or promoting “church growth” and more with casting a powerful vision of nations transformed through the acceptance of the sovereignty of the risen king. Matthew’s missiological horizon stretches well beyond defending, as suggested by some commentators, an inferred first-century Matthean community in an acrimonious intramural dispute with other Jewish groups. Rather, Matthew prepares his readers, first century and later, through a multifaceted and nuanced theology of discipleship, for participation in a missiological movement that is national in its focus, breathtaking in its scope, eschatological in its significance, and open in its appeal.

Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters

Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters
Author: Matthias Henze
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 670
Release: 2020-11-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0884144828

An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.