The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible

The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible
Author: Hanne Løland Levinson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 1108833659

This book investigates the texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a character expresses a wish to die.

Vast As the Sea

Vast As the Sea
Author: Samuel Hildebrandt
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023
Genre: Bible
ISBN: 1506485499

The poetry of the Old Testament articulates the painful experiences of being human. Vast as the Sea shows how texts like Job, Jeremiah, and the Psalms provide honest and healing expressions for life's struggles. This book is a rich resource for scholars and readers of the Bible, as well as for psychologists and pastoral counselors.

Jonah

Jonah
Author: Rhiannon Graybill
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2023-10-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300274572

An innovative translation and commentary on the book of Jonah by a trio of award-winning scholars The book of Jonah, which tells the outlandish story of a disobedient prophet swallowed by a great fish, is one of the Bible’s best-known narratives. This tale has fascinated readers for millennia and has inspired countless interpretations. This commentary features a new translation of Jonah as well as an introduction outlining the major interpretive issues in the text. The introduction traces the composition history of the book, paying special attention to the psalm in the second chapter; and the authors explore new theories surrounding the time and place where Jonah delivers his message to Nineveh, as well as the city’s act of repentance. In addition to these features, this volume draws on a variety of critical approaches to biblical literature—including affect theory, animal studies, performance criticism, postcolonial criticism, psychological criticism, spatial theory, and trauma theory—to reveal the book’s many interpretive possibilities. An updated treatment of Jonah’s reception history includes analyses of the story in religious traditions, art and literature, and popular culture.

Queering the Prophet

Queering the Prophet
Author: L. Juliana M. Claassens
Publisher: SCM Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2023-10-27
Genre:
ISBN: 0334065151

What does it mean to be a prophet in queer times? Considering first the queerness of the prophet Jonah, this volume then broadens its scope to the queer prophetic in our own time, reflecting on what makes a prophet ‘queer’, and considering how public theology is itself, an example of the queer prophetic. With a broad range of international contributors, this book offers a bold and essential new addition to queer biblical studies literature.

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Vol. Three-Volume Set)

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Vol. Three-Volume Set)
Author: Robert Alter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 2966
Release: 2018-12-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0393292509

A landmark event: the complete Hebrew Bible in the award-winning translation that delivers the stunning literary power of the original. A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

Israel and Judah Redefined

Israel and Judah Redefined
Author: C. L. Crouch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: Bibles
ISBN: 1108473768

Uses migration research, trauma studies, and postcolonial theory to explore the Babylonian exiles effect on Israelite and Judahite identity.

Interested Parties

Interested Parties
Author: David J. A. Clines
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 1995-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567588777

One of the more creative Old Testament scholars of our time, David Clines offers an enjoyable and provocative set of studies on ideology. The title of a keynote essay, 'Why is There a Song of Songs, and What Does It Do to You If You Read It?', hints at the twin focus of the volume: the ideology of the writers, who bring the biblical texts into being, and the ideologies of the readers, who are shaped by the text at the same moment as they are shaping it in their own image. Among the essays are 'The Ten Commandments, Reading from Right to Left'; 'Metacommentating Amos'; 'David the Man: The Construction of Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible'; and 'Psalm 2 and the MLF (Moabite Liberation Front)'.

The Samson Story

The Samson Story
Author: Shaul Bar
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2018-06-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532646496

Love, seduction, betrayal, violence, riddles, and myth all find their place in the biblical story of Samson. Samson is the last of the judges, with 20 percent of the book devoted to him—more than any other judge. From the beginning, Samson is unlike any other judge, which the author suggests when narrating Samson’s birth. Samson is destined, even before his birth, to deliver Israel. He doesn’t lead his people into battle, he acts alone; his battles are personal vendettas. Samson fights with a lion, defeats the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, captures foxes, sets Philistine fields on fire, and carries the Gates of Gaza on his shoulders. So what stands behind these stories? Was Samson a mythological hero like Hercules and Gilgamesh? Like other men in the Hebrew Bible, Samson can’t resist foreign women. Time after time, he follows Philistine women who eventually betray him. Samson is defeated not by physical strength, but by the powers of seduction, making this story a tragedy. Who were these women and how did they defeat Samson? Readers of this volume will rediscover Samson and better understand his achievements and failures. This study will afford a provocative and useful insight into the character of Samson.

The Hebrew Bible, Nationalism and the Origins of Anti-Judaism

The Hebrew Bible, Nationalism and the Origins of Anti-Judaism
Author: David Aberbach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2022-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000708276

In the attempts to unify divided peoples on the basis of a shared past, both historical and mythical, this book illumines aspects of cultural nationalism common since the Middle Ages. As an edited work, the Bible includes texts mostly depicting long-gone historical eras extending over several centuries. Following on from Aberbach’s previous work National Poetry, Empires, and War, this book argues that works of this nature – notably the Mujo-Halil songs in Albania, the Irish stories of Cuchulain, the songs of the Nibelungen in Germany, or the Finnish legends collected in The Kalevala – have an ancient precedent in the Hebrew Bible (to which national literatures often allude and refer), a subject largely neglected in biblical studies. The self-critical element in the Hebrew Bible, common in later national literature, is examined as the basis of later anti-Semitism, as the Bible was not confined to Jews but was adopted in translation by many other national groups. With several dozen original translations from the Hebrew, this book highlights how the Bible influenced and was distorted by later national cultures. Written without jargon, this book is intended for the general reader, but is also an important contribution to the study of the Bible, nationalism, and Jewish history.