Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature

Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature
Author: David S. Vanderhooft
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2013-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1575068672

This volume, in celebration of Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, includes twenty-eight illuminating essays on ancient Near Eastern history and literature, which focus especially on the intersection of these fields. Contributors include one of Machinist’s teachers, several of his students, and numerous colleagues and friends. These essays probe topics for which Machinist’s work has often set new standards. And in the spirit of the honoree and his interests, these comparative studies encompass Babel, Bibel, and more. In them, Assyriologists contend with biblical cruxes and biblicists engage Assyriological research, while classicists and Hittitologists participate with considerations of their respective disciplines within a broad cross-cultural context. The volume is a must for anyone committed to the ongoing comparative study of the ancient Near East, and within that framework, the historical study of the Hebrew Bible.

Judges Hermeneia

Judges Hermeneia
Author: Mark S. Smith
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Total Pages: 924
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0800660625

This groundbreaking volume presents a new translation of the text and detailed interpretation of almost every word or phrase in the book of Judges, drawing from archaeology and iconography, textual versions, biblical parallels, and extrabiblical texts, many never noted before. Archaeology also serves to show how a story of the Iron II period employed visible ruins to narrate supposedly early events from the so-called "period of the Judges." The synchronic analysis for each unit sketches its characters and main themes, as well as other literary dynamics. The diachronic, redactional analysis shows the shifting settings of units as well as their development, commonly due to their inner-textual reception and reinterpretation. The result is a remarkably fresh historical-critical treatment of 1:1-10:5.--Publisher's description.

Min?ah Le-Na?um

Min?ah Le-Na?um
Author: Nahum M. Sarna
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 349
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1850754195

Nahum Sarna's distinctive and original scholarship has taken in a wide range of subject areas from work on Genesis and the Psalms to his Jewish Bible commentary and the English translation of the Ketuvim. At first Assistant Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the 1950s, he was Dora Golding Professor of Bible at Brandeis University from 1965 to his retirement. This collection of 22 essays reflects Professor Sarna's breadth of interests, with contributions from the late Gershon Cohen on the Hebrew Crusade Chronicle and the Ashkenazic tradition; Judah Goldin on Reuben; Moshe Greenberg and Jonas Greenfield on the work of the Jewish Publication Society's Ketuvim translators; and Shemaryahu Talmon on fragments of a Psalms scroll from Masada.

Reading the Song of Songs in a #MeToo Era

Reading the Song of Songs in a #MeToo Era
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2023-06-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004543937

The Song of Songs is the only book of the Bible to privilege the voice of a woman, and its poetry of love and eroticism also bears witness to violence. How do the contemporary #MeToo movement and other movements of protest and accountability renew questions about women, gender, sex, and the problematic of the public at the heart of this ancient poetry? This edited volume seeks to reinvigorate feminist scholarship on the Song by exploring diverse contexts of reading, from Akkadian love lyrics, to Hildegard of Bingen, to Marc Chagall.

The Genesis of Good and Evil

The Genesis of Good and Evil
Author: Mark S. Smith
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1611649005

For centuries, the Garden of Eden story has been a cornerstone for the Christian doctrine of the Fall and original sin. In recent years, many scholars have disputed this understanding of Genesis 3 because it has no words for sin, transgression, disobedience, or punishment. Instead, it is about how the human condition came about. Yet the picture is not so simple. The Genesis of Good and Evil examines how the idea of the Fall developed in Jewish tradition on the eve of Christianity. In the end, the Garden of Eden is a rich study of humans in relation to God that leaves open many questions. One such question is, Does Genesis 3, 4, and 6, taken together, support the Christian doctrine of original sin? Smiths well-informed, close reading of these chapters concludes that it does. In this book, he addresses the many mysterious matters of the Garden story and invites readers to explore questions of their own.

Traditional Techniques in Classical Hebrew Verse

Traditional Techniques in Classical Hebrew Verse
Author: Wilfred G. E. Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 546
Release: 1994-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567598195

Before, during and after the preparation of Classical Hebrew Poetry: A Guide to its Techniques, Wilfred Watson published several articles on Hebrew poetry in a wide range of periodicals. The present volume collects together the most significant of these writings, including a chapter from a book on chiasmus, as well as a few unpublished items. After an opening survey of current work on Hebrew verse the articles cover the following topics: parallelism (including half-line parallelism, previously almost unnoticed), antithesis, word pairs, chiasmus, figurative language and introductions to speech in verse. The last section deals with structural devices and a folktale motif in narrative verse, hyperbole, apostrophe and alliteration. Previously unpublished items are on the contribution of ethnopoetics, from the study of Native American literature to Hebrew narrative verse (a new topic in biblical studies), parallelism in the Song of Songs and a metaphor in Jeremiah. This anthology is intended as a companion volume to Classical Hebrew Poetry. It includes additions and corrections to that book and there are also several indices.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies
Author: Julia M. O'Brien
Publisher:
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2014
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 019983699X

As the first major encyclopedia of its kind, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Gender Studies (OEBGS) is the go-to source for scholars and students undertaking original research in the field. Extending the work of nineteenth and twentieth century feminist scholarship and more recent queer studies, the Encyclopedia seeks to advance the scholarly conversation by systematically exploring the ways in which gender is constructed in the diverse texts, cultures, and readers that constitute "the world of the Bible." With contributions from leading scholars in gender and biblical studies as well as contemporary gender theorists, classicists, archaeologists, and ancient historians, this comprehensive reference work reflects the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the field and traces both historical and modern conceptions of gender and sexuality in the Bible. The two-volume Encyclopedia contains more than 160 entries ranging in length from 1,000 to 10,000 words. Each entry includes bibliographic references and suggestions for further reading, as well as a topical outline and index to aid in research. The OEBGS builds upon the pioneering work of biblically focused gender theorists to help guide and encourage further gendered discussions of the Bible.

Ke-ʻir Netsurah

Ke-ʻir Netsurah
Author: Israel Ephʻal
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004174109

Exploring the military, legal, social and literary aspects of ancient warfare, this study examines the multifaceted nature of the siege phenomenon in the Ancient Near East. The book is based on Akkadian and biblical (and, to lesser degree, Greek, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hittite and Ugaritic) sources as well as on the depictions on reliefs from Assyrian palaces and Egyptian temples. The analysis incorporates lexical study and military thinking and focuses on the technology of warfare and human behavior in a state of emergency. This volume is a co-publication between Brill and The Hebrew University Magnes Press.