Michelle Levine
The biblical commentary of the foremost thirteenth-century Spanish exegete, Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides), on the stories of Genesis, provides a penetrating analysis of the Bible’s diverse literary strategies of characterization. This volume applies modern literary scholarship to investigate his insights into the underlying poetic principles of characterization in the Bible. Modern readers will find that the literary perceptions and stimulating readings of Nahmanides open up the world of biblical narrative in innovative ways.
John F. Finamore and John M. Dillon
Iamblichus (245–325), successor to Plotinus and Porphyry, brought a new religiosity to Neoplatonism. His theory of the soul is at the heart of his philosophical system. This edition of the fragments of Iamblichus’ major work on the soul, De Anima, is accompanied by the first English translation of the work and a commentary that explains the philosophical background and Iamblichus’ doctrine of the soul.
Natalio Fernández Marcos and Wilfred G. E. Watson
This translation of the second—revised and expanded—Spanish edition is a comprehensive introduction to the Septuagint and to other Greek versions of the Bible. It will prove particularly useful to biblical scholars and students of theology, ancient history, philology, and to those interested in the history of Judaism and the origins of Christianity.
Henning Graf Reventlow, Leo G. Perdue (Translator)
In this volume, the first of four on the History of Biblical Interpretation, readers will discover how the earliest interpreters of the Bible made the Scriptures come alive for their times—within the contexts and under the influences of Hellenism, Stoicism, and Platonism, as well as the interpretive methods developed in Alexandria. .
Henning Graf Reventlow, James O. Duke (Translator)
Volume 2 of History of Biblical Interpretation deals with the most extensive period under examination in this four-volume set. It begins in Asia Minor in the late fourth century with Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia, the founder of a school of interpretation that sought to accentuate the literal meaning of the Bible and thereby stood apart from ancient tradition. It ends with another outsider, a thousand years later in England, who in terms of the presuppositions of his thought stood at the end of an era: John Wyclif. In between these two interpreters, this volume presents the history of biblical interpretation from late antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages.
W. Benjamin Henry
On Death, by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, is among the most significant philosophical treatments of the theme surviving from the Greco-Roman world. This edition contains the Greek text, newly reconstituted with the help of the infrared imaging technology that has revolutionized the study of Philodemus’s works in the twenty-first century, and completely translated into English for the first time.
Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Tina Pippin
To explore biblical mothers and their relationships with their daughters and sons, the contributors to this volume participate in a comparative analysis between biblical mothers and mothers in popular media, history, literature, and the arts. The diversity of methods they employ prompts a rich discussion on the deconstruction of motherhood, offering new ways of envisioning both biblical and contemporary motherhood.
Samuel I. Thomas
This volume provides a new interpretation of the functions of “mystery” language and secrecy in the Qumran scrolls. The texts preserved and composed at Qumran by the apocalyptic group known as the Yahad display an interest in revelation, interpretation, and ritual practice, and attest to the active cultivation of esoteric arts such as astrology and astronomy, physiognomy, and therapeutic “magic.” The “Mysteries” of Qumran offers an in-depth semantic analysis of relevant terminology and integrates social-scientific and intellectual-history approaches in focusing on an important motif in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Joel M. LeMon and Kent Harold Richards, editors
As the field of biblical studies expands to accommodate new modes of inquiry, scholars are increasingly aware of the need for methodological clarity. David L. Petersen’s teaching, research, and service to the guild are marked by a commitment to such clarity. Thus, in honor of Petersen’s work, a cohort of distinguished colleagues presents this volume as an authoritative and up-to-date handbook of methods in Hebrew Bible scholarship.
Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, Tom Thatcher, editors
This groundbreaking volume draws together an international group of leading biblical scholars to consider one of the most controversial religious topics in the modern era: Is the Gospel of John—the most theological and distinctive among the four canonical Gospels—historical or not? If not, why does John alone among the Gospels claim eyewitness connections to Jesus? If so, why is so much of John’s material unique to John? Using various methodologies and addressing key historical issues in John, these essays advance the critical inquiry into Gospel historiography and John’s place within it, leading to an impressive consensus and convergences along the way.
Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather E. Weir, editors
In this volume, the contributions of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century women—including Arcangela Tarabotti, Aemelia Lanyer, and Josephine Butler—are addressed in their historical and cultural contexts. Each of these recovered authors worked to liberate women from interpretations of the Bible that proved oppressive to them. Leading feminist biblical scholars assess the works of these forerunners, or protofeminists, in light of contemporary feminist approaches, and the collection as a whole illustrates the significance of these neglected works for reception history, biblical studies, and women’s studies.
Scott B. Noegel and Gary A. Rendsburg
This monograph includes four lengthy studies on the Song of Songs, which together identify the northern dialect of the poetry, focus on the literary devices of alliteration and variation, and propose that the composition is akin to medieval Arabic poetic genres, aimed at critiquing the king and his court. The authors conclude that the poem was written during the period of the two monarchies, probably circa 900 B.C.E., somewhere in northern Israel, with the goal of censuring King Solomon and his descendants on the throne in Jerusalem.
David A. Bernat
The first and only full-length scholarly study of circumcision in the Hebrew Bible, this volume offers new and important insights into the biblical idea of covenant and into core aspects of the Torah’s views on God, ritual, and Israelite destiny. Sign of the Covenant will be a key reference work for anyone looking at circumcision in any culture, and particularly for students of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity.
John M. Dillon and Wolfgang Polleichtner
The nineteen philosophical letters of Iamblichus, which are translated into English here for the first time, address such topics as providence, fate, concord, marriage, bringing up children, ingratitude, music, and the cardinal virtues. The letters reflect the concerns of popular moral philosophy and illustrate the more public aspects of Iamblichus's philosophy. This volume will be of interest to students of late antiquity, of Neoplatonic philosophy, and of early Christianity.
Robert K. Ritner
This volume, the first extensive collection of Third Intermediate Period inscriptions in any language, includes the primary sources for the history, society, and religion of Egypt during this complicated period, when Egypt was ruled by Libyan and Nubian dynasties and had occasional relations with Judah and the encroaching, and finally invading, Assyrian Empire. It includes the most significant texts of all genres, newly translated and revised.
Ilaria Ramelli, translated by David Konstan
In this volume, all of Hierocles’ surviving works are translated into English for the first time, with the original Greek and a facing English translation: the Elements of Ethics, preserved on papyrus, along with all fragments and excerpts from the treatise On Duties, collected by Stobaeus in the fifth century C.E. and dealing mainly with social relationships, marriage, household, and family.
Harry A. Hoffner Jr.
This is the first book-length collection in English of letters from the ancient kingdom of the Hittites. Letters containing correspondence between kings and their foreign peers, between kings and their officials in the provinces, and between these officials themselves reveal rich details of provincial administration, the relationships and duties of the officials, and tantalizing glimpses of their private lives.
Jerome Murphy-O’Connor
This classic work, now expanded and updated with a fifty-two-page Afterword, presents Paul’s pastoral anthropology in terms of his own thought, not alien categories imposed upon him. After examining in part 1 the New Testament witness about Jesus the Christ to discover what humans can be and should be (anthropology), Murphy-O’Connor turns his attention in part 2 to the human condition within society: under sin; alienated from God and the world; and egocentric. Part 3 then discusses life in the body of Christ—the Christian community—as the authentic existence that overcomes egocentric alienation in the true freedom of the mind of Christ.
John T. Fitzgerald, Fika J. van Rensburg, and Herrie F. van Rooy, editors
Animosity in its various forms, including enmity, war, homicide, domestic violence, religious hostility, and retaliation, is a perennial problem that has plagued every form of interpersonal and international relationship since the dawn of human existence. The essays in this volume, offering perspectives from three continents, examine how animosity is understood and presented in the biblical text and its historical and literary contexts.
David G. Burke, editor
In their elegant but often overlooked preface to the King James Bible, the translators asserted, “Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.” In celebration of the work of these translators and the fruit of their labors, the authors of this volume, representing a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, examine the cultural and religious monument that is the King James Bible.
E. Earle Ellis
Do we really know who wrote the New Testament documents? Do we really know when they were written? Scholars have long debated these fundamental questions. This volume identifies and investigates literary traditions and their implications for the authorship and dating of the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament.
Hindy Najman
This book critiques the terms “pseudepigraphy” and “rewritten Bible,” which presuppose conceptions of authentic attribution and textual fidelity foreign to ancient Judaism, and instead develops the concept of a discourse whose creativity and authority depend on repeated returns to the exemplary figure and experience of a founder.
Maxine L. Grossman
This study offers an alternative approach to the historiography of ancient Jewish sectarianism, acknowledging the presence of competing claims to shared traditions and the potential for changes in textual interpretation over time or among diverse communities.
Emanuel Tov
This monograph is written in the form of a handbook on the scribal features of the texts found in the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea Scrolls.The findings have major implications for the study of the scrolls and the understanding of their relationship to scribal traditions in Israel and elsewhere.
Stanley E. Porter
Since the time of F. C. Baur and right up to the present, scholars have been intrigued by the figures who sometimes lurk in the shadows of Paul’s writings or who sometimes emerge in full force to confront him. This volume includes essays that ask pertinent questions regarding Paul and his opponents and that address some of the major current theories. $32.95
Stanley E. Porter
This volume includes papers that raise a variety of questions regarding the canon of the Pauline writings. $32.95
BROWN JUDAIC STUDIES
Zvi Jonathan Kaplan
This book examines the development of Jewish positions on the relationship between church and state in France from the French Revolution until the 1905 law of separation.
David G. Rice and John E. Stambaugh
Since its initial publication in 1979, Sources for the Study of Greek Religion has become an essential classroom resource in the field of classical studies. The Society of Biblical Literature is pleased to present a corrected edition—in a new, attractive, and electronic-friendly format—with hopes that it will inspire a new generation of classicists and religious historians.
Mark K. George
The narratives about Israel’s tabernacle are neither a building blueprint nor simply a Priestly conceit securing priestly prominence in Israel. Using a spatial poetics to reexamine these narratives, George argues that the Priestly writers encode a particular understanding of Israel’s identity and self-understanding in tabernacle space.
Delbert Burkett
This work examines three disputed issues in the study of Q: its existence; its unity as a document; and the plurality of its wording. It evaluates the arguments for and against the existence of Q and concludes that some form of the Q hypothesis is necessary.
The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400
Ramsay MacMullen
The author uses excavation reports about hundreds of churches of the fourth century to show what worshipers did in them and in the cemeteries where most of them were built. What emerges, in this richly illustrated work, is a religion that ordinary Christians, by far the majority, practiced in a different and largely forgotten second church. The picture fits with textual evidence that has been often misunderstood or little noticed.
Randall C. Bailey, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia, editors
Critics from three major racial/ethnic minority communities in the United States focus on the problematic of race and ethnicity in the Bible and in contemporary biblical interpretation. With keen eyes on both ancient text and contemporary context, contributors pay close attention to how racial/ethnic dynamics intersect with other differential relations of power such as gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism.
This book offers a comprehensive study of the Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War. In a departure from the classical proposal that the Sicarii were an armed and fanatical off-shoot of the Zealots, this work concludes that from a historical perspective, “Sicarii” was a somewhat fluid term used to describe Jews of the Judean revolt who were associated with acts of violence against their own people for religious/political ends.