Green argues that the Beatitudes in Matthew's version are a carefully constructed poem, exhibiting a number of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry as we know it from the Old Testament; but as certain of these, such as rhyme and alliteration, cannot survive translation, what we have here is an original composition in Greek. This is shown to be no isolated phenomenon in the gospel; a series of texts found at specially significant points in it disclose similar characteristics. The findings cut across conventional source attributions and reveal the creative hand of the evangelist. By studying the individual beatitudes in their relation to each other as revealed by the formal structure, fresh light is thrown upon their meaning and their background in the scriptures of the Old Testament.>

In recent years, Old Testament scholars have come to see that the aesthetic and rhetorical richness of Hebrew poetry goes far beyond simple synonymous, antithetic, and synthetic parallelism. One aspect that has yet to receive sustained treatment is the poetic device known as direct discourse or quotation--the direct citation of a person's speech. Rolf A. Jacobson remedies this lack and makes a significant contribution to Old Testament studies by offering a sustained investigation into the function of direct discourse in the Hebrew Psalter. This leads to a greater understanding both of direct discourse and also of those psalms in which this poetic device occurs.

This study focuses on a reading of Proverbs 19 as satire and argues that it alludes to two points of critique against Solomon: his political policy of socio-economic injustice and his numerous sexual (in)discretions. That Solomon abandoned his divinely proscribed duty only evinces his lack of fear of Yahweh. First, Solomon demonstrates his lack of discernment by an inability to rule with righteousness, justice and equity because of administrative policies that bled the innocent dry of their resources for his own self-aggrandizement. Second, Solomon's sexual behavior reflects his need of Wisdom as the personification of eroticism. The absence of the fear of Yahweh in Solomon prompts the poets reproof in Proverbs 19 that he should resume his proper role of Torah meditation. How the son responds to the decision posed to him remains decidedly open-ended, since satire generally offers no denouement to its plot. Nevertheless, the signs of this satiric poetry intimate the wise king as a royal fool.

An examination of the final form of Hosea within the socio-historical context of Persian period Judah, making use of insights from historical-critical and reader-oriented perspectives. The amalgamation of these two seemingly divergent approaches creates a framework within which the setting and interpretive practices of both the modern critic and the ancient reader(s) can be taken seriously. The resulting examination proposes a reading of Hosea shaped, as far as possible, by the reading conventions and socio-religious concerns of Persian period Judahites.>

Previous attempts to critique the canonical approach of Brevard Childs have remained largely theoretical in nature. One of the weakness of canonical criticism, then, is its failure to have generated new readings of extended biblical passages. Reviewing the hermeneutics and the praxis of Childs's approach, Lyons then turns to the Sodom narrative (Gen 18-19) as a test of a practical exegesis according to Childs' principles, and then to reflect critically upon the reading experience generated. Surprisingly, the canonical reading produced is a wholly new one, centred around the complex, irreducible - even contradictory - request of Abraham for Yahweh to do justice (18:23-25).

This book examines the educated elite in 1 Corinthians through the development, and application, of an ancient education model. The research reads PaulGCOs text within the social world of early Christianity and uses social-scientific criticism in reconstructing a model that is appropriate for first-century Corinth. Pauline scholars have used models to reconstruct elite education but this study highlights their oversight in recognising the relevancy of the Greek Gymnasium for education. Topics are examined in 1 Corinthians to demonstrate where the model advances an understanding of PaulGCOs interaction with the elite Corinthian Christians in the context of community conflict. This study demonstrates the important contribution that this ancient education model makes in interpreting 1 Corinthians in a Graeco-Roman context. This is Volume 271 of JSNTS.

Paul's reading of the Old Testament continues to witness to the significance of reading the Old Testament in a Christian way. This study argues that a theological approach to understanding Paul's appeal to and reading of the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, offers important insights into the ways in which Christians should read the Old Testament and a two-testament canon today. By way of example, this study explores the ways in which Isaiah 40-66's canonical form presents the gospel in miniature with its movement from Israel to Servant to servants. It is subsequently argued that Paul follows this literary movement in his own theological reflection in 2 Corinthians 5:14-6:10. Jesus takes on the unique role and identity of the Servant of Isaiah 40-55, and Paul takes on the role of the servants of the Servant in Isaiah 53-66. From this exegetical exploration conclusions are drawn in the final chapter that seek to apply a term from the history of interpretation to Paul's reading, that is, the plain sense of Scripture. What does an appeal to plain sense broker? And does Paul's reading of the Old Testament look anything like a plain sense reading? Gignilliat concludes that Paul is reading the Old Testament in such a way that the literal sense and its figural potential and capacity are not divorced but are actually organically linked in what can be termed a plain sense reading.

For some years the view has become established that the Book of the Twelve is a systematically structured literary unity. An exegesis which takes the final canonical text seriously undertakes to understand the structure and theological intention of this unity. The papers collected here attempt to reveal significant structures which overarch the individual components. Particular emphasis is placed on the reconstruction of thematic threads which are created when individual prophets take up topics from their predecessors (e.g. Jehovah's Day, conversion, role of the peoples) and intensify them. The papers were written between 1999 and 2002 under the aegis of the Society of Biblical Literature's Working Group on The Formation of the Book of the Twelve.

"The Farewell Discourse" (John 13-17) is an unique and climactic portion of "John's Gospel", which serves as a hinge on which the entire Gospel narrative pivots from Jesus' public ministry to his Passion. Shallow readings of this Discourse often pass over or ignore significant aspects of the text, especially the instruction and preparation Jesus was giving, both in words and actions, to make ready his disciples to continue his mission to the world after his departure. Other readings (notably form-critical) see the text as disarranged and therefore not a coherent whole. A thorough analysis employing the elements of Greco-Roman rhetoric has shown that there is a rhetorical dimension to the Discourse which makes sense of the text as a coherent whole. "The Farewell Discourse" was found to follow a rhetorical arrangement which gives a literary explanation to some assumed form-critical problems, such as the ending at 14:31. Not only does this rhetorical structure give appropriate closure and transition with movement from one topic to another, it does so with a chiastic arrangement of the major topics. Jesus is presented by the evangelist, with his words and actions, defining and modeling what his disciples are to be in their own soon-approaching ministry to the community of believers and to the world. He is shown giving persuasive words of comfort, encouragement, instruction, and motivation to his disciples as he prepares them to continue his mission after his departure.

Among linguistic philosophers, speech act theory has illuminated the fact that uttering a sentence does not merely convey information; it may also involve the performing of an action. The concept of communicative action provides additional tools to the exegetical process as it points the interpreter beyond the assumption that the use of language is merely for descriptive purposes. Language can also have performative and self-involving dimensions. Despite their clear hermeneutical importance, the notions expressed within speech act theory have been generally neglected by biblical interpreters. The few who have applied speech act theory to the OT typically subsume the discipline into an eclectic type of literary/rhetorical criticism. Such an approach, though, tends to discount the distinctive notions expressed by theoreticians. This dissertation presents the basic philosophical concepts of speech act theory in order to accurately implement them alongside other interpretive tools. The above analysis leads to applying these concepts to "Isaiah" 41:21-29, 49:1-6, 50:4-10, and 52:13-53:12. These four sections intricately function within the overall prophetic strategy of chapters 40-55: the call to return or turn to Yahweh. The way these chapters describe the nature of this return is for the reader to forsake sin, acknowledge and confess Yahweh as God alone. The first passage represents the basic concerns of chapters 40-48 and specifically Jacob-Israel's deliverance from Babylon through Yahweh's Cyrus illocutionary act. The final three passages represent the servant leitmotif running throughout the chapters and implore the reader through self-involvement to embrace the role of Yahweh's servant.

An enigmatic collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, the 'Gospel of Thomas' was discovered in the sands of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in the 1940's. Since its discovery, scholars and the public alike have been intrigued to know what the Gospel says and what light it sheds on the formation of early Christianity. In Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, April DeConick argued that the gospel was a 'rolling corpus, ' a book of sayings that grew over time, beginning as a simple written gospel containing oracles of the prophet Jesus. As the community faced various crises and constituency changes, including the delay of the Eschaton and the need to accommodate Gentiles within the group, its traditions were reinterpreted and the sayings in their gospel updated, accommodating the present experiences of the community. Here, DeConick provides a new English translation of the entire Gospel of Thomas, which includes the original 'kernel' of the Gospel and all the sayings. Whilst most other translations are of the Coptic text with only occasional reference to the Greek fragment variants, this translation integrates the Greek and offers new solutions to complete the lacunae. Gospel are also included. This is volume 287 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series and is part of the Early Christianity in Context series

Sicker asserts that the Mosaic canon, the Pentateuch, is first and foremost a library of essentially political teachings and documents, and that the first eleven chapters of the book of "Genesis" set forth in essence a general Mosaic political philosophy. These writings take a unique mythopoeic approach to the construction of a normative political theory intended to undergird the idea of a mutual covenant between God and the people of Israel that is to be realized in history in the creation of the ideal society. It is with the elaboration of the political ideas reflected in these early chapters of "Genesis" that this book is concerned.

For the modern reader, the biblical texts should be understood as postulating some basic ideas of Mosaic moral and political philosophy that, in Sicker's view, continue to be applicable in contemporary times. First, man is endowed with free will, however constrained by circumstances it may be, and with the intellect to govern and direct it in appropriate paths. Accordingly, he is individually responsible for his actions and must be held accountable for them. Second, man has a necessary relation to God whether he wishes it or not. Prudence alone will therefore dictate that compliance with divine precept is in man's best interest. Third, the notion that man can create a moral society without reference to God is a deceptive illusion. Man's ability to rationalize even his most outrageous behavior clearly indicates the need for an unimpeachable source and standard of moral authority. Fourth, until all men accept the preceding principles, the idea of a universal state is both dangerous and counterproductive. In the 20th century, we have witnessed two different attempts to create such a world state, both of which produced totalitarian monstrosities. Fifth, individualism as a social philosophy tends to be destructive of traditional values and must be tempered by the idea of communal responsibility. A survey of particular interest to scholars, researchers, and students interested in Jewish history, political thought, and the Old Testament.

The anthropological approach to the expulsion of the foreign women from the post-exilic community argues that it was the result of a witch-hunt. Its comparative approach notes that the community responded to its weak social boundaries in the same fashion as societies with similar social weaknesses. This book argues that the post-exilic community's decision to expel the foreign women in its midst was the direct result of the community's inability to enforce a common morality among its members. This anthropological approach to the expulsion shows how other societies with weak social moralities tend to react with witch-hunts, and it suggests that the expulsion in Ezra 9-10 was precisely such an activity. It concludes with an examination of the political and economic forces that could have eroded the social morality of the community.

'[W]hen they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost (phantasma), and cried out; for they all saw him, and were terrified' (Mark 6:49, RSV). There is a growing awareness among biblical scholars and others of the potential value of modern and postmodern fantasy theory for the study of biblical texts. Following theorists such as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gilles Deleuze (among others), we understand the fantastic as the deconstruction of literary realism. The fantastic arises from the text's resistance to understanding; the "meaning" of the fantastic text is not its reference to the primary world of consensus reality but rather a fundamental undecidability of reference. The fantastic is also a point at which ancient and contemporary texts (including books, movies, and TV shows) resonate with one another, sometimes in surprising ways, and this resonance plays a large part in my argument. Mark and its afterlives "translate" one another, in the sense that Walter Benjamin speaks of the tangential point at which the original text and its translation touch one another, not a transfer of understood meaning but rather a point at which what Benjamin called "pure language" becomes apparent. Mark has always been the most "difficult" of the canonical gospels, the one that requires the greatest amount of hermeneutical gymnastics from its commentators. Its beginning in media res, its disconcerting ending at 16:8, its multiple endings, the "messianic secret," Jesus's tensions with his disciples and family - these are just some of the more obvious of the and many troublesome features that distinguish Mark from the other biblical gospels. If there had not been two other gospels (Matthew and Luke) that were clearly similar to Mark but also much more attractive to Christian belief, it seems likely that Mark, like the gospels of Thomas and Peter, would not have been accepted into the canon. Reading Mark as fantasy does not "solve" any of these problems, but it does place them in a very different context, one in which they are no longer "problems," but in which there are different problems. A fantastical reading of the gospel of Mark is not the only correct understanding of this text, but rather one possibility that may have considerable appeal and value in the contemporary world. This fantastic reading is a "reading from the outside," inspired by the parable "theory" of Isaiah 6:9-10 and Mark 4:11-12: "for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand." Reading from the outside counters a widespread belief that only those within the faith community can properly understand the scriptures. It is the "stupid" reading of those who do not share institutionalized understandings passed down through catechisms and creeds, i.e., through the dominant ideology of the churches.

The first comprehensive study of Scottish religious imperialism in the Middle East highly topical in the light of parallels with American religious imperialism in the region has interdisciplinary importance and appeal Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home portrays the Scottish missions to Palestine carried out by Presbyterian churches. These missions had as their stated aim the conversion of Jews to Protestantism, but also attempted to 'convert' other Christians and Muslims. Marten discusses the missions to Damascus, Aleppo, Tiberias, Safad, Hebron and Jaffa, and locates the missionaries in their religious, social, national and imperial contexts. He describes the three main methods of the missionaries' work - confrontation, education and medicine - as well as the ways in which these were communicated to the supporting constituency in Scotland. Michael Marten was formerly a graduate student in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh, and now teaches at SOAS.