This book offers unique insights into the Psalms and sketches a variety of interpretive possibilities. The exposition of Psalm texts against the background of their different historical and/or cultic settings in the ancient Near East sets a firm basis for their reapplication in the liturgy today. In the history of interpretation the Psalms have also proven themselves to be natural texts for liturgical use. This scholarly effort thus portrays in various ways the importance of the Psalms for their reviving interpretation and application in the liturgy. Contributors include: Marcel Bernhard, Georg P. Braulik, Brian Doyle, Alphonso Groenewald, Dirk J. Human, Jorg Jeremias, Louis C. Joner, Jurie H. le Roux, Eckhart Otto, Nick A. Schuman, Stephanus D. Snyman, Hans-Ulrich Steymans, Pieter M. Venler and Cas J.A. Vos. JSOTS 410

An important new addition to the "International Critical Commentary" series, "John 1-4" brings together all the relevant aids to exegesis, enabling scholars obtain complete knowledge and understanding of this Old Testament book.For over one hundred years, the "International Critical Commentary" has had a special place amongst works on the Bible. This new volume on "John" brings together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary and theological - to enable the scholar to have a complete knowledge and understanding of this old testament book. McHugh incorporates new evidence available in the field and applies new methods of studies. No uniform theological or critical approach to the text is taken.

Since at least the 19th century Hebrew Bible scholarship has traditionally seen priests and prophets as natural opponents, with different social spheres and worldviews. In recent years several studies have started to question this perspective. The Priests in the Prophets examines how the priests are portrayed in the Latter Prophets and analyzes the relationship between priests and prophets. The contributors also provide insights into the place of priests, prophets, and some other religious specialists in Israelite and Judean society in pre-exilic and post-exilic times.

May 2003 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Wesley. This is a beautifully written biography intended for a general audience. While not at all hagiographical, the book leads one to admire Wesley immensely. He traveled throughout the British Isles more than anyone in history. Reviled early on during his plein air evangelical crusades, he became deeply loved in old age by all sectors of the population. While the book has a slightly British cast to it (which is unavoidable given the extent of Wesley's travels throughout Britain), it gives adequate coverage to his period in the American colonies.

The prophets Haggai and Zechariah, near contemporaries, were active at a critical period in Israel's history. The recently restored Jerusalem community had come through national downfall and exile. Its religious and sociopolitical identity in the Persian Empire had to be established. This volume offers a thematic study of the prophetic response to that situation. The prophets, their status and their styles of prophecy are compared with those of their predecessors, as are their attitudes towards Israel's religious traditions. Their theological understanding of proper leadership, divine judgment, and Israel's relationship to other nations is compared with the developing theology of the classical prophets. The purpose is to discover whether Haggai, Zechariah and their tradents demonstrate continuity with, or divergence from, the prophetic traditions in which they stood. This study concludes that Haggai is a traditionalist, while Zechariah emerges as an innovative and radical theologian ahead of his time.

It has often been argued that Zerubbabel, the Jewish governor of Yehud at the time of the rebuilding of the temple (late 6th century BCE), was viewed by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah as the new king in the line of David. In this new study, Rose offers a contrary proposal for the interpretation of the oracles in Haggai 2 and Zechariah 3 and 6. He traces their background in the pre-exilic prophets, pays special attention to often neglected details of semantics and metaphor, and concludes that neither Haggai nor Zechariah designated Zerubbabel as the new king in Jerusalem. Instead, the oracles in Zechariah 3 and 6 should be seen as fully messianic.>

This comprehensive Companion to the Hebrew Bible offers a broad overview and survey of Old Testament study. It consists of newly commissioned articles from an impressive range of top international Old Testament scholars, from the UK, Europe, Canada and the US. The history, archaeology, theology, sociology and ancient Near Eastern context of the Hebrew Bible are all given considerable attention, and by addressing questions of methodology and interpretation the Companion also introduces readers to important issues in the academic study of the Old Testament.The articles are written so as to be accessible to non-specialists whilst also of interest to scholars, since the contributors articulate their own position on their subject. The volume as a whole is introduced by an editorial overview of the discipline, providing the reader with a guide to the interconnections between individual articles. This Companion is an ideal tool for students, not just for use on one course, but over several years of study.

The international conference held in Limerick, Ireland, in May 2005 produced far more than the usual collection of loosely related papers. Rather, this volume from the 17 contributors demarcates and organizes a whole field, serving as an indispensable introduction to intertextuality in general, and as an original examination of the topic in relation to the New Testament epistles. CONTENTS Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis R. MacDonald and Stanley E. Porter Introduction: Tracing the Development of the Epistles: The Potential and the Problem PART I. ASPECTS OF THEORY, PRACTICE AND RELATED RESEARCH Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher Intertextuality: Between Literary Theory and Text Analysis Steve Moyise Intertextuality, Historical Criticism and Deconstruction Peter Phillips Biblical Studies and Intertextuality: Should the Work of Genette and Eco Broaden our Horizons? Erkki Koskenniemi Josephus and Greek Poets Jon Paulien Elusive Allusions in the Apocalypse: Two Decades of Research into John's Use of the Old Testament PART II. FROM THE OT TO THE EPISTLES Thomas L. Brodie The Triple Intertextuality of the Epistles. Introduction Lukas Bormann Triple Intertextuality in Philippians Stanley E. Porter Further Comments on the Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament PART III. FROM EPISTLE TO EPISTLE Annette Merz The Fictitious Self-Exposition of Paul: How Might Intertextual Theory Suggest a Reformulation of the Hermeneutics of Pseudepigraphy? Hanna Roose 2 Thessalonians as Pseudepigraphic Reading Instruction for 1 Thessalonians: Methodological Implications and Exemplary Illustration of an Intertextual Concept J. Michael Gilchrist Intertextuality and the Pseudonymity of 2 Thessalonians Outi Leppa 2 Thessalonians among the Pauline Letters: Tracing the Literary Links between 2 Thessalonians and Other Pauline Epistles David J. Clark Structural Similarities in 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Comparative Discourse Anatomy IV. FROM EPISTLE TO NARRATIVE (GOSPEL/ACTS) Dennis R. MacDonald A Categorization of Antetextuality in the Gospels and Acts: A Case For Luke's Imitation of Plato and Xenophon to Depict Paul as a Christian Socrates Paul Elbert Possible Literary Links between Luke-Acts and Pauline Letters Regarding Spirit-Language Heikki Leppa Reading Galatians with and without the Book of Acts Mike Sommer A Better Class of Enemy: Opposition and Dependence in the Johannine Writings Thomas L. Brodie, Dennis R. MacDonald, Stanley E. Porter Problems Of Method: Suggested Guidelines

Writing in an accessible and anecdotal style, Tom Wright helps us to approach the rich and many-sided story of the book of Acts. Wright shows how the book builds on Luke's gospel, laying out the continuing work and teaching of the now risen and ascended Jesus in the power of the Spirit. His writing captures the vivid way in which Luke's work draws us all into the story, while leaving the ending open and challenging, inviting Christians today to pick up and carry on the story as we in turn live our lives in the service of Jesus.

Past scholarship on the prison-escapes in the Acts of the Apostles has tended to focus on lexical similarities to Euripides' Bacchae, going so far as to argue for direct literary dependence. Moving beyond such explanations, the present study argues that miraculous prison-escape was a central event in a traditional and culturally significant story about the introduction and foundation of cults - a story discernable in the Bacchae and other ancient texts. When the mythic quality and cultural diffusion of the prison-escape narratives are taken into account, the resemblance of Lukan and Dionysian narrative episodes is seen to depend less on specific literary borrowing, and more on shared familiarity with cultural discourses involving the legitimating portrayal of new cults in the ancient world.

Are early Irish stories influenced by the Bible or transcriptions of pre-Christian Celtic lore? Layzer explores the practical and theoretical difficulties of determining 'influence' in ancient writing, and the relationship between the oral and the written, literacy and literature and the disciplines of Irish Studies and Biblical Studies.

This original and unusual book investigates a continuing Johannine apocalyptic tradition, represented in three strange Greek texts that are also linked to a Coptic manuscript. None of the Greek texts has been published in recent years, and they have never been published together or associated in studies of Christian apocrypha. John Court, well known for his studies on Revelation, supplies the text of the Greek manuscripts, with English translations, introductions and detailed explanatory notes that set the texts and their ideas in the context of Christian views on the future and the afterlife.>

The papers in this volume revolve around the history of the influence exerted by the person of Moses and the traditions associated with him. They deal not only with the function of the figure of Moses in the Pentateuch, the salvation in the Red Sea and the final day of Mosesa (TM) life, but also with the way Moses was received in the Deuteronomic history, the Psalms, the Book of Jeremiah, the Septuagint, in Qumran, early Jewish extra-biblical literature, the New Testament and the Early Church.

Rhetoric ad Social Justice in Isaiah applies a literary methodology to the book of Isaiah in order critically to explore the nature and sources of the social justice encoded in the world created by the text. After a close reading of Isaiah 1: 16, 17, Gray establishes grounds for a trajectory to Isaiah 58, preparatory to examining if it offers a deepening of the concept of social justice in the Isaianic corpus. Gray raises the issue of divine reliability to assess the impact on the theme of social justice of the rhetoric of universal punishment by the divine/prophetic voice. He evaluates the ways the stark Isaianic dichotomy between reliance on God and anything of human origin is affected by trust in God being destabilized: if trust in God is demonstrated to be difficult on account of legitimate doubts about divine justice, then the way is opened for retaining an active human role in the search for justice. Gray demonstrates the ways that social justice attains primacy in Isaiah, the ways that humanity if given a role in pursuing social justice, and the ways that Isaiah 58 impinges upon the idea of social justice within the book as a whole.

This closely argued and thoughtful book offers a fresh and nuanced understanding of the function of the suffering theme in Philippians. A comprehensive survey of previous readings of Philippians is followed by a clear outline of the principles and practice of rhetorical criticism with particular reference to the study of letter-structure. The book concludes by considering in detail the shape and function of the theme of suffering in each of the rhetorical sections of the letter as identified by the author.

Using stylistic, formal and thematic criteria, Paffenroth reconstructs a pre-Lukan source (L) for much of the unique material in Luke 3-19. This source portrays Jesus primarily as a healer and teller of parables, a portrayal very different from that of the suffering Son of Man in Mark, the aphoristic teacher of Wisdom in Q, or the depiction of Jesus as universal saviour that Luke himself prefers. This source is quite primitive, probably earlier than Mark, perhaps as early as Q, to which it is quite similar in form, if not content.>

In The Branches of the Gospel of John, Keefer presents a new paradigm for understanding the role of history of interpretation in New Testament studies, with a focus on the Gospel of John. Drawing largely from the work of Hans Robert Jauss, he presents history of interpretation as a means to understand both the text and the historical reader. Jauss's concept of Rezeptionsasthetik helps the New Testament scholar to reflect upon both text and history in a new light. John is an exemplary work to investigate along these lines because no other canonical book was as provocative in the early church. John was used extensively by Valentinians but also by the best-known opponent of Valentinus, Irenaeus. Later, major figures such as Origen, Augustine, and John Chrysostom worked through this gospel, chapter by chapter, to produce either commentaries (Origen) or sets of homilies (Augustine and Chrysostom). What emerges in The Branches of the Gospel of John is a realization that these early interpreters prove fruitful for both textual and historical study of the Fourth Gospel. With regard to history, early interpreters of John provide data points for understanding John in second- and third-century contexts. Although these early interpretations do not explain the origins of John's gospel, they nevertheless provide us with evidence of the Fourth Gospel's historical role in the construction of the early church. With regard to literary and textual issues, the present book demonstrates that these early readings of John can open up fresh avenues of interpretation for contemporary readers.

Although it opens with an argument that the earth, and not humanity, is the real subject of Genesis 1-11, this collection of essays focuses first on female personalities in Genesis (Eve, Hagar, Rebeccah, Tamar and the four tribal matriarchs), then on male characters (Abraham, Ishmael, Pharaoh). The treatment ranges from historical-critical analysis, through discourse analysis and narrative, ideological and psychological analyses, to postmodern autobiographical exegesis. Among the many delights of this selection are the mingling of traditional and contemporary perspectives, especially the interplay of gender at the level of the biblical text and of the modern author-and perhaps also of the modern reader of this fascinating assortment of studies on tales of human ancestry.>

This new commentary is organized around a distinctive discourse analysis of the small prophetic book of Haggai, and an appreciation of its tightly crafted narrative. Identifying six discrete oracles from the prophet Haggai, Meadowcroft structures his analysis of the narrative around those six oracles. Thematically, the centre of Haggai's prophecy is the role of the temple within the life of the people of God. The desolation of the temple is bound up with the desolation of the land and the desolation of the people on the land. Rebuilding the temple will be the means to break the cycle of desolation. But things are more complex than that. Rebuilding the temple must happen within the fraught imperial context; and rebuilding the temple will foreground a tension between institutional life and the life of the Spirit. Contextualizing Haggai in today's world, Meadowcroft offers an extensive prolegomenon on reading Haggai as scripture. In it he hears a challenge to the Church in the West and a call to rediscover humanity's priestly role in the temple of an environment under threat of desolation.

The Apostle Paul expected the vast majority of the recipients of his letters to hear, not read, them. He structured his compositions for the ear rather than the eye. Pauline audiences would hear clues to meaning and structure because they had learned to communicate in a world where those clues were essential to understanding. Recognizable structures and patterns were essential for listeners to organize what they heard, to follow, to predict and to remember the flow of communication. Oral Biblical Criticism examines Paul's Epistle to the Philippians in light of recent study of oral principles of composition and interpretation.