Scholarship in the Hebrew Scriptures is more bountiful and diverse than ever before, a situation that presents a formidable challenge to the student trying to understand the critical issues in Hebrew Bible study. This book deals with each section of the canon and explains the standard questions, with special attention to points of scholarly agreement and contention. Written by an international group of preeminent scholars, this collection is intended for readers with a diversity of interests and is specifically designed for those making their first acquaintance with the complex character of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.

God's covenant with Israel is one of the most important themes of Old Testament scholarship: 'I will be your God, you shall be my people'. Yet this has only rarely been the focus of a comprehensive study.Professor Rendtorff explores the different ways the covenant formula is used in the Bible, its structural and theological functions, the connections between covenant and election.An important contribution to a canonical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.

In a methodological discussion of this issue, the contributors cover a range of topics, from ancient poltics to modern ideology. The entity known as 'the Exile' has had an extremely forceful influence in Old Testament scholarship, both as an event and as a symbol. But was there an 'Exile'? And if so, how did it fit into the pattern of population deportations that characterized the imperial strategies of the ancient Near East? In a major methodological discussion of this issue, the contributors to this symposium of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology cover a range of topics, from ancient politics to modern ideology. In probing the meaning and implication of 'Exile' they also reflect a spectrum of opinions and conclusions. As with Volume 1 of this series, the editor has provided an introduction and concluding reflections.

As with the first two volumes in this series, The Talmud for Beginners, Volume 3: Living in a Non-Jewish World, introduces the beginner to an important book of the Talmud; in this case, Avodah Zarah, translated as "Strange Worship." The theme, generally speaking, is Jewish relations with non-Jews.

For this volume, sequel to The Bible in Three Dimensions, the seven full-time members of the research and teaching faculty in Biblical Studies at Sheffield-Loveday Alexander, David Clines, Meg Davies, Philip Davies, Cheryl Exum, Barry Matlock and Stephen Moore-set themselves a common task: to reflect on what they hope or imagine, as century gives way to century, will be the key areas of research in biblical studies, and to paint themselves, however modestly, into the picture. The volume contains, as well as those seven principal essays, a 75-page 'intellectual biography' of the Department and a revealing sketch of the 'material conditions' of its research and teaching, together with a list of its graduates and the titles of their theses.

In a profound look at what it means for new generations to read and interpret ancient religious texts, rabbi and philosopher Marc-Alain Ouaknin offers a postmodern reading of the Talmud, one of the first of its kind. Combining traditional learning and contemporary thought, Ouaknin dovetails discussions of spirituality and religious practice with such concepts as deconstruction, intertextuality, undecidability, multiple voicing, and eroticism in the Talmud. On a broader level, he establishes a dialogue between Hebrew tradition and the social sciences, which draws, for example, on the works of Levinas, Blanchot, and Jabes as well as Derrida. "The Burnt Book" represents the innovative thinking that has come to be associated with a school of French Jewish studies, headed by Levinas and dedicated to new readings of traditional texts, which is fast gaining influence in the United States.

The Talmud, transcribed in 500 C.E., is shown to be a text that refrains from dogma and instead encourages the exploration of its meanings. A vast compilation of Jewish oral law, the Talmud also contains rabbinical commentaries that touch on everything from astronomy to household life. Examining its literary methods and internal logic, Ouaknin explains how this text allows readers to transcend its authority in that it invites them to interpret, discuss, and re-create their religious tradition. An in-depth treatment of selected texts from the oral law and commentary goes on to provide a model for secular study of the Talmud in light of contemporary philosophical issues.

Throughout the author emphasizes the self-effacing quality of a text whose worth can be measured by the insights that live on in the minds of its interpreters long after they have closed the book. He points out that the burning of the Talmud in anti-Judaic campaigns throughout history has, in fact, been an unwitting act of complicity with Talmudic philosophy and the practice of self-effacement. Ouaknin concludes his discussion with the story of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who himself burned his life achievement--a work known by his students as "the Burnt Book." This story leaves us with the question, should all books be destroyed in order to give birth to thought and renew meaning?"

Zohar, or "brilliant light," is the central text of Kabbalah. In Jewish mystical tradition, it is the meeting of midrash (storytelling that expands on events in the Bible) and myth. This selection offers original translations of eight of the most well developed narratives in the Zohar along with notes and detailed commentary. The tales deal with the themes of sin and repentance, death, exile, redemption, and resurrection. Most importantly, they are "stories," they are literature, and here they are finally analyzed as such. Using comparative information, Aryeh Wineman places the tales in their historical and etymological contexts. He cites a variety of theorists of myth, including Otto Rank, C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell, all of whom sought to connect the motifs of the Zohar to universal motifs. He ties the stories to the tenets of Kabbalah, to one another, and to the world's universal symbols and meanings.

The incredible discoveries at Qumran are unveiled in this compelling volume by one of the world's foremost experts on biblical archaeology and the ancient Qumran community. Drawing on the best of current research and a thorough knowledge of all the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hartmut Stegemann analyzes the purpose of the Qumran settlement, paints a picture of how daily life was carried on there, explores the relation of the Qumran community to John the Baptist, to Jesus, and to early Christianity, and uncovers the true nature of the Qumran writings, which continue to have a profound impact on biblical studies today

The Ecstasy of Enlightenment is an inside look at the spiritual world of Tantra -- one of the most sophisticated, alluring, and controversial forms of Buddhism. Cleary unlocks the mysteries of the Carya-Giti, a collection of teachings by more than twenty famous Siddhas, or Tantric adepts, who lived during the illustrious Pala dynasty of old Bengal. These teachings emanate from one of the most dynamic sources of international Buddhism, at the height of its religious development, and as such, they are completely nonsectarian. The original Bengali texts, and, accordingly, the modern English translations, have been written for popular audiences.

Tantrism is often represented as somehow disconnected from mainstream Buddhist traditions, sometimes even considered non-Buddhistic, often called "decadent" or worse. Cleary's commentary is exceptional in the clarity with which he documents the spiritual connection of Tantric Buddhism with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. Partic-ularly noteworthy is his demonstration of the parallels between original Tantric Buddhism in Bengal and the original Zen Buddhism of China. The treatment of sensuality in the Tantric context, often a subject of distortion and controversy, is noteworthy for its exceptional subtlety and dignity. Symbolic, psychological, and physical aspects of the Tantric teachings are illuminated on a continuum coinciding with the spiritual development of Buddhism.

Cleary's introduction also includes little-known information about the history of world Buddhism and the spiritual continuity of the succession of the main phases of its development. He gives a panoramic view of the network of Buddhism linking Bengal, Indonesia, India, Afghanistan, Tibet, China, and Japan, and illustrates the concrete historical transcendence of pan-Buddhism over political and cultural borders. This global vision is particularly important today for the effective integration of traditional values into modern consciousness.

The bible remains one of the major literary achievements of human history, comprizing over 60 documents, with as many contributors, and composed over many centuries. In this book, Michael Fishbane approaches the Hebrew Bible from a literary point of view. He demonstrates how, just as orators use particular techniques such as repetition and pause to convey their message in the way they requie, so too the Hebrew Bible authors used a range of literary devices to communicate a religious message applicable to particular historical moments, each with their own political, moral and theological contexts.

In this exploration of Jewish wisdom during the Hellenistic period, internationally renowned scholar John J. Collins examines the books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, and the recently discovered Qumran Sapiential A text from the Dead Sea Scrolls - offering one of the first such examinations of this text in print. This commentary is a compelling analysis of these important texts and their continuing traditions.>

..". a superb example of modern Orthodox Jewish biblicalinterpretation." -- Interpretation

"This detailed andintriguing work represents years of thought and meticulous analysis as well as afresh reading of several familiar prophetic narratives found in the OT." -- TheCatholic Biblical Quarterly

..". this book containswell-argued and thoughtful literary readings... Simon is thoroughly versed in thesecondary literature but has managed to write a volume accessible to both scholarsand informed general readers..." -- Choice

Noted biblicalscholar Uriel Simon undertakes a systematic study of prophetic narratives in theBible. He focuses on seven stories (including Samuel's call to prophecy, Saul atEndor, and David and Bathsheba), analyzing their form and structure, theirrhetorical devices, their descriptions of character and motive, their narrativetechniques -- in short, on the ways in which the stories are told.

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter.

In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

'Content analysis'-which is a computer-assisted form of textual analysis-is used to examine divine activity in six prophetic texts, comparing God's activity to that of humans. In this methodologically innovative study, the author concludes, in the light of quantitative data, that God is harsher to non-Israelites than to Israelites in all the texts, and much kinder to Israelites in Joel than in the typical prophet. God and humans are involved in much the same kinds of physical and mental processes, but to considerably different degrees. Griffin argues persuasively that the God of the prophets is not the 'wholly other' of some theologies, but neither do his actions follow exactly the human pattern.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

Sirach is a book that raises a very distinctive set of problems. What should we call it (Sirach, Ecclesiasticus, Ben Sira)? What is the relation between the traditional Greek text and the recently rediscovered Hebrew parts of the book? Where did it stand in relation to Jewish tradition and the Hellenism that was sweeping the Mediterranean world? In this guide, a new addition to Sheffield's series on the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, these questions are discussed, as well as the use the author made of Scripture, and the scholarly placing of the book in the Wisdom tradition. The author's attitude to women is considered and the volume ends with a consideration of some of the chief theological themes of Sirach.

The burgeoning use of modern literary theory and cultural criticism in recent biblical studies has led to stimulating-but often bewildering-new readings of the Bible. This book, argued from a perspective shaped by postmodernism, is at once an accessible guide to and an engagement with various methods, theories, and critical practices transforming biblical scholarship today. Written by a collective of cutting-edge scholars-with each page the work of multiple hands-The Postmodern Bible deliberately breaks with the individualist model of authorship that has traditionally dominated scholarship in the humanities and is itself an illustration of the postmodern transformation of biblical studies for which it argues. The book introduces, illustrates, and critiques seven prominent strategies of reading. Several of these interpretive strategies-rhetorical criticism, structuralism and narratology, reader-response criticism, and feminist criticism-have been instrumental in the transformation of biblical studies up to now. Many-feminist and womanist criticism, ideological criticism, poststructuralism, and psychoanalytic criticism-hold promise for the continued transformation of these studies in the future. Focusing on readings from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, this volume illuminates the current multidisciplinary debates emerging from postmodernism by exposing the still highly contested epistemological, political, and ethical positions in the field of biblical studies.

This volume suggests that reading and writing about literature are ways to gain an ethical understanding of how we live in the world. Postmodern narrative is an important way to reveal and discuss who are society's victims, inviting the reader to become one with them. A close reading of fiction by Toni Morrison, Patrick Suskind, D.M. Thomas, Ian McEwan and J.M. Coetzee reveals a violence imposed on gender, race and the body-politic. Such violence is not new to the postmodern world, but reflects Western culture's religious traditions, as this book demonstrates through a reading of stories from the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament.

This book discusses recent trends and issues in the scholarly study of the Qur'an and its exegesis. The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented development in qur'anic studies in terms of both the number of volumes that have been produced and the wide range of issues covered. It is not an exaggeration to say that the field of qur'anic studies today has become the 'crown' of Islamic studies. In this book, scholars of diverse approaches critically engage with the Qur'an and its exegesis, including questions about the milieu in which the Qur'an emerged, the Qur'an's relation to the biblical tradition, its chronology, textual integrity, and its literary features. In addition, this volume addresses recent scholarship on tafsir (qur'anic exegesis), including thematic interpretation, diacronic and syncronic readings of the Qur'an. Various approaches to understanding the Muslim scripture with or without tafsir are also discussed.

Translated by Allan W. MahnkeA pioneering history of Old Testament law from its scarcely discernable origins in the pre-monarchical period to the canonisation of the Pentateuch.Praise for THE TORAH'Crusemann and Houtman has enormously enriched the field; it will attract the serious attention of scholars for many years to come.' B. S. Jackson, University of Manchester, Journal of Semitic Studies>

This fascinating book brings together a unique collection of commentaries, translated from the original Arabic, on some of the key passages of the Quran. Presenting the views of a broad range of commentators, both classical and modern, it focuses on such topics as God, Muhammad, revelation, and Muslim beliefs and duties, in addition to chapters exploring mystical, philosophical and Shiite quaranic exegesis. The Quran and its Exegesis offers an unparalleled overview of Muslim thinking through the ages and around the world, an essential addition to the libraries of all students of Islam and comparative religion.

With this selection of his essays and studies, Moshe Greenberg joins JPS's Scholars of Distinction. One of the world's foremost Bible experts, Dr. Greenberg's viewpoint has been shaped by the study of the ancient Near Eastern context of biblical Israel and the history of the interpretation of the Bible from its earliest translations until today. He regards the text with admiration for its enduring power, for the features that set it apart from the literatures of surrounding cultures, and for the riches discovered in it through the ages by "faith-full" interpreters. For Dr. Greenberg, the Jewish Bible scholar is, ultimately, charged with the task of identifying and explaining the impact that Hebrew scriptures have had on humanity in general and on Judaism in particular. These essays, composed during a period of some forty-five years, are presented essentially in their original form, many with newly added notes by the author; some of the essays have never before been published.

Aiming to provide a concise account of the Hebrew Bible, this text gives a brief account of the place of the Hebrew scriptures in Jewish life and thought, from the early Rabbinic period to the present day. This is followed by an outline of each of the 36 books of the Jewish canon, and a brief presentation of their contents, illustrated by quotations from scripture. The presentation follows the actual structure of the book.

In this critical analysis Enrico Mazza concentrates on structure as he traces the evolution of the Eucharistic Prayer (anaphora) from its origins in the ancient Jewish rites and its Christian beginnings in the Didache. He then examines the paleoanaphoras of the early centuries and moves through the origin and progressive development of the larger anaphoric families (Alexandrian, Roman, Antiochene), showing the influence of the Jewish rites on the formation of the Christian texts before arriving finally at the classical anaphoras of the fourth century. Enrico Mazza is professor of liturgical history at the Universit... Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. He is the author of Mystagogy: A Theology of Liturgy in the Patristic Ages and Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Rite.

Considering the extent of social injustice in the world today, how can Christians combine their efforts with those of other concerned people to solve this problem? Social Justice in the Hebrew Bible offers an answer to this question by examining how Israel used the social justice thought of other Near Eastern peoples to face its own justice crises. It uses as its framework the Hebrew Bible's statements about this issue in its law codes, prophetic books, psalms, narrative works, and wisdom literature. Malchow demonstrates that Israel did not originate the concept of social justice. Rather, it drew its resources for overcoming it from Near Eastern thought on the subject. By combining its own ideas of social justice with those of its neighbors, Israel's people fought injustice with what was new" and what was "old." Israel's three methods of acceptance, adaptation, and transformation remain relevant to the changing conditions of life today. They are useful in our integrations of non-Christian thought with our own and continue to shape Israel's justice tradition. Social injustice is an immense and world-wide problem. Social Justice in the Hebrew Bible stresses that in order for Christians to be ethically responsible and true to their tradition, they must join forces with other concerned people in the struggle against it. Bruce V. Malchow, PhD, is professor of Hebrew Bible at the Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, Wisconsin. He has published articles in numerous journals, including the Journal of Biblical Literature and Catholic Biblical Quarterly. "