An analysis of the intertwining tales of Elijah and Ahab - mercurial prophet and Machiavellian king - this book is an accessible and reader-friendly treatment of some of the most dramatic and well-known episodes in the Bible. In contrast to the popular image of Elijah as a courageous wonder-worker who calls down fire from heaven and ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot, this book contends that the prophet was a deeply conflicted man, torn between a burning idealism and a deep disillusionment over his failure to achieve his ideals. Despite his profound sense of failure, Elijah's struggle against the paganizing regime of King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, managed to save monotheism from eclipse, and in so doing alter the course of human history. This work further proposes that the tale presented by the Bible is more than an account of an ancient battle between two historic figures: it is a paradigm of the struggle between the ideals of human dignity and justice, and the alternative of expediency in the pursuit of power, a conflict that pervades human life to this very day.

Biblical Representations of Moab: A Kenyan Postcolonial Reading employs critical theories on colonial, anticolonial, and postcolonial ethnicity and African cultural hermeneutics to examine the overlap of politics, ethnicity, nationality, economics, and religion in contemporary Kenya and to utilize those critical tools to illuminate the Hebrew Bible narratives concerning the Moabites. This book can be used by teachers and students of contemporary methods in Hebrew Bible studies, postcolonial studies, Africana studies, African biblical hermeneutics, political science, gender studies, history, philosophy, international studies, religion and peace studies, African affairs, and ethnic/racial conflict and resolution studies. It would also be of immense value to clergy and lay leaders engaged in interfaith or interethnic/racial dialogue.

Mother Zion in Deutero-Isaiah: A Metaphor for Zion Theology offers the unique perspective that personified mother Zion in Deutero-Isaiah is not just a metaphor used for a rhetorical purpose but a cognitive metaphor representing Zion theology, a central theme in the Book of Isaiah. The author deftly combines the methods of metaphor theory and intertextuality to explain the vital but often overlooked conundrum that Zion in Deutero-Isaiah is an innocent mother, unlike the adulterous wife in other prophetic books. This interpretation offers a vital corrective to the view of women in the biblical context. As a result of this usage, Deutero-Isaiah paradoxically presents Yahweh the Creator as the one who gives birth to the people, not mother Zion. This understanding explains the concentration of gynomorphic imagery used for God in this prophetic book, providing a counterbalance to patriarchal perspectives of God. Finally, a fresh insight is offered into the ongoing debate between universalism and nationalism in Deutero-Isaiah, based on the premise that as a symbol of Zion theology, mother Zion represents Yahweh's universal sovereignty rather than a nationalistic ethnicity. Mother Zion in Deutero-Isaiah is an invaluable resource in courses that deal with issues in Isaiah, biblical interpretation, and feminist hermeneutics, especially regarding the feminine personification of Zion and the maternal imagery of God.

The very essence of the existential relationship between the human and the divine is communicated by the English word, 'worship'. Although the word appears to carry a univocal meaning in English, no such word per se exists in the Greek New Testament. The English word at best explains but does not adequately and completely define the dynamics involved in the relationship between humanity and God. Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters approaches the subject of Christian worship in respect to its origins from the perspective of the earliest New Testament writer: Paul. This book seeks to address the relative absence in scholarship of a full treatment of worship in the Pauline Letters. Closely related to the theme of Christian worship in the Pauline Letters is the person of the risen Jesus and the place he occupies in the faith community. This work proposes a proper working definition of, including criteria for, 'worship'. Paul employed an array of Greek words as descriptors to communicate the various nuances and dimensions related to one's relationship with God. 'Worship' also functioned for Paul as a boundary marker between believers and unbelievers vis-a-vis baptism and the Eucharist. The eschatological and teleological aspects of worship are also examined through a study of the Carmen Christi (Phil 2: 6-11). This study maintains that worship in Paul is not defined by any one word but is rather a composite and comprehensive personal religious relationship between the worshipper and God.

This second volume of collected studies by the Munich Old Testament scholar, Christoph Levin, is comprised of 17 essays. A major focus of this volume is on Old Testament hermeneutics and theology. Other papers examine the editorial history of the Pentateuch, the Book of Kings, the Prophetic Books, and the Psalms. Chapters are also devoted to in-depth analyses of the literary history of the books of Genesis, Kings, and Jonah.

This book cantains the Syriac text of Saint Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis supplied with an Arabic translation and commentaries. Its text is one of the most beautiful texts in Syriac language. The book is good for the general readers and those who have interest in the Syriac fathers and churches.

Kamrada's study analyses three narratives concerning the greatest heroic figures of the biblical tradition: Jephthah's daughter, Samson and Saul, and includes a consideration of texts about King David. All three characters are portrayed as the greatest and most typical and exemplary heroes of the heroic era. All three heroes have an exceptionally close relationship with the deity all die a traditionally heroic, tragic death. Kamrada argues that within the Book of Judges and the biblical heroic tradition, Jephthah's daughter and Samson represent the pinnacle of female and male heroism respectively, and that they achieve super-human status by offering their lives to the deity, thus entering the sphere of holiness. Saul's trajectory, by contrast, exemplifies downfall of a great hero in his final, irreversible separation from God, and it also signals the decline of the heroic era. David, however, is shown as an astute hero who founds a lasting dynasty, thus conclusively bringing the heroic era in the Deuteronomistic history to a close.

Messianism is one of the great themes in intellectual history. But for precisely this reason, because it has done so much important ideological work for the people who have written about it, the historical roots of the discourse itself have been obscured from view. What did it mean to talk about "messiahs" in the ancient world, before the idea of messianism became a philosophical juggernaut, dictating the terms for all subsequent discussion of the topic? In this book, Matthew V. Novenson gives a revisionist account of messianism in antiquity. He shows that, for the ancient Jews and Christians who used the term, a messiah was not an article of faith but a manner of speaking. It was a scriptural figure of speech, one among numerous others, useful for thinking kinds of political order: present or future, real or ideal, monarchic or theocratic, dynastic or charismatic, and other variations beside. The early Christians famously seized upon the title "messiah" (in Greek, "Christ") for their founding hero and thus molded the sense of the term in certain ways, but, Novenson shows, this is nothing other than what all ancient messiah texts do, each in its own way. If we hope to understand the ancient texts about messiahs (from Deutero-Isaiah to the Parables of Enoch, from the Qumran Community Rule to the Gospel of John, from the Pseudo-Clementines to Sefer Zerubbabel), then we must learn to think in terms not of a world-historical idea but of a language game, of so many creative reuses of an archaic Israelite idiom. In The Grammar of Messianism, Novenson demonstrates the possibility and the benefit of thinking of messianism in this way.

In this book Itzhak Benyamini presents an alternative reading of Genesis, a close textual analysis from the story of creation to the binding of Isaac. This reading offers the possibility of a soft relation to God, not one characterized by fear and awe. The volume presents Don-Abraham-Quixote not as a perpetual knight of faith but as a cunning believer in the face of God's demands of him. Benyamini reads Genesis without making concessions to God, asking about Him before He examines the heart of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the other knights of faith (if they are really that). In this way, the commentary on Genesis becomes a platform for a new type of critical theology. Through this unconventional rereading of the familiar biblical text, the book attempts to extract a different ethic, one that challenges the Kierkegaardian demand of blind faith in an all-knowing moral God and offers in its stead an alternative, everyday ethic. The ethic that Benyamini uncovers is characterized by family continuity and tradition intended to ensure that very axis-familial permanence and resilience in the face of the demanding and capricious law of God and the everyday hardships of life.

This book demonstrates that the Gospels originated from a sequential hypertextual reworking of the contents of Paul's letters and, in the case of Matthew and John, of the Acts of the Apostles. Consequently, the new quest for the historical Jesus, which takes this discovery into serious consideration, results in a rather limited reconstruction of Jesus' life. However, since such a reconstruction includes, among others, Jesus' messiahship, behaving in a way which was later interpreted as pointing to him as the Son of God, instituting the Lord's Supper, being conscious of the religious significance of his imminent death, dying on the cross, and appearing as risen from the dead to Cephas and numerous other Jewish believers, it can be reconciled with the principles of the Christian faith.

A clear, in-depth biblical explanation of the origin, history, and significance of the Middle East conflict.

The current conflict in the Middle East began long before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It originated when Abraham sinned, distorting God's promise that he and his heirs would make a great nation and inherit the land now called The Holy Land.

A historical and political account, "Seeds of Turmoil" clearly explains the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar and the ensuing sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau, whose choices formed the world's three most influential religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This fascinating insight into the beginnings of the conflict also explains what about the land is so important today. In addition, Wright sheds light on the conflicting Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives and answers the question, Does God play favorites?

The political and social changes that occurred with the transformation of the Roman Empire into a Roman Christian Empire and with the bishops' new social position as imperial bishops called for new literary representations of the ideal Christian leader. In this struggle, the figure of Moses turned up as a suitable figure intimately connected with questions of authority and power and, related to this, with the risk of dissension and discord. While the portrait of Moses as a political figure was hardly applicable in Christian discourses of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it became the centre of interest during the 4th century. This new emphasis was, however, no more new than that it actually revived traditions of 1st-century Jewish biographical and autobiographical narratives.

For Daniel Fredericks, allowing the thematic words and phrases of Ecclesiastes to speak with their Hebrew voices demonstrates its affinity with the breadth of Old Testament legal, poetic, wisdom and prophetic writings as well as the teachings of Christ and the apostles. Ecclesiastes is found in the canon of Scripture because it plays a significant role in a cumulative theology of the Old and New Testaments. The beautiful and mysterious lyrics of The Song of Songs have prompted a wide range of interpretations. Daniel Estes reads the ancient song cycle in terms of its literary genre as Hebrew poetry. By attending carefully to the literary features of the text, he seeks to remain sensitive to the emotions that the poet desired to express and to reproduce in the reader. At the same time, he endeavours to hear the echoes of the Song as they resonate within the larger context of the biblical canon, and to suggest how its prominent theme of the nurture of intimacy can be applied to life today.

This incomplete, early twentieth-century edition was one of the first modern attempts to bring textual criticism to bear on the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures which originated in the third century BCE. It is still widely consulted today. Originally issued in nine parts between 1906 and 1940, this reissue is bound in four volumes. This, the second volume, contains the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges and Ruth. Following Swete's smaller Septuagint (1887 1894) the running text is that of Codex Vaticanus (B) supplemented by Codex Alexandrinus (A) or another uncial when B is defective. The edition provides an extensive critical apparatus, taking account of numerous uncial manuscripts, fragments and palimpsests, over sixty cursive manuscripts, a sample lectionary, early daughter versions of the Septuagint, including the Armenian, Bohairic, Sahidic, Ethiopian, Old Latin, Palestinian Aramaic, and Syro-hexapla, and a wide range of Patristic quotations.

This incomplete, early twentieth-century edition was one of the first modern attempts to bring textual criticism to bear on the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures which originated in the third century BCE. It is still widely consulted today. Originally issued in nine parts between 1906 and 1940, this reissue is bound in four volumes. This third volume contains the later historical books: 1 and 2 Samuel (1927); 1 and 2 Kings (1930); 1 and 2 Chronicles (1932); and 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras (Ezra) and Nehemiah (1935). Following Swete's smaller Septuagint (1887 1894) the running text is that of Codex Vaticanus (B) supplemented by Codex Alexandrinus (A) or another uncial when B is defective. The edition includes an extensive critical apparatus taking account of key uncial manuscripts and fragments, over thirty cursive manuscripts, several daughter versions and a wide range of Patristic quotations.

This study deals with the most important king of the Aramaean kingdom of Damascus, Hazael, and the impact he had on biblical literature, which goes beyond the few verses that mention him explicitly in the Book of Kings and the Book of the Twelve. The extra-biblical sources reveal that Hazael managed to create a large kingdom and to expand his authority over the whole of Syria-Palestine, including the Kingdom of Israel and the House of David, during the second half of the ninth century BCE. The Bible presents that power of Hazael as oppression of both kingdoms, yet the biblical writers elaborated a much more nuanced portrait of Hazael than first meets the eye. In the Elijah-Elisha cycles, Hazael provides a theological interpretative paradigm, the Elisha-Hazael paradigm, which provides in the Book of Kings and in the Book of the Twelve (especially in the books of Amos and Jonah) the key to explain God's mysterious dealings with Israel and Israel's enemies. Hazael is presented as a faithful agent of YHWH, who fulfils the divine plan. Beyond the power Hazael yielded across the Levant in his life time, the Elisha-Hazael paradigm reveals his enduring influence in Judah and in biblical literature.

This incomplete, early twentieth-century edition was one of the first modern attempts to bring textual criticism to bear on the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures which originated in the third century BCE. It is still widely consulted today. Originally issued in nine parts between 1906 and 1940, this reissue is bound in four volumes. This, the final volume, contains the books of Esther, Judith, and Tobit. Following Swete's smaller Septuagint (1887-1894) the running text is that of Codex Vaticanus (B) supplemented by Codex Alexandrinus (A) or N when B is defective. The edition includes an extensive critical apparatus, citing key uncial manuscripts and fragments, twenty-seven cursive manuscripts, many freshly collated for the edition, the Sahidic, Ethiopic, Syriac and Old Latin versions, and quotations from Latin writers including Cyprian and Augustine. It remains an invaluable resource for the study of the Septuagint.

Henry Barclay Swete (1835 1917) published An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek in 1900 as a manual to accompany his three-volume edition of the Septuagint (1887 1894) and to provide a guide through the vast corpus of Septuagint literature. Part 1 covers the textual history of the Septuagint, providing an in-depth analysis of its complex tradition, surveying the most important Greek witnesses and the earliest versions. Part 2 discusses the Alexandrian manuscript tradition, and covers the order and grouping of books, titles, comparison with the Hebrew Canon, and the textual divisions used in the manuscripts. Part 3 is concerned with the influence and use of the Septuagint in later works. An appendix contains the letter of pseudo-Aristeas with an introduction explaining the forgery. For over a century Swete's work has been an indispensable tool for every scholar and student of the Septuagint.

This incomplete, early twentieth-century edition was one of the first modern attempts to bring textual criticism to bear on the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures which originated in the third century BCE. It is still widely consulted today. Originally issued in nine parts between 1906 and 1940, this reissue is bound in four volumes. Volume 1 contains the books of Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus. Following Swete's smaller Septuagint (1887-1894) the running text is that of Codex Vaticanus (B) supplemented by Codex Alexandrinus (A) or another uncial when B is defective. The edition provides an extensive critical apparatus, taking account of numerous uncial manuscripts, fragments and palimpsests, over sixty cursive manuscripts, a sample lectionary, early daughter versions of the Septuagint, including the Armenian, Bohairic, Sahidic, Ethiopian, Old Latin, Palestinian Aramaic, and Syro-hexapla, and a wide range of Patristic quotations.

From creationism to The God Delusion, the public dialogue of science and religion either uses the early chapters of Genesis in a naive and simplistic way or rejects their relevance to contemporary questions. This is reinforced by the myth that Darwin caused a rejection of a literalistic reading of Genesis 1 and from that point most Christian theology lost any confidence in these texts. The truth is far more complex. Jewish and Christian interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis had a long a fruitful history from the earliest times. In the 19th century, many more important issues were at stake than biblical literalism, and there were many different interpretations of how the discoveries of Darwin helped or hindered the reading of the biblical text. Today, theologians are returning to the importance of Genesis as a partner in dialogue with science, gender, and environmental care. As the distinguished authors of the papers in this volume show, far from Darwin burying these ancient texts, he has liberated them to speak in new and different ways. The volume is divided into three parts. In the first, the authors explore how the scriptures themselves were interpreted before the time of Darwin. The fact that non-literal interpretations were standard in early Jewish and Christian thought is often ignored. In fact, these insightful early interpretations have much to teach us today. Part II presents essays on the real history of the Darwin controversies. Exploding the myths about this period, it is fascinating to see how Darwin was welcomed by many religious thinkers. In Part II, the authors apply the insights of Genesis post Darwin to contemporary issues today, such as: what it means to be human, questions of gender, and of evil and environmental care. The final chapter deals with the rise of creationism in its current social context.

This study pursues two goals: On the one hand, it examines the origins of a part of the Old Testament books of Samuel (the so-called a oeStory of Davida (TM)s Risea, and in particular its first seven chapters: 1 Samuel 15a "21). Based on the results thereof, on the other hand, it poses the question of whether and to what extent the books of Samuel can be considered to be historical writing. For this purpose, it fruitfully applies above all the ideas of the German history theoretician, JArn RA1/4sen.

The Biblical World is a comprehensive guide to the contents, historical settings, and social context of the Bible. This new edition is updated with several new chapters as well as a new section on biblical interpretation. Contributions from leading scholars in the field present wide-ranging views not just of biblical materials and their literary and linguistic context, but also of the social institutions, history and archaeology, and religious concepts. New chapters cover topics such as the priesthood and festivals, creation and covenant, ethics, and family life, while a new section on biblical interpretation discusses Jewish and Christian bible translation and key thematic emphases, and modern reader-response and cultural approaches. This revised edition of The Biblical World offers an up-to-date and thorough survey of the Bible and its world, and will continue to be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and their history and interpretation, as well as anyone working on the societies, religions, and political and cultural institutions that created and influenced these texts.

The author analyzes the different ideas of the political structure of the province of Juda which is presupposed by the book Esra-Nehemia. Three constitutional concepts and their theological outline are worked out to give insight into the development of the theological-political thoughts of post-exilic times.