While there are many textbooks about the prophetic literature, most have taken either a historical or literary approach to studying the prophets. A Chorus of Prophetic Voices, by contrast, draws on both historical and literary approaches by paying careful attention to the prophets as narrative characters. It considers each unique prophetic voice in the canon, in its fully developed literary form, while also listening to what these voices say together about a particular experience in Israel's story. It presents these four scrollsaEURO"Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the TwelveaEURO"as works produced in the aftermath of destruction, works that employ prophetic characters, and as the words uttered during the crises. The prophetic literature became for Israel, living in a context of dispersion and imperial domination, a portable and adaptable resource at once both challenging and comforting. This book provides the fullest picture available for introducing students to the prophetic literature by valuing the role of the original prophetic characters, the finished state of the books that bear their names, the separate historical crises in the life of Israel they address, and the aEUROoechorus of prophetic voicesaEURO one hears when reading them as part of a coherent literary corpus.

The juxtaposition of 'favour' and 'righteousness' in the flood narrative raises an interpretative and theological problem: Is Noah chosen because of divine favour or because of his piety ? Source-critical scholars identify two different theologies by J and P: J understands Noah's election to be an act of grace whereas P emphasizes Noah's righteousness as the basis for his election. Scholars who interpret the flood narrative according to its final form argue that Noah is chosen because he is righteous. This view is problematic, however, since in the primaeval history grace is shown to the 'undeserving', thus it is characteristically unmerited. This book entails an exegetical analysis of, and according to, the final form of the text, with particular attention being given to the meaning and function of these verses in the Toledot structure. Kaminski argues against the commonly held view that Noah finds favour because he is righteous, and seeks to demonstrate that divine favour is unmerited in accordance with the theme of grace in the primaeval history and in Genesis as a whole. Thus what sets the flood story in motion is not Noah's righteousness, but the divine favour he finds.

The Body As Property indicates that physical disfigurement functioned in biblical law to verify legal property acquisition, when changes in the status of dependents were formalized. It is based on the reality the cuneiform script, in particular, was developed in Sumer and Mesopotamia for the purpose of record keeping: to provide legal proof of ownership where the inscription of a tablet evidenced the sale, or transfer, of property. Legitimate property acquisition was as important in biblical law, where physical disfigurements marked dependents, in a similar way that the veil or the head covering identified a wife or concubine in ancient Assyrian and Judean societies. This is primarily substantiated in the accounts of prescriptive disfigurements: namely circumcision and the piercing of a slave's ear, both of which were required only when a son, or slave, was acquired permanently. It is further argued that legal entitlement was relevant also to the punitive disfigurements recorded in Exodus 21:22-24, and Deuteronomy 25:11-12, where the physical violation of women was of concern solely as an infringement of male property rights.

Few phrases in Scripture have occasioned as much discussion as has the "I am who I am" of Exodus 3:14. What does this phrase mean? How does it relate to the divine name, YHWH? Is it an answer to Moses' question (v. 13), or an evasion of an answer? The trend in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarly interpretations of this verse was to superimpose later Christian interpretations, which built on Greek and Latin translations, on the Hebrew text. According to such views, the text presents an etymology of the divine name that suggests God's active presence with Israel or what God will accomplish for Israel; the text does not address the nature or being of God. However, this trend presents challenges to theological interpretation, which seeks to consider critically the value pre-modern Christian readings have for faithful appropriations of Scripture today. In "Too Much to Grasp": Exodus 3:13?15 and the Reality of God, Andrea Saner argues for an alternative way forward for twenty-first century readings of the passage, using Augustine of Hippo as representative of the misunderstood interpretive tradition. Read within the literary contexts of the received form of the book of Exodus and the Pentateuch as a whole, the literal sense of Exodus 3:13-15 addresses both who God is as well as God's action. The "I am who I am" of v. 14a expresses indefiniteness; while God reveals himself as YHWH and offers this name for the Israelites to call upon him, God is not exhausted by this revelation but rather remains beyond human comprehension and control.

In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire traced the narrative development of the divine character in the Old Testament, placing the God portrayed at the end of that long story at the center of theological discussion. He showed that Israel's understanding of God had developed into a complex, multipurpose being who could work within a new reality, a world that included a semiautonomous province of Yehud and a burgeoning Mesopotamian-Mediterranean world in which the Jewish people lived and moved in a growing diversity of ways. Now, McEntire continues that story beyond the narrative end of the Hebrew Bible as Israel and Israel's God moved into the Hellenistic world. The "narrative" McEntire perceives in the apocryphal literature describes a God protecting and guiding the scattered and persecuted, a God responding to suffering in revolt, and a God disclosing mysteries, yet also hidden in the symbolism of dreams and visions. McEntire here provides a coherent and compelling account of theological perspectives in the apocryphal writings and beyond.

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the Bible in the medieval world. For the Anglo-Saxons, literary culture emerged from sustained and intensive biblical study. Further, at least to judge from the Old English texts which survive, the Old Testament was the primary influence, both in terms of content and modes of interpretation. Though the Old Testament was only partially translated into Old English, recent studies have shown how completely interconnected Anglo-Latin and Old English literary traditions are.Old English Literature and the Old Testament considers the importance of the Old Testament from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from comparative to intertextual and historical. Though the essays focus on individual works, authors, or trends, including the Interrogationes Sigewulfi, Genesis A, and Daniel, each ultimately speaks to the vernacular corpus as a whole, suggesting approaches and methodologies for further study.

This major work explores the message and meaning of Ezekiel, one of the longest and most difficult of the prophetic books. An introduction explains what is involved in reading a prophetic book, and how the book of Ezekiel was put together and structured. It looks at the form of speech used and discusses Ezekiel's author and those who transmitted, edited, and enlarged upon what he had to say. The destruction of Jerusalem is a primary concern, and attention is focused on the political and social situation of the time in order to provide a clear understanding of the political and religious crisis facing the prophet's contemporaries.

A lengthy history of readers' struggles with Joel lies behind Merx's characterization of the book as "the problem child of Old Testament exegesis, insofar as the resources utilized by interpreters thus far are entirely insufficient to dispel its darkness". Long before Vernes posited that chapters 3-4 were a composition distinct from 1-2, Augustine voiced his perplexity about how the book constituted a unity. Many attempts to expound it as a unity have subdued the book's tensions through problematic harmonizations. On the other hand, theories of the book's development within the construction of a Book of the Twelve not only bar understanding the book as a whole, but also fall short of explaining its composition. In this volume, Ronald L. Troxel acknowledges the perennial problems raised by the book, but argues that taking account of the signs of its genre elucidates numerous cruxes and spotlights salient interpretive features that are infrequently discussed. Recognizing that chapter four comprises a series of late additions permits recognition of narrative markers that unite the first three chapters as a product of schriftgelehrte Prophetie, "scribal prophecy". The book's features align well with those of two other prophetic narratives fashioned as composite works: Jonah and Haggai. All three books are better accounted for in this way than through the prism of redactional expansion. Correlatively, the long-standing arguments against chapter 3 as the literary continuation of chapters 1-2 prove reliant on social conceptions of prophecy that are alien to schriftgelehrte Prophetie. Instead, Troxel shows Joel 3 to be the culmination of a didactic narrative meant to prepare a future generation to survive the Day of the Lord. The first chapter of Troxel's study illuminates the persistent conundrums addressed in the history of interpretation, as well as the social contexts from which resolutions have been proposed. Chapters two and three address the book's composite texture and narrative marks, while chapter four expounds its distinctive eschatology. The fifth chapter synthesizes these observations in a synopsis of Joel's genre, scope, and meaning.

Reflections on the Psalms provides insightful commentary on each of the Psalms from the same experienced team of writers that have made Reflections for Daily Prayer so popular. It offers inspiring and undated reflections on all 150 psalms, with longer psalms split into parts in accordance with the Lectionary. Each reflection is accompanied by its corresponding Psalm refrain and prayer from the Common Worship Psalter, making this a valuable resource for personal or devotional use. Specially written introductions by Paula Gooder and Steven Croft explore the Psalms and the Bible and the Psalms in the life of the Church.

The foundation of the modern State of Israel in 1948 is commemorated by many Palestinians as a day of catastrophe. Many Palestinian Christians claim that the nakba was also spiritually catastrophic: the characters, names, events, and places of the Old Testament took on new significance with the newly formed political state, which caused vast portions of the text to become unusable in their eyes and be abandoned. Stalder asks how Palestinian Christians have read the Old Testament in the period before and under the British Mandate and now, in light of the foundation of the modern State of Israel, then contemplates how they might read these sacred texts in the future, interacting with proposals by Michael Prior, Charles Miller, and Gershon Nerel. His particular goal is to outline a possible hermeneutic that does not disregard the concerns of the respective religious communities without writing off the Old Testament prematurely.

For almost 3000 years the story of Jonah has intrigued, amused, inspired, encouraged, a,d challenged people of faith. This timeless story about one imperfect, complex man and his difficult relationship with God continues to engage contemporary audiences. Jonah enjoys a unique place in salvation history. His life reprises the actions of key Old Testament figures and also points forward to the New Testament and the coming Messiah. Jonah's story is a beautiful, complex, artfully crafted, work of minimalist literature which speaks a profound and resounding message of grace that still captures the human heart. This book is designed to facilitate a 40 day, shared journey through the book of Jonah. The radical revelation of the book of Jonah is that God's grace is wild. It refuses all human attempts to tame, domesticate, or restrain it. This grace continually bursts forth, in the most unexpected of places, and reaches out to the most unlikely of people.

Power and Politics in the Book of Judges studies political culture and behavior in premonarchic Israel, focusing on the protagonists in the book of Judges. Although the sixth-century BCE Deuteronomistic editor portrayed them as moral champions and called them "judges," the original bardic storytellers and the men and women of valor themselves were preoccupied with the problem of gaining and maintaining political power. John C. Yoder considers the variety of strategies the men and women of valor used to gain and consolidate their power, including the use of violence, the redistribution of patronage, and the control of the labor and reproductive capacity of subordinates. They relied heavily, however, on other strategies that did not deplete their wealth or require the constant exercise of force: mobilizing and dispensing indigenous knowledge, cultivating a reputation for reliability and honor, and positioning themselves as skillful mediators between the realms of earth and heaven, using their association with YHWH to advance their political, economic, or military agenda.

A concise introduction to a central topic in biblical studies, designed with the needs of students, preachers and teachers in mind

Building on the foundation of the popular volumes The Bible from Scratch: The Old Testament for Beginners and The New Testament for Beginners, Donald Griggs and Paul Walaskay offer a new study on the book of Acts.

In seven chapters, Griggs and Walaskay tell the story of this popular New Testament book, with its stories of the works of Jesus' disciples after his death, resurrection, and ascension. A leader's guide and participant section are included, making this volume an excellent resource for group or individual study.

"Ancient World Studies the Book of Isaiah" is an inductive Bible study of Isaiah, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, suitable for any serious student of the Bible. It includes thirty five-day lessons, with numerous notes, definitions, and introductions, as well as maps, charts, timelines and historical summaries for the nations mentioned in Isaiah.

The prophetic books are some of the most captivating and fascinating texts of the Old Testament, but they are also some of the most misunderstood. Interpreting the Prophets equips the reader with the knowledge and skills they need to interpret the Prophets in a faithful and accurate fashion. Beginning with the nature of the prophetic role and prophetic books in Israel, Old Testament scholar Aaron Chalmers leads the reader through the various "worlds" of Israel's prophets--historical, social, theological and rhetorical-- providing the basic contextual and background information needed both for sound and sensible exegesis, and for sensitive interpretation and application for today. He concludes with a helpful chapter giving guidelines for preaching from the Prophets--including advice on choosing the texts, making appropriate analogies, and the potential problems and common pitfalls to avoid.