The present volume contains a collection of articles from an international conference in Zurich that brought together leading voices from North America, Europe, and Israel to evaluate the present state of research on the composition of the Pentateuch. The aim of the conference was to clarify differences in methodology and to identify points of convergence in the present state of pentateuchal research as a basis for further discussion. "The essays in this volume provide important insights about the way toward a better understanding of the Pentateuch's literary development." Angela Roskop Erisman in Journal of the American Oriental Society 133.3 (2013), p. 551-553

"The Bible is the most important cultural and religious document in the Western world. Te three monotheistic faiths-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-have all grown out of the traditions that we find in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible. The Bible therefore has a natural place in a liberal arts curriculum."

-from the introduction

So begins Barstad in this comprehensive, student-friendly introductory textbook outlining the contours of the Old Testament literature in simple and straightforward prose. This text is an excellent primer as well as an invaluable reference book to which students will turn throughout their education.

Preaching's Survey of Bibles and Bible Reference We often turn to the book of Job when we encounter suffering. We look for an explanation for the questions "Why me?" or "Why her?" But what if it turns out that although Job does suffer, the book is not really about his suffering? If ever a book needed a "How to Read" instruction manual, it is the book of Job. And when two respected Old Testament scholars team up-both of whom have written commentaries on Job-we have a matchless guide to reading and appreciating the book. From their analysis of its place in the wisdom literature of the Bible and the ancient Near East to their discussions of its literary features and relationship to history, Walton and Longman give us the best of their expertise. They explore the theology of Job, placing it within Israelite religion and Old Testament theology. And they coach us in how to read Job as Christians. When it turns out the book is not what we thought it was, our reading is richly layered and more satisfying. Whether you are preparing for preaching, teaching, leading a Bible study, studying for a class or for personal enrichment, How to Read Job is your starting point.

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction-covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography-a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation-the author's own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes-the author's notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting-a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment-verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation-brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography-occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.

Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories by J. David Pleins with Jonathan Homrighausen is an innovative study reference intended for both introductory and advanced students of the Hebrew language to help them understand and remember vocabulary based on logical categories of related words. Since our minds acquire and recall language by making associations between related words it is only natural that we would study language in this way. By organizing Hebrew vocabulary into logical categories, as opposed to frequency, students can quickly begin to familiarize themselves with entire groups of terms and more readily acquaint themselves with the ranges of meaning of particular Hebrew words. This reference tool focuses on nouns in the Old Testament, and includes over 175 word grouping categories including pottery, ships, birds, jewelry, seasons, and many more. For each Hebrew term a definition is given and a reference in the Hebrew Bible appears so readers can see the word in context. For many words additional lexical references are indicated where students can look for further study. Words that hapax legomena (words appearing only once in the Hebrew Bible) are marked with an "H" and words that are rare and appear less than 10 times are marked with an "R." Two helpful appendices equip students for further study, these include 1) a Guide for Further Reading where recommendations are given for helpful resources for studying the larger macro categories and 2) Lists of "cluster verses" where several words in a given category appear together, giving students the ability to see how these words function together in context. Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary by Conceptual Categories is intended to move students beyond rote memorization to a more dynamic grasp of Hebrew vocabulary, ultimately equipping them to read with more fluidity and with a deeper and more intuitive grasp of the biblical text.

In "Out of Eden," Paul W. Kahn offers a philosophical meditation on the problem of evil. He uses the Genesis story of the Fall as the starting point for a profound articulation of the human condition. Kahn shows us that evil expresses the rage of a subject who knows both that he is an image of an infinite God and that he must die. Kahn's interpretation of Genesis leads him to inquiries into a variety of modern forms of evil, including slavery, torture, and genocide.

Kahn takes issue with Hannah Arendt's theory of the banality of evil, arguing that her view is an instance of the modern world's lost capacity to speak of evil. Psychological, social, and political accounts do not explain evil as much as explain it away. Focusing on the existential roots of evil rather than on the occasions for its appearance, Kahn argues that evil originates in man's flight from death. He urges us to see that the opposite of evil is not good, but love: while evil would master death, love would transcend it.

Offering a unique perspective that combines political and cultural theory, law, and philosophy, Kahn here continues his project of advancing a political theology of modernity.

In this first volume in the Library of Biblical Theology series, Walter Brueggemann portrays the key components in Israel's encounter with God as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Creation, election, Torah, the divine hand in history; these and other theological high points appear both in their original historical context, and their ongoing relevance for contemporary Jewish and Christian self-understanding.

Written in accessible language and sensitive to those who have little or no experience in reading the Bible, each book in the Conversations with Scripture series focuses on exploring the historical and critical background of the biblical texts, while illustrating how these centuries-old writings still speak to us today. Countryman brings his considerable biblical studies erudition as well as his skills as a popular writer and published poet to bear on the Psalms. Though an accomplished scholar of the New Testament, Countryman illumines the Psalms with insight and creativity. Readers will experience this most beloved part of the scriptural canon in a fresh and exciting way.

Daniel was written during a time when God s people were struggling to discern how to remain faithful, even as their lives were dominated by the political and cultural forces of the Empire. Daniel s central themes have remained relevant ever since: the challenge of remaining loyal to God despite the alternately seductive and threatening voices of imperial powers; the indispensability of humility before God; the perpetual problem of human arrogance and failure to recognize the overarching power of God; the insatiable and life-denying human thirst for power and control; and the call to find in God the source of just, joyful and abundant living. As people today try to make sense of a newly emerging global reality, Daniel continues to speak an important word about faithful living. Who truly controls our lives? To what or whom do we owe ultimate allegiance? To whom do the kingdom, the power and the glory belong? This book invites readers to consider the questions that Daniel raises and then live out the answers. "

Sometimes it s hard for people to reconcile their lives in this chaotic, energized, nonsensical world with their faith in God. They want to know what s really true, what they can count on, what they can build their futures on. They want their lives to matter. And yet to them the Bible often seems merely to be an ancient book about dead people who had no idea of the stresses and fears and challenges of living today.

This straightforward, real-world devotional guide is designed to help people of all ages connect powerfully with the God of the Bible as revealed in the Psalms the Bible s songbook. Within the exquisitely emotional lyrics in these songs, young readers will find all the feelings, struggles, and fears they face each day. And they ll find the spiritual resources to help them thrive.

Using 90 selected passages from the Psalms, Peter Wallace has put together a stimulating new devotional full of fresh ideas for finding ways to connect with God, with one another, and with the world at large. As a result, readers will gain encouragement and strength to face their uncertain world with the wisdom and love of the God who so deeply loves them."

Ruth and Esther are two prophetic pictures of the same gospel. One speaks of a last-minute rescue from death, the other of a long-awaited filling of a terrible emptiness. One ends with a baby; the other concludes with an annual remembrance of an amazing escape. But neither really ends, until they find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Part of the Teaching series, this book is designed to help the pastor/preacher, small group leader, or youth worker in preparing and presenting studies.

A fascinating insight into the rival religious communities of the early Christian church. These apocryphal texts open a window to understanding the rival religious communities which coexisted with the early church. Written after the ministry of Christ and the apostles, these collections of writings speak contain stories about Jesus that were never part of the canonical Gospels, but nevertheless offer a fascinating glimpse into the world of the early church. These translations by Rick Brannan are perfect for use by students, scholars, and everyday Christians interested in early Christian apocrypha. Lexham Classics are beautifully typeset new editions of classic works. Each book has been carefully transcribed or translated from the original texts, ensuring an accurate representation of the writing as the author intended it to be read. This volume includes: Infancy Gospels The Protevangelium of James The Infancy Gospel of Thomas Passion Gospels The Gospel of Peter The Gospel of Thomas (Greek Fragments) The Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate) and the Descent of Christ to Hell Post-Resurrection Gospels The Gospel of Mary Fragments Agrapha Sayings in the Canonical New Testament outside of Gospels Sayings in Additions to New Testament MSS Sayings in the Apostolic Fathers Sayings in Justin Martyr

This is the first of a two-volume bible commentary covering the Psalms and examining the role of these biblical poems throughout Jewish and Christian history. * Provides a fascinating introduction to the literary, historical, and theological background of psalmody * Examines the psalms through liturgy and prayer, study and preaching, translation and imitation, and musical composition and artistic illustration * Includes illustrations of significant psalms, helpful maps, and an extensive bibliography; an expanded bibliography to accompany the book is also available at www.wiley.com/go/gillingham * A forthcoming second volume is planned, which will take an alternative psalm-by-psalm approach * Now available in paperback, and published in the innovative reception-history series, Blackwell Bible Commentaries

The Psalms is a beautiful presentation of this beloved section of Scripture. Featuring the ESV text, each psalm is presented in large, readable type on high quality paper. The layout gives ample space for the text and adds to the aesthetic value of the biblical poetry. This is a wonderful edition for devotions, for liturgical use, and as a gift. Black letter text Single-column format

When Cecil B. DeMille's epic, The Ten Commandments, came out in 1956, lines of people crowded into theaters across America to admire the movie's spectacular special effects. Thanks to DeMille, the commandments now had fans as well as adherents. But the country's fascination with the Ten Commandments goes well beyond the colossal scenes of this Hollywood classic. In this vividly rendered narrative, Jenna Weissman Joselit situates the Ten Commandments within the fabric of American history. Her subjects range from the 1860 tale of the amateur who claimed to have discovered ancient holy stones inside a burial mound in Ohio to the San Francisco congregation of Sherith Israel, which commissioned a luminous piece of stained glass depicting Moses in Yosemite for its sanctuary; from the Kansas politician Charles Walter, who in the late nineteenth century proposed codifying each commandment into state law, to the radio commentator Laura Schlessinger, who popularized the Ten Commandments as a psychotherapeutic tool in the 1990s. At once text and object, celestial and earthbound, Judaic and Christian, the Ten Commandments were not just a theological imperative in the New World; they also provoked heated discussions around key issues such as national identity, inclusion, and pluralism. In a country as diverse and heterogeneous as the United States, the Ten Commandments offered common ground and held out the promise of order and stability, becoming the lodestar of American identity. While archaeologists, theologians, and devotees across the world still wonder what became of the tablets that Moses received on Mount Sinai, Weissman Joselit offers a surprising answer: they landed in the United States.

Exploring the lively polemics among Jews, Christians, and Muslims during the Middle Ages, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh analyzes Muslim critical attitudes toward the Bible, some of which share common features with both pre-Islamic and early modern European Bible criticism. Unlike Jews and Christians, Muslims did not accept the text of the Bible as divine word, believing that it had been tampered with or falsified. This belief, she maintains, led to a critical approach to the Bible, which scrutinized its text as well as its ways of transmission. In their approach Muslim authors drew on pre-Islamic pagan, Gnostic, and other sectarian writings as well as on Rabbinic and Christian sources. Elements of this criticism may have later influenced Western thinkers and helped shape early modern Bible scholarship. Nevertheless, Muslims also took the Bible to predict the coming of Muhammad and the rise of Islam. They seem to have used mainly oral Arabic translations of the Hebrew Bible and recorded some lost Jewish interpretations. In tracing the connections between pagan, Islamic, and modern Bible criticism, Lazarus-Yafeh demonstrates the importance of Muslim mediation between the ancient world and Europe in a hitherto unknown field.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Das Buch befasst sich mit bedeutenden Dolmetschern und UEbersetzern aus 5000 Jahren auf der Basis umfangreicher Recherchen in Archiven und Bibliotheken. Aus der Geschichte der Translation sind erstmals aufgearbeitet: die Dolmetscher im Alten Testament, die Rolle der Pfortendolmetscher im Osmanischen Reich, die Dolmetschermemoiren uber die Kriegserklarung Deutschlands an die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941 in der Gegenuberstellung mit neuen Dokumenten aus Archiven in Moskau und Washington sowie die Geschichte des Simultandolmetschens in der DDR. Grundlich beleuchten die Autorinnen die Tatigkeit der Russisch-Dolmetscher auf dem Nurnberger Prozess anhand schriftlicher und mundlicher Erinnerungen. Den Abschluss bilden Leben und Wirken der UEbersetzer der ersten russischen Ausgabe des Kapitals von Karl Marx.

This comprehensive, introductory textbook is unique in exploring the emergence of the Hebrew Bible in the broader context of world history. It particularly focuses on the influence of pre-Roman empires, empowering students with a richer understanding of Old Testament historiography. * Provides a historical context for students learning about the development and changing interpretations of biblical texts * Examines how these early stories were variously shaped by interaction with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic empires * Incorporates recent research on the formation of the Pentateuch * Reveals how key biblical texts came to be interpreted by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths * Includes numerous student-friendly features, such as study questions, review sections, bibliographies, timelines, and illustrations and photos

Classical Pentateuch research mainly dealt with the books of Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy and it is only in recent decades that the literary and theological meanings of Moses' fourth book has been rediscovered. In this volume, Christian Frevel lets the interplay between narrative and legislative material - which is often not understood - emerge into new light, examining the texts of the Book of Numbers as inner-biblical interpretations and tradition-bound innovations. Cloaked in the Israelites' 40-year long sojourn in the desert, the Book of Numbers presents a tightly-woven fabric of texts which reflect the social and cultic orders, discuss questions of leadership and explore the meaning of the Promised Land to Israel's existence. The Book of Numbers is characterized in its entirety by transformations: for example, the exodus generation becomes the desert generation and leadership is transferred from Moses to Joshua, from Aaron to Eleazar. Important innovations such as the hierarchical organization of the cult, including the role of the Levites or the hereditary law concerning daughters, are cultivated within these transformations. The people's time in the desert (re)form their social frameworks and renders them sustainable for the existence in the Promised Land. Important themes such as community and cult organization, the enduring election of the Israelites, the meaning of the Promised Land for the collective identity, questions of hierarchical leadership and democratic participation, of collective guilt and individual liability, along with many other aspects, are dealt with in the texts. Without the literary traditions of the Book of Numbers, which were mostly set down around the 5th-4th centuries BCE, the formation of the Pentateuch as Torah would not have been conceivable. The studies of this volume reveal the thematic diversity of the book against a backdrop of its literary creation within the Penta- and Hexateuch.

Texts after Terror offers an important new theory of rape and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible. While the Bible is filled with stories of rape, scholarly approaches to sexual violence in the scriptures remain exhausted, dated, and in some cases even un-feminist, lagging far behind contemporary discourse about sexual violence and rape culture. Graybill responds to this disconnect by engaging contemporary conversations about rape culture, sexual violence, and #MeToo, arguing that rape and sexual violence - both in the Bible and in contemporary culture - are frequently fuzzy, messy, and icky, and that we need to take these features seriously. Texts after Terror offers a new framework informed by contemporary conversations about sexual violence, writings by victims and survivors, and feminist, queer, and affect theory. In addition, Graybill offers significant new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen. 34), Tamar (2 Sam. 13), Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11), Hagar (Gen. 16), Daughter Zion (Lam. 1-2), and the unnamed woman known as the Levite's concubine (Judges 19). Texts after Terror urges feminist biblical scholars and readers of all sorts to take seriously sexual violence and rape, while also holding space for new ways of reading these texts that go beyond terror, considering what might come after.

Highly regarded Old Testament scholar John Goldingay offers a substantive and useful commentary on the book of Genesis that is both critically engaged and sensitive to the theological contributions of the text. This volume, the first in a new series on the Pentateuch, complements the successful Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Wisdom and Psalms series (series volumes have sold over 55,000 copies). Each series volume will cover one book of the Pentateuch, addressing important issues and problems that flow from the text and exploring the contemporary relevance of the Pentateuch. The series editor is Bill T. Arnold, the Paul S. Amos Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Die Weihnachtsvorlesung gehoert zu den fest etablierten Veranstaltungen der Padagogischen Hochschule Freiburg. Jedes Jahr referieren Wissenschaftler*innen aus der Perspektive ihrer jeweiligen Disziplin zum Thema "Weihnachten". Der vorliegende Band dokumentiert eine Reihe dieser interdisziplinaren Weihnachtsvorlesungen, prasentiert neue Beitrage und bildet so die gesellschaftlich-kulturelle Prasenz und Popularitat des Weihnachtsfestes ab. Das Spektrum der Aufsatze reicht von theologischen Artikeln wie "Weihnachten im Alten Testament?" und "Weihnachten bei Martin Luther" bis zu kulturwissenschaftlichen Beitragen wie "Weihnachtsszenen im Theater" und religionspadagogischen Aufsatzen wie "Der grosse Gott wird ein kleines Kind".

Hebraism in Religion, History, and Politics is an investigation into Hebraism as a category of cultural analysis within the history of Christendom. Its aim is to determine what Hebraism means or should mean when it is used. The characteristics of Hebraism indicate a changing relation between the Old and New Testaments that arose in Medieval and early modern Europe, between on the one hand a doctrinally universal Christianity, and on the other various Christian nations that were understood as being a 'new Israel'. Thus, Hebraism refers to the development of a paradoxically intriguing 'Jewish Christianity' or an 'Old Testament Christianity'. It represents a 'third culture' in contrast to the culture of Roman or Hellenistic empire and Christian universalism. There were attempts, with varying success, during the twentieth century to clarify Hebraism as a category of cultural history and religious history. Steven Grosby expertly contributes to that clarification. In so doing, the possibility arises that Hebraism and Hebraic culture offer a different way to look at religion, its history, and the history of the West.