Ruth: Bridges and Boundaries is a literary close reading of the text as a bridge between the anarchic period of the Judges and the monarchic age that begins with the birth of David, as reflected through Ruth's absorption process within Bethlehemite society. This bridge is constructed from three main axes: the theological perception that human actions have the power to shape and advance reality; the moral-legal perception that the spirit of the law must be privileged over the letter of the law and social conventions; and the principle that the institute of monarchy must be based upon human compassion. The commentary traces the narrative sequence through the paradigm of this three-fold cord, showing how these threads are woven throughout the book. This innovative reading is illustrated with an unprecedented psychological analysis of Ruth as a narrative of transition, using modern psychological theories. This contemporary yet textually faithful literary commentary offers new insight into the inner workings of the text of Ruth as literary masterpiece. Academic yet accessible, this work provides tools for readers of Ruth and the field of biblical narrative in general.

The study discusses the Old Testament's parable of Nathan and the subsequent condemnation of King David. The intriguing episode of the Prophet Nathan pronouncing judgment on the erring King David has always attracted the interest of the exegete and various researchers have used different methods to separate the condemnation of King David from the ancient author. This study presents a synchronic reading of the canonical text that reveals the episode as the mirror image of the oracle of eternal dynasty pronounced to David by the same prophet in the Second Book of Samuel 7. It is indeed the work of the deuteronomistic writer who has adapted an oracle against the dynasty of David and trimmed it to the advantage of his hero in the unfolding of history.

Many of us know and love the stories and characters of the Old Testament such as Joseph, Moses and Jonah. But how do we view its importance in relation to New Testament teaching and our 21st century experiences? This accessible yet powerful addition to the Pocket Guide series draw together the threads of Scripture to help us understand the power of God's word when viewed in its completeness.

This book deals with the theology of the Church of Smyrna from its foundation up to the Council of Nicaea in 325. The author provides a critical historical evaluation of the documentary sources and certain aspects particularly deserving of discussion. He makes a meticulous study of the history of the city, its gods and institutions, the set-up of the Jewish and Christian communities and the response of the latter to the imperial cult. Finally, he undertakes a detailed analysis both of the reception of the Hebrew Scriptures and the apostolic traditions, as well as examining the gradual historical process of the shaping of orthodoxy and the identity of the community in the light of the organisation of its ecclesial ministries, its sacramental life and the cult of its martyrs.

ECPA Gold Medallion Award winner In this first volume of a three-volume Old Testament theology, John Goldingay focuses on narrative. Examining the biblical order of God's creation of and interactions with the world and Israel, he tells the story of Israel's gospel as a series of divine acts: God Began God Started Over God Promised God Delivered God Sealed God Gave God Accommodated God Wrestled God Preserved God Sent God Exalted This is an Old Testament theology like no other. Whether applying magnifying or wide-angle lenses, Goldingay is closely attentive to the First Testament's narrative, plot, motifs, tensions and subtleties. Brimming with insight and energy, and postmodern in its ethos, this book will repeatedly reward readers with fresh and challenging perspectives on God and God's ways with Israel and the world-as well as Israel's ways with God. Goldingay's Old Testament Theology is not only a scholarly contribution to the ongoing quest of understanding the theological dimensions of the First Testament. Preachers and teachers will prize it as a smart, informed and engaging companion as they read and re-present the First Testament story to postmodern pilgrims on the way. This is Old Testament theology that preaches. Volume two focuses on Israel's faith, or Old Testament theology as belief. It explores the person and nature of God, the nature of the world and humanity, the character of sin and the significance of Israel. Volume three's focus is Israel's life, or Old Testament theology as ethos, exploring its worship, spirituality, ideals and vision for living.

The editors of The Jewish Annotated New Testament explore how Jews and Christians can learn from and understand each other better by exploring how they read many of the same Bible stories through different lens. Esteemed Bible scholars Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler take readers on a guided tour of the most popular Old Testament stories referenced in the New Testament to explore how Christians, Jews, and scholars read these ancient texts differently. Among the passages analyzed are the creation story, the role of Adam and Eve, the suffering servant passages in Isaiah, the sign of "Jonah" Jesus refers to, and the words Jesus quotes from Psalm 22 as he is dying on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Comparing Jewish, Christian, and academic interpretations of each ancient narrative, Levine and Brettler offer a deeper understanding of these contrasting faiths, and illuminate the historical and literary significance of the Bible and its place in our culture. Revealing not only what Jews and Christians can learn from each other, The Bible With and Without Jesus also shows how to appreciate the distinctive perspectives of each. By understanding the depth and variety of reading these passages, we not only enhance our knowledge of each other, but also see more clearly the beauty and power of Scripture itself.

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.

The Septuagint - the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible - was an influential translation for Jews and Christians of the first century. When the New Testament writers quoted the Old Testament, they most often used the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX) translation. Thus the vocabulary and thought forms of the LXX had a significant impact on the development of New Testament theology. Although the LXX and the New Testament were both written in Koine Greek, much of their vocabulary and word forms are different. Thus students and scholars who desire to read the LXX need a reliable reference guide that will help them decode the host of word forms and meanings that go beyond New Testament Greek. The Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint lists alphabetically every Greek word form found in the standard Rahlfs LXX text, along with a detailed parsing of each form. Besides correcting errors found in the previous (1994) edition, this expanded edition also includes basic glosses (definitions) for each Greek word from Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, compiled by Johan Lust, Erik Eynikel, and Katrin Hauspie. These glosses are translation equivalents rather than technical definitions, and provide literal meanings as well as metaphorical ones. In many cases, the glosses are accompanied by grammatical and contextual information that sheds additional light on the word's meaning. The combination of the exhaustive grammatical analysis of the Analytical Lexicon and the helpful glosses of the Greek-English Lexicon make this expanded edition an indispensible tool for everyone engaged in the study of the Septuagint.

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.

The first systematic and comprehensive attempt to identify and analyze the role of Isaianic language and imagery in literature, art, and music Using reception history as its basis for study, Isaiah Through the Centuries is an unprecedented exploration of the afterlife of the Book of Isaiah, specifically in art, literature, and music. This is a commentary that guides the reader through the Book of Isaiah, examining the differing interpretations of each phrase or passage from a variety of cultural and religious perspectives, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Clearly structured and accessible, and richly illustrated, the book functions as a complete and comprehensive educational reference work. Isaiah Through the Centuries encourages readers to learn with an open mind and to understand how different interpretations have helped in the teaching and comprehension of the Bible and Isaiah's place in it. As part of the Wiley-Blackwell Bible Commentaries series, which is primarily concerned with reception history, the book emphasizes that how people interpret the prophet--and how they've been influenced by him--is often just as important as the sacred text's original meaning. Uses reception history to study the renowned prophet Provides a historical context for every use or interpretation discussed Offers essential background information on authors, artists, musicians, etc. in its glossary and biographies Minimizes historical details in order to focus as much as possible on exegetical matters Presents the role of Isaiah and the Bible in the creative arts Will be useful to multiple disciplines including theology and religion, English literature, art history and the history of music, not just Biblical Studies Comprehensive in scope, Isaiah Through the Centuries is a much-needed resource for all those interested in the influence of the Bible on Western culture, and presents unique perspectives for anyone interested in the Bible to discuss and debate for many years to come.

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.

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.

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 the Lord I Take Refuge invites readers to experience the Psalms in a new and refreshing way, with devotional content written by Dane Ortlund. This gift edition features an elegant and long-lasting TruTone cover.

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.