Even when he was a prototype of European identity, Paul transgressed the limits of Europe. It is not clear whether he was conformist or rebellious, orthodox or liberal, sexist, or egalitarian. Instead of pushing the Apostle into the arbitrary categories of modern European identity, Fatima Tofighi takes into account the challenge that Paul brings to normative conceptions of political theology (Rom 13), 'religion' (Gal 2.12-14), and women's veiling (1 Cor 11. 5-16). Alternative interpretations of these passages, with the help of postmodern theory, both solve the major problems of biblical exegesis and offer a critique of the allegedly well-defined European categories.

Sicker asserts that the Mosaic canon, the Pentateuch, is first and foremost a library of essentially political teachings and documents, and that the first eleven chapters of the book of "Genesis" set forth in essence a general Mosaic political philosophy. These writings take a unique mythopoeic approach to the construction of a normative political theory intended to undergird the idea of a mutual covenant between God and the people of Israel that is to be realized in history in the creation of the ideal society. It is with the elaboration of the political ideas reflected in these early chapters of "Genesis" that this book is concerned.

For the modern reader, the biblical texts should be understood as postulating some basic ideas of Mosaic moral and political philosophy that, in Sicker's view, continue to be applicable in contemporary times. First, man is endowed with free will, however constrained by circumstances it may be, and with the intellect to govern and direct it in appropriate paths. Accordingly, he is individually responsible for his actions and must be held accountable for them. Second, man has a necessary relation to God whether he wishes it or not. Prudence alone will therefore dictate that compliance with divine precept is in man's best interest. Third, the notion that man can create a moral society without reference to God is a deceptive illusion. Man's ability to rationalize even his most outrageous behavior clearly indicates the need for an unimpeachable source and standard of moral authority. Fourth, until all men accept the preceding principles, the idea of a universal state is both dangerous and counterproductive. In the 20th century, we have witnessed two different attempts to create such a world state, both of which produced totalitarian monstrosities. Fifth, individualism as a social philosophy tends to be destructive of traditional values and must be tempered by the idea of communal responsibility. A survey of particular interest to scholars, researchers, and students interested in Jewish history, political thought, and the Old Testament.

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The anthropological approach to the expulsion of the foreign women from the post-exilic community argues that it was the result of a witch-hunt. Its comparative approach notes that the community responded to its weak social boundaries in the same fashion as societies with similar social weaknesses. This book argues that the post-exilic community's decision to expel the foreign women in its midst was the direct result of the community's inability to enforce a common morality among its members. This anthropological approach to the expulsion shows how other societies with weak social moralities tend to react with witch-hunts, and it suggests that the expulsion in Ezra 9-10 was precisely such an activity. It concludes with an examination of the political and economic forces that could have eroded the social morality of the community.

An enigmatic collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, the 'Gospel of Thomas' was discovered in the sands of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in the 1940's. Since its discovery, scholars and the public alike have been intrigued to know what the Gospel says and what light it sheds on the formation of early Christianity. In Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, April DeConick argued that the gospel was a 'rolling corpus, ' a book of sayings that grew over time, beginning as a simple written gospel containing oracles of the prophet Jesus. As the community faced various crises and constituency changes, including the delay of the Eschaton and the need to accommodate Gentiles within the group, its traditions were reinterpreted and the sayings in their gospel updated, accommodating the present experiences of the community. Here, DeConick provides a new English translation of the entire Gospel of Thomas, which includes the original 'kernel' of the Gospel and all the sayings. Whilst most other translations are of the Coptic text with only occasional reference to the Greek fragment variants, this translation integrates the Greek and offers new solutions to complete the lacunae. Gospel are also included. This is volume 287 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series and is part of the Early Christianity in Context series

'[W]hen they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost (phantasma), and cried out; for they all saw him, and were terrified' (Mark 6:49, RSV). There is a growing awareness among biblical scholars and others of the potential value of modern and postmodern fantasy theory for the study of biblical texts. Following theorists such as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gilles Deleuze (among others), we understand the fantastic as the deconstruction of literary realism. The fantastic arises from the text's resistance to understanding; the "meaning" of the fantastic text is not its reference to the primary world of consensus reality but rather a fundamental undecidability of reference. The fantastic is also a point at which ancient and contemporary texts (including books, movies, and TV shows) resonate with one another, sometimes in surprising ways, and this resonance plays a large part in my argument. Mark and its afterlives "translate" one another, in the sense that Walter Benjamin speaks of the tangential point at which the original text and its translation touch one another, not a transfer of understood meaning but rather a point at which what Benjamin called "pure language" becomes apparent. Mark has always been the most "difficult" of the canonical gospels, the one that requires the greatest amount of hermeneutical gymnastics from its commentators. Its beginning in media res, its disconcerting ending at 16:8, its multiple endings, the "messianic secret," Jesus's tensions with his disciples and family - these are just some of the more obvious of the and many troublesome features that distinguish Mark from the other biblical gospels. If there had not been two other gospels (Matthew and Luke) that were clearly similar to Mark but also much more attractive to Christian belief, it seems likely that Mark, like the gospels of Thomas and Peter, would not have been accepted into the canon. Reading Mark as fantasy does not "solve" any of these problems, but it does place them in a very different context, one in which they are no longer "problems," but in which there are different problems. A fantastical reading of the gospel of Mark is not the only correct understanding of this text, but rather one possibility that may have considerable appeal and value in the contemporary world. This fantastic reading is a "reading from the outside," inspired by the parable "theory" of Isaiah 6:9-10 and Mark 4:11-12: "for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand." Reading from the outside counters a widespread belief that only those within the faith community can properly understand the scriptures. It is the "stupid" reading of those who do not share institutionalized understandings passed down through catechisms and creeds, i.e., through the dominant ideology of the churches.

This critically acclaimed series provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The authors are scholars of international standing.

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This powerful collection of essays focuses on the representation of God in the Book of Ezekiel. With topics spanning across projections of God, through to the implications of these creations, the question of the divine presence in Ezekiel is explored. Madhavi Nevader analyses Divine Sovereignty and its relation to creation, while Dexter E. Callender Jnr and Ellen van Wolde route their studies in the image of God, as generated by the character of Ezekiel. The assumption of the title is then inverted, as Stephen L. Cook writes on 'The God that the Temple Blueprint Creates', which is taken to its other extreme by Marvin A. Sweeney in his chapter on 'The Ezekiel that God Creates', and finds a nice reconciliation in Daniel I. Block's chapter, 'The God Ezekiel Wants Us to Meet.' Finally, two essays from Christian biblical scholar Nathan MacDonald and Jewish biblical scholar, Rimon Kasher, offer a reflection on the essays about Ezekiel and his God.

What is an 'echo' of Scripture? How can we detect echoes of the Old Testament in Paul, and how does their detection facilitate interpretation of the Pauline text? These are questions addressed by this collection of essays from the SBL programme unit Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity. The first part of the book reports its vigorous 1990 discussion of Richard Hays's 'Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul', including contributions by Craig Evans, James Sanders, William Scott Green and Christiaan Beker, as well as a response by R.B. Hays. The second part of the book studies specific passages where reference is made to the Old Testament explicitly or allusively. The contributors here are James Sanders, Linda Belleville, Carol Stockhausen, James Scott, Nancy Calvert and Stephen Brown.

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The 22 essays in this new and comprehensive study explore how notions of covenant, especially the Sinaitic covenant, flourished during the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and early Hellenistic periods. Following the upheaval of the Davidic monarchy, the temple's destruction, the disenfranchisement of the Jerusalem priesthood, the deportation of Judeans to other lands, the struggles of Judeans who remained in the land, and the limited returns of some Judean groups from exile, the covenant motif proved to be an increasingly influential symbol in Judean intellectual life. The contributors to this volume, drawn from many different countries including Canada, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States, document how Judean writers working within historiographic, Levitical, prophetic, priestly, and sapiential circles creatively reworked older notions of covenant to invent a new way of understanding this idea. These writers examine how new conceptions of the covenant made between YHWH and Israel at Mt. Sinai play a significant role in the process of early Jewish identity formation. Others focus on how transformations in the Abrahamic, Davidic, and Priestly covenants responded to cultural changes within Judean society, both in the homeland and in the diaspora. Cumulatively, the studies of biblical writings, from Genesis to Chronicles, demonstrate how Jewish literature in this period developed a striking diversity of ideas related to covenantal themes.

This monograph examines intertextual connections to Ezekiel found in John and in Second Temple literature. Chapter One describes the method used in the monograph, described as comparative intertextuality. Intertextual connections between Ezekiel and later Second Temple works are compared with intertextual connections between Ezekiel and the Gospel of John. Two chapters are devoted to understanding how various works in the Second Temple period make use of Ezekiel. The DSS contain many allusions to a number of Ezekiel's oracles, while other Second Temple works refer to only a few of Ezekiel's oracles, and those only rarely. In each case, Manning examines the evidence for the presence of the allusions, studies the implied interpretational methods, and comments on the function of the allusion in advancing the author's ideas. Two chapters analyze John's allusions to Ezekiel: the good shepherd, the vine, the opened heavens, imagery from the dry bones vision, and water symbolism. The monograph concludes with observations on how John's use of Ezekiel fits within the use of Ezekiel in Second Temple literature.John shares certain tendencies with other literature, such as the combination of allusions from related OT passages, the resumption of allusions later in the same work, and careful attention to the original context of the allusion. John has a few unique tendencies: he alludes to all five of Ezekiel's oracles of hope and primarily uses that imagery to describe the giving of the Holy Spirit and new life through Jesus.

We are living in exciting times, where God is stirring His daughters to step up and grasp hold of His Kingdom purposes, daring to apply His truth to their lives at new levels. In so doing, they are influencing others to do the same - and the Kingdom is rapidly growing stronger as a result. Patricia Talbott is one of these women at the forefront, and her book will be a powerful tool to help release this great potential. Cherie Minton, Co-Founder, Hope Force International I have known Patricia for 20 years, and from the time I met her I knew she was a woman of purpose and destiny. She is also a woman of discernment, wisdom, courage, prayer, determination, obedience, faith and commitment For women of all ages this is a wonderful book containing Biblical truth, with application. Patricia has found such treasures in these women's lives, treasures that can be become part of our lives today. She has already incorporated many of these values in her own life, so she writes with authority. I highly recommend this book for individual and group study, for processing and for reflection. Donna Ruth Jordan, YWAM Associates

Was Esther unique - an anomaly in patriarchal society? Conventionally, scholars see ancient Israelite and Jewish women as excluded from the public world, their power concentrated instead in the domestic realm and exercised through familial structures. Rebecca S. Hancock demonstrates, in contrast, that because of the patrimonial character of ancient Jewish society, the state was often organized along familial lines. The presence of women in roles of queen consort or queen is therefore a key political, and not simply domestic, feature.Attention to the narrative of Esther and comparison with Hellenistic and Persian historiography depicting "wise women" acting in royal contexts reveals that Esther is in fact representative of a wider tradition. Women could participate in political life structured along familial and kinship lines. Further, Hancock's demonstration qualifies the bifurcation of "public" (male-dominated) and "private" (female-dominated) space in the ancient Near East.

This volume is a collection of fresh essays in honor of Professor John T. Townsend. It focuses on the interpretation of the common Jewish and Christian Scripture (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) and on its two off-shoots (Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament), as well as on Jewish-Christian relations. The contributors, who are prominent scholars in their fields, include James L. Crenshaw, Goeran Eidevall, Anne E. Gardner, Lawrence M. Wills, Cecilia Wassen, Robert L. Brawley, Joseph B. Tyson, Eldon J. Epp, Yaakov Elman, Rivka Ulmer, Andreas Lehnardt, Reuven Kimelman, Bruce Chilton, and Michael W. Duggan. "an engaging and impressive scholarly work." - Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 81.3 (2019)