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About the Contributor(s): Moshe Greenberg taught the Bible and
Judaica at the University of Pennsylvania from 1954 until 1970 and
was professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem until
retiring in 1996. He died in 2010. His many publications include:
The Hab/piru, Introduction to Hebrew, Biblical Prose Prayer,
Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought, and Ezekiel (2 vols.,
Anchor Bible).
The Psalms are the best known and most widely used prayer texts of
the Bible. But the prayers of the Israelite took another form: the
prose prayers that we find embedded in biblical narrative. Prose
prayer was spoken by persons of all ranks. Male and female,
Israelite and foreigner, all enjoyed equal access to God. The
pervasiveness and spontaneity of this prayer, independent as it was
of the structure and taboos of formal worship, turned it into a
criterion for sincerity both in relations with God and in those
among human beings.
Greenberg finds in this rich life of private prayer a setting for
the high religious ideas--and the scathing critique of
worship--that characterized the "genius" of the prophets of the
eighth and ninth centuries B.C. His compact and masterful study,
originally the 1981-1982 Taubman Lectures at Berkeley, suggests an
explanation for the unprecedented democratization of worship in
post-biblical Judaism.
With this selection of his essays and studies, Moshe Greenberg
joins JPS's Scholars of Distinction. One of the world's foremost
Bible experts, Dr. Greenberg's viewpoint has been shaped by the
study of the ancient Near Eastern context of biblical Israel and
the history of the interpretation of the Bible from its earliest
translations until today. He regards the text with admiration for
its enduring power, for the features that set it apart from the
literatures of surrounding cultures, and for the riches discovered
in it through the ages by "faith-full" interpreters. For Dr.
Greenberg, the Jewish Bible scholar is, ultimately, charged with
the task of identifying and explaining the impact that Hebrew
scriptures have had on humanity in general and on Judaism in
particular. These essays, composed during a period of some
forty-five years, are presented essentially in their original form,
many with newly added notes by the author; some of the essays have
never before been published.
Ezekiel was and is perhaps the most misunderstood and challenging
Hebrew prophet. His prophecies and visions transport us to almost
indescribable realms, completely uncharted territory this side of
heaven. But as one of Israel's three major prophets, the words and
symbolic actions of this mouthpiece of God were directed to a
people weighed down by the realities of human experience. In this
long-awaited and eagerly anticipated second volume of his
commentary on the Book of Ezekiel, Moshe Greenberg exhibits the
characteristic care and special sensitivity of a world-renowned
scholar. He translates the text into a flowing English that
captures the richness and subtleties of the problematic Hebrew
original. Using illustrations from a vast array of literature on
Ezekiel, Greenberg brings the book's prophecies and people alive
for modern readers.
In Ezekiel 1-20, the first of two volumes of commentary on the
Scripture attributed to the third major Old Testament prophet,
Moshe Greenberg uses accessible prose to explain Ezekiel's
ecstatic, erratic, almost incomprehensible otherworldly visions and
prophecies. One of this century's most respected biblical scholars,
Greenberg translates the text, identifies the critical issues
raised by the book, and offers an impressively balanced, thoroughly
holistic interpretation of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 1-20 rigorously engages
the biblical text with all the tools of historical critical
analysis. Drawing upon the rich history of Jewish and Christian
interpretation, Greenberg employs ancient and modern sources in his
elucidation of this most difficult prophetic book. Only his second
and final volume, Ezekiel 21-48, can complete the most
authoritative commentary on Ezekiel.
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