This volume presents an important insight into the history of scholarship on the Old Testament over the last 100 years. Presented in collaboration with the Society for Old Testament Study, which celebrates its centenary in 2017, the volume examines the shifting patterns in scholarship on the Old Testament over the last century, from the types of subject studied to the demographic make-up of the scholars working on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible themselves. The volume has been written by several longstanding members and officers of the society. As such the volume presents a remarkable history of scholarship of Old Testament studies.

Across the pages of 2 Chronicles a colourful cast of characters passes in breathless parade before the reader. The tales of the kings of Judah are told in sequence, from Rehoboam 'the Enlarger' (who on the contrary shrinks the kingdom) to Zedekiah 'the Righteous' (who equally contrariwise profanes the divine name). These motley monarchs are preceded by the unparalleled King Solomon of All Israel and succeeded by the imperial King Cyrus of Persia, and all the while the tellers of the tales weave an insistent ideological thread through the fabric of their stories. John Jarick's reading of Chronicles brings out the fascination and discomfort of handling an ancient scroll that presents itself as the authoritative account of how things were and how they ought to be.

The books of Chronicles have a certain fantasy quality about them. They create an imaginary world in which things happen just so, and in which any potentially untidy loose ends in their narrative of the past are tied together in a highly systematic way. This is storytelling with the didactic purpose of inculcating a particular ideology, bombarding the reader with a kaleidoscopic procession of heroes and villains and presenting a frontierland of danger and opportunity. John Jarick's focus on the literary world of Chronicles provides a fresh reading of the work, foregrounding the often unrecognized artistry in the telling of the tale-including at times a distinctly musical language and a careful mathematical precision. But at the same time he does not hide the dark underbelly of the writing, with its persistent note of conformity to the political and religious system advocated by the storytellers. This edition is a reprint of the original 2002 edition with different pagination. A companion volume on 2 Chronicles is published for the first time in 2007.

1753 saw the publication of two major works of Old Testament scholarship: Robert Lowth's On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews and Jean Astruc's Conjectures on Genesis (published anonymously when Astruc was Professor of Medicine at the College Royal in Paris). Both these works have had conisderable repercussions in biblical study down to the present day. Indeed, they may be said to have inaugurated modern critical approaches to biblical poetry and prose, respectively, of the Old Testament. To mark and reflect upon the 250th anniversary of the publication of these volumes, the University of Oxford hosted a "Sacred Conjectures" conference in 2003. An international group of scholars gathered to discuss the context and legacy of Lowth's and Astruc's seminal contributions to the field of biblical scholarship; the majority of the papers presented at the conference appear in this volume. The collection aims to provide for Lowth and Astruc not only an account and evaluation of their life and work but also an understanding of the wider intellectual context of their scholarship and the reception and influence of their work ever since.

This collection of essays examines the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament from a variety of angles. The slipperiness of the concept of 'wisdom literature', the transmission of 'wise' advice for living, rabbinic and patristic approaches to the Bible's wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge modern perspectives on such Old Testament books as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all to be found here. In the tradition of the renowned previous volumes from the Oxford Old Testament Seminar - King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1998), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (2004), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (2005), and Prophecy and Prophets in Ancient Israel (2010)-this new volume again brings the scholarship of the Oxford Seminar, here focused on the rich subject of Old Testament wisdom traditions, to an international readership.

The books of Chronicles have a certain fantasy quality about them. They create an imaginary world in which things happen just so, and in which any potentially untidy loose ends in their narrative of the past are tied together in a highly systematic way. This is storytelling with the didactic purpose of inculcating a particular ideology, bombarding the reader with a kaleidoscopic procession of heroes and villains and presenting a frontierland of danger and opportunity. John Jarick's focus on the literary world of Chronicles provides a fresh reading of the work, foregrounding the often unrecognized artistry in the telling of the tale-including at times a distinctly musical language and a careful mathematical precision. But at the same time he does not hide the dark underbelly of the writing, with its persistent note of conformity to the political and religious system advocated by the storytellers. This edition is a reprint of the original 2002 edition with different pagination. A companion volume on 2 Chronicles is published for the first time in 2007.

Across the pages of 2 Chronicles a colourful cast of characters passes in breathless parade before the reader. The tales of the kings of Judah are told in sequence, from Rehoboam 'the Enlarger' (who on the contrary shrinks the kingdom) to Zedekiah 'the Righteous' (who equally contrariwise profanes the divine name). These motley monarchs are preceded by the unparalleled King Solomon of All Israel and succeeded by the imperial King Cyrus of Persia, and all the while the tellers of the tales weave an insistent ideological thread through the fabric of their stories. John Jarick's reading of Chronicles brings out the fascination and discomfort of handling an ancient scroll that presents itself as the authoritative account of how things were and how they ought to be.

This collection of essays examines the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament from a variety of angles. The slipperiness of the concept of 'wisdom literature', the transmission of 'wise' advice for living, rabbinic and patristic approaches to the Bible's wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge modern perspectives on such Old Testament books as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all to be found here. In the tradition of the renowned previous volumes from the Oxford Old Testament Seminar - King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1998), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (2004), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (2005), and Prophecy and Prophets in Ancient Israel (2010)-this new volume again brings the scholarship of the Oxford Seminar, here focused on the rich subject of Old Testament wisdom traditions, to an international readership.

This volume presents an important insight into the history of scholarship on the Old Testament over the last 100 years. Presented in collaboration with the Society for Old Testament Study, which celebrates its centenary in 2017, the volume examines the shifting patterns in scholarship on the Old Testament over the last century, from the types of subject studied to the demographic make-up of the scholars working on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible themselves. The volume has been written by several longstanding members and officers of the society. As such the volume presents a remarkable history of scholarship of Old Testament studies.