This volume makes a positive intervention into maximalist/minimalist debates about Israelite historiography by pointing to the events that happened during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. During this historical epoch, traditions about Israel and Judah's founding became fixed as markers of ethnic identity, and much of the canonical Hebrew Bible came into its present form. Concentrating on these events, a clearer historical picture emerges.
The entire volume is set within the context of Doug Knight's contributions, which have encouraged a rigorous social-scientific and tradition-historical approach to the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel in general. Many scholars have pursued how the social scientific method, first used to analyze early monarchic Israel, can shape the understanding of these later historical periods. Knight's methods, teachings, writings, and scholarly interventions have pointed the contributors of this volume to fresh considerations of the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The concluding essay will examine the future directions in which such sociological and historical investigation can go forward.

Tangled in the puzzling images of the book of Ezekiel is a message that is very relevant to our lives today. This insightful study explores the scripture in terms of its themes.

This study offers up rich new understandings of the eucharist by juxtaposing Old Testament traditions of faith with themes of communion in the early church.

Looking at their stories in the context of their times, Berquist casts new light on how and why these women in a man's world acted as they did and what they still have to teach us.

This new series presents innovative titles pertaining to human origins, evolution, and behavior from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Subject areas include but are not limited to biological and physical anthropology, prehistoric archaeology, evolutionary psychology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology. The series volumes will be of interest primarily to students and scholars in these fields.

Human bodily existence is at the core of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures -- from birth to death. From God's creation of Adam out of clay, to the narratives of priests and kings whose regulations governed bodily practices, the Hebrew Bible focuses on the human body. Moreover, ancient Israel's understanding of the human body has greatly influenced both Judaism and Christianity. Despite this pervasive influence, ancient Israel's view of the human body has rarely been studied and, until now, has been poorly understood.

In this beautifully written book, Jon L. Berquist guides the reader through the Hebrew Bible, examining ancient Israel's ideas of the body, the unstable roles of gender, the deployment of sexuality, and the cultural practices of the time. Conducting his analysis with reference to contemporary theories of the body, power, and social control, Berquist offers not only a description and clarification of ancient Israelite views of the body, but also an analysis of how these views belong to the complex logic of ancient social meanings. When this logic is understood, the familiar Bible becomes strange and opens itself to a wide range of new interpretations.

This volume makes a positive intervention into maximalist/minimalist debates about Israelite historiography by pointing to the events that happened during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. During this historical epoch, traditions about Israel and Judah's founding became fixed as markers of ethnic identity, and much of the canonical Hebrew Bible came into its present form. Concentrating on these events, a clearer historical picture emerges. The entire volume is set within the context of Douglas A. Knight's contributions, which have encouraged a rigorous social-scientific and tradition-historical approach to the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel in general.

The Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar ran as a joint project of the AAR and SBL from 2000-2005, the only cross-society venture of its time. For the first time in the development of biblical studies, participants in the seminar attempted to foreground and critically analyze space with the same theoretical nuance that biblical scholars have traditionally devoted to history. This volume, first, collects five papers focused on biblical cities, and especially Jerusalem. The female personification of Zion allows for, among other things, a specifically feminist slant on spatiality theory. Whereas these essays begin with cities as material realities, the second part of the volume offers two essays that begin with the imagined spaces of apocalyptic literature, though these two are shown to have deep connection to actual lived space. The final essay moves outside the biblical canon to examine real and imagined space in Pure Land Buddhism.

The long-held view that the Persian period in Israel (known as Yehud) was a historically derivative era that engendered little theological or literary innovation has been replaced in recent decades by an appreciation for the importance of the Persian period for understanding Israel's literature, religion, and sense of identity. A new image of Yehud is emerging that has shifted the focus from viewing the postexilic period as a staging ground for early Judaism or Christianity to dealing with Yehud on its own terms, as a Persian colony with a diverse population. Taken together, the thirteen chapters in this volume represent a range of studies that touch on a variety of textual and historical problems to advance the conversation about the significance of the Persian period and especially its formative influence on biblical literature. Contributors include Richard Bautch, Jon L. Berquist, Zipporah G. Glass, Alice W. Hunt, David Janzen, John Kessler, Melody D. Knowles, Jennifer L. Koosed, Herbert R. Marbury, Christine Mitchell, Julia M. O'Brien, Donald C. Polaski, Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Brent A. Strawn, and Christine Roy Yoder. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)