Susan Niditch's commentary on the book of Judges pays careful attention to the literary and narrative techniques of the text and yields fresh readings of the book's difficult passages: stories of violence, ethnic conflict, and gender issues. Niditch aptly and richly conveys the theological impact and enduring significance of these stories.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

Works created in the period from the Babylonian conquest of Judea through the takeover and rule of Judea and Samaria by imperial Persia reveal a profound interest in the religious responses of individuals and an intimate engagement with the nature of personal experience. Using the rich and varied body of literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible, Susan Niditch examines ways in which followers of Yahweh, participating in long-standing traditions, are shown to privatize and personalize religion. Their experiences remain relevant to many of the questions we still ask today: Why do bad things happen to good people? Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? How do I define myself? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being? How do I cope with chaos and make sense of my experience? What roles do material objects and private practices play within my religious life? These questions deeply engaged the ancient writers of the Bible, and they continue to intrigue contemporary people who try to find meaning in life and to make sense of the world. The Responsive Self studies a variety of phenomena, including the use of first-person speech, seemingly autobiographic forms and orientations, the emphasis on individual responsibility for sin, interest in the emotional dimensions of biblical characters, and descriptions of self-imposed ritual. This set of interests lends itself to exciting approaches in the contemporary study of religion, including the concept of "lived religion," and involves understanding and describing what people actually do and believe in cultures of religion.

The story of Jacob and Esau is told in the book of Genesis. With his mother's help, Jacob impersonates his hairy older twin by dressing in Esau's clothes and covering his own hands and the nape of his neck with the hairy hide of goats. Fooled by this ruse, their blind father, Isaac, is tricked into giving the younger son the blessing of the firstborn. This is only one of many biblical stories in which hair plays a pivotal role.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the relationship between culture and the body. Hair plays an integral role in the way we represent and identify ourselves. The way we treat our hair has to do with aesthetics, social structure, religious identity, and a host of other aspects of culture. In societies modern and ancient, the hairdo is one key to a group's cultural code. In ancient Israel, hair signifies important features of identity with respect to gender, ethnicity, and holiness.
Susan Niditch seeks a deeper understanding of Israelite culture as expressed, shaped, and reinforced in images of hair. Among her examples is the tradition's most famous long-haired hero, Samson. The hair that assures Samson's strength is a common folktale motif, but is also important to his sacred status as a Nazirite. Niditch examines the meaning of the Nazirite identity held by Samuel as well as Samson arguing that long hair is involved in a complex set of cultural assumptions about men, warrior status, and divine election. In addition to biblical texts, Niditch looks at pictorial and other material evidence. She concludes by examining the troubling texts in which men impose hair cutting or loosening upon women, revealing much aboutattitudes to women and their place in Israelite culture. Much has been written on the presentation of the body in various literatures, including the Bible, but the role of hair in ancient Israel has been neglected. This book charts a new path for studies on the body, religion, and culture.

In Ethics in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, Susan Niditch takes soundings among those who have recently approached ethics in the Hebrew Scriptures, their methodological interests, their goals, and their definitions of "ethics" itself. By means of close exegesis of specific passages from the Hebrew Bible and a discussion of the interpretation and application of these ancient texts by post-biblical Jewish writers and other creative contributors from outside the Jewish tradition, this volume explores topics in religious ethics, social justice, political ethics, economic ethics, issues in ecology, gender and sexuality, killing and dying, and reproductive ethics. Certain goals inform all chapters: interest in tracing recurring themes concerning the definition of the good, and the various ways in which Jewish thinkers rely on the more ancient material, interpret, and appropriate it; the links between areas in ethics, for example, between gender and reproductive ethics or war-views and attitudes to political ethics and environmental ethics. Niditch carves out specific biblical texts and themes in order to explore them in depth with special interest in the meanings and messages that emerge from ancient Israelite writers' varied treatments of issues in ethics. Ethics in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond provides a thoughtful discussion of biblical composers' treatment of ethical issues and an engaging overview of the ways in which these texts have been appropriated, in particular by Jewish contributors. This volume serves to challenge readers' own assumptions about biblical ethics, the applicability and the various meanings and messages that might be derived from engagement with key biblical texts.

Texts about war pervade the Hebrew Bible, raising challenging questions in religious and political ethics. Among the most disquieting war passages are those in which God demands the total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender, age, or military status. The ideology of the "ban", however, is only one among a range of attitudes towards war preserved in the ancient Israelite literary tradition. Applying insights from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies, Niditch considers a wide spectrum of war ideologies in the Hebrew Bible, seeking in each case to discover why and how these views might have made sense to biblical writers, who themselves can be seen to wrestle with the ethics of violence. Niditch thus challenges the stereotype of the violent "Old" Testament - of law versus gospel, justice versus mercy, and judgment versus love. To understand attitudes about war in the Hebrew Bible, Niditch argues, is to understand war in general: the motivations, justifications, and rationalizations of those who wage it. In addition, this exploration reveals much about the social and cultural history of Israel, as war texts are found to map the world views of biblical writers from various periods and settings. Reviewing ways in which modern scholars have interpreted this controversial material, Niditch sheds further light on the normative assumptions that shape our understanding of ancient Israel. More widely, this work explores how human beings attempt to justify killing and violence. Niditch's unique study will be of particular interest to students of Judaism, the Bible, and religion, as well as ethicists and historians concerned with relating classical sources tocontemporary issues.

Susan Niditch's commentary on the book of Judges pays careful attention to the literary and narrative techniques of the text and yields fresh readings of the book's difficult passages: stories of violence, ethnic conflict, and gender issues. Niditch aptly and richly conveys the theological impact and enduring significance of these stories. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

This book is an essential resource for understanding the question of the Bible's relationship to orality. Susan Niditch offers a strong argument for the continuity of the literature of the Israelites. She helps the modern reader look at the Bible as living words, breathing life into us daily, instead of seeing the text as a foregone artifact.

Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines--such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary criticism--to illuminate the everyday realities and social subtleties these ancient cultures experienced. This series employs sophisticated methods resulting in original contributions that depict the reality of the people behind the Hebrew Bible and interprets these insights for a wide variety of readers.

Treating Old Testament stories as the product of an oral traditional world, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore sets biblical narrative in a broad cross-cultural context and reveals much about the richness and complexity of the ancient Israelite civilization that produced it.

Using a unique combination of biblical scholarship and folklore methodology, Susan Niditch tracks stories of biblical characters who become heroes against the odds, either through trickery or through native wisdom, physical prowess, and the help of human or divine agents. In this volume, originally published as Underdogs and Tricksters, Niditch examines three cross-sections of the Old Testament in detail: stories in Genesis in which patriarchs pretend that their wives are really their sisters; the contrasting stones of two younger sons, the trickster Jacob and the earnest underdog Joseph; and the story of Esther as a paradigm of feminine wisdom pitted against unjust authority.

Linking these Old Testament heroes to the legendary tricksters and underdogs of other cultures, Niditch shows how the Israelites' worldview and self-image are reflected in the way biblical authors tell their stories. Through a thoughtful analysis of style, content, narrative choices, and attitudes to issues of gender and political authority in biblical narrative, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore draws persuasive conclusions about the identity, location, and provenance of the stories' authors and their audiences.

This is a readable introduction to the religious traditions of the ancient Israelites, the people of the Hebrew Bible. It sets forth the biblical and extra-biblical evidence concerning their beliefs, myths, and ritual practices.