Engage fourteen essays from an international group of experts

There is little direct evidence for formal education in the Bible and in the texts of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. At the same time, pedagogy and character formation are important themes in many of these texts. This book explores the pedagogical purpose of wisdom literature, in which the concept of discipline (Hebrew musar) is closely tied to the acquisition of wisdom. It examines how and why the concept of musar came to be translated as paideia (education, enculturation) in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Septuagint), and how the concept of paideia was deployed by ancient Jewish authors writing in Greek. The different understandings of paideia in wisdom and apocalyptic writings of Second Temple Judaism are this book's primary focus. It also examines how early Christians adapted the concept of paideia, influenced by both the Septuagint and Greco-Roman understandings of this concept.

Features

Karina Martin Hogan is Associate Professor of Theology and Women’s Studies at Fordham University. She is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Judaism and Catholic Biblical Quarterly. and is co-editor of the JSJ Supplement Series. She is the author of Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra (2008).

Matthew Goff is Professor of Religion at Florida State University. He is the author most recently of 4QInstruction: A Commentary (2013).

Emma Wasserman is Associate Professor of Religion at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Her most recent book Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the World of Paul is forthcoming in the Anchor Yale Bible Series.