A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY34 have author last names that start with H have author last names that start with H
A systematic attempt to understand the rabbinic world through its approach to confronting uncertainty
In the history of halakhah, the treatment of uncertainty became one of the most complex fields of intense study. In his latest book, Moshe Halbertal focuses on examining the point of origin of the study of uncertainty in early rabbinic literature, including the Mishnah, Tosefta, and halakhic midrashim. Halbertal explores instructions concerning how to behave in situations of uncertainty ranging from matters of ritual purity, to lineage and marriage, to monetary law, and to the laws of forbidden foods. This examination of the rules of uncertainty introduced in early rabbinic literature reveals that these rules were not aimed at avoiding but rather at dwelling in the midst of uncertainty, thus rejecting the sectarian isolationism that sought to minimize a community’s experience of and friction with uncertainty.
Features:
- A thorough investigation of the principles concerning how to behave in cases of uncertainty
- An examination of two distinct modes for coping with uncertainty
The First Urban Churches 7 includes essays focused on the development of early Christianity from the mid-first century through the sixth century CE in the ancient Macedonian city of Thessalonica. An international group of contributors traces the emergence of Thessalonica’s house churches through a close study of the archaeological remains, inscriptions, coins, iconography, and Paul’s two letters to the Thessalonians. After a detailed introduction to the city, including the first comprehensive epigraphic profile of Thessalonica from the Hellenistic age to the Roman Empire, topics discussed include the Roman emperor’s divine honors, coins and inscriptions as sources of imperial propaganda, Thessalonian family bonds, Paul’s apostolic self-image, the role of music at Thessalonica and in early Christianity, and Paul’s response to the Thessalonian Jewish community. Contributors include D. Clint Burnett, Alan H. Cadwallader, Rosemary Canavan, James R. Harrison, Julien M. Ogereau, Isaac T. Soon, Angela Standhartinger, Michael P. Theophilos, and Joel R. White.
Investigate the challenges, threats, and opportunities experienced by the early church
Volume two of The First Urban Churches focuses on the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Roman Corinth. An investigation of the material evidence of Corinth helps readers today understand properly the challenges, threats, and opportunities that the early Corinthian believers faced in the city. The essays demonstrate decisively the difference that such an approach makes in grappling with the meaning and context of the Corinthian epistles in the New Testament.
Features:
- Analysis of urban evidence of the inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography
- Proposed reeconstructions of the past and its social, religious, and political significance
- A nuanced, informed portrait of ancient urban life in Corinth
Investigate the challenges, threats, and opportunities experienced by the early church in Ephesus
The third installment of The First Urban Churches focuses on the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Ephesus. As with previous volumes, contributors illustrate how an investigation of the material evidence will help readers understand properly the challenges, threats, and opportunities that the early Ephesian believers faced in that city. Brad Bitner, James R. Harrison, Michael Haxby, Fredrick J. Long, Guy M. Rogers, Michael Theophilos, Paul Trebilco, and Stephan Witetschek demonstrate decisively the difference that such an approach makes in grappling with the meaning and context of the New Testament writings, particularly Ephesians, Acts, and Revelation.
Features
- Analysis of urban evidence of the inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography
- Proposed reconstructions of the past and its social, religious and political significance
- A nuanced, informed portrait of ancient urban life in Ephesus
A fresh examination of early Christianity by an international team of New Testament and classical scholars
Volume 5 of The First Urban Churches investigates the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Roman Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea. Building on the methodologies introduced in the first volume and supplementing the in-depth studies of Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi (vols. 2-4), essays in this volume challenge readers to reexamine preconceived understandings of the early church and to grapple with the meaning and context of Christianity in its first-century Roman colonial context.
Features:
- Analysis of urban evidence found in inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography
- Proposed reconstructions of the past and its social, religious, and political significance
- A nuanced, informed portrait of ancient urban life in the cities of the Lycus Valley
An examination of early Roman Christianity by New Testament and classical scholars
Building on the methodologies introduced in the first volume of The First Urban Churches and supplementing the in-depth studies of Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea (vols. 2–5), essays in this volume challenge readers to reexamine what we know about the early church within Rome and the port city of Ostia. In the introductory section of the book, James R. Harrison discusses the material and documentary evidence of both cities, which sets the stage for the essays that follow. In the second section, Mary Jane Cuyler, James R. Harrison, Richard Last, Annelies Moeser, Thomas A. Robinson, Michael P. Theophilos, and L. L. Welborn examine a range of topics, including the Ostian Synagogue, Romans 1:2–4 against the backdrop of Julio-Claudian adoption and apotheosis traditions, and the epistle of 1 Clement. In the final section of this volume, Jutta Dresken-Welland and Mark Reasoner engage Peter Lampe’s magnum opus From Paul to Valentinus; Lampe wraps up the section and the volume with a response. Throughout, readers are provided with a rich demonstration of how the material evidence of the city of Rome illuminates the emergence of Roman Christianity, especially in the first century CE.
A fresh look at early urban churches
This collection of essays examines the urban context of early Christian churches in the first-century Roman world. A city-by-city investigation of the early churches in the New Testament clarifies the challenges, threats, and opportunities that urban living provided for early Christians. Readers will come away with a better understanding of how scholars assemble an accurate picture of the cities in which the first Christians flourished.
Features:
- Analysis of urban evidence of the inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography
- Discussion of how to use different types of evidence responsibly
- Outline of what constitutes proper methodological use for establishing a nuanced, informed portrait of ancient urban life
Investigate the challenges and opportunities experienced by the early church
This fourth installment of The First Urban Churches, edited by James R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn, focuses on the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Roman Philippi. The international team of New Testament and classical scholars contributing to the volume present essays that use inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography to examine the rivalries, imperial context, and ecclesial setting of the Philippian church.
Features:
- Analysis of the material and epigraphic evidence relating to first- and second-century CE Roman Philippi
- Examination of important passages from Philippians within their ancient urban context
- Investigation of the social composition and membership of the Philippian church from the archaeological and documentary evidence
Now available in English
In discussions of the origin of the Pentateuch, the Priestly source traditionally constitutes an undisputed reference point for different source-critical models, and it is the only literary layer with concise terminology and a theological conception that can be extracted from a non-Priestly context. This English translation of Abschied von der Priesterschrift? Zum Stand der Pentateuchdebatte revisits the scholarly debate surrounding the Documentary Hypothesis and the so-called Priestly material’s position either as an independent written source or as a redaction within the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy. Contributors include Christoph Berner, Erhard Blum, Jan Christian Gertz, Christoph Levin, Eckart Otto, Christophe Nihan, and Thomas Römer.
Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and re
Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and religion, Jews and Judaism, and earliest Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean
Ross Kraemer is Professor Emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. This volume of essays, conceived and produced by students, colleagues, and friends bears witness to the breadth of her own scholarly interests. Contributors include Theodore A. Bergren, Debra Bucher, Lynn Cohick, Mary Rose D’Angelo, Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, Robert Doran, Jennifer Eyl, Paula Fredriksen, John G. Gager, Maxine Grossman, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Jordan Kraemer, Robert A. Kraft, Shira L. Lander, Amy-Jill Levine, Susan Marks, E. Ann Matter, Renee Levine Melammed, Susan Niditch, Elaine Pagels, Adele Reinhartz, Jordan Rosenblum, Sarah Schwarz, Karen B. Stern, Stanley K. Stowers, Daniel Ullucci, Arthur Urbano, Heidi Wendt, and Benjamin G. Wright.Features:
- Articles that examine both ancient and modern texts in cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective
- Twenty-eight original essays on ancient Judaism, Christianity, and women in the Greco-Roman world
A new reading strategy for the Thanksgiving Hymns
Hasselbalch asserts that current theories about the social background of Thanksgiving Hymns are unable to explain its heterogeneous character. Instead the author suggests a reading strategy that leaves presumptions about the underlying social contexts aside to instead consider the collection’s hybridity as a clue to understanding the collection as a whole.
Features:
- Systemic Functional Linguistics applied to four Hodayot
- Analysis that highlights the role of a mediator in the agency of God
- An approach that highlights the unity of the collection
Readings by South Pacific islanders
This book offers readings of the Bible by native biblical critics from the South Pacific (Pasifika). An essay from editor Jione Havea introduces the volume by locating these essays within islander criticism and by explaining the flow of the book. Essays are presented in three sections. “Island Twists” offers readings that twist, like a whirlpool, biblical texts around insights of Pasifika novelists, composers, poets, and sages. “Island Turns” contains contextual readings that turn biblical texts toward Pasifika. “Across the Sea” contains responses by biblical critics from across the sea.
Features
- Contributions to islander criticism
- A showcase of texts by native writers, poets, and composers
- Crosscultural and postcolonial readings
Explore theories, readings and interpretations from island perspectives
In this collection the authors focus on contextual, cultural, and postcolonial criticisms. This work seeks to move beyond simply reacting to, rejecting, or recasting biblical interpretations that misunderstand or mischaracterize island space. Instead it serves as an entry point to thinking biblically through the island. The contributors are Margaret Aymer, Randall C. Bailey, Roland Boer, Steed Vernyl Davidson, Jione Havea, Hisako Kinukawa, Grant Macaskill, Mosese Ma'ilo, J. Richard Middleton, Althea Spencer Miller, Aliou C. Niang, Andrew Mein, Daniel Smith-Christopher, Nasili Vaka'uta, and Elaine M. Wainwright.
Features:
- Sixteen essays by islanders rooted in Asia, America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Oceania
- Essays that invite a conversation on how being islanders and islandedness condition the way islanders read biblical texts
- Three sections of articles, two of which engage the first
Engaging voices crossing textual limits, race, and ethnic lines
In this collection of essays, scholars from Oceania open a new dialog regarding the vast, complex, and slippery nature of the Bible and the fluid meanings of borders and belongings. From belonging in a place, a group, or movement to belongings as material and cultural possessions, from borders of a text, discipline, or thought to borders of nations, communities, or bodies, the authors follow the currents of Oceania to the shores of Asia and beyond. Scholars contributing essays include Jeffrey W. Aernie, Merilyn Clark, Jione Havea, Gregory C. Jenks, Jeanette Mathews, Judith E. McKinlay, Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon, David J. Neville, John Painter, Kathleen P. Rushton, Ruth Sheridan, Nasili Vaka‘uta, and Elaine M. Wainwright. Michele A. Connolly, David M. Gunn, and Mark G. Brett provide responses to the essays.
Features:
- Discussion of the impacts of natural disasters and political and ecological upheavals on biblical interpretation and theological reflection
- Fourteen essays on texts in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament
- Three responses to the essays provide a range of views on the topics
Understand the purpose and background of the new The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition project
Our understanding of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible has been transformed in the wake of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hendel explores and refines this new knowledge and formulates a rationale for a new edition of the Hebrew Bible. The chapters situate The Hebrew Bible; A Critical Edition project in a broad historical context, from the beginnings of textual criticism in late antiquity and the Renaissance to the controversies in contemporary theory and practice. This book combines close analysis with broad synthesis, yielding new perspectives on the text of the Hebrew Bible.
Features- Theory and practice of textual criticism
- Textual history of the Hebrew Bible
- History of text-critical scholarship
A history of research that changed scholarly perceptions of early Judaism
This collection of essays by some of the most important scholars in the fields of early Judaism and Christianity celebrates fifty years of the study of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha at the Society of Biblical Literature and the pioneering scholars who introduced the Pseudepigrapha to the Society. Since its early days as a breakfast meeting in 1969, the Pseudepigrapha Section has provided a forum for a rigorous discussion of these understudied texts and their relevance for Judaism and Christianity. Contributors recount the history of the section's beginnings, critically examine the vivid debates that shaped the discipline, and challenge future generations to expand the field in new interdisciplinary directions.
Features:
- Reflections from early members of the Pseudepigrapha Group
- Essays that examine a methodological shift from capturing and preserving traditions to exploring the intellectual and social world of Jewish antiquity
- Evaluations of past interactions with adjacent fields and the larger academic world
An essential resource for scholars and students
Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.
Essays that explore the rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world
The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), the great compilation of Jewish law edited in the late Sasanian era (sixth–seventh century CE), also incorporates a great deal of aggada, that is, nonlegal material, including interpretations of the Bible, stories, folk sayings, and prayers. The Talmud’s aggadic traditions often echo conversations with the surrounding cultures of the Persians, Eastern Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, and the ancient Babylonians, and others. The essays in this volume analyze Bavli aggada to reveal this rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world.
Features:
- A detailed analysis of the different conceptions of martyrdom in the Talmud as opposed to the Eastern Christian martyr accounts
- Illustration of the complex ways rabbinic Judaism absorbed Christian and Zoroastrian theological ideas
- Demonstration of the presence of Persian-Zoroastrian royal and mythological motifs in talmudic sources
This volume brings together scholars from New Testament studies and classics, whose fields of study have much in common but are not often in in conversation. The contributors explore how the ancient works they study can be resources for thinking critically and creatively about issues that matter today. The essays address our obligation to take positive moral stands on divisive issues of both the past and the present, including empire, racial/ethnic and religious difference, economic inequality, gender and sexuality, slavery, and disability. Contributors include Douglas Boin, Denise Kimber Buell, Gay L. Byron, Allen Dwight Callahan, Joy Connolly, Jennifer A. Glancy, Shelley P. Haley, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Katherine Lu Hsu, Timothy Joseph, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Yii-Jan Lin, Dominic Machado, Joseph A. Marchal, Thomas R. Martin, Candida R. Moss, Laura Salah Nasrallah, Jorunn Økland, and Abraham Smith.
This festschrift honors the work of Stanley K. Stowers, a renowned specialist in the field of Pauline studies and early Christianity, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday and retirement from Brown University. The collection includes twenty-eight essays on theory and history of interpretation, Israelite religion and ancient Judaism, the Greco-Roman world, and early Christinity, a preface honoring Stowers, and a select bibliography of his publications.
Contributors include: Adriana Destro, John T. Fitzgerald, John G. Gager, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Ross S. Kraemer, Saul M. Olyan, Mauro Pesce, Daniel Ullucci, Debra Scoggins Ballentine, William K. Gilders, David Konstan, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Jordan D. Rosenblum, Michael L. Satlow, Karen B. Stern, Emma Wasserman, Nathaniel DesRosiers, John S. Kloppenborg, Luther H. Martin, Arthur P. Urbano, L. Michael White, William Arnal, Pamela Eisenbaum, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Karen L. King, Christopher R. Matthews, Erin Roberts, and Richard Wright.
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
"This is a book about submission and subversion, injustice and justice, heroes and villains."
In Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? Jimmy Hoke reads Romans with an innovative, intersectional approach that produces distinctive meanings for passages that probe how queer wo/men who first encountered Paul's letter could have engaged with it. Though Paul's letter to the Romans arguably contains the Bible’s strongest condemnation of queer wo/men (1:26–27), that is not the letter's full story. Hoke turns a feminist and queer gaze toward Paul’s conception of faith and ethics, making explicit how Paul's theology throughout Romans has been affectively motivated by imperial notions of gender, race, and sexuality. Moving beyond Paul's singular voice, Hoke engages with a feminist and queer praxis of assemblage to generate plausible ways wo/men of Rome interacted with this epistle. By engaging affect theory, Hoke brings to life not only ideas and words but the feelings and sensations that moved in-between some of the earliest Christ-followers, revealing how queer wo/men were there among them and what that means for queer wo/men today. Hoke includes a reader's guide with key terms used throughout the book, making this an excellent option for both students and scholars beginning to engage not only Paul's letters but also the complex worlds of feminist, queer, and affect theories.
A collection of essays from the International Cooperation Initiative of the Society of Biblical Literature
This first volume in the International Voices in Biblical Studies series stimulates and facilitates a global hermeneutic in which centers and margins fade. The collection explores the global context within which biblical studies and interpretation take place, includes three case studies from different regions, and reflections on the consequences of global hermeneutics on biblical interpretation and on translation.Features
New translations of fifty transliterated texts for research and classroom use
This collection of sixth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamian texts provides a close-up, often dramatic, view of ancient courtroom encounters shedding light on Neo-Babylonian legal culture and daily life. In addition to the legal texts, Holtz provides an introduction to Neo-Babylonian social history, archival records, and legal materials. This is an essential resource for scholars interested in the history of law.
Features
- Fifty new English translations
- Transliterations for use in advanced Akkadian courses
- Background essays perfect for courses dealing with ancient Near Eastern history and law
- Explanatory essays preceding each text and its translation
Explore the lengthy history of legal metaphors in ancient prayer
In biblical and other ancient Near Eastern sources, prayer is an opportunity to make one’s case before divine judges. Prayers were formulated using courtroom or trial language, including demands for judgment, confessions, and accusations. The presence of these legal concepts reveals ancient Near Eastern thoughts about what takes place when one prays. Holtz highlights legal concepts that appear in prayers, including the motif of the speakers' oppression in Psalms the possibility of countersuit against God through prayer, and divine attention and inattention as legal responses. By reading ancient prayers together with legal texts, this book shows how speakers took advantage of prayer as an opportunity to have their day in the divine court and even sue against divine injustice.
Features
- Identification of legal vocabulary and concepts that appear in ancient prayers
- Analysis of legal metaphors in prayer examples in Akkadian and postbiblical rabbinic texts
- Interpretations of trial records and texts from Psalms and Lamentations
A richly illustrated collection of essays on visual biblical interpretation
For centuries Christians have engaged their sacred texts as much through the visual as through the written word. Yet until recent decades, the academic disciplines of biblical studies and art history largely worked independently. This volume bridges that gap with the interdisciplinary work of biblical scholars and art historians. Focusing on the visualization of biblical characters from both the Old and New Testaments, essays illustrate the potential of such collaboration for a deeper understanding of the Bible and its visual reception. Contributions from Ian Boxall, James Clifton, David B. Gowler, Jonathan Homrighausen, Heidi J. Hornik, Jeff Jay, Christine E. Joynes, Yohana A. Junker, Meredith Munson, and Ela Nuțu foreground diverse cultural contexts and chronological periods for scholars and students of the Bible and art.
The essays in Bible Trouble all engage queer theories for purposes of biblical interpretation, a rare effort to date within biblical scholarship. The title phrase “Bible Trouble” plays on Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, gesturing toward a primary text for contemporary queer theory. The essays consider, among others, the Lazarus story, the Ethiopian eunuch, “gender trouble” in Judges 4 and 5, the Song of Songs, and an unorthodox coupling of the books of Samuel and the film Paris Is Burning. This volume “troubles” not only the boundaries between biblical scholarship and queer theory but also the boundaries between different frameworks currently used in the analysis of biblical literature, including sexuality, gender, race, class, history, and literature. The contributors are Ellen T. Armour, Michael Joseph Brown, Sean D. Burke, Heidi Epstein, Deryn Guest, Jione Havea, Teresa J. Hornsby, Lynn R. Huber, S. Tamar Kamionkowski, Joseph A. Marchal, Jeremy Punt, Erin Runions, Ken Stone, Gillian Townsley, Jay Twomey, and Manuel Villalobos.
A call for “trans literacy” within biblical scholarship
In this volume Hornsby and Guest introduce readers to terms for the various identities of trans people and how the Bible can be an affirmation of those deemed sexually other by communities. This book offers readings of well known (e.g., Gen 1; Revelation) and not so well known (2 Sam 6; Jer 38) narratives to illustrate that the Bible has been translated and interpreted with a bias that makes heterosexuality and a two sex, two gender system natural, and thus divinely ordained. The authors present examples that show gender was never a binary, and in the Bible gender and sex are always dynamic categories that do, and must, transition.
Features:
Exegesis that bears fruit both for the academy and the church
In this collection of essays and sermons on the Gospel of John and Revelation, friends, colleagues, and former students of Gail R. O’Day explore and extend the possibilities raised by her work in her groundbreaking study Revelation in the Fourth Gospel. The essays engage with both historical contextualization and literary analysis to identify the rhetorical features that ancient readers might have apprehended, while the sermons explore how the literary shape of the text can inform preaching through attention to the narrative modes of the text. Contributions from Yoshimi Azuma, Teresa Fry Brown, Patrick Gray, Lynn R. Huber, Susan E. Hylen, Karoline M. Lewis, Thomas G. Long, Veronice Miles, Vernon K. Robbins, Gilberto A. Ruiz, Ted A. Smith, and William M. Wright IV thematize the importance of narrative approaches and the diverse ways they can be employed.
In this book devoted exclusively to temples and perceptions of the divine presences that inhabit them, Michael B. Hundley focuses on the official religions of the ancient Near East and explores the interface between the human and the divine within temple environs.
Hundley identifies common ancient Near Eastern temple systems and examines issues that include what temple structures communicate, how temples were understood to function, temple ideology, the installation of divine presence in a temple, the connection between presence and physical representation, and human service to the deity.
Drawing on architectural and spatial theory, ritual theory, theories of language, art history, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, and comparative studies, Hundley offers a single interpretive lens through which to view temple worship.
Features:
- A close examination of temples in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite Anatolia, and Syria-Palestine
- An interdisciplinary treatment of architecture, language, ritual, and art
- A dual focus on how a deity's divine presence connects to space and art and how human service to the deity maintains the deity's active presence
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