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.

Essays that explore early Christian texts and the broader world in which they were written

This volume of twelve essays celebrates the contributions of classicist Judith Perkins to the study of early Christianity. Drawing on Perkins's insights related to apocryphal texts, representations of pain and suffering, and the creation of meaning, contributors explore the function of Christian narratives that depict pain and suffering, the motivations of the early Christians who composed these stories, and their continuing value to contemporary people. Contributors also examine how narratives work to create meaning in a religious context. These contributions address these issues from a variety of angles through a wide range of texts.

Features:

• Introductions to and treatments of several largely unknown early Christian texts
• Essays by ten women and two men influenced or mentored by Judith Perkins
• Essays on the Deuterocanon, the New Testament, and early Christian relics

Donna Laird examines Ezra and Nehemiah in the light of modern sociological theorist Pierre Bourdieu. How did this context of hardship, exile, and return change what Ezra and Nehemiah viewed as important? How did they define who was a part of their community, and who was an outsider? It goes on to explore how the books engaged readers at the time: how it addressed their changing circumstances, and how different groups gained and used social power, or the ability to influence society.

Features

• Chapters dedicated to penitential prayer and to the role of ritual
• Illustrations of how the writers used past traditions to justify dividing those who belong, the repatriates, from the local population
• Demonstration of how shifting strategies of discourse in the various sections of Ezra-Nehemiah reflect the changing political and social contexts for the community and the authors

An intersectional study of New Testament and noncanonical literature

Anna Rebecca Solevåg explores how nonnormative bodies are presented in early Christian literature through the lens of disability studies. In a number of case studies, Solevåg shows how early Christians struggled to come to terms with issues relating to body, health, and dis/ability in the gospel stories, apocryphal narratives, Pauline letters, and patristic expositions. Solevåg uses the concepts of narrative prosthesis, gaze and stare, stigma, monster theory, and crip theory to examine early Christian material to reveal the multiple, polyphonous, contradictory ways in which nonnormative bodies appear.

Features:

• Case studies that reveal a variety of understandings, attitudes, medical frameworks, and taxonomies for how disabled bodies were interpreted
• A methodology that uses disability as an analytical tool that contributes insights about cultural categories, ideas of otherness, and social groups’ access to or lack of power
• An intersectional perspective drawing on feminist, gender, queer, race, class, and postcolonial studies

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

An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek

With the publication of the widely used 28th edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the 5th edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts, including genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.

Features

• A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
• Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
• Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms

This volume continues the tradition of New Seals and Inscriptions, Hebrew, Idumean and Cuneiform (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007) by featuring analyses by eminent scholars of some of the archaeological treasures from Dr. Shlomo Moussaieff’s outstanding collection. These contributions signal fresh approaches to the study of ancient artifacts and underscore the role of archaeological evidence in reconstructing the legacy of antiquity, especially that of the biblical period. The contributors are Kathleen Abraham, Chaim Cohen, Robert Deutsch, Claire Gottlieb, Martin Heide, Richard S. Hess, W. G. Lambert†, André Lemaire, Meir Lubetski, Matthew Morgenstern, Alan Millard, Lawrence J. Mykytiuk, and Peter van der Veen.

Nineteenth-Century Women’s Movements and the Bible examines politically motivated women’s movements in the nineteenth century, including the legal, cultural, and ecclesiastical contexts of women. Focusing on the period beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 through the end of World War I in 1918, contributors explore the many ways that women’s lives were limited in both the public and domestic spheres. Essays consider the social, political, biblical, and theological factors that resulted in a multinational raising of awareness and emancipation for women in the nineteenth century and the strengthening of their international networks. The contributors include Angela Berlis, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Ute Gerhard, Christiana de Groot, Arnfriður Guðmundsdóttir, Izaak J. de Hulster, Elisabeth Joris, Christine Lienemann-Perrin, Amanda Russell-Jones, Claudia Setzer, Aud V. Tønnessen, Adriana Valerio, and Royce M. Victor.

A close look at how Strauss's engagement with popular and scholarly controversies influenced his study of the Gospels

David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined is known as a monumental contribution to the critical, scientific study of religion and Christian origins. It was widely read and influenced literary and historical research on the Bible as well as critical philosophy between Hegel and Nietzsche. Less well-known are Strauss's writings from the same period on "the nocturnal side of nature," paranormal phenomena such as demon possession, animal magnetism, and the ghost-seeing of Frederike Hauffe, the famous "Seeress of Prevorst."

Features:

• Illuminates unfamiliar features of early nineteenth-century theology, philosophy, and medicine showing how spirituality and science blended together in these fields
• Demonstrates the importance of Western esotericism and popular religion in the history of modern biblical studies
• Sheds new light on Strauss’s study of the Gospels as myths, his critique of miracles and his account of the historical Jesus

A new English translation of the first text translated from Arabic to Armenian for research and classroom use

Robert W. Thomson translates this ninth-century commentary defending the miaphysite theological position of the Armenian church against the chalcedonian position of the Greek Byzantine church. Nonnus’s exegesis of the gospel falls in the context of trends in Eastern Christian biblical exposition, primarily the Syrian tradition. Therefore, Thomson emphasizes the parallels in Syriac commentaries on the book of John, noting also earlier Greek writers whose works were influential in Syria. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Armenian church and church history.

Features:

• Introductory material on the text’s history, manuscript traditions, and theological importance
• Translation of the Armenian text and commentary
• Bibliography covering the Armenian, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic texts as well as secondary sources

This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Deuteronomy. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Deuteronomy, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.

A result of John Wevers’s twenty-five-year association with the Göttingen LXX, this work records his textual notes on the Greek Exodus. The Greek text of Exodus departs in places radically from the Hebrew of the Masoretic tradition. These Notes presuppose that the Hebrew parent text was not all that different from the Masoretic tradition text and that the Greek translator throughout tried to formulate an understanding of the Hebrew from an Alexandrian-Jewish perspective. Included in the Notes are assessments of major textual variants by later readers. This volume is intended for serious students interested in using the LXX text, rather than for the professional LXX scholar.

This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Genesis. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Genesis, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.

This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Levitcus. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Leviticus, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.

This volume of notes on the Greek texts of the Pentateuch focuses on the book of Numbers. John William Wevers's volume includes verse by verse notes for each chapter, sigla, proposed changes to Numbers, and indexes of Greek and Hebrew words and phrases.