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Paul and the Resurrected Body
Social Identity and Ethical Practice
Matt O'Reilly
SBL Press, 2020

A new reading of Pauline theology, ethics, and eschatology grounded in social-identity theory and sociorhetorical criticism

Readers often think of Paul’s attitude toward the resurrection of the body in individual terms: a single body raised as the climax of an individual’s salvation. In Paul and the Resurrected Body: Social Identity and Ethical Practice, Matt O’Reilly makes the case that, for Paul, the social dimension of future bodily resurrection is just as important, if not more so. Through a close reading of key texts in the letters to the Corinthians, Romans, and Philippians, O’Reilly argues that resurrection is integral to Paul’s understanding of Christian social identity. In Paul’s theological reasoning, a believer’s hope for the future depends on being identified as part of the people of God who will be resurrected.

Features

  • A clarification of the eschatological basis for Paul’s ethical expectations
  • Exploration of the social significance of Paul’s theological reasoning
  • An integration of ancient rhetorical theory with contemporary social-identity theory
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Paul as Infant and Nursing Mother
Metaphor, Rhetoric, and Identity in 1 Thessa
Jennifer Houston McNeel
SBL Press, 2014

Explore the significance of maternal metaphors in the writings of a first-century male missionary and theologian

Paul employed metaphors of childbirth or breastfeeding in four out of the seven undisputed epistles. In this book, McNeel uses cognitive metaphor theory and social identity analysis to examine the meaning and function of these maternal metaphors. She asserts that metaphors carry cognitive content and that they are central to how humans process information, construct reality, and shape group identity.

Features:

  • A focus on “identity” as the way in which people understand themselves in relation to one another, to society, and to those perceived as outsiders
  • Examination of metaphor as part of Paul’s rhetorical strategy
  • Integration of the work of philosopher Max Black with the work of cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
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Paul Unbound
Other Perspectives on the Apostle
Mark D. Given
SBL Press, 2022

"As long as there are readers of Paul, there will be always be other perspectives."

The essays in this second edition of Paul Unbound: Other Perspectives on the Apostle provide introductions to Paul's relationship to and views on the Roman Empire, first-century economic stratification, his opponents, ethnicity, the law, Judaism, women, and Greco-Roman rhetoric. Contributors Warren Carter, Charles H. Cosgrove, A. Andrew Das, Steven J. Friesen, Mark D. Given, Deborah Krause, Mark D. Nanos, and Jerry L. Sumney have added addendums to their original essays and updated the bibliography to take into account scholarship produced in the decade since the publication of the first edition. The collection provides essential background and sets out new directions for study useful to students of the New Testament and Paul's letters.

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The People beside Paul
The Philippian Assembly and History from Below
Joseph A. Marchal
SBL Press, 2015

Who are the people beside Paul, and what can we know about them?

This volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars with a broad range of expertise and a common interest: Philippi in antiquity. Each essay engages one set of contextual particularities for Paul and the ordinary people of the Philippian assembly, while simultaneously placing them in wider settings. This 'people's history' uses both traditional and more cutting-edge methods to reconsider archaeology and architecture, economy and ethnicity, prisons and priestesses, slavery, syncretism, stereotypes of Jews, the colony of Philippi, and a range of communities. The contributors are Valerie Abrahamsen, Richard S. Ascough, Robert L. Brawley, Noelle Damico, Richard A. Horsley, Joseph A. Marchal, Mark D. Nanos, Peter Oakes, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Angela Standhartinger, Eduard Verhoef, and Antoinette Clark Wire.

Features

  • An examination of the social forms and forces that shaped and affected the Philippian church
  • Essays offer insight into standard questions about the letter s hymn and audience, Paul's 'opponents,' and the sites of the community and of Paul's imprisonment
  • A focused exploration of more marginalized topics and groups, including women, slaves, Jews, and members of localized cults
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The Philo of Alexandria Scripture Index
Sean A. Adams
SBL Press, 2023

The Philo of Alexandria Scripture Index identifies and lists every instance in which Philo of Alexandria cites or alludes to passages from Jewish Scripture. With 7,831 references, this book is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. Unlike other volumes with a single index of Philo’s citations and allusions organized by biblical book, this volume includes a second index that follows Philo’s treatise order. This second format allows students and scholars easily to examine Philo’s engagement with Scripture in individual treatises and to interrogate how Philo collected and grouped intertexts. In addition to the indices, Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle provide an introduction to their methodology and their selection of texts, including Philo’s fragmentary works and those that survive only in the Armenian tradition.

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Philo of Alexandria's Exposition on the Tenth Commandment
Hans Svebakken
SBL Press, 2012
In his comprehensive exposition of the Tenth Commandment (Spec. 4.79–131), Philo considers the prohibition “You shall not desire”: what sort of desire it prohibits (and why) and how the Mosaic dietary laws collectively enforce that prohibition. This volume offers the first complete study of Philo’s exposition, beginning with an overview of its content, context, and place in previous research. In-depth studies of Philo’s concept of desire and his concept of self-control provide background and demonstrate Philo’s fundamental agreement with contemporary Middle-Platonic moral psychology, especially in his theory of emotion (pathos). A new translation of the exposition, with commentary, offers a definitive explanation of Philo’s view of the Tenth Commandment, including precisely the sort of excessive desire it targets and how the dietary laws work as practical exercises for training the soul in self-control.
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Plant Metaphors in Prophetic Condemnations of Israel and Judah
Tina M. Sherman
SBL Press, 2023

Tina M. Sherman offers a first-of-its-kind, detailed analysis of prophetic passages that depict people as plants—from grasses and grains to fruit trees and grapevines—examining how the biblical authors exploited these metaphors to portray the condemnation and punishment of Israel and Judah in terms of the everyday work of crop farming and plant husbandry. Additionally, she explores how the prophetic authors employed plant imagery to construct national identities that emphasize the people’s collective responsibility for the kingdoms’ fate. Plant Metaphors in Prophetic Condemnations of Israel and Judah demonstrates the usefulness of combining conceptual metaphor theory with aspects of frame semantics in the analysis of patterns of thought and expression in biblical metaphor.

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Plant Metaphors in the Old Greek of Isaiah
Benjamin M. Austin
SBL Press, 2019

A thorough analysis of metaphor translation techniques used in Isaiah

In this study Benjamin M. Austin analyzes all the plant metaphors in Isaiah and classifies them according to the metaphor translation techniques used by the Septuagint translator. Austin illustrates how the translator took the context of each metaphor into account and demonstrates how the natural features of the plants under discussion at times influenced their translation. He argues that the translator tried to render metaphors vividly and with clarity, sometimes adjusting them to match the experience of his audience living in Egypt. Austin also examines metaphors in terms of their vehicles (the objects of comparison), so that the translation of similar metaphors can be compared.

Features

  • A comparison of the Masoretic Text to the Septuagint and Targum
  • A classification of metaphor translation strategies
  • An introduction to the Hellenistic and the Jewish conception of metaphors
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The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes
A Social-Science Perspective
Mark R. Sneed
SBL Press, 2012
Scholars attempt to resolve the problem of the book of Ecclesiastes’ heterodox character in one of two ways, either explaining away the book’s disturbing qualities or radicalizing and championing it as a precursor of modern existentialism. This volume offers an interpretation of Ecclesiastes that both acknowledges the unorthodox nature of Qoheleth’s words and accounts for its acceptance among the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible. It argues that, instead of being the most secular and modern of biblical books, Ecclesiastes is perhaps one of the most religious and primitive. Bringing a Weberian approach to Ecclesiastes, it represents a paradigm of the application of a social-science methodology.
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Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations
Musa W. Dube
SBL Press, 2012
This volume foregrounds biblical interpretation within the African history of colonial contact, from North Atlantic slavery to the current era of globalization. It reads of the prolonged struggle for justice and of hybrid identities from multifaceted contexts, where the Bible co-exists with African Indigenous Religions, Islam, and other religions. Showcasing the dynamic and creative approaches of an emerging and thriving community of biblical scholarship from the African continent and African diaspora, the volume critically examines the interaction of biblical texts with African people and their cultures within a postcolonial framework. While employing feminist/womanist, postcolonial, Afrocentric, social engagement, creative writing, reconstruction, and HIV/AIDS perspectives, the authors all engage with empire in their own ways: in specific times, forms, and geography. This volume is an important addition to postcolonial and empires studies in biblical scholarship. The contributors are David Tuesday Adamo, Lynn Darden, H. J. M. (Hans) van Deventer, Musa W. Dube, John D. K. Ekem, Ernest M. Ezeogu, Elelwani B. Farisani, Sylvester A. Johnson, Emmanuel Katongole, Malebogo Kgalemang, Temba L. J. Mafico, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele), Andrew M. Mbuvi, Sarojini Nadar, Elivered Nasambu-Mulongo, Jeremy Punt, Gerrie Snyman, Lovemore Togarasei, Sam Tshehla, Robert Wafawanaka, Robert Wafula, Gerald West, Alice Y. Yafeh-Deigh, and Gosnell L. Yorke.
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Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible
The Next Step
Roland Boer
SBL Press, 2013
This volume returns to where initial interest in postcolonial biblical criticism began: the Hebrew Bible. It does so not to celebrate the significant achievements of postcolonial analysis over the last few decades but to ask what the next step might be. In these essays, established and newer scholars, many from the interstices of global scholarship, discuss specific texts, neo/post/colonial situations, and theoretical issues. Moving from the Caribbean to Greenland, from Ezra-Nehemiah to the Gibeonites, this collection seeks out new territory, new questions, and possibly some new answers. The contributors are Roland Boer, Steed Davidson, Richard Horsley, Uriah Y. Kim, Judith McKinlay, Johnny Miles, Althea Spencer-Miller, Leo Perdue, Christina Petterson, Joerg Rieger, and Gerald West.
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Poverty, Law, and Divine Justice in Persian and Hellenistic Judah
Johannes Unsok Ro
SBL Press, 2018

A view of Persian and Hellenistic Judean communities through theological and socioeconomic lenses

Johannes Unsok Ro employs philological, historical, and sociological approaches to investigate the close connections between socioeconomic structures, social inequality, and theological developments in the Judean communities in Persian- and Hellenistic-era Palestine. Ro contends that competing points of view from communities of lay returnees, priestly returnees, and communities of resident Judeans and Samaritans were juxtaposed within the Hebrew Bible, which took shape during the postexilic period. By exploring issues such as the relationship between the shaping of the canon and literacy in the Judean community, the term strangers in the biblical law codes, the socioeconomic structures of Judean communities reflected in the biblical law codes, the development of the theological concept of divine punitive justice, the piety of the poor in certain psalms, and the concept of poverty in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ro illustrates that the communities behind each text and its redactions can be ascertained through sociological and theological lenses.

Features

  • Demonstration that a theology of the poor materialized orally among the poor but found written expression among Levites
  • Insight into the socioeconomic and theological concerns of the authorial groups behind various biblical law codes
  • A case that biblical “poverty” sometimes refers to humility and a theologically reflected consciousness of lowliness toward God
[more]

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Prayers and the Construction of Israelite Identity
Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher
SBL Press, 2019

Substantial insights into various identity discourses reflected in the biblical prayers

This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel.

Features

  • Thorough study of prayers that play a key role for a biblical book’s (re)construction of the people’s history and identity
  • An examination of ways biblical figures are remodeled by their prayers by introducing other, sometimes even contradictory, discourses on identity
  • An exploration of different ways in which psalms from postexilic times shaped, reflected, and modified identity discourses
[more]

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Praying Legally
Shalom E. Holtz
SBL Press, 2019

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
[more]

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Priests and Cults in the Book of the Twelve
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer
SBL Press, 2016

Key essays that explore a range of attitudes toward clergy and ritual

This book discusses the depictions of the cult and its personnel in the twelve prophetic books commonly referred to as the Book of the Twelve or the Minor Prophets. The articles in the volume explore the following questions: How did these prophetic writers envision the priests and the Levites? What did they think about the ritual aspects of ancient Israelite faith, including not only the official temple cult in Jerusalem but also cultic expressions outside the capital? What, in their views, characterized a faithful priest and what should the relationship be between his cultic performance and the ways in which he lived his life? How does the message of each individual author fit in with the wider Israelite traditions? Finally, who were these prophetic authors, in which historical contexts did they live and work, and what stylistic tools did they use to communicate their message?

Features:

  • Essays investigate the ways in which key texts in the Book of the Twelve endorse, criticize, seek to reform, or seek to abolish the cult and clergy
  • Articles focus on the books of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Zephaniah, Zechariah, and Malachi, but include other texts
  • Exploration of how the attitudes towards cult and clergy in these key texts tie in with the attitudes found elsewhere in the Book of the Twelve
  • [more]

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    Profaning Paul
    Cavan W. Concannon
    University of Chicago Press, 2021
    A critical reconsideration of the repeated use of the biblical letters of Paul.
     
    The letters of Paul have been used to support and condone a host of evils over the span of more than two millennia: racism, slavery, imperialism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, to name a few. Despite, or in some cases because of, this history, readers of Paul have felt compelled to reappropriate his letters to fit liberal or radical politics, seeking to set right the evils done in Paul’s name. Starting with the language of excrement, refuse, and waste in Paul’s letters, Profaning Paul looks at how Paul’s “shit” is recycled and reconfigured. It asks why readers, from liberal Christians to academic biblical scholars to political theorists and philosophers, feel compelled to make Paul into a hero, mining his words for wisdom. Following the lead of feminist, queer, and minoritized scholarship, Profaning Paul asks what would happen if we stopped recycling Paul’s writings. By profaning the status of his letters as sacred texts, we might open up new avenues for imagining political figurations to meet our current and coming political, economic, and ecological challenges.
     
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    Prophets Male and Female
    Gender and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the
    Jonathan Stökl
    SBL Press, 2013
    Because gender is an essential component of societies of all times and places, it is no surprise that every prophetic expression in the ancient social world was a gendered one. In this volume scholars of the biblical literature and of the ancient Mediterranean consider a wide array of prophetic phenomena. In addition to prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible, the essays also look at prophecy in ancient Mesopotamia and early Christianity. Using the most current theoretical categories, the volume demonstrates how essential a broad definition of gender is for understanding its connection to both the delivery and the content of ancient prophecy. Attention to gender dynamics will continue to reveal the fluidity of prophetic gender performance and to open up the ancient contexts of prophetic texts. The contributors are Roland Boer, Corrine Carvalho, Lester L. Grabbe, Anselm C. Hagedorn, Esther J. Hamori, Dale Launderville, Antti Marjanen, Martti Nissinen, Jonathan Stökl, Hanna Tervanotko, and Ilona Zsolnay.
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    The Prophets Speak on Forced Migration
    Mark J. Boda
    SBL Press, 2015

    A valuable resource with productive avenues for inquiry

    In this collection of essays dealing with the prophetic material in the Hebrew Bible, scholars explore the motifs, effects, and role of forced migration on prophetic literature. Contributors focus on the study of geographical displacement, social identity ethics, trauma studies, theological diversification, hermeneutical strategies in relation to the memory, and the effects of various exilic conditions in order to open new avenues of study into the history of Israelite religion and early Judaism.

    Features:

    • An introductory essay that presents a history of scholarship and an overview of the collection
    • Ten essays examining the rhetoric of exile in the prophets
    • Current, thorough approaches to the issues and problems related to historical and cultural features of exile in biblical literature
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    front cover of Psalm Studies, Volume 1
    Psalm Studies, Volume 1
    Sigmund Mowinckel
    SBL Press, 2014

    Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.

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    front cover of Psalm Studies, Volume 2
    Psalm Studies, Volume 2
    Sigmund Mowinckel
    SBL Press, 2014

    Sigmund Mowinckel is widely recognized as one of the leading forces in Psalms research during the twentieth century. Indeed, the culmination of Mowinckel’s thought and work, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, continues to play a significant role in Psalms scholarship today. Not as well known are the seminal studies that prepared the ground for Mowinckel’s later work, the six Psalmenstudien that are translated here into English for the first time. In these studies Mowinckel explores with care and in detail such topics as: “'Awen and the Psalms of Individual Lament”; “YHWH’s Enthronement Festival and the Origin of Eschatology”; “Cultic Prophecy and Prophetic Psalms”; “The Technical Terms in the Psalm Superscriptions”; “Blessing and Curse in Israel’s Cult and Psalmody”; and “The Psalmists.” Anyone interested in Psalms study, especially the possible role of the New Year’s enthronement festival within Israel’s cult and its relation to the Psalter, will find much to consider in these classic works.

    [more]

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    The Psalms of Solomon
    Language, History, Theology
    Eberhard Bons
    SBL Press, 2015

    A fresh analysis of that sheds new light on the Psalms of Solomon

    Researchers whose work focuses on the Psalms of Solomon, experts on the Septuagint, and scholars of Jewish Hellenistic literature take a fresh look at debates surrounding the text. Authors engage linguistic, historical, and theological issues including the original language of the psalms, their historical setting, and their theological intentions with the goal of expanding our understanding of first-century BCE Jewish theology.

    Features:

    • New methods applied to open questions of authorship and historical context
    • Focusd scholarly attention on a work of theological and literary importance
    • Revised essays originally presented at the First International Meeting on the Psalms of Solomon
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    The Psalms of Solomon
    Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts
    Patrick Pouchelle
    SBL Press, 2021

    Explore new approaches to the Psalms of Solomon

    The Psalms of Solomon: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts explores a unique pseudepigraphal document that bears witness to the 63 BCE Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Essays address a variety of themes, notably their political, social, religious, and historical contexts, through the lens of anthropology of religion, cognitive science, socioeconomic theory, and more. Contributors include Kenneth Atkinson, Eberhard Bons, Johanna Erzberger, Angela Kim Harkins, G. Anthony Keddie, Patrick Pouchelle, Stefan Schreiber, Shani Tzoref, and Rodney A. Werline.

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