A concise study of a large number of examples of pluses and minus providing insight into translation from Hebrew to Greek

Van der Vorm-Croughs focuses this translation study on the processes leading to pluses and minuses including linguistic and stylistic aspects (i.e., cases in which elements have been added or omitted for the sake of a proper use of the Greek language), literary aspects (additions and omissions meant to embellish the Greek text), translation technical aspects (e.g., the avoidance of redundancy), and contextual and intertextual exegesis and harmonization. This work also covers the relation between the Greek Isaiah and its possible Hebrew Vorlage to try to determine which pluses and minuses may have been the result of the translator’s use of a different Hebrew text.

Features:

• Eleven categories for the pluses and minuses of the Greek Isaiah
• Examination of translation techniques and translator errors
• Use of Joseph Ziegler’s critical edition

An engaging anthology that deals with both theory and practice

The emerging discipline of biblical spirituality considers how faith finds expression within the biblical texts and how modern expressions of faith interact with those texts. This volume represents Christo Lombaard’s reflective, analytical, and exegetical contributions to the field in order to explore how biblical texts mediate faith, both ancient and contemporary. It reflects on aspects of the interaction of faith and Scripture, critically approaching both dimensions.

Features:

• Seven previously published papers drawn predominately from South African journals
• Explorations of how biblical texts mediate faith
• Close examination of the discipline of biblical spirituality as part of spirituality studies

This volume contains selected papers from a December 2006 Dumbarton Oaks symposium that complemented an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts at the Freer Gallery and Sackler Gallery of Art titled "In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000." Speakers were invited to examine the use of the Greek Old Testament as a text, social practice, and cultural experience in the Byzantine Empire. Not only are reminiscences of the Old Testament ubiquitous in Byzantine literature and art, but the Byzantine people also revered and identified with Old Testament role models. The Old Testament connected Byzantium not only with its Christian neighbors but with Jewish and Muslim peoples as well. This widespread phenomenon has never received systematic investigation. The Old Testament in Byzantium considers the manifestations of the holy books in Byzantine manuscript illustration, architecture, and government, as well as in Jewish Bible translations and the construction of Muhammad's character.

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

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From ancient times to the present day, utopian social ideas have made the unity of humankind a central concern. In the face of the threats to civic peace and harmony caused by misrule, factions, inequality, and moral weakness, philosophical and religious traditions in antiquity gave considered attention to the attainment of oneness both as an ideal and as an embodied practice. In this volume, scholars of ancient history, early Judaism, and biblical studies come together to show that ideas of unity and practices of oneness were grounded in larger conceptions of worldview, cosmic order, and power, with theological ideas such as the oneness of God laying an important foundation. In particular, contributors focus on how early Christians, with their inherited Jewish, Greek, and Roman traditions, reinterpreted oneness in light of their new identity as “members of Christ” and how they put it into practice. Contributors are Stephen C. Barton, Anna Sieges-Beal, Max Botner, Andrew J. Byers, Carsten Claußen, Kylie Crabbe, Robbie Griggs, James R. Harrison, Walter J. Houston, T. J. Lang, Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, John-Paul Lotz, Lynette Mitchell, Nicholas J. Moore, Elizabeth E. Shively, Julien C. H. Smith, and Alan Thompson.

A Brill classic now in paperback from SBL Press

Essays in this volume describe the shift in biblical exegesis within the last several decades from the interpretation of biblical texts as the outcome of historical development, or diachronic methodology, to the exploration of the text as the result of a reading process rather than a historical process, or synchronic methodology. The methods discussed include ideology criticism, semantic and poetic analysis, cognitive linguistics, drama theory, narratology, deconstruction, and anthropology, and intertextuality. The authors of this work challenge biblical scholars not to just perform exegesis, but to explore the methods and aims underlying their interpretations.

Features:

• Essays examine texts from the Old or New Testament through the lens of one of the many modern synchronic methods used in postmodern literary interpretation
• Fifteen essays from top scholars in the field

The book of Job is a complex, sophisticated treatment of the problem of undeserved suffering. It is also a sustained meditation on creation, on humanity’s place in creation, and on God’s ordering of creation. In this study, Kathryn Schifferdecker offers a close literary and theological reading of the book of Job—particularly of the speeches of God at the end of the book—in order to articulate its creation theology, which is particularly pertinent in our environmentally-conscious age.

After all of Job’s agonized questioning, God’s answer does not directly address Job’s questions about undeserved suffering or divine justice. Instead, the divine speeches take Job on a God’s-eye tour of creation in all its beauty and complexity. In extraordinarily detailed and beautiful poetry, the divine speeches show Job that the world is radically non-anthropocentric, that there exist wild places and animals whose value has nothing to do with their usefulness to humanity, and that God delights in the freedom of God’s creatures. This vision of the divine speeches enables Job to move out of despair into renewed participation in God’s often-dangerous but beautiful world.

This creation theology of Job, virtually unique in the Bible, has much to say to us today, as we struggle theologically and politically with the issues of environmental degradation and humanity’s relationship to the natural world.