“[An] extraordinary book.” —New Republic
Fusing high scholarship with high drama, Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg uncover a secret and extraordinary aspect of a legendary Renaissance scholar’s already celebrated achievement. The French Protestant Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) is known to us through his pedantic namesake in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. But in this book, the real Casaubon emerges as a genuine literary hero, an intrepid explorer in the world of books. With a flair for storytelling reminiscent of Umberto Eco, Grafton and Weinberg follow Casaubon as he unearths the lost continent of Hebrew learning—and adds this ancient lore to the well-known Renaissance revival of Latin and Greek.
The mystery begins with Mark Pattison’s nineteenth-century biography of Casaubon. Here we encounter the Protestant Casaubon embroiled in intellectual quarrels with the Italian and Catholic orator Cesare Baronio. Setting out to understand the nature of this imbroglio, Grafton and Weinberg discover Casaubon’s knowledge of Hebrew. Close reading and sedulous inquiry were Casaubon’s tools in recapturing the lost learning of the ancients—and these are the tools that serve Grafton and Weinberg as they pore through pre-1600 books in Hebrew, and through Casaubon’s own manuscript notebooks. Their search takes them from Oxford to Cambridge, from Dublin to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they reveal how the scholar discovered the learning of the Hebrews—and at what cost.
A broad, sweeping volume that breaches the walls separating biblical and theological disciplines
Biblical scholars and theologians engage an important question: Who is Israel’s God for Christian readers of the Old Testament? For Christians, Scripture is the Old and New Testament bound together in a single legacy. Contributors approach the question from multiple disciplinary vantage points. Essays on both Testaments focus on figural exegesis, critical exegesis, and the value of diachronic understandings of the Old Testament’s compositional history for the sake of a richer synchronic reading. This collection is offered in celebration of the life and work of Christopher R. Seitz. His rich and wide-ranging scholarly efforts have provided scholars and students alike a treasure trove of resources related to this critical question.
New and challenging readings of biblical characters
This volume of collected essays introduces the concept of interfigurality, the interrelations and interdependence between characters in the Gospel of John and in the Synoptic Gospels and the Hebrew Bible.The essays are informed by a narrative-critical reader-response, (post)feminist hermeneutics and an autobiographical approach to biblical texts. This volume encourages transformative encounters between present-day readers and the ancient biblical texts.
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Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger is an independent scholar and the author of Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-viewed (1999) and the editor of The Personal Voice in Biblical Interpretation (1998) and Autobiographical Biblical Criticism: Between Text and Self (2002).
A nuanced study of early Christian exegesis
Miriam DeCock analyzes four important early Christian treatments of the Gospel of John, including commentaries by Origen and Cyril from the Alexandrian tradition and the homilies of John Chrysostom and the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which represent Antiochian traditions. DeCock maintains that the traditional distinction between nonliteral and literal interpretations in these two early Christian centers remains helpful despite recent challenges to the paradigm. She argues that a major and abiding distinction between the two schools lies in the manner in which Alexandrian and Antiochian authors apply the gospel text to their respective communities. DeCock demonstrates that the Antiochenes find primarily literal moral examples and doctrinal teachings in John's Gospel, whereas the Alexandrians find both these and nonliteral teachings concerning the immediate situation of the church and of its individual members.
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Explore how empire is a crucial foreground for reading and interpreting the New Testament
In the last three decades, significant attention has been given to the way in which New Testament texts engage and respond to the imperial world in which they were written. The purpose of the present volume is to introduce students and non-specialists to the growing subfield of New Testament studies known as empire studies. Contributors seek to make readers aware of the significant work that has already been produced, while also pointing them to new ways in which this field is moving forward. The contributors are Bruce W. Longenecker, Richard A. Horsley, Warren Carter, Adam Winn, Eric D. Barreto, Beth M. Sheppard, Neil Elliot, James R. Harrison, Harry O. Maier, Deborah Krause, Jason A.Whitlark, Matthew R. Hauge, Kelly D. Liebengood, and Davina C. Lopez.
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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.
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Was Deuteronomy created to be a subversive text based on Assyian treaties?
In this new book Crouch focuses on Deuteronomy’s subversive intent, asking what would be required in order for Deuteronomy to successfully subvert either a specific Assyrian source or Assyrian ideology more generally. The book reconsiders the nature of the relationship between Deuteronomy and Assyria, Deuteronomy’s relationship to ancient Near Eastern and biblical treaty and loyalty oath traditions, and the relevance of Deuteronomy’s treaty affinities to discussions of its date.
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