BiblioVault - Books about Criticism, interpretation, etc

Tel Dan in Its Northern Cultic Context

Andrew R. Davis

SBL Press, 2013

This work presents in detail a description of archaeological data from the Iron II temple complex at Tel Dan in northern Israel. Davis analyzes the archaeological remains from the ninth and eighth centuries, paying close attention to how the temple functioned as sacred space. Correlating the archaeological data with biblical depictions of worship, especially the “textual strata” of 1 Kings 18 and the book of Amos, Davis argues that the temple was the site of “official” and family religion and that worship at the temple became increasingly centralized. Tel Dan's role in helping reconstruct ancient Israelite religion, especially distinctive religious traditions of the northern kingdom, is also considered.

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Temptation Transformed

The Story of How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple

Azzan Yadin-Israel

University of Chicago Press, 2022

A "brisk and entertaining" (Wall Street Journal) journey into the mystery behind why the forbidden fruit became an apple, upending an explanation that stood for centuries.

How did the apple, unmentioned by the Bible, become the dominant symbol of temptation, sin, and the Fall? Temptation Transformed pursues this mystery across art and religious history, uncovering where, when, and why the forbidden fruit became an apple.

Azzan Yadin-Israel reveals that Eden’s fruit, once thought to be a fig or a grape, first appears as an apple in twelfth-century French art. He then traces this image back to its source in medieval storytelling. Though scholars often blame theologians for the apple, accounts of the Fall written in commonly spoken languages—French, German, and English—influenced a broader audience than cloistered Latin commentators. Azzan Yadin-Israel shows that, over time, the words for “fruit” in these languages narrowed until an apple in the Garden became self-evident. A wide-ranging study of early Christian thought, Renaissance art, and medieval languages, Temptation Transformed offers an eye-opening revisionist history of a central religious icon.

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The Testimony of Two Nations

How the Book of Mormon Reads, and Rereads, the Bible

Michael Austin

University of Illinois Press, 2024

Understanding the Book of Mormon on its own terms and through its two-way connection with the Bible

Like the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon uses narratives to develop ideas and present instruction. Michael Austin reveals how the Book of Mormon connects itself to narratives in the Christian Bible with many of the same tools that the New Testament used to connect itself to the Hebrew Bible to create the Christian Bible. As Austin shows, the canonical context for interpreting the Book of Mormon includes the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon itself, and other writings and revelations that hold scriptural status in most Restoration denominations. Austin pays particular attention to how the Book of Mormon connects itself to the Christian Bible both to form a new canon and to use the canonical relationship to reframe and reinterpret biblical narratives. This canonical context provides an important and fruitful method for interpreting the Book of Mormon.

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Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles

What is in the Picture.

Caroline Vander Stichele

SBL Press, 2012

Children’s Bibles are often the first encounter people have with the Bible, shaping their perceptions of its stories and characters at an early age. The material under discussion in this book not only includes traditional children’s Bibles but also more recent phenomena such as manga Bibles and animated films for children. The book highlights the complex and even tense relationship between text and image in these Bibles, which is discussed from different angles in the essays. Their shared focus is on the representation of “others”—foreigners, enemies, women, even children themselves—in predominantly Hebrew Bible stories. The contributors are Tim Beal, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Melody Briggs, Rubén R. Dupertuis, Emma England, J. Cheryl Exum, Danna Nolan Fewell, David M. Gunn, Laurel Koepf, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Jeremy Punt, Hugh S. Pyper, Cynthia M. Rogers, Mark Roncace, Susanne Scholz, Jaqueline S. du Toit, and Caroline Vander Stichele.

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Texts and Contexts of the Book of Sirach / Texte und Kontexte des Sirachbuches

Gerhard Karner

SBL Press, 2017

Now available from SBL Press

Thirteen essays, some in German and others in English, tackle the complicated history of textual transmission of Sirach. This book presents the proceedings of an international conference held in 2014 in Eichstaett, Germany on the text of Ben Sira within its historical contexts.Contributors include James K. Aitken, Pierre-Maurice Bogaert, Franz Böhmisch, Anthony J. Forte SJ, Jan Joosten, Otto Kaiser, Siegfried Kreuzer, Jean-Sébastien Rey, Werner Urbanz, Knut Usener, Oda Wischmeyer, Markus Witte, Benjamin G. Wright, and Burkard M. Zapff.

Features:

A sociocultural and theological history of Sirach
Philological and textual problems of the Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions
Translation strategies based on Greek, Syriac, and Latin text traditions and related hermeneutical questions

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Textual Signposts in the Argument of Romans

A Relevance-Theory Approach

Sarah H. Casson

SBL Press, 2019

A fresh look at the development of Paul’s argument in Romans

The Greek word gar occurs 144 times in Romans and 1,041 times in the entire New Testament. However, many instances of this connective defy easy definition, and the English translation for is often inadequate, obscuring the clue that gar gives to the direction of the communicator’s thought. In this ground-breaking work, Sarah H. Casson argues that gar offers vital guidance to the coherence of Romans. The book applies the cognitive approach of relevance theory to show how garfunctions as an indispensable guide for tracing the significant points of Paul’s argument, helping resolve questions about the coherence of sections, as well as smaller-scale exegetical problems. The work engages with key debates regarding the purpose of Romans and challenges some recent influential interpretations.

Features:

An exegetically useful understanding of the connective gar
A new method for determining Paul’s audience and reason for writing
A challenge to recent key debates and influential interpretations of the purpose of Romans

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Theology and Anthropology in the Book of Sirach

Bonifatia Gesche

SBL Press, 2020

New research on Sirach for scholars and students

The present volume of English and German essays includes the proceedings of an international conference held in Eichstaett, Germany, in 2017. Themes of creation, emotions, life, death, wisdom, knowledge, the individual and society, family, gender, mercy, justice, and freedom are but a few of the topics that contributors explore in this new collection. Essays explore the rich intertextual connections between Sirach and other biblical texts.

Features:

Attention to theological distinctions presented in the Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions of the book of Sirach
Examination of the reception of Sirach in the New Testament and the early modern era
English abstracts for German-language essays and German abstracts for English-language essays

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Thinking Biblically

Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies

André LaCocque and Paul Ricoeur

University of Chicago Press, 1998

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament.

LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age.

This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing.

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The Time Has Grown Short

René Girard, or the Last Law

Benoît Chantre

Michigan State University Press, 2022

The protagonist of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time observes with wonder the comings and goings of the crows that roost in the belfry of the village church in Combray, his childhood home. For René Girard, one of Proust’s great interpreters, their mysterious flight, first departing from and then returning to the vertical axis of the steeple, suggests the movement of modern history—the crisis of aristocratic models, the growing servitude of individuals possessed by mimetic desire, and the final irruption of authentic transcendence. In this rich exploration of Girard’s insights, his French editor and longtime collaborator Benoît Chantre brings Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans into dialogue with both Proust and Girard in order to push to its logical endpoint the idea of a back-and-forth movement from chaos to order. History, Chantre argues, has been driven mad by the revelation of its sacrificial engine. The only way out lies in a transformation internal to the crisis itself—only that faith which is capable of hearing the One who speaks in the Law makes it possible to avoid the perpetual ups and downs of rivalry. Acting and revealing Himself at the heart of history, an intimate model “hidden since the foundation of the world” deals a fatal blow to the circle of sin. Authentic transcendence coincides with the eschaton, the moment when—according to Saint Paul—historical time implodes into eternity.

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Torah

Functions, Meanings, and Diverse Manifestations in Early Judaism and Christianity

William M. Schniedewind

SBL Press, 2022

The present volume explores the ever-evolving understandings and diverse manifestations of the Hebrew notion of torah in early Jewish and Christian literature and the different roles torah played within those communities, whether in Judea or in the Hellenistic and early Roman diaspora. This collection of essays is purposefully wide-ranging, with contributors exploring and rethinking some of the most basic scholarly assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of torah in light of new critical approaches and methodologies. Contributors include Gabriele Boccaccini, Francis Borchardt, Calum Carmichael, Federico Dal Bo, Lutz Doering, Oliver Dyma, Paula Fredriksen, Robert G. Hall, Magnar Kartveit, Anne Kreps, David Lambert, Michael Legaspi, Jason A. Myers, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Patrick Pouchelle, Jeremy Punt, Michael L. Satlow, Joachim Schaper, William Schniedewind, Elisa Uusimäki, Jacqueline Vayntrub, Jonathan Vroom, James W. Watts, Benjamin G. Wright III, and Jason M. Zurawski.

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Toward a Latino/a Biblical Interpretation

Francisco Lozada Jr.

SBL Press, 2017

Engage an interdisciplinary approach

In Toward a Latino/a Biblical Interpretation Francisco Lozada Jr. explores the complex and diverse issues related to Latino/a biblical interpretation. After laying the theoretical foundation, he offers three sample readings of biblical texts to lead readers through the intricacy of interpretation that has historically and culturally surrounded understanding what it means to do Latino/a biblical interpretation. Throughout, Lozada attempts to work out various strategies that Latinos/as have employed to read biblical texts. He argues that Latino/a biblical interpretation is concerned with identity and belongingness with a goal of transforming/liberating the Latino/a community.

Features

An introduction to what it means to do Latino/a biblical interpretation
A demonstration of three different reading strategies (correlation, dialogical, and ideological) that Latinos/as employ in reading biblical texts
An exploration of whether one has to be Latino/a to do Latino/a biblical interpretation

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Traces of Grand Peace

Classics and State Activism in Imperial China

Jaeyoon Song

Harvard University Press, 2015

Since the second century BC the Confucian Classics, endorsed by the successive ruling houses of imperial China, had stood in tension with the statist ideals of “big government.” In Northern Song China (960–1127), a group of reform-minded statesmen and thinkers sought to remove the tension between the two by revisiting the highly controversial classic, the Rituals of Zhou: the administrative blueprint of an archaic bureaucratic state with the six ministries of some 370 offices staffed by close to 94,000 men. With their revisionist approaches, they reinvented it as the constitution of state activism. Most importantly, the reform-councilor Wang Anshi’s (1021–1086) new commentary on the Rituals of Zhou rose to preeminence during the New Policies period (ca. 1068–1125), only to be swept into the dustbin of history afterward. By reconstructing his revisionist exegesis from its partial remains, this book illuminates the interplay between classics, thinkers, and government in statist reform, and explains why the uneasy marriage between classics and state activism had to fail in imperial China.

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Tradition and Innovation

English and German Studies on the Septuagint

Martin Rösel

SBL Press, 2018

Explore the opportunities and challenges of Septuagint studies

Recent research into the Septuagint has revealed numerous examples of modifications of the meaning of the Hebrew text in the course of its translation into Greek. This collection of essays by one of the leading scholars on the Septuagint shows how complex the translation of individual books was, provides reasons for differences between the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, and paves the way for a theology of the Septuagint. Articles introduce the field of Septuagint studies, the problem of the Letter of Aristeas, and the Hellenistic environment and the hermeneutics of Hellenistic Judaism.

Features:

A methodological discussion of whether and how a theology of the Septuagint can be written
Essays introducing the field of Septuagint studies and its Hellenistic environment and the hermeneutics of Hellenistic Judaism
Fifteen English and German essays covering twenty-five years of Septuagint research

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Traditions of the Bible

A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era

James L. Kugel

Harvard University Press, 1998

James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully rich and illuminating work, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference work.

Focusing on two dozen core stories in the Pentateuch--from the Creation and Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Kugel explains how and why the writers of this formative age of interpretation--roughly 200 B.C.E. to 150 C.E.--assumed such a significant role. Mining their writings--including the Dead Sea Scrolls, works of Philo and Josephus and letters of the Apostle Paul, and writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the rabbinic Sages--he quotes for us the seminal passages that uncover this crucial interpretive process.

For this full-scale reference work Kugel has added a substantial treasury of sources and passages for each of the 24 Bible stories. It will serve as a unique guide and sourcebook for biblical interpretation.

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Transcendentalist Hermeneutics

Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism of the Bible

Richard A. Grusin

Duke University Press, 1991

American literary historians have viewed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832 in favor of a literary career as emblematic of a main current in American literature. That current is directed toward the possession of a self that is independent and fundamentally opposed to the “accoutrements of society and civilization” and expresses a Transcendentalist antipathy toward all institutionalized forms of religious observance.
In the ongoing revision of American literary history, this traditional reading of the supposed anti-institutionalism of the Transcendentalists has been duly detailed and continually supported. Richard A. Grusin challenges both traditional and revisionist interpretations with detailed contextual studies of the hermeneutics of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker. Informed by the past two decades of critical theory, Grusin examines the influence of the higher criticism of the Bible—which focuses on authorship, date, place of origin, circumstances of composition, and the historical credibility of biblical writings—on these writers. The author argues that the Transcendentalist appeal to the authority of the “self” is not an appeal to a source of authority independent of institutions, but to an authority fundamentally innate.

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Trauma and the Failure of History

Kings, Lamentations, and the Destruction of Jerusalem

David Janzen

SBL Press, 2019

A theoretical and exegetical exploration of trauma in the Hebrew Bible

David Janzen discusses the concepts of history and trauma and contrasts the ways historians and trauma survivors grapple with traumatic events, a contrast embodied in the very different ways the books of Kings and Lamentations react to the destruction of Jerusalem. Janzen’s study warns that explanations in histories will tend to silence the voices of trauma survivors, and it challenges traditional approaches that sometimes portray the explanations of traumatic events in biblical literature as therapeutic for victims.

Features:

Exploration of history as a narrative explanation that creates a past readers can recognize to be true
Examination of how trauma results in a failure of victims to fully experience or remember traumatic events.
A case for why the past is a construction of cultures and historians

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Two Shipwrecked Gospels

The Logoi of Jesus and Papias's Exposition of Logia about the Lord

Dennis R. MacDonald

SBL Press, 2012

With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.

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