In After Transformation, Maia Kotrosits offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Recasting the monumental changes that occurred between the second and fourth centuries, when Rome transitioned from pagan to Christian worship, Kotrosits presents a condensed and evocative meditation on the profound effects of Christian imperialism across time and geography. She employs a collection of forms ranging from micro-essay and vignette to poem and fragment to capture human struggles with time and change, showing how the mundane and intimate details of our lives can themselves be conduits of historical knowing. Arguing for lyricism as a method, Kotrosits reclaims vulnerability, urgency, and storytelling in historical work to model new ways of writing the past and experiencing ourselves more fully in time. Above all, After Transformation is about the ironies of the ways that history is written against the reality of the ways that history is lived.

The French Catholic priest and biblical scholar Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was at the heart of the Roman Catholic Modernist crisis in the early part of the twentieth century. He saw much of his work as an attempt to bring John Henry Newman’s notion of development of doctrine into the realm of Catholic biblical studies, and thereby transform Catholic theology. This volume situates Loisy’s better known works on the New Testament and theology in the context of his lesser known work in Assyriology and Old Testament studies. His early training in Assyriology taught Loisy a comparative historical approach to studying ancient texts, in addition to providing him the requisite training in ancient Near Eastern languages and literature. Loisy built upon this Assyriological foundation with his historical critical work in biblical studies, first in the Old Testament. In his biblical scholarship, Loisy combined the then current trends of historical biblical criticism with his more comparative approach. Prior to his excommunication in 1908, Loisy attempted in his more popular writings to defend the inclusion of historical biblical criticism in the repertoire of Catholic biblical interpretation. He saw this as an important step in reforming Catholic theology. The Modernist crisis set the stage for the major debates that would occur in the Catholic theological world for more than a century. The controversy over Modernism became one important conflict that helped pave the way for the Second Vatican Council. The issues raised during Loisy’s time, remain contested today. Examining how Loisy approached biblical studies helps readers better understand his overall work, and the place it played in the pivotal intellectual turmoil of his day.

New English translations based upon the most up-to-date critical editions

This book for the first time collects the various ancient accounts of the martydoms of Peter and Paul, which number more than a dozen, along with more than forty references to the martyrdoms from early Christian literature. At last a more complete picture of the traditions about the deaths of Peter and Paul is able to emerge.

Features:

• Greek, Latin, and Syriac accounts from antiquity translated into English
• Introductions and notes for each text
• Original texts are produced on facing pages for specialists

A critical examination of the history of Israel.

When did Israel begin? The origins of ancient Israel are shrouded in mystery, and those hoping to explore the issue must utilize resources from three different fields—archaeology, epigraphy, and biblical texts—and then examine their interrelations while keeping in mind that the name Israel was not used to describe just one state but referred to numerous entities at different times.

Archaeology, History, and Formation of Identity in Ancient Israel provides a critical reading of Israel’s history. It is neither a harmonizing reading, which takes the picture painted by texts as a given fact, nor a reading supporting biblical texts with archaeological and epigraphic data; instead, it offers the reader multiple options to understand biblical narratives on a historical and theological level. In addition to presenting the main currents in the field, the book draws upon the latest discoveries from Czech-Israeli excavations to offer new hypotheses and reconstructions based on the interdisciplinary dialogue between biblical studies, archaeology, and history.

Engage the delightful and inspiring, sometimes rough and rocky road to inclusive and transformative Bible reading

This book offers the results of research within a new area of discipline—empirical hermeneutics in intercultural perspective. The book includes interpretations from the homeless in Amsterdam, to Indonesia, from African Xhosa readers to Norway, to Madagascar, American youths, Germany, Czech Republic, Colombia, and Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic.

Features:

• Interpretations from ordinary readers in more than twenty-five countries
• Background introduction with history of the text
• Discussion of intertextual connections with Greco-Roman authors

Ancient Israel did not emerge within a vacuum but rather came to exist alongside various peoples, including Canaanites, Egyptians, and Philistines. Indeed, Israel’s very proximity to these groups has made it difficult—until now—to distinguish the archaeological traces of early Israel and other contemporary groups. Through an analysis of the results from recent excavations in light of relevant historical and later biblical texts, this book proposes that it is possible to identify these peoples and trace culturally or ethnically defined boundaries in the archaeological record. Features of late second-millennium B.C.E. culture are critically examined in their historical and biblical contexts in order to define the complex social boundaries of the early Iron Age and reconstruct the diverse material world of these four peoples. Of particular value to scholars, archaeologists, and historians, this volume will also be a standard reference and resource for students and other readers interested in the emergence of early Israel.

A new reconstruction of cultic practices surrounding death in ancient Israel

In Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel, Kerry M. Sonia examines the commemoration and care for the dead in ancient Israel against the broader cultural backdrop of West Asia. This cult of dead kin, often referred to as ancestor cult, comprised a range of ritual practices in which the living provided food and drink offerings, constructed commemorative monuments, invoked the names of the dead, and protected their remains. This ritual care negotiated the ongoing relationships between the living and the dead and, in so doing, helped construct social, political, and religious landscapes in relationship to the past. Sonia explores the nature of this cult of dead kin in ancient Israel, focusing on its role within the family and household as well as its relationship to Israel’s national deity and the Jerusalem temple.

Features:

• A reevaluation of whether burial and necromantic rituals were part of the cult of dead kin
• A portrait of the various roles Israelite women played in the cult of dead kin
• A reassessment of biblical writers’ attitudes toward the cult of dead kin

Material from the Dead Sea Scrolls appears in many publications. While much of the corpus has now appeared in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series, there are still fragments buried in obscure journals and books that can be virtually impossible to find. This book identifies all the passages in the Qumran documents that contain biblical text, both in the biblical and non-biblical scrolls. It provides specific bibliographic information, in canonical order, for locating each passage in the published scrolls and compares each one to the ancient Hebrew and Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible, noting both similarities and differences. It is designed to help those who want to work with manuscripts and versions to discover the original text of the Hebrew Bible. This work will appeal to students of Qumran, and both scholars and nonspecialists interested in textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

This volume presents the work of the international, interdisciplinary research project Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT), whose members focused on cultural, ideological, and material changes in the period when the sacred traditions of the Hebrew Bible were created, transmitted, and transformed. Specialists in the textual study of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, archaeology, Assyriology, and history, working across their fields of expertise, trace how changes occurred in biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts and traditions. Contributors Tero Alstola, Anneli Aejmelaeus , Rick Bonnie, Francis Borchardt, George J. Brooke, Cynthia Edenburg, Sebastian Fink, Izaak J. deHulster , Patrik Jansson, Jutta Jokiranta, Tuukka Kauhanen, Gina Konstantopoulos, Lauri Laine, Michael C. Legaspi, Christoph Levin, Ville Mäkipelto, Reinhard Müller, Martti Nissinen, Jessi Orpana, Juha Pakkala, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Christian Seppänen, Jason M. Silverman, Saana Svärd, Timo Tekoniemi, Hanna Tervanotko, Joanna Töyräänvuori, and Miika Tucker demonstrate that rigorous yet respectful debate results in a nuanced and complex understanding of how ancient texts developed.

An authoritative critical edition

The discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed our understanding of the life and history of ancient Jewish communities when both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity were emerging. As part of this rich discovery, the Community Rule serves to illuminate the religious beliefs and practices as well as the organizational rules of the group behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, there is no single, unified text of the Community Rule; rather, multiple manuscripts of the Community Rule show considerable variation and highlight the work of ancient Jewish scribes and their intentional literary development of the text. In this volume, Sarianna Metso brings together the surviving evidence in a new edition that presents a critically established Hebrew text with an introduction and an English translation.

Features:

• A critical apparatus and textual notes
• All the surviving evidence of the Community Rule
• A new method for presenting complex developments and transmission history of ancient texts

This short Coptic lexicon addresses the needs of beginning Coptic students for a resource focused on vocabulary in the Nag Hammadi texts. The second edition includes additional word entries, updated definitions, and cross references.

Constructing Antichrist engages readers with the question: what does Paul have to do with the Antichrist? Integrating new scholarship in apocalypticism and the history of exegesis, this book is the first longitudinal study of the role of Paul in apocalyptic thought

An essential resource exploring orality and literacy in the pre-Hellenistic southern Levant and the Hebrew Bible

Situated historically between the invention of the alphabet, on the one hand, and the creation of ancient Israel's sacred writings, on the other, is the emergence of literary production in the ancient Levant. In this timely collection of essays by an international cadre of scholars, the dialectic between the oral and the written, the intersection of orality with literacy, and the advent of literary composition are each explored as a prelude to the emergence of biblical writing in ancient Israel. Contributors also examine a range of relevant topics including scripturalization, the compositional dimensions of orality and textuality as they engage biblical poetry, prophecy, and narrative along with their antecedents, and the ultimate autonomy of the written in early Israel. The contributors are James M. Bos, David M. Carr, André Lemaire, Robert D. Miller II, Nadav Na'aman, Raymond F. Person Jr., Frank H. Polak, Christopher A. Rollston, Seth L. Sanders, Joachim Schaper, Brian B. Schmidt, William M. Schniedewind, Elsie Stern, and Jessica Whisenant.

Features

• Addresses questions of literacy and scribal activity in the Levant and Negev
• Articles examine memory, oral tradition, and text criticism
• Discussion of the processes of scripturalization

Do professional historians and New Testament scholars use the same methods to explore the past? This interdisciplinary textbook introduces students of the New Testament to the vocabulary and methods employed by historians. It discusses various approaches to historiography and demonstrates their applicability for interpreting the New Testament text and exploring its background. Overviews of the philosophy of history, common historical fallacies, and the basics of historiography are followed by three exegetical studies that illustrate the applicability of various historical methods for New Testament interpretation.

Now in paperback!

The volume covers Qumran scholarship in separate countries: the USA, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Each essay carries a detailed bibliography for the respective country. Biographies of all the major scholars active in the field are briefly given as well. This book thereby exhaustively surveys past and present Qumran research, outlining its particular development in various circumstances and national contexts. For the first time, perspectives and information not recorded in any other publication are highlighted.

Features:

Paperback format of an essential Brill resource

Twenty-seven articles by twenty-six of the top scholars in the field

Contributions represent the work of more than sixty years of scholarly research

Explore how the past came to address the present and the future and why it became important for emerging Jewish identity.

Experts explore the themes and topics that made Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets appealing to ancient readers leading ultimately to those texts becoming authoritative for Persian and Hellenistic readers. This unique collection of essays focuses on what larger impact these texts might have had on primary and secondary audiences as part of emerging Torah. Contributors include Klaus-Peter Adam, Yairah Amit, Thomas M. Bolin, Philip R. Davies, Serge Frolov, Susanne Gilmayr-Bucher, E. Axel Knauf, Christoph Levin, James R. Linville, and Thomas Römer, and Diana V. Edelman.

Features:

• Essays focused on why texts became authoritative instead of when they were written or their historicity
• Two scholars examine each book providing a range of views
• Coverage of the socio-religious function of emerging Torah in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods

This inventive work explores Mark’s Gospel within the contexts of the empires of Rome and Europe. In a unique dual analysis, the book highlights how empire is not only part of the past but also of a present colonial heritage. The book first outlines postcolonial criticism and discusses the challenges it poses for biblical scholarship, then scrutinizes the complex ways with which nineteenth-century commentaries on Mark’s Gospel interplayed with the formation of European colonial identities. It examines the stance of Mark’s Gospel vis-à-vis the Roman Empire and analyzes the manner in which the fibers of empire within Mark are interwoven, reproduced, negotiated, modified and subverted. Finally, it offers synthesizing suggestions for bringing Mark beyond a colonial heritage. The book’s candid use of postcolonial criticism illustrates how a contemporary perspective can illuminate and shed new light on an ancient text in its imperial setting.

A reevaluation of the concept of the soul based on the latest evidence

Biblical scholars have long claimed that the Israelites “could not conceive of a disembodied nefesh [soul].” Steiner rejects that claim based on a broad spectrum of textual, linguistic, archaeological, and anthropological evidence spanning the millennia from prehistoric times to the present. The biblical evidence includes a prophecy of Ezekiel condemning women who pretend to trap the wandering souls of sleeping people. The extrabiblical evidence suggests that a belief in the existence of disembodied souls was part of the common religious heritage of the peoples of the ancient Near East.

Features

• A re-examination of the evidence for and against disembodied souls in the Hebrew Bible
• A new look at the nature and behavior of disembodied souls in the Hebrew Bible
• A new study of the meaning and sociolinguistic background of the Katumuwa inscription

A fresh literary analysis of political polemic in the Bible

The Book of Judges ends with a bizarre narrative of sex and violence that starts with a domestic tiff and ends with the decimation of a tribe that is restored by means of abduction and rape. Cynthia Edenburg applies a fresh literary analysis, recent understandings of historical linguistics, and historical geography in her exploration of the origin of the anti-Benjamin polemic found in Judges 19–21, the growth and provenance of the book of Judges, and the shape of the Deuteronomistic History. Her study exposes how Judges 19–21 function as political polemic reflecting not the pre-monarchic period but instead the historical realities of the settlement of Benjamin during the Babylonian and Persian period.

Features:

• Methodological discussions that open each chapter
• Charts and tables
• Engagement with current research produced by scholars from around the world

Advance your understanding of divination’s role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East

This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires.

Features:

• Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studies
• Essays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empires
• Index of ancient sources

A comprehensive history of a state on Judah’s border

Edom at the Edge of Empire combines biblical, epigraphic, archaeological, and comparative evidence to reconstruct the history of Judah's neighbor to the southeast. Crowell traces the material and linguistic evidence, from early Egyptian sources that recall conflicts with nomadic tribes to later Assyrian texts that reference compliant Edomite tribal kings, to offer alternative scenarios regarding Edom's transformation from a collection of nomadic tribes and workers in the Wadi Faynan as it relates to the later polity centered around the city of Busayra in the mountains of southern Jordan. This is the first book to incorporate the important evidence from the Wadi Faynan copper mines into a thorough account of Edom's history, providing a key resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible.

A new perspective on essential aspects of Esther’s plot and characters for students and scholars

Empire and Gender in LXX Esther foregrounds and highlights empire as the central lens in this provocative new reading of Esther. This book provides a unique synchronic reading of LXX Esther with the Additions, allowing the presence and negotiation of imperial power to be further illuminated throughout the story’s plot. Stone explores and demonstrates how performances of gender are inextricably intertwined with the exertion and negotiation of imperial power portrayed in LXX Esther and offers examples of connections to the range of imperial power experienced by Jewish people during the late Second Temple period.

Features:

• An exploration of the tenets and methodology of imperial-critical approaches
• Focused attention to the final form of LXX Esther
• Construction of early audiences for LXX Esther in first-century BCE Ptolemaic Alexandria and Hasmonean Judea

This collection of essays continues the investigation of religious experience in early Judaism and early Christianity begun in Experientia, Volume 1, by addressing one of the traditional objections to the study of experience in antiquity. The authors address the relationship between the surviving evidence, which is textual, and the religious experiences that precede or ensue from those texts. Drawing on insights from anthropology, sociology, social memory theory, neuroscience, and cognitive science, they explore a range of religious phenomena including worship, the act of public reading, ritual, ecstasy, mystical ascent, and the transformation of gender and of emotions. Through careful and theoretically informed work, the authors demonstrate the possibility of moving from written documents to assess the lived experiences that are linked to them. The contributors are István Czachesz, Frances Flannery, Robin Griffith-Jones, Angela Kim Harkins, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, John R. Levison, Carol A. Newsom, Rollin A. Ramsaran, Colleen Shantz, Leif E. Vaage, and Rodney A. Werline.

Now in paperback!

Cognitive science of religion is a radically new paradigm in the study of religion. Historians of religion have shown increasing interest in this approach. The book is in four parts: an introduction to cognitive and social-scientific approaches, applications of cognitive science, applications of conceptual blending theory, and applications of socio-cognitive analyses.

Features:

• Paperback format of an essential Brill resource
• Essays that combine cognitive analysis with historical and social-scientific approaches to biblical materials, Christian origins, and early Judaism
• Research for historians of religion, biblical scholars, and those working in the cognitive science of religion.

A new history of literary narration rooted in the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation.
 
We often identify secularization's characteristic literary form as the modern novel: out with divine scripture, in with human fictions. In Fictions of God, Raphael Magarik argues that this story overlooks the cultural upheavals of the Protestant Reformation. Early reformers imagined a Bible that was neither infallible nor inerrant but fictional, composed by a divine counterfactual: God crafted the text, they said, as if it had been written by the prophets. Early modern Protestants now found in their Bibles not a source of foundational truths but a model for unreliable narration, even fiction.

Fictions of God traces how this approach to literature passed from biblical commentators to poets like Abraham Cowley, John Milton, and Lucy Hutchinson amid the violent emergence of a new religious and political order—long before the eighteenth-century rise of the English novel. The result is a transformative account of the Reformation’s effect on imaginative literature and the secularization of the Bible itself.

The most up-to-date sourcebook on warfare in the ancient Near East

Fighting for the King and the Gods provides an introduction to the topic of war and the variety of texts concerning many aspects of warfare in the ancient Near East. These texts illustrate various viewpoints of war and show how warfare was an integral part of life. Trimm examines not only the victors and the famous battles, but also the hardship that war brought to many. While several of these texts treated here are well known (i.e., Ramses II's battle against the Hittites at Qadesh), others are known only to specialists. This work will allow a broader audience to access and appreciate these important texts as they relate to the history and ideology of warfare.

Features

• References to recent secondary literature for further study
• Early Greek and Chinese illustrative texts for comparisons with other cultures
• Indices to help guide the reader

A fresh examination of early Christianity by an international team of New Testament and classical scholars

Volume 5 of The First Urban Churches investigates the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Roman Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea. Building on the methodologies introduced in the first volume and supplementing the in-depth studies of Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi (vols. 2-4), essays in this volume challenge readers to reexamine preconceived understandings of the early church and to grapple with the meaning and context of Christianity in its first-century Roman colonial context.

Features:

• Analysis of urban evidence found in inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography
• Proposed reconstructions of the past and its social, religious, and political significance
• A nuanced, informed portrait of ancient urban life in the cities of the Lycus Valley

This book provides a grammar of the extrabiblical Hebrew inscriptions of Palestine that have been attributed by various archaeological, historical, and paleographic analyses to the period between the tenth and the sixth century B.C.E. These pre-Persian inscriptions constitute a corpus of epigraphic Hebrew inscriptions (including ostraca, graffiti, and seals) that has never been studied comprehensively. While studies of the better-known epigraphic Hebrew inscriptions have been attempted, this book covers the entire corpus. In addition, the seal inscriptions and the personal names have been systematically compared with the longer inscriptions for the first time.

Gregory of Nyssa’s fifteen Homilies on the Song of Songs offer an important resource for the history of Christian biblical exegesis, as well as for the history of Christian ascetical and spiritual teaching, and stand alongside Origen’s commentary on the Song as a source for the later interpretative tradition. In addition to offering the original text and an English translation of all fifteen homilies, Norris provides an analysis of the characteristic themes of Gregory’s ascetical teaching, emphasizes its connection in his mind with the institution of baptism, and stresses the degree to which Gregory sees the teaching of the Song as addressed not to a special class of believers but to any and all Christians.

The first expansive reference examining the texts and material culture related to children in ancient Israel

Growing Up in Ancient Israel uses a child-centered methodology to investigate the world of children in ancient Israel. Where sources from ancient Israel are lacking, the book turns to cross-cultural materials from the ancient Near East as well as archaeological, anthropological, and ethnographic sources. Acknowledging that childhood is both biologically determined and culturally constructed, the book explores conception, birth, infancy, dangers in childhood, the growing child, dress, play, and death. To bridge the gap between the ancient world and today’s world, Kristine Henriksen Garroway introduces examples from contemporary society to illustrate how the Hebrew Bible compares with a Western understanding of children and childhood.

Features:

• More than fifty-five illustrations illuminating the world of the ancient Israelite child
• An extensive investigation of parental reactions to the high rate of infant mortality and the deaths of infants and children
• An examination of what the gendering and enculturation process involved for an Israelite child

A thorough case for a later date for of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles

In this collection of essays, Israel Finkelstein deals with key topics in Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles, such as the list of returnees, the construction of the city wall of Jerusalem, the adversaries of Nehemiah, the tribal genealogies, and the territorial expansion of Judah in 2 Chronicles. Finkelstein argues that the geographical and historical realities cached behind at least parts of these books fit the Hasmonean period in the late second century BCE. Seven previously published essays are supplemented by maps, updates to the archaeological material, and references to recent publications on the topics.

Features:

• Analysis of geographical chapters of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles
• Study of the Hasmonean period in the late second century BCE
• Unique arguments regarding chronology and historical background

A thorough overview of the history of ancient Israel for research and classroom use

Richard D. Nelson charts the beginning of the Iron Age and the emergence of Israel and its literature, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the downfall of Israel, Judah in the Assyrian and Babylonian periods, Yehud and Persia, and the Hellenistic period. Each chapter provides a summary of the period under consideration, a historical reconstruction of the period, based on biblical and extrabiblical evidence; a critical study of the biblical literature deriving from or associated with the period, and theological conclusions that readers may draw from the relevant biblical texts.

Features:

• Balanced coverage of controversial topics
• Extensive bibliographies at the beginning of each chapter
• Lists of rulers and key dates for reference and classroom use

An insightful historical account of Phoenicia that illustrates its cities, culture, and daily life

Hélène Sader presents the history and archaeology of Phoenicia based on the available contemporary written sources and the results of archaeological excavations in Phoenicia proper. Sader explores the origin of the term Phoenicia; the political and geographical history of the city-states Arwad, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre; and topography, climate, and natural resources of the Phoenician homeland. Her limited focus on Phoenicia proper, in contrast to previous studies that included information from Phoenician colonies, presents the bare realities of the opportunities and difficulties shaping Phoenician life. Sader’s evaluation and synthesis of the evidence offers a corrective to the common assumption of a unified Phoenician kingdom.

Features

• Historical as well as modern maps with the locations of all relevant archaeological sites
• Faunal and floral analyses that shed light on the Phoenician diet
• Petrographic analysis of pottery that sheds light on trading patterns and developments

This English translation of the second edition of Christian Frevel’s essential textbook Geschichte Israels (Kohlhammer, 2018) covers the history of Israel from its beginnings until the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). Frevel draws on archaeological evidence, inscriptions and monuments, as well as the Bible to sketch a picture of the history of ancient Israel within the context of the southern Levant that is sometimes familiar but often fresh and unexpected. Frevel has updated the second German edition with the most recent research of archaeologists and biblical scholars, including those based in Europe. Tables of rulers, a glossary, a timeline of the ancient Near East, and resources arranged by subject make this book an accessible, essential textbook for students and scholars alike.

This work contains the first English translations of a collection of Hittite myths. The translations are based on the original tablets on which the myths were written and take into account recent textual discoveries and published studies on the texts. Revised and corrected, this second edition includes an additional newly published Hurrian myth. In addition to translations, the volume includes a series of brief introductions to the myths, a glossary of names and technical terms, and indexes of proper names and topics/subjects. Accessible to nonspecialists, the translations also preserve column and line count for the convenience of scholars.

Jesus and his followers defined their allegiances and expressed their identities in a communications culture that manifested itself in voice and chirographic practices, in oral-scribal interfaces, and in performative activities rooted in memory. In the sixteen essays gathered in Imprints, Voiceprints, and Footprints of Memory, Werner Kelber explores the verbal arts of early Christian word processing operative in a media world that was separated by two millennia from our contemporary media history. The title articulates the fact that the ancient culture of voiced texts, hand-copying, and remembering is chiefly accessible to us in print format and predominantly assimilated from print perspectives. The oral-scribal-memorial-performative paradigm developed in these essays challenges the reigning historical-critical model in biblical scholarship. Notions of tradition, the fixation on the single original saying, the dominant methodology of form criticism, and the heroic labors of the Quest—stalwart features of the historical, documentary paradigm—are all subject to a critical review. A number of essays reach beyond New Testament texts, ranging from the pre-Socratic Gorgias through medieval manuscript culture on to print’s triumphant apotheosis in Gutenberg’s Vulgate, product of the high tech of the fifteenth century, all the way to conflicting commemorations of Auschwitz—taking tentative steps toward a history of media technologies, culture, and cognition of the Christian tradition in the West.

This collection of essays by Thomas Kazen focuses on issues of purity and purification in early Judaism and the Jesus tradition. During the late Second Temple period, Jewish purity practices became more prominent than before and underwent substantial developments. These essays advance the ongoing conversation and debate about a number of key issues in the field, such as the relationship between ritual and morality, the role and function of metaphor, and the use of evolutionary and embodied perspectives. Kazen's research stands in constant dialogue with the major currents and main figures in purity research, including both historical (origin, development, practice) and cognitive (evolutionary, emotional, conceptual) approaches.

Empires Come and Go, Homelands Never

Readers of the Hebrew Bible know the basic story line: during the early sixth century BCE the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem, deported a portion of the population to Mesopotamia, and triggered a crisis of faith in the minds of prophets, priests, and liturgists that still echoes through the centuries. Though many Judahites chose to make their way home under Persian imperial control, the straightforward biblical story of exile and return masks many complex issues of evidence and fact. Unlike previous studies that focused narrowly on the Babylonian exile of the Judahite elites, this volume widens the geographical and temporal scope to include the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires. Improved access to and understanding of relevant texts, iconography, and material culture provide an opportunity for scholars to reappraise methods of imperial control and the responses of those in exile and under occupation. Contributors Pamela Barmash, Ryan P. Bonfiglio, Caralie Cooke, Lisbeth S. Fried, Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, Mark W. Hamilton, Matt Waters, and Ian D. Wilson lay a firm foundation for future work on the long sixth century.

What does it mean to say that Scripture is God’s Word? And just how true is the Bible? Though sometimes dismissed as “fundamentalist” concerns, these questions also sent twentieth-century Catholic theology searching for a new paradigm of biblical inspiration. Theologians repeatedly attempted to reconcile the traditional conviction that the Bible shares in the omniscience of its divine author with scholarly findings that suggested otherwise. Joseph Ratzinger contributed both negatively and positively to this project, deconstructing the regnant manualist models of inspiration and constructing an alternative inspired by St. Bonaventure. The result is an ecclesial model of surprising comprehensiveness and balance. Indeed, The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture concludes that Ratzinger’s alternative provides the least inadequate paradigm currently on offer today. The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture breaks new ground in several ways. First, it situates Ratzinger within a broader Catholic quest for a theology of inspiration, showing his model offers advantages even relative to those proposed by modern theology’s most eminent minds: John Henry Newman, Pierre Benoit, Karl Rahner, and David Tracy. Secondly, this book shows how Ratzinger’s paradigm generates “tests” for identifying the perennially valid affirmations of Scripture, and thus an approach to resolving disputed biblical questions. Must one who accepts the authority of Scripture believe in the Devil? Are the Marian dogmas really “in” Scripture? To what extent does Jesus’s prohibition of divorce still apply in today’s changed social circumstances? Just how historical are Gospel narratives, like the Last Supper, intended to be? The result is a book that bridges the gap between normative theology and historical exegesis. Overall, The Inspiration and Truth of Scripture presents Ratzinger not as an unimaginative enforcer of doctrinal conclusions but as a creatively faithful theologian, whose reconfiguration of inspiration should serve as the point of departure for all future reflection on the subject.

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.

Features:

• A thorough investigation of the nature and requirements of subversion
• A focused examination of the context in which Deuteronomy would have functioned
• An appendix focused on redactional questions related to Deuteronoy 13 and 28

Jerome’s Abbreviated Psalter was one of the most important collections of psalm verses in the Middle Ages. Commonly found in primers and books of hours, it was the primary medium for lay people to imitate the monastic divine office, even as it offered concessions to harsh personal circumstances. This edition presents the Middle English versions in parallel, followed by the Latin version in the Lincoln Thornton manuscript. An introductory review considers the psalter in general and the origins of abbreviated psalters in particular. Jerome’s Abbreviated Psalter is the most widespread text in the abbreviated psalter tradition and it illustrates an important aspect of lay devotional life from the eighth to the sixteenth century. The English versions contribute both to the history of English prose and to the history of biblical translation in English.

Jerusalem is the center of the universe, the hub of the three great monotheistic religions, yet how did a city located on the desert fringe, in the semi-arid southern highlands of Israel with little tillable land achieve such dominance? To provide answers to this enduring riddle, Israel Finkelstein has collected twenty-four of his best articles and essays covering the Middle Bronze Age to the late Hellenistic period. With critical and well-informed care, he analyzes archaeological evidence that often stands in tension with the biblical text. Topics of particular interest include the archaeology of the tenth century BCE; Saul, David, and Solomon in the Bible and archaeology; the first expansion of the city in the ninth century; its full growth in the late eighth to seventh centuries; Jerusalem and Judah under the Assyrian Empire; the days of King Josiah; and transformations in the Persian-Hellenistic era. Short addenda update the reader on recent developments.

The first Greek text of the Epistle of Aristeas published in more than a century

The Greek text Epistle of Aristeas is a Jewish work of the late Hellenistic period that recounts the origins of the Septuagint. Long recognized as a literary fiction, the Epistle of Aristeas has been variously dated from the third century BCE to the first century CE. As a result, its epistolary features, and especially those in which the putative author, Aristeas, addresses his brother and correspondent, Philocrates, have largely been ignored. In light of more recent scholarship on epistolary literature in the Greco-Roman world, however, this volume presents for the first time a complete Greek text and English Translation with introduction, notes, and commentary of the Epistle of Aristeas with key testimonia from Philo, Josephus, and Eusebius, as well as other related examples of Jewish fictional letters from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.

Features

• Relevant excerpts from Eupolemus, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, and the Greek Additions to Esther with translations and introductions
• A critical introduction to ancient Greek letter-writing
• An outline of epistolary features in the text

The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. was a watershed event in the history of Judah, the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the exilic period, during which many of the biblical texts were probably written. The conquest left clear archaeological marks on many sites in Judah, including Jerusalem, and the Bible records it as a traumatic event for the population. Less clear is the situation in Judah following the conquest, that is, in the sixth century, a period with archaeological remains the nature and significance of which are disputed. The traditional view is that the land was decimated and the population devastated. In the last two decades, archaeologists arguing that the land was not empty and that the exile had little impact on Judah’s rural sector have challenged this view. This volume examines the archaeological reality of Judah in the sixth century in order to shed new light on the debate. By expanding research into new avenues and examining new data, as well as by applying new methods to older data, the author arrives at fresh insights that support the traditional view of sixth-century Judah as a land whose population, both urban and rural, was devastated and whose recovery took centuries.

Investigate a relatively neglected but momentous period in Judean history

Nadav Sharon closely examines a critical period in Judean history, which saw the end of the Hasmonean dynasty and the beginning of Roman domination of Judea leading up to the kingship of Herod (67-37 BCE). In this period renowned Roman figures such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, Gaius Cassius (a conspirator against Caesar), and Mark Anthony, led the Roman Republic on the eve of its transformation into an Empire, each having his own dealings with—and holding sway over—Judea at different times. This volume explores the impact of the Roman conquest on the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, enhances the understanding of later Judean-Roman relations and the roots of the Great Revolt, and examines how this early period of Roman domination had on impact on later developments in Judean society and religion.

Features:

• Part one dedicating to reconstructing Judean history from the death of Alexander to the reign of King Herod
• Part two examining the effects of Roman domination on Judean society
• Maps, illustrations, and appendices

The period of Assyrian domination over Israel and Judah (ca. 750–650 B.C.E.) can be reconstructed with reasonable accuracy. For example, both biblical and extrabiblical records indicate that the northern kingdom (Israel) came to an end in 722 with the fall of Samaria, while several decades later Jerusalem, capital of the southern kingdom (Judah), narrowly escaped being taken by Sennacherib. The first half of the seventh century was dominated by Manasseh in Judah, who not only served his overlords the Assyrians but also practiced a bloody form of despotism. With regard to biblical literature, the eighth century was the period of Israel’s first great literary prophets: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. Other important texts, such as the Book of the Covenant, the early stories about the kings, the early forms of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis, and collections of proverbs, were either created or underwent profound editorial shaping during this time. This volume surveys the history of this formative period and presents a critical study of the biblical literature that originated within this historical context, as well as theological conclusions that readers may draw from these texts.

An incomparable interdisciplinary study of the history of Judah

Experts from a variety of disciplines examine the history of Judah during the seventh century BCE, the last century of the kingdom’s existence. This important era is well defined historically and archaeologically beginning with the destruction layers left behind by Sennacherib’s Assyrian campaign (701 BCE) and ending with levels of destruction resulting from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian campaign (588-586 BCE). Eleven essays develop the current ongoing discussion about Judah during this period and extend the debate to include further important insights in the fields of archaeology, history, cult, and the interpretation of Old Testament texts.

Features

• A new chronological frame for the Iron Age IIB-IIC
• Close examinations of archaeology, texts, and traditions related to the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah
• An evaluation of the religious, cultic, and political landscape
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“The Making of the Bible is invaluable for anyone interested in Scripture and in the intertwined histories of Judaism and Christianity.”
—John Barton, author of A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths

The authoritative new account of the Bible’s origins, illuminating the 1,600-year tradition that shaped the Christian and Jewish holy books as millions know them today.

The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose.

Recent scholarship has overturned popular assumptions about Israel’s past, suggesting, for instance, that the five books of the Torah were written not by Moses but during the reign of Josiah centuries later. The sources of the Gospels are also under scrutiny. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter reveal the long, transformative journeys of these and other texts en route to inclusion in the holy books. The New Testament, the authors show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. Rather the two evolved in parallel, in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. Indeed, Schmid and Schröter argue that Judaism might not have survived had it not been reshaped in competition with early Christianity.

A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the world’s best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.

“A landmark…If you have time to read only one book on the Bible this year, make sure that it is this one.”—Katherine J. Dell, Church Times

“Excellent…With a sure touch, the authors lead the reader through the geopolitical context of the Hebrew Bible and the setting and background of the New Testament, finding something to say about practically every book’s origins and development.”—John Barton, The Tablet

“A remarkable deep dive into foundational books whose origins are often taken for granted.”—Publishers Weekly

In this revelatory account of the making of the foundational text of western civilization, a world-renowned scholar of the Hebrew scriptures joins a noted authority on the New Testament to reconstruct Jewish and Christian scriptural histories and reveal the underappreciated contest between them.

The New Testament, they show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. The two evolved in parallel, often in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet of the long, transformative journeys of these texts on route to inclusion in the holy books, revealing their buried lessons and secrets.

A new reading strategy for the Thanksgiving Hymns

Hasselbalch asserts that current theories about the social background of Thanksgiving Hymns are unable to explain its heterogeneous character. Instead the author suggests a reading strategy that leaves presumptions about the underlying social contexts aside to instead consider the collection’s hybridity as a clue to understanding the collection as a whole.

Features:

• Systemic Functional Linguistics applied to four Hodayot
• Analysis that highlights the role of a mediator in the agency of God
• An approach that highlights the unity of the collection

All the chronicle literature of ancient Mesopotamia from the early second millennium to Seleucid times is collected in this English translation of Glassner’s Chroniques Mésopotamiennes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993). In addition to revising and supplementing the French edition, this volume provides transcriptions of the cuneiform and English translations of every example of Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian chronographic literature as well as seminal essays on the genre and on Mesopotamian historiography in general.

A focused, interdisciplinary examination of a tumultuous, history-making era

The Middle Maccabees lays out the charged, complicated beginnings of the independent Jewish state founded in the second century BCE. Contributors offer focused analyses of the archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and textual evidence, framed within a wider world of conflicts between the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Seleucids of Syria, and the Romans. The result is a holistic view of the Hasmonean rise to power that acknowledges broader political developments, evolving social responses, and the particularities of local history. Contributors include Uzi ‘Ad, Donald T. Ariel, Andrea M. Berlin, Efrat Bocher, Altay Coşkun, Benedikt Eckhardt, Gerald Finkielsztejn, Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Yuval Gadot, Erich Gruen, Sylvie Honigman, Jutta Jokiranta, Paul J. Kosmin, Uzi Leibner, Catharine Lorber, Duncan E. MacRae, Dvir Raviv, Helena Roth, Débora Sandhaus, Yiftah Shalev, Nitsan Shalom, Danny Syon, Yehiel Zelinger, and Ayala Zilberstein.

Features

• Up-to-date, generously illustrated essays analyzing the relevant archaeological remains
• A revised understanding of how local and imperial histories overlapped and intersected
• New analysis of the book of 1 Maccabees as a tool of Hasmonean strategic interest

A ground-breaking collection exploring the rich array of emotions in biblical literature

An international team of Hebrew Bible and New Testament scholars offers incisive case studies of passions displayed by divine and human figures in the biblical texts ranging from joy, happiness, and trust to grief, hate, and disgust. Essays address how biblical characters' feelings affect their relationship with God, one another, and the world and how these feelings mix together, for good or ill, for flourishing or vexation. Deeply engaged with both ancient and modern contexts, including the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of emotion in the humanities and sciences, these essays break down the artificial divide between reason and passion, cognition and emotion, thought and feeling in biblical study.

Features

• Case studies drawn from multiple genres across the Bible: narrative, prophets, poetry, wisdom, Gospels, and letters
• Helpful select bibliographies of interdisciplinary resources at the end of each essay
• Critical balance between theory and practice and between method and close textual analysis
• Distinctive ancient Hebrew and Greek uses of emotional terms and concepts compared with each other and with evolving understandings in Western culture

Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and re

Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and religion, Jews and Judaism, and earliest Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean

Ross Kraemer is Professor Emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. This volume of essays, conceived and produced by students, colleagues, and friends bears witness to the breadth of her own scholarly interests. Contributors include Theodore A. Bergren, Debra Bucher, Lynn Cohick, Mary Rose D’Angelo, Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, Robert Doran, Jennifer Eyl, Paula Fredriksen, John G. Gager, Maxine Grossman, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Jordan Kraemer, Robert A. Kraft, Shira L. Lander, Amy-Jill Levine, Susan Marks, E. Ann Matter, Renee Levine Melammed, Susan Niditch, Elaine Pagels, Adele Reinhartz, Jordan Rosenblum, Sarah Schwarz, Karen B. Stern, Stanley K. Stowers, Daniel Ullucci, Arthur Urbano, Heidi Wendt, and Benjamin G. Wright.

Features:

• Articles that examine both ancient and modern texts in cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective
• Twenty-eight original essays on ancient Judaism, Christianity, and women in the Greco-Roman world