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242 books match the query 'Old Testament' and 13 start with s

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Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity

Henrietta L. Wiley

SBL Press, 2016

Critical and creative studies that offer fresh perspectives on ancient ideas and practices

The contributions to this volume deal in various ways with the cult at the Jerusalem Temple that epitomized the religious, cultural, and socio-political identity of Judaism for many centuries. Some essays examine ancient constitutive practices and concepts, such as purification rituals, sacrifices, atonement, or sacred authorities at the temple, with the goal of interpreting their meanings for modern readers. Other essays explore alternatives to ancient cultic meaning and practice. Essays critique established traditions, attempt to renegotiate them, or use metaphor and spiritualization to expand the potential of these phenomena to serve as terminological and ideological resources. Thus they examine and affirm the continuing relevance of ancient Jewish cultic notions long after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

An international group of scholars representing different fields and diverse religious backgrounds
A thorough examination of traditions as through the lens of contemporaneous interpretive traditions such as Jewish prophecy, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Christian literature
Examination of topics such as purification, sacrifice, and atonement, and the depiction and development of sacred authority throughout the Bible

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Sarah the Priestess

The First Matriarch of Genesis

Savina Teubal

Ohio University Press, 1984

The only source in which Sarah is mentioned is the Book of Genesis, which contains very few highly selective and rather enigmatic stories dealing with her. On the surface, these stories tell us very little about Sarah, and what they do tell is complicated and confused by the probability that it represents residue surviving from two different written sources based on two independent oral traditions. Nevertheless, the role which Sarah plays, in the Genesis narratives, apears to be a highly energetic one, a role so active, in fact, that it repeatedly overshadows that of her husband.

In a patriarchal environment such as the Canaan of Genesis, the situation is discordant and problematic. Dr. Teubal suggests that the difficulty is eliminated, however, if we understand that Sarah and the other matriarchs mentioned in the narratives acted within the established, traditional Mesopotamian role of priestess, of a class of women who retained a highly privileged position vis-a-vis their husbands.

Dr. Teubal shows that the “Sarah tradition” represents a nonpatriarchal system struggling for survival in isolation, in the patriarchal environment of what was for Sarah a foreign society. She further indicates that the insistence of Sarah and Rebekah that their sons and heirs marry wives from the old homeland had to do not so much with preference for endogamy and cousin marriage as with their intention of ensuring the continuation of their old kahina-tradition against the overwhelming odds represented by patriarchal Canaan.

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Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel

Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives

Joachim J. Krause

SBL Press, 2020

Ponder questions of the united monarchy under Saul and David in light of current historical and archaeological evidence

Reconstructing the emergence of the Israelite monarchy involves interpreting historical research, approaching questions of ancient state formation, synthesizing archaeological research from sites in the southern Levant, and reexamining the biblical traditions of the early monarchy embedded in the books of Samuel and Kings. Integrating these approaches allows for a nuanced and differentiated picture of one of the most crucial periods in the history of ancient Israel. Rather than attempting to harmonize archaeological data and biblical texts or to supplement the respective approach by integrating only a portion of data stemming from the other, both perspectives come into their own in this volume presenting the results of an interdisciplinary Tübingen–Tel Aviv Research Colloquium.

Features:

Essays on Israel's monarchy by experts in biblical archaeology and biblical studies
Methods for integrating archaeology and biblical traditions in reconstructing ancient Israel's history
New research on the sociopolitical process of state formation in Israel and Judah

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Scribal Memory and Word Selection

Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible

Raymond F. Person Jr.

SBL Press, 2023

What were ancient scribes doing when they copied a manuscript of a literary work? This question is especially problematic when we realize that ancient scribes preserved different versions of the same literary texts. In Scribal Memory and Word Selection: Text Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Raymond F. Person Jr. draws from studies of how words are selected in everyday conversation to illustrate that the same word-selection mechanisms were at work in scribal memory. Using examples from manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, Person provides new ways of understanding the cognitive-linguistic mechanisms at work during the composition/transmission of texts. Person reveals that, while our modern perspective may consider textual variants to be different literary texts, from the perspective of the ancient scribes and their audiences, these variants could still be understood as the same literary text.

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Second Wave Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible

Marianne Grohmann

SBL Press, 2019

An innovative collection of inner-biblical, intertextual, and intercontextual dialogues

Essays from a diverse group of scholars offer new approaches to biblical intertextuality that examine the relationship between the Hebrew Bible, art, literature, sociology, and postcolonialism. Eight essays in part 1 cover inner-biblical intertextuality, including studies of Genesis, Judges, and Qoheleth, among others. The eight postbiblical intertextuality essays in part 2 explore Bakhtinian and dialogical approaches, intertextuality in the Dead Sea Scrolls, canonical critisicm, reception history, and #BlackLivesMatter. These essays on various genres and portions of the Hebrew Bible showcase how, why, and what intertextuality has been and presents possible potential directions for future research and application.

Features:

Diverse methods and cases of intertextuality

Rich examples of hermeneutical theory and interpretive applications

Readings of biblical texts as mutual dialogues, among the authors, traditions, themes, contexts, and lived worlds

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Sedulius, The Paschal Song and Hymns
Carl P. Springer
SBL Press, 2013
This is the first complete English translation of the poetic works of Sedulius, a Christian Latin poet of late antiquity whose biblical epic and hymns were enormously popular during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The introduction places the poet and his works into his historical and literary contexts, followed by the Latin text of Sedulius’s poetic works with English translation on facing pages. Notes on linguistic and historical matters are designed to help the reader with little or no Latin and only some familiarity with Sedulius’s classical and biblical sources. Appendices supply texts and translations of incidental related materials, including Sedulius’s dedicatory letters; biographical notices, subscriptions, and laudatory poems associated with Sedulius’s works in the manuscript tradition; and representative excerpts from Sedulius’s own prose paraphrase of the Paschale Carmen. The volume includes a bibliography and index.
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Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom
The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors
Nicole L. Tilford
SBL Press, 2017
Examine new insights into the conceptual worldview of biblical wisdom communities

The Bible is full of metaphors. On the surface, these metaphors seem like simple literary flourishes that have been added to the text for artistic effect. This book, however, argues that biblical metaphors reflect more basic, prelinguistic cognitive structures. These conceptual metaphors developed out of common concrete experiences and only gradually developed into the complex metaphors that one finds within biblical texts. This book explores how common sensory activities like seeing, hearing, touching, eating, breathing, and walking developed into the abstract metaphors for wisdom that one finds in Proverbs, Job, and Qohelet. Because it traces the cognitive development of a set of related metaphors across several congruent texts, it provides a model by which scholars can trace the cognitive development of biblical metaphors more generally in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish and Christian texts.

Features:

A synthesis of conceptual metaphor theory that provides a workable theory for examining biblical texts

An analytical framework for studying sensory experience and sensory metaphors in biblical texts

Diagrams

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Seven Days, Many Voices
Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation
Rabbi Benjamin David
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017
Few stories are as compelling as the Creation story in the Book of Genesis. Our readings of Creation are incredibly diverse. This collection gives us a lens into a wide range of creative and inspiring thinking about Creation. Important thinkers such as Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Dr. Alyssa Gray, Rabbi Aaron Panken, PhD, Rabbi Mira Wasserman, PhD, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, and many others, examine the Creation story through fields of midrash, biblical criticism, literature, theology, climate justice, human rights, history, and science. This diverse collection of some of today's finest thinkers will challenge assumptions and spark new ideas. Great for individual study or community learning!
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Social Theory and the Study of Israelite Religion
Essays in Retrospect and Prospect
Saul M. Olyan
SBL Press, 2012
This volume assesses past, theoretically engaged work on Israelite religion and presents new approaches to particular problems and larger interpretive and methodological questions. It gathers previously unpublished research by senior and mid-career scholars well known for their contributions in the area of social theory and the study of Israelite religion and by junior scholars whose writing is just beginning to have a serious impact on the field. The volume begins with a critical introduction by the editor. Topics of interest to the contributors include gender, violence, social change, the festivals, the dynamics of shame and honor, and the relationship of text to ritual. The contributors engage theory from social and cultural anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ritual studies. Theoretical models are evaluated in light of the primary data, and some authors modify or adapt theory to increase its utility for biblical studies. The contributors are Susan Ackerman, Stephen L. Cook, Ronald Hendel, T. M. Lemos, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Carol Meyers, Saul M. Olyan, Rüdiger Schmitt, Robert R. Wilson, and David P. Wright.
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Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible
Ronald Hendel
SBL Press, 2016

Understand the purpose and background of the new The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition project

Our understanding of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible has been transformed in the wake of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hendel explores and refines this new knowledge and formulates a rationale for a new edition of the Hebrew Bible. The chapters situate The Hebrew Bible; A Critical Edition project in a broad historical context, from the beginnings of textual criticism in late antiquity and the Renaissance to the controversies in contemporary theory and practice. This book combines close analysis with broad synthesis, yielding new perspectives on the text of the Hebrew Bible.
Features

Theory and practice of textual criticism

Textual history of the Hebrew Bible

History of text-critical scholarship
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Strength to Strength
Essays in Honor of Shaye J. D. Cohen
Michael L. Satlow
SBL Press, 2018
Essays that engage the scholarship of Shaye J. D. Cohen

The essays in Strength to Strength honor Shaye J. D. Cohen across a range of ancient to modern topics. The essays seek to create an ongoing conversation on issues of identity, cultural interchange, and Jewish literature and history in antiquity, all areas of particular interest for Cohen. Contributors include: Moshe J. Bernstein, Daniel Boyarin, Jonathan Cohen, Yaakov Elman, Ari Finkelstein, Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Steven D. Fraade, Isaiah M. Gafni, Gregg E. Gardner, William K. Gilders, Martin Goodman, Leonard Gordon, Edward L. Greenstein, Erich S. Gruen, Judith Hauptman, Jan Willem van Henten, Catherine Hezser, Tal Ilan, Richard Kalmin, Yishai Kiel, Ross S. Kraemer, Hayim Lapin, Lee I. Levine, Timothy H. Lim, Duncan E. MacRae, Ivan Marcus, Mahnaz Moazami, Rachel Neis, Saul M. Olyan, Jonathan J. Price, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Michael L. Satlow, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Daniel R. Schwartz, Joshua Schwartz, Karen Stern, Stanley Stowers, and Burton L. Visotzky.

Features:

A full bibliography of Cohen’s published works

An essay on the contributions of Cohen
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Supplementation and the Study of the Hebrew Bible
Saul M. Olyan
SBL Press, 2018
Explore the role supplementation played in the development of the Hebrew Bible

This new volume includes ten original essays that demonstrate clearly how common, varied, and significant the phenomenon of supplementation in the Hebrew Bible is. Contributors examine instances of supplementation ranging from minor additions to aid pronunciation, to fill in abbreviations, or to clarify ambiguous syntax to far more elaborate changes, such as interpolations within a work of prose, in a prophetic text, or in a legal text. Scholars also examine supplementation by the addition of an introduction, a conclusion, or an introductory and concluding framework to a particular lyrical, legal, prophetic, or narrative text.

Features:

A contribution to the further development of a panbiblical compositional perspective

Examples from Psalms, the pentateuchal narratives, the Deuteronomistic History, the Latter Prophets, and legal texts
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Surviving Lamentations
Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book
Tod Linafelt
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Most contemporary interpretations of the biblical book of Lamentations focus on the figure of the "suffering man" as a role model for submission in the face of God's punishment for sin. Yet such a model offers small consolation to survivors of the Holocaust or other mass atrocities and also ignores chapters 1 and 2 of Lamentations, in which the personification of Zion laments her sufferings and demands a response on behalf of her dying children.

In Surviving Lamentations, Tod Linafelt offers an alternative reading of Lamentations in light of the "literature of survival" (works written by survivors of catastrophe) as well as literary and philosophical reflections on "the survival of literature." He refocuses attention on the figure of Zion as a manifestation of a basic need to give voice to suffering, and traces the afterlife of Lamentations in Jewish literature, in which text after text attempts to provide the response to Zion's lament that is lacking in Lamentations itself.

Seen through Linafelt's eyes, Lamentations emerges as uncannily relevant to contemporary discourse on survival.
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