Böcker i The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies-serien

Previous attempts to critique Brevard Childs's canonical approach have remained largely theoretical in nature. Reviewing the hermeneutics and the praxis of the approach, this book turns to the Sodom narrative (Genesis 18-19) as a test of a practical exegesis according to Childs' principles.

Shame has become a topic of major interest in the literature of psychology and anthropology. This book explores the phenomenon of shame in the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the major prophets as shame vocabulary is most prominent there.

This collection of essays is written by biblical scholars from around the world who are friends and students of the distinguished American biblical scholar Gene M. Tucker, who was President of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1996. His scholarly interest has been wide-ranging, from a passion to understand the biblical prophets to enduring probing of the theology that gave rise to the Hebrew Bible, and this book embodies these wide-ranging interests. Each essay probes the issues of prophetic studies and the theology of the Hebrew Bible. The essays include an examination of the role of W.F. Albright as a prophetic figure in the history of biblical studies and an examination of the superscriptions in the book of the Twelve.

This volume represents an international collaboration focusing on the books of Chronicles as literature, looking at their literary sources, their techniques of composition, their perspectives, how they were read in antiquity, and the value of contemporary reading strategies for bringing the text to life in the present day. It opens with five ''Overview'' articles by Kai Peltonen, Steven McKenzie, Graeme Auld, Rodney Duke and John Wright; William Schniedewind, Gary Knoppers, Ehud Ben Zvi, Armin Siedlecki and Howard Wallace deal with ''Themes''; and James Trotter, Christine Mitchell, Kirsten Nielsen, Noel Bailey, Roland Boer and Magnar Karveit address specific texts. The collection both reflects and stimulates recent and contemporary fascination with the Chronicler in biblical scholarship.

The book of Joshua is well known for its tales of slaughter and destruction. This reading shows that ambiguity created by means of juxtaposing contrasting ideas is a feature of the compositional arrangement in Joshua. While there may be a dream land emptied of foreigners awaiting Israelite occupation, there is also a grudging acceptance of co-existence in the land with a certain class of foreigner represented by the exceptional outsiders such as Rahab and Gibeonites. Mitchell''s conclusion is that such ways of dealing with reality were a feature of the disillusionment and hope of post-exilic Judaism.

The study attempts to examine the role of tradition in the teaching of Isaiah with a view to discerning the basis of the ethics presupposed by the prophet. The view that Isaiah''s ethical pronouncements were dependent upon the legal, covenantal and wisdom traditions of Israel is discussed, and the possibility of a direct dependence on the oracles of his contemporary, Amos, is examined. Davies shows that the whole question of the influence of tradition on the thought of Isaiah is fraught with problems.

Out of Eden contributes towards conversations about interpreting scripture. Rather than adopting traditional views (creation and ''fall'' or growth), this study integrates literary-critical theories and feminist scholarship to read the Genesis narrative in relation to concerns of contemporary communities. The question of how we might engage the interpretative process and the rhetorical power of texts as we live our lives ''out of Eden'' is addressed. Stratton argues that the interpretration of Genesis 2-3 matters, that there are consequences for the actions we take on the basis of our interpretations, and that we should enter the interpretative process only with care.

Exalted for centuries as a hero and author of the Bible, Moses is inseparable from biblical tradition itself. Moses is also an inherently ambiguous figure and a perennial focus of controversy, from ancient disputes of priestly rivalry to modern issues of class, gender and race.

In several places in Isaiah 56-66 a group of Israelites is accused of engaging in various forms of aberrant religious practice: the sacrifice of children, the eating of swine, participation in fertility rites, the practice of necromancy, offering sacrifice to deities known as Gad and Meni, and a host of other things. Who are these people? Certainly not the Zadokite priesthood, as Paul Hanson claimed in his The Dawn of Apocalyptic. More likely argues Schramm, they are simply traditional syncretistic Yahwists.

The three Nathan narratives in 2 Samuel and 1 Kings, are given detailed consideration in this fascinating study. A persuasive attempt is made to reconstruct the original form of the traditions and to trace the modifications made to them before they were finally accepted into the Succession Narrative. The original Nathan, a court official and chief spokesman for the Jebusite group, sought a working compromise between the original Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem and its new Israelite settlers. After accepting service under King David, Nathan tried to secure the best he could for the Jebusites in this new situation. When this tradition was expanded, modified and theologized, the consistent Nathan of early tradition became a complex character, and almost appears as a dual personality: the diplomatic court prophet of the original narrative became an outspoken prophet of Yahweh in the ''theological'' accounts of his activities.

This collection of essays arises from the lively discussions in the Formation of the Book of Isaiah Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature. The essays exhibit the diversity that has always been present in the Seminar. Each contributor has a unique perspective and thus extends the frontiers of research on the book of Isaiah. Yet, taken as a whole, the essays fall into two broad groups, being either ''objective'' in their approach to the text-embracing historical-critical method or a synchronic approach in which text rather than reader is the focus-or ''postmodern'', in the sense that meaning is in no small degree located in what the reader does. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Mark Biddle, David Carr, Edgar Conrad, Chris Franke, Kathryn Pfisterer Darr, Rolf Rendtorff, Gerald Sheppard, Benjamin Sommer, Gary Stansell, and Roy Wells.

This Festschrift honours one of today''s leading scholars of early Judaism and Christian origins. Twenty-two essays by internationally renowned scholars reflect the pioneering contribution of Geza Vermes in the fields of Dead Sea Scrolls, Targums and Rabbinics and New Testament.

Berlinerblau argues that in order to procure reliable historical information about ''popular religious groups'' (such as women, non-privileged economic strata, heterodox elements) we must search for what he calls ''implicit evidence'': mundane details regarding the vow which the biblical writers tacitly assumed and hence unknowingly bequeathed to posterity. By piecing together these strands of implicit evidence the author attempts to reconstruct the basic norms of the Israelite votive system. In so doing, he explains why certain ''popular religious groups'' were attracted to this particular practice.

This collection of inter-related essays argues that the way in which Chronicles incorporates and develops material from Samuel-Kings offers an analogy for the way in which the final edition of Exodus was produced. Embedded within the text of Exodus there is an earlier Deuteronomistic version recoverable from the reminiscences of the exodus in Deuteronomy. This, it is suggested, is the most objective method available for recreating the literary history of Exodus and must constitute the first stage in any analysis of Exodus. Already, it produces some surprisingly radical results.

W.M.L. de Wette (1780-1849) was not only one of the founders of modern Old Testament criticism. His loss and recovery of Christian faith, his dismissal from his post in Berlin in 1819 on political grounds and his long subsequent exile in Basel left their mark upon his work in New Testament ethics, dogmatics and aesthetics. This first modern critical study of de Wette''s life and work evaluates his achievements in the context of his own times and asesses their importance on modern biblical scholars.

This book explores the social roles of women as portrayed within the book of Proverbs, as well as the character archetypes and patriarchal ideologies which undergird the sages'' portrayal. Using feminist folklore methodologies and performance studies, the author explores an alternative paradigm for understanding women''s relationship to wisdom traditions in the ancient near east, using parallel texts, later midrash and extrabiblical re-presentations of biblical women associated with wisdom. The author demonstrates that women were culturally authorized ''performers'' of the family based wisdom traditions of teaching, economic problem solving, and care giving, and that these roles provided them with a platform to use their acknowledged wisdom in public roles.

Martin Noth argued that in the books of Joshua-Kings could be seen the work of a single, purposeful author or historian-a hypothesis which, although close to becoming one of those rare ''assured results of critical scholarship'', has recently encountered criticism. Nelson observes that Noth''s historian has a ''disturbing tendency to fall apart in the hands of those who work with him''. In this comprehensive study of the question, he attempts to put on a solid critical foundation the increasingly popular theory that the Deutoronomistic History is a product of a two-stage literary process.

John Eaton, well known for his Psalms commentary, here offers a new model of commentary-writing. The psalms treated are those exalting God''s Torah (Psalms 1, 19, 119) and those proclaiming his kingship (93, 97, 99). A detailed examination is made of the treatment of these psalms by selected exegetes from Delitzsch to the present. General conclusions are then drawn for such questions as dating, text, unity, meaning, piety, theology, and relation to prophecy. Both groups of psalms are found to contain great riches of religious insight and experience, which exegetes have rarely come within range of appreciating. Several important interpreters are only superficially known outside their own language group; the present study seeks to remedy this.

Joshua 24 has long been recognized as a crucial chapter for source-critical studies and for the reconstruction of Israel''s early history. The present volume summarizes and evaluates previous (often contradictory) efforts to explain Joshua 24 on the basis of literary criticism, the role of covenant concepts in Israel''s history writing, form-critical comparisons with treaty texts, archaeological approaches to the Shechem traditions, structural analysis and textual criticism. ''...[a] comprehensive and formidably documented volume ...'' Christopher T. Begg, Old Testament Abstracts.

In this rich and elegantly presented interdisciplinary study, the theme is the impact of iron technology on the material and cultural life of ancient Israel. The author argues that iron itself and the processes of ironworking functioned as dominant cultural symbols, conveying meanings about significant transformations that established Israel''s social and religious identity. This wide-ranging monograph is particularly valuable for its integration of material about ironworking in traditional African societies, anthropological theories on symbolism and archaeological information on the development of iron technology in the Near East.

Daniel 2-7 are noteworthy chapters in the Bible, partly because they are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew and partly because the early Greek translation of those chapters, known to us as the Septuagint, is quite different from the Aramaic text that we have. This book highlights and analyzes the differences by exploring the effectiveness of each version as a piece of narrative. A new appreciation of the craft of the Aramaic narrative is one result. Another is an enhanced understanding of how biblical narrative handles symbolism. Through this study the reader also gains insight into differing circles of wisdom in Persian times, each giving rise to a textual tradition still accessible to us.

Into the Hands of the Living God is Lyle Eslinger''s second study of Deuteronomistic literature. This book is devoted to studies of key texts (Joshua 1-9; Judges 1-2; 1 Samuel 12; 1 Kings 8; 2 Kings 17) or concepts (the success/failure of the conquest; the exile and theodicy) in these narratives. Eslinger''s readings are unorthodox and challenging, both for readers from the communities of faith and for critical scholarship. The Deuteronomistic narratives are here shown to be far from being a vindication of the ways of God at Israel''s expense. Rather, in these narratives God, no less than Israel''s leaders, has his hands soiled in the machinations that end in Babylon. What the Deuteronomistic history offers is, rather, dispassionate analysis of the problems, some unavoidable, that predetermined the failure of the covenant relationship. The collection of carefully worked out close readings of the biblical text in this volume provides a new critical vantage point from which one can reassess conventional historical-critical readings of these colourful books.

A reader-oriented approach provides a substantially new angle of vision on Psalm 18 and Psalms study in general. Reader-based interpretation is compared to conventional methodologies by means of four separate analyses of Psalm 18: a textual study, a form-critical explication, a rhetorical study, and an experimental reader-oriented study involving the following strategies. Initially, the components of the text are considered as networks of signals for the reader. Secondly, the text''s speech acts are isolated and typified. Thirdly, the ancient and contemporary contexts for the reading of the psalm are examined. The reader-oriented study culminates in two perspectives upon Psalm 18. The psalm may be read as a ritual speech act performed by the community of ancient worshippers, or as a lyric poem that each contemporary reader experiences by identification with the speaker. The concluding chapter reviews each of the methodologies, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, as well as interrelationships among methods.

This tribute to Albert Pietersma of the University of Toronto is offered by a highly distinguished international panel of scholars, including John W. Wevers, Takamitsu Muraoka, Anneli Aejmelaeus, Emanuel Tov, Johan Lust, Robert A. Kraft, Johann Cook, Arie van der Kooij, Moises Silva and Claude E. Cox. The focus of the volume is on the Old Greek Psalter and its significance for biblical research and related disciplines, where it marks a definitive statement of research questions and issues in this increasingly important area of biblical textual studies.

Nahum Sarna''s distinctive and original scholarship has taken in a wide range of subject areas from work on Genesis and the Psalms to his Jewish Bible commentary and the English translation of the Ketuvim. At first Assistant Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the 1950s, he was Dora Golding Professor of Bible at Brandeis University from 1965 to his retirement. This collection of 22 essays reflects Professor Sarna''s breadth of interests, with contributions from the late Gershon Cohen on the Hebrew Crusade Chronicle and the Ashkenazic tradition; Judah Goldin on Reuben; Moshe Greenberg and Jonas Greenfield on the work of the Jewish Publication Society''s Ketuvim translators; and Shemaryahu Talmon on fragments of a Psalms scroll from Masada.