Books in the Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible series

In this volume, Witte presents three case studies on biblical theology and demonstrates how the ways of speaking and thinking about God in the Old Testament constitute the religio-historical and theological basis for the discourse on God's acts in the person of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The theology of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament are inseparably connected, even if discrete theologies of the Old and New Testaments can be identified. The first study traces the development of the understanding of God in the Old Testament through the Hebrew divine title, El Shaddai, and one of its most important Greek equivalents, pantokrator. The use of the title El Shaddai, its ancient Near Eastern religious background, its transfer into Hellenistic Judaism, and its theological significance reveal fundamental aspects of a biblical theology that is equally indebted to comparative philology and to the history of religion. The second essay discusses justice as a central theme of the theology of the Old Testament and as an essential category in defining the relationship between God and humanity through a selection of different texts from the canon of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. The third study offers a short literary-historical biography of Yahweh as the creator of the world, the master of history, the guarantor of justice, and the donor of wisdom. It takes into account the approach of the first essay, which presents theology as a sort of religio-historical onomastics, and reflects, on the basis of the second essay, the traditio-historical presentation of images of God and his anointed in the Old Testament as a background for theology and christology in the New Testament.

The Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of theological inquiries and debates in Judaism and Christianity. But is there something like theology already in the Hebrew Bible itself? Is it possible to describe the literary growth of the Hebrew Bible by means of an ongoing theological debate? Answers to these questions depend on how one conceives of the category “theology.” In this book, Konrad Schmid reconstructs the development of this category, then describes and discusses biblical texts in the Hebrew Bible that are relevant to the question Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible?The book consists of two main sections. In the first, Schmid traces the notion of “theology” from its earliest use, in Greek philosophy, through the medieval period and to today. He pays close attention to “biblical theology,” particularly the different understandings of this idea as something emanating from the Hebrew Bible itself versus something that readers impose onto the biblical text. He also tracks the influence of the discipline of comparative religion on biblical theology, especially with regard to the growing division between biblical and systematic theology. In the second part, Schmid focuses specifically on “implicit” biblical theology, that is, theological reflection apparent within the Hebrew Bible itself. He provides several examples, such as the theologization of the law that resulted from inner-biblical exegesis and Jeremiah’s universal theology of history.Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible? will serve as an important reference to all those interested in the question posed by the title. Schmid provides a nuanced answer to this question that both takes into account the convoluted history of biblical theology and lays out new ways of approaching the subject.

Presents a reconstruction of the history of Ancient Israel in biblical times, taking into account biblical and extra-biblical texts as well as archaeological material.

The historical-critical method that characterizes academic biblical studies too often remains separate from approaches that stress the history of interpretation, which are employed more frequently in the area of Second Temple or Dead Sea Scrolls research. Inaugurating the new series, Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible, A More Perfect Torah explores a series of test-cases in which the two methods mutually reinforce one another.The volume brings together two studies that investigate the relationship between the composition history of the biblical text and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature. The Temple Scroll is more than the blueprint for a more perfect Temple. It also represents the attempt to create a more perfect Torah. Its techniques for doing so are the focus of part 1, entitled “Revelation Regained: The Hermeneutics of KI and ‘IM in the Temple Scroll.” This study illuminates the techniques for marking conditional clauses in ancient Near Eastern literature, biblical law, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also draws new attention to the relationship between the Temple Scroll’s use of conditionals and the manuscript’s organized spacing system for marking paragraphs.Part 2 is entitled “Reception History as a Window into Composition History: Deuteronomy’s Law of Vows as Reflected in Qoheleth and the Temple Scroll.” The law of vows in Deut 23:22–24 is difficult in both its syntax and its legal content. The difficulty is resolved once it is recognized that the law contains an interpolation that disrupts the original coherence of the law. The reception history of the law of vows in Numbers 20, Qoh 5:4–7, 11QTemple 53:11–14, and Sipre Deuteronomy confirms the hypothesis of an interpolation. Seen in this new light, the history of interpretation offers a window into the composition history of the biblical text.

Explores the figurative and symbolic function of animal imagery in the Bible, with particular attention to the structural and stylistic features of that imagery in the Book of Psalms.