Books in the Studies in Biblical Literature series

This book investigates the Matthean use of bread and the breaking of bread in light of cognitive conceptual metaphor, which are not only intertwined within Matthew's narrative plots but also function to represent Matthew's communal identity and ideological vision.

For hundreds of years, scholars have debated the meaning of Jesus' central theological term, the 'kingdom of God'. Most of the argument has focused on its assumed eschatological connotations and Jesus' adherence or deviation from these ideas. Within the North American context, the debate is dominated by the work of Norman Perrin, whose classification of the kingdom of God as a myth-evoking symbol remains one of the fundamental assumptions of scholarship. According to Perrin, Jesus' understanding of the kingdom of God is founded upon the myth of God acting as king on behalf of Israel as described in the Hebrew Bible. Moving Beyond Symbol and Myth challenges Perrin's classification, and advocates the reclassification of the kingdom of God as metaphor. Drawing upon insights from the cognitive theory of metaphor, this study examines all the occurrences of the 'God is king' metaphor within the literary context of the Hebrew Bible. Based on this review, it is proposed that the 'God is king' metaphor functions as a true metaphor with a range of expressions and meanings. It is employed within a variety of texts and conveys images of God as the covenantal sovereign of Israel; God as the eternal suzerain of the world, and God as the king of the disadvantaged. The interaction of the semantic fields of divinity and human kingship evoke a range of metaphoric expressions that are utilized throughout the history of the Hebrew Bible in response to differing socio-historical contexts and within a range of rhetorical strategies. It is this diversity inherent in the 'God is king' metaphor that is the foundation for the diversified expressions of the kingdom of God associated with the historical Jesus and early Christianity.

Canaan to Corinth

Tracks the mystery of narratives in the Hebrew Bible and their allusions to Sinai laws by highlighting intertextual allusions created by verbal resonances. This title suggests that most of Genesis was composed during or after the Babylonian exile, after the codification of most Sinai laws, which Genesis protagonists consistently violate.

Axis of Glory

How do philosophical theories influence the reading of the Bible? How did the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance alter the views of God, miracles, prophecy, creation, and evil? This book explores these questions in detail through the work of Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), a great Jewish statesman, philosopher, and biblical interpreter who embodied the fundamental paradigm shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This book also serves as an invaluable reference guide to such medieval Jewish philosophers as Saadia, Maimonides, and Gersonides, as well as some of their Muslim counterparts such as Averroes, Avicenna, and al-Ghazali, in most of the fundamental issues of philosophy and biblical interpretation.

Modern Christian theology has been problematic with schism between Bible and theology, and between biblical studies and systematic theology. This title analyzes Brevard Springs Childs' concept of theological exegesis in biblical canons. He demonstrates forcefully the inadequacies of the historical-critical method in practicing biblical theology.

This book is an analysis of inner-biblical exegesis which ordinarily involves examination of the intertextual relationship between two texts within the biblical corpus. The direction of dependence between texts of this kind is not as important in the present study as the direction in which these texts were meant to be read by those who gave them their final shape.