Books in the The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies series

A comprehensive collection of intertextual readings of the book of Job in connection with texts across the Hebrew Bible and throughout history.

This volume makes a positive intervention into maximalist/minimalist debates about Israelite historiography by pointing to the events that happened during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. During this historical epoch, traditions about Israel and Judah''s founding became fixed as markers of ethnic identity, and much of the canonical Hebrew Bible came into its present form. Concentrating on these events, a clearer historical picture emerges. The entire volume is set within the context of Doug Knight''s contributions, which have encouraged a rigorous social-scientific and tradition-historical approach to the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel in general. Many scholars have pursued how the social scientific method, first used to analyze early monarchic Israel, can shape the understanding of these later historical periods. Knight''s methods, teachings, writings, and scholarly interventions have pointed the contributors of this volume to fresh considerations of the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The concluding essay will examine the future directions in which such sociological and historical investigation can go forward.

This volume advances scholarly discussion of Jeremiah via rigorous feminist and postcolonial perspectives of the text. Essays analyse gendered imagery, explore rhetorics of imperialism and resistance, and examine theological implications of feminist-critical perspectives on YHWH and other deities represented in Jeremiah.

Discusses the experience and understanding of the senses in the culture represented in the Hebrew Bible. Through examination of associative and contextual patterns, the author reaches a septasensory model, including sight, hearing, speech, kinaesthesia, touch, taste, and smell.

Born out of two years of presentations in the Biblical Hebrew Poetry Section at SBL, this volume discusses 'voice'.

This collection honours Margreet Steiner, who used archaeology and pottery analysis to question the assumptions made by historians and biblical scholars about the past. It brings together biblical scholars and archaeologists to examine the relationship between 'dirt' archaeology and the biblical world as presented to us through written sources.

This book examines many of the laws in the Torah governing sexual relations and the often implicit motivations underlying them. It also considers texts beyond the laws in which legal traditions and ideas concerning sexual behavior intersect and provide insight into ancient Israel's social norms. The book includes extended treatments on the nature and function of marriage and divorce in ancient Israel, the variation in sexual rules due to status and gender, the prohibition on male-with-male sex, and the different types of sexualities that may have existed in ancient Israel.The essays draw on a variety of methodologies and approaches, including narrative criticism, philological analysis, literary theory, feminist and gender theory, anthropological models, and comparative analysis. They cover content ranging from the narratives in Genesis, to the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, to later re-interpretations of pentateuchal laws in Jeremiah and texts from the Second Temple period. Overall, the book presents a combination of theoretical discussion and close textual analysis to shed new light on the connections between law and sexuality within the Torah and beyond.

Built upon the flourishing study of costume, this book analyses sartorial evidence provided both by texts of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. The essays within lend clarity to the link between material and ideological, examining the tradition of dress, the different types of literature that reference the tradition of garments, and the people for whom such literature was written. The contributors explore sources that illuminate the social, psychological, aesthetic, ideological and symbolic meanings of clothing. The topics covered range from the relationship between clothing, kingship and power, to the symbolic significance of the high priestly regalia and the concept of garments as deception and defiance, while also considering the tendency to omit or ignore descriptions of YHWH's clothing. Following a historical sequence, the essays cross-reference with each other to create a milestone in biblical sartorial study.

The goal of the work is to expose what factors turned a positive (or neutral) character of the Golden Calf image into a negative one. >

Collects the best of the papers and responses of the Writing/Reading Jeremiah Group (SBL) offering an assessment of new interpretative directions in current Jeremiah Studies.

Characters provide the entry point to the story of the books of Samuel, just as they do in all stories. In this book the history of research into characters in Samuel, and the role(s) they play in the text are examined and discussed. The contributors look at the interpretative function of characters in the Samuel stories, and at issues of textual composition and what profiling of characters within the text can add to theories surrounding this issue. Specific characters are also profiled and studied. The character of God is examined: is God kind towards Israel? Is God loving and 'worthy to be praised' 2 Sam 22.4. Characters such as Hannah are examined from the perspective of literary type, as well as Eli as priest and Samuel himself as prophet. All of the major characters within the books are studied, including David and Jonathan, and chapters also treat the minor characters and offer information on their roles in the structure of the text. The contributors provide a range of different approaches to characterization, according to their specific expertise, and provide a thorough handbook to the characters in Samuel and their roles in the literary make-up of the text.

Based on two years of academic presentations on laments in the Biblical Hebrew Poetry Section at the Society of Biblical Literature (2006-2007), this title provides fresh readings of familiar texts as they are read through the lens of lamentation, and deepens our understanding of Israel and God as lamenter and lamentee.

Ancestor veneration plays important- and hitherto overlooked- socio-religious and ideological roles in various and competing territorial claims as presented in the Hebrew Bible.

Investigates the composition history of the "Amos-text" by drawing on the influential works of Hans W Wolff and J Jeremias. This redaction-critical study interprets the reasons for judgment in "Amos" 2.6-16 in the literary context of each of the redactional compositions which, it is argued, underlie the "Amos-text".

This volume collects essays from an international body of leading scholars in Old Testament studies, focused upon the key concepts of the question of historicity of biblical stories, the archaeology of Israel/Palestine during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and the nature of biblical narratives and related literature. As a celebration of the extensive body of Thomas L. Thompson's work, these essays enable a threefold perspective on biblical narratives. Beginning with 'method', the contributors discuss archaeology, cultural memory, epistemology, and sociology of knowledge, before moving to 'history, historiography and archaeology' and close analysis of the Qumran Writings, Josephus and biblical rewritings. Finally the argument turn to the narratives themselves, exploring topics including the possibility of invented myth, the genre of Judges and the depiction of Moses in the Qu'ran. Presenting an interdisciplinary analysis of the historical issues concerning ancient Israel/Palestine, this volume creates an updated body of reference to fifty years' worth of scholarship.