Books published by SBL Press

William G. Dever offers a welcome perspective on ancient Israel and Judah that prioritizes the archaeological remains to render history as it was-not as the biblical writers argue it should have been. Drawing from the most recent archaeological data as interpreted from a nontheological point of view and supplementing that data with biblical material only when it converges with the archaeological record, Dever analyzes all the evidence at hand to provide a new history of ancient Israel and Judah that is accessible to all interested readers.

This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel.

This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel.

Eighteen essays offer insights into the meaning of the senses in ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, and Egypt and show various questions and methods with which this topic can be approached. Experts examine the classical senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) as well as other senses (such as kinesthesis and the sense of balance) and sense-related issues (such as disgust, sensory imagination, and disabilities). This collection provides a stimulus and a basis for students and scholars to explore the senses in the ancient Near East.

The various contributors to this collection question and expand the meaning and boundaries, not only of what counts as queer work in biblical studies, but also of what constitutes the Pauline, especially given its curious afterlives in philosophy, literature, art, and history. Essays provide important explorations of gender, sexuality, and embodiment as well as their intersections with, in, and as dynamics of empire and economy, race and ethnicity, religion and nationality, animality and disability.

The various contributors to this collection question and expand the meaning and boundaries, not only of what counts as queer work in biblical studies, but also of what constitutes the Pauline, especially given its curious afterlives in philosophy, literature, art, and history. Essays provide important explorations of gender, sexuality, and embodiment as well as their intersections with, in, and as dynamics of empire and economy, race and ethnicity, religion and nationality, animality and disability.

This fourth installment of The First Urban Churches, edited by James R. Harrison and L. L. Welborn, focuses on the urban context of Christian churches in first-century Roman Philippi. The international team of New Testament and classical scholars present essays that use inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, coins, and iconography to examine the rivalries, imperial context, and ecclesial setting of the Philippian church.

This volume of essays, from an internationally renowned group of scholars, challenges popular ways of understanding how Judaism and Christianity came to be separate religions in antiquity. Essays in the volume reject the belief that there was one parting at an early point in time and contest the argument that there was no parting until a very late date. Scholars re-examine texts authored by ancient worshipers of Israel's God, resulting in a complex account of multiple partings that occurred at different places and paces in myriad ways around the ancient Mediterranean in the first four centuries CE.