front cover of Daily Life in Biblical Times
Daily Life in Biblical Times
Oded Borowski
SBL Press, 2003
While the history of Israel during the period from ca. 1200 to 586 B.C.E. has been in the forefront of biblical research, little attention has been given to questions of daily life. Where did the Israelites live? What did people do for a living? What did they eat and what affected their health? How did the family function? These and similar questions form the basis for this book. The book introduces different aspects of daily life. It describes the natural setting and the people who occupied the land. It deals with the economy, both rural and urban, emphasizing the main sources of livelihood such as agriculture, herding, and trade. These topics are discussed in relation to the family in particular and the social structure in general. Other topics include urban society, the bureaucracy and the military. Beyond material culture, the book delves into daily and seasonal cultural, social and religious activities, art, music, and the place of writing in Israelite society. Drawing on textual and archaeological evidence, and written with nontechnical language, the book will be especially helpful for undergraduates, seminarians, pastors, rabbis, and other interested nonspecialist readers as well as graduate students and faculty in Hebrew Bible.
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Daughter Zion
Her Portrait, Her Response
Mark J. Boda
SBL Press, 2012
This volume showcases recent exploration of the portrait of Daughter Zion as “she” appears in biblical Hebrew poetry. Using Carleen Mandolfo’s Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007) as a point of departure, the contributors to this volume explore the image of Daughter Zion in its many dimensions in various texts in the Hebrew Bible. Approaches used range from poetic, rhetorical, and linguistic to sociological and ideological. To bring the conversation full circle, Carleen Mandolfo engages in a dialogic response with her interlocutors. The contributors are Mark J. Boda, Mary L. Conway, Stephen L. Cook, Carol J. Dempsey, LeAnn Snow Flesher, Michael H. Floyd, Barbara Green, John F. Hobbins, Mignon R. Jacobs, Brittany Kim, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Christl M. Maier, Carleen Mandolfo, Jill Middlemas, Kim Lan Nguyen, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective
A History of Research
Devorah Dimant
SBL Press, 2016

Now in paperback!

The volume covers Qumran scholarship in separate countries: the USA, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Each essay carries a detailed bibliography for the respective country. Biographies of all the major scholars active in the field are briefly given as well. This book thereby exhaustively surveys past and present Qumran research, outlining its particular development in various circumstances and national contexts. For the first time, perspectives and information not recorded in any other publication are highlighted.

Features:

  • Paperback format of an essential Brill resource
  • Twenty-seven articles by twenty-six of the top scholars in the field
  • Contributions represent the work of more than sixty years of scholarly research
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    front cover of Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat
    Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat
    New Methods and Perspectives
    Carmen Palmer
    SBL Press, 2020

    A reexamination of the people and movements associated with Qumran, their outlook on the world, and what bound them together

    Dead Sea Scrolls, Revise and Repeat examines the identity of the Qumran movement by reassessing former conclusions and bringing new methodologies to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The collection as a whole addresses questions of identity as they relate to law, language, and literary formation; considerations of time and space; and demarcations of the body. The thirteen essays in this volume reassess the categorization of rule texts, the reuse of scripture, the significance of angelic fellowship, the varieties of calendrical use, and celibacy within the Qumran movement. Contributors consider identity in the Dead Sea Scrolls from new interdisciplinary perspectives, including spatial theory, legal theory, historical linguistics, ethnicity theory, cognitive literary theory, monster theory, and masculinity theory.

    Features

    • Essays that draw on new theoretical frameworks and recent advances in Qumran studies
    • A tribute to the late Peter Flint, whose scholarship helped to shape Qumran studies
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    Deuteronomy-Kings as Emerging Authoritative Books
    A Conversation
    Diana V. Edelman
    SBL Press, 2014

    Explore how the past came to address the present and the future and why it became important for emerging Jewish identity.

    Experts explore the themes and topics that made Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets appealing to ancient readers leading ultimately to those texts becoming authoritative for Persian and Hellenistic readers. This unique collection of essays focuses on what larger impact these texts might have had on primary and secondary audiences as part of emerging Torah. Contributors include Klaus-Peter Adam, Yairah Amit, Thomas M. Bolin, Philip R. Davies, Serge Frolov, Susanne Gilmayr-Bucher, E. Axel Knauf, Christoph Levin, James R. Linville, and Thomas Römer, and Diana V. Edelman.

    Features:

    • Essays focused on why texts became authoritative instead of when they were written or their historicity
    • Two scholars examine each book providing a range of views
    • Coverage of the socio-religious function of emerging Torah in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods
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    front cover of The Didache
    The Didache
    A Missing Piece of the Puzzle in Early Christianity
    Jonathan A. Draper
    SBL Press, 2015

    An intriguing dilemma for those who study ancient Christian contexts and literature

    This edited volume includes essays and responses from specialists in the Didache and in early church history in general.

    Features:

    • Strategies for understanding liturgical constructions and ritual worship found in the text
    • Studies that apply generally to the overall content and background of the Didache
    • Essays on the relationship between the Didache and scripture—particularly with respect to the Gospel of Matthew
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    front cover of Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo
    Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo
    Justin M. Rogers
    SBL Press, 2017

    Explore the Jewish traditions preserved in the commentaries of a largely neglected Alexandrian Christian exegete

    Justin M. Rogers surveys commentaries on Genesis, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Zechariah by Didymus the Blind (ca. 313–398 CE), who was regarded by his students as one of the greatest Christian exegetes of the fourth century. Rogers highlights Didymus’s Jewish sources, zeroing in on traditions of Philo of Alexandria, whose treatises were directly accessible to Didymus while he was authoring his exegetical works. Philonic material in Didymus is covered by extensive commentary, demonstrating that Philo was among the principle sources for the exegetical works of Didymus the Blind. Rogers also explores the mediating influence of the Alexandrian Christian tradition, focusing especially on the roles of Clement and Origen.

    Features

    • Fresh insights into the Alexandrian Christian reception of Philo
    • A thorough discussion of Didymus’s exegetical method, particularly in the Commentary on Genesis
    • Examination of the use and importance of Jewish and Christian sources in Late Antique Christian commentaries
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    front cover of Discourse Markers in Early Koine Greek
    Discourse Markers in Early Koine Greek
    Cognitive-Functional Analysis and LXX Translation Technique
    Christopher J. Fresch
    SBL Press, 2023

    Using a cognitive-functional linguistic framework and cross-linguistic research on discourse markers, Christopher J. Fresch investigates the use of five discourse markers in the documentary papyri of the third to first centuries BCE and the Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. Through this analysis, Fresch proposes linguistically grounded descriptions for how each discourse marker uniquely functions to guide readers in how they process and comprehend the text. Based on these descriptions, he examines the instances of these discourse markers in the Greek translation of the Minor Prophets and how the translator used them to render the Hebrew text. Fresch presents a picture of a translator who selected discourse markers based on their own understanding of the structure, flow, and meaning of the underlying Hebrew text. Their use attests to a translator who was contextually aware and who desired to produce a translation in idiomatic Koine.

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    front cover of Discourses of Empire
    Discourses of Empire
    The Gospel of Mark from a Postcolonial Perspective
    Hans Leander
    SBL Press, 2013
    This inventive work explores Mark’s Gospel within the contexts of the empires of Rome and Europe. In a unique dual analysis, the book highlights how empire is not only part of the past but also of a present colonial heritage. The book first outlines postcolonial criticism and discusses the challenges it poses for biblical scholarship, then scrutinizes the complex ways with which nineteenth-century commentaries on Mark’s Gospel interplayed with the formation of European colonial identities. It examines the stance of Mark’s Gospel vis-à-vis the Roman Empire and analyzes the manner in which the fibers of empire within Mark are interwoven, reproduced, negotiated, modified and subverted. Finally, it offers synthesizing suggestions for bringing Mark beyond a colonial heritage. The book’s candid use of postcolonial criticism illustrates how a contemporary perspective can illuminate and shed new light on an ancient text in its imperial setting.
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    Disembodied Souls
    The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits in the Ancient Near East, with an
    Richard C. Steiner
    SBL Press, 2015

    A reevaluation of the concept of the soul based on the latest evidence

    Biblical scholars have long claimed that the Israelites “could not conceive of a disembodied nefesh [soul].” Steiner rejects that claim based on a broad spectrum of textual, linguistic, archaeological, and anthropological evidence spanning the millennia from prehistoric times to the present. The biblical evidence includes a prophecy of Ezekiel condemning women who pretend to trap the wandering souls of sleeping people. The extrabiblical evidence suggests that a belief in the existence of disembodied souls was part of the common religious heritage of the peoples of the ancient Near East.

    Features

    • A re-examination of the evidence for and against disembodied souls in the Hebrew Bible
    • A new look at the nature and behavior of disembodied souls in the Hebrew Bible
    • A new study of the meaning and sociolinguistic background of the Katumuwa inscription
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    front cover of Dismembering the Whole
    Dismembering the Whole
    Composition and Purpose of Judges 19-21
    Cynthia Edenburg
    SBL Press, 2016

    A fresh literary analysis of political polemic in the Bible

    The Book of Judges ends with a bizarre narrative of sex and violence that starts with a domestic tiff and ends with the decimation of a tribe that is restored by means of abduction and rape. Cynthia Edenburg applies a fresh literary analysis, recent understandings of historical linguistics, and historical geography in her exploration of the origin of the anti-Benjamin polemic found in Judges 19–21, the growth and provenance of the book of Judges, and the shape of the Deuteronomistic History. Her study exposes how Judges 19–21 function as political polemic reflecting not the pre-monarchic period but instead the historical realities of the settlement of Benjamin during the Babylonian and Persian period.

    Features:

    • Methodological discussions that open each chapter
    • Charts and tables
    • Engagement with current research produced by scholars from around the world
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    front cover of Divided Worlds? Challenges in Classics and New Testament Studies
    Divided Worlds? Challenges in Classics and New Testament Studies
    Caroline Johnson Hodge
    SBL Press, 2023

    This volume brings together scholars from New Testament studies and classics, whose fields of study have much in common but are not often in in conversation. The contributors explore how the ancient works they study can be resources for thinking critically and creatively about issues that matter today. The essays address our obligation to take positive moral stands on divisive issues of both the past and the present, including empire, racial/ethnic and religious difference, economic inequality, gender and sexuality, slavery, and disability. Contributors include Douglas Boin, Denise Kimber Buell, Gay L. Byron, Allen Dwight Callahan, Joy Connolly, Jennifer A. Glancy, Shelley P. Haley, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Katherine Lu Hsu, Timothy Joseph, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Yii-Jan Lin, Dominic Machado, Joseph A. Marchal, Thomas R. Martin, Candida R. Moss, Laura Salah Nasrallah, Jorunn Økland, and Abraham Smith.

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    front cover of Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires
    Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires
    Alan Lenzi
    SBL Press, 2014

    Advance your understanding of divination’s role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East

    This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires.

    Features:

    • Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studies
    • Essays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empires
    • Index of ancient sources
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    front cover of Documents from the Luciferians
    Documents from the Luciferians
    In Defense of the Nicene Creed
    Colin M. Whiting
    SBL Press, 2019

    Six important documents for scholars of early church history

    This volume includes English translations of several documents concerning the Luciferians, a group of fourth-century Christians whose name derives from the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari. Documents include a confession of faith written for Emperor Theodosius I and a theological treatise written for his wife by Luciferian clergyman Faustinus, the first English translation of a Luciferian petition to Theodosius that focuses on the persecution the community has suffered, Theodosius’s imperial law in response to the Luciferians, two letters composed by Luciferians that purport to represent correspondence from the bishop Athanasius of Alexandria to Lucifer, and the priest Jerome’s Dialogus adversus Luciferianos. These texts highlight connections between developments in Christian theology and local Christian communities in the course of the fourth century.

    Features:

    • The first English translation of Faustinus’s Libellus precum
    • An overview of the development of late antique theology and Christianity
    • An introduction to Luciferian beliefs and the translated texts
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    front cover of Drawn to the Word
    Drawn to the Word
    The Bible and Graphic Design
    Amanda Dillon
    SBL Press, 2021

    A unique study of lectionaries and graphic design as a site of biblical reception

    How artists portrayed the Bible in large canvas paintings is frequently the subject of scholarly exploration, yet the presentation of biblical texts in contemporary graphic designs has been largely ignored. In this book Amanda Dillon engages multimodal analysis, a method of semiotic discourse, to explore how visual composition, texture, color, directionality, framing, angle, representations, and interactions produce potential meanings for biblical graphic designs. Dillon focuses on the artworks of two American graphic designers—the woodcuts designed by Meinrad Craighead for the Roman Catholic Sunday Missal and Nicholas Markell’s illustrations for the worship books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—to present the merits of multimodal analysis for biblical reception history.

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    front cover of Dreams and Visions in the Bible and Related Literature
    Dreams and Visions in the Bible and Related Literature
    Richard J. Bautch
    SBL Press, 2023

    The essays in Dreams and Visions in the Bible and Related Literature focus on how the reading community interprets dreams or visions and what is at stake for whom in a dream or vision’s interpretation. Contributors explore the hermeneutics of readership, the relationship between reading and intertextuality, and the interplay of affect and emotion within dreams and visions in religious texts. A variety of methodologies are employed, including rhetorical analysis, critical theory, trauma studies, the analysis of space and society, and the history of emotions. Contributors are Richard J. Bautch, Genevive Dibley, Roy Fisher, Gina Hens-Piazza, Joseph McDonald, Deborah Prince, Jean-François Racine, Andrea Spatafora, and Rodney A. Werline.

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