A Prelude to Biblical Folklore

A Prelude to Biblical Folklore PDF Author: Susan Niditch
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068836
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Treating Old Testament stories as the product of an oral traditional world, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore sets biblical narrative in a broad cross-cultural context and reveals much about the richness and complexity of the ancient Israelite civilization that produced it. Using a unique combination of biblical scholarship and folklore methodology, Susan Niditch tracks stories of biblical characters who become heroes against the odds, either through trickery or through native wisdom, physical prowess, and the help of human or divine agents. In this volume, originally published as Underdogs and Tricksters, Niditch examines three cross-sections of the Old Testament in detail: stories in Genesis in which patriarchs pretend that their wives are really their sisters; the contrasting stories of two younger sons, the trickster Jacob and the earnest underdog Joseph; and the story of Esther as a paradigm of feminine wisdom pitted against unjust authority. Linking these Old Testament heroes to the legendary tricksters and underdogs of other cultures, Niditch shows how the Israelites' worldview and self-image are reflected in the way biblical authors tell their stories. Through a thoughtful analysis of style, content, narrative choices, and attitudes to issues of gender and political authority in biblical narrative, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore draws persuasive conclusions about the identity, location, and provenance of the stories' authors and their audiences.

A Prelude to Biblical Folklore

A Prelude to Biblical Folklore PDF Author: Susan Niditch
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068836
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Treating Old Testament stories as the product of an oral traditional world, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore sets biblical narrative in a broad cross-cultural context and reveals much about the richness and complexity of the ancient Israelite civilization that produced it. Using a unique combination of biblical scholarship and folklore methodology, Susan Niditch tracks stories of biblical characters who become heroes against the odds, either through trickery or through native wisdom, physical prowess, and the help of human or divine agents. In this volume, originally published as Underdogs and Tricksters, Niditch examines three cross-sections of the Old Testament in detail: stories in Genesis in which patriarchs pretend that their wives are really their sisters; the contrasting stories of two younger sons, the trickster Jacob and the earnest underdog Joseph; and the story of Esther as a paradigm of feminine wisdom pitted against unjust authority. Linking these Old Testament heroes to the legendary tricksters and underdogs of other cultures, Niditch shows how the Israelites' worldview and self-image are reflected in the way biblical authors tell their stories. Through a thoughtful analysis of style, content, narrative choices, and attitudes to issues of gender and political authority in biblical narrative, A Prelude to Biblical Folklore draws persuasive conclusions about the identity, location, and provenance of the stories' authors and their audiences.

Patterns of Destiny

Patterns of Destiny PDF Author: Diane M. Sharon
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 1575060523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"Diane Sharon uses the tools of structuralist literary criticism to uncover social and theological patterns in the literature of the Hebrew Bible. After providing a brief framework for understanding the approach used in her study, she demonstrates that the social activity of eating and drinking, when accompanied by other literary motifs, is part of a pattern portending the establishment or condemnation of a cultural entity. This pattern she refers to as the Pattern of Destiny." "In addition to defining the "destiny pattern," Sharon shows that the "direction" of the eating and/or drinking event provides clues regarding the nature of the destiny portended: whether the event will turn out to the positive or negative for the individual or cultural entity is signaled by clues within the eating/drinking event, sometimes in opposition to the surface structure of the text in which these clues are embedded." --Book Jacket.

Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible

Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Melissa Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199656770
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book explores the Hebrew Bible for evidence of comedy and further asks how reading the Hebrew Bible through a comic "lens" might positively inform feminist interpretation. The exploration is conducted with a number of Hebrew Bible narratives, all of which prominently involve female characters.

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Carolyn J. Sharp
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300344X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to develop in unexpected ways. Main themes explored here include the ironizing of foreign rulers, the prostitute as icon of the ironic gaze, indeterminacy and dramatic irony in prophetic performance, and irony in ancient Israel's wisdom traditions. Sharp devotes special attention to how irony destabilizes dominant ways in which the Bible is read today, especially when it touches on questions of conflict, gender, and the Other.

Exegeting Orality

Exegeting Orality PDF Author: Nick Acker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 172524845X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
For too long, critical biblical studies have applied modern textual assumptions to ancient oral cultures. Exegeting Orality challenges many of these modern approaches, distilling decades of studies in oral traditions to redirect pastors and scholars toward a more accurate narrative of biblical origins, identity, and meaning. Many works in the area of orality, textuality, performance criticism, and media studies focus on critical issues. Exegeting Orality guides pastors and scholars through a brief introduction to these fields, emphasizing biblical inspiration, interpretation, and proclamation. This work honors the rich oral traditional foundations of the inspired canon, urging a transformative shift in how we interpret the Bible. The stories we believe define us. The Bible is not just a text to be studied but a record of voices from the past who performed our definitive stories. The Bible is a tradition to be reproclaimed and reenacted in the community of faith. Let us not recast these ancient voices into modern epistemological molds without letting them speak from within their own cultural realities. Their voices still call out to us through the abiding Holy Spirit who connects us all to the story of Jesus. May we live out that ancient story today together.

Sinning in the Hebrew Bible

Sinning in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Alan F. Segal
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231504349
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Stories of rape, murder, adultery, and conquest raise crucial issues in the Hebrew Bible, and their interpretation helps societies form their religious and moral beliefs. From the sacrifice of Isaac to the adultery of David, narratives of sin engender vivid analysis and debate, powering the myths that form the basis of the religious covenant, or the relationship between a people and their God. Rereading these stories in their different forms and varying contexts, Alan F. Segal demonstrates the significance of sinning throughout history and today. Drawing on literary and historical theory, as well as research in the social sciences, he explores the motivation for creating sin stories, their prevalence in the Hebrew Bible, and their possible meaning to Israelite readers and listeners. After introducing the basics of his approach and outlining several hermeneutical concepts, Segal conducts seven linked studies of specific narratives, using character and text to clarify problematic terms such as "myth," "typology," and "orality." Following the reappearance and reinterpretation of these narratives in later compositions, he proves their lasting power in the mythology of Israel and the encapsulation of universal, perennially relevant themes. Segal ultimately positions the Hebrew Bible as a foundational moral text and a history book, offering uncommon insights into the dating of biblical events and the intentions of biblical authors.

Imagined Worlds and Constructed Differences in the Hebrew Bible

Imagined Worlds and Constructed Differences in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Jeremiah W. Cataldo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567683508
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
The purpose of this volume is twofold: to introduce readers to the study of cultural memory and identity in relation to the Hebrew Bible, and to set up strategies for connecting studies of the historical contexts and literature of the Bible to parallel issues in the present day. The volume questions how we can better understand the divide between insider and outsider and the powerful impact of prejudice as a basis for preserving differences between "us" and "them"? In turn the contributors question how such frameworks shape a community's self-perception, its economics and politics. Guided by the general framework of Anderson's theory of nationalism and the outsider, such issues are explored in related ways throughout each of the contributions. Each contribution focuses on social, economic, or political issues that have significantly shaped or influenced dominant elements of cultural memory and the construction of identity in the biblical texts. Together the contributions present a larger proposal: the broad contours of memory and identity in the Bible are the products of a collective desire to reshape the social-political world.

Love in the Hebrew Bible

Love in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Song-Mi Suzie Park
Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp
ISBN: 1646983165
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
Christians insist that love stands at the heart of who God is. Yet, when we talk about love in the Hebrew Bible, how much do we really know? Possessing such a belief alone does not mean that we possess a clear understanding of what love is. Are we aware of how often divine and human love are tied up with the idea of preference for one individual or group over another? Do we know how often descriptions of love involve questions of power, authority, and gender? Do we see that love is connected to suffering, betrayal, and sometimes death in the Hebrew Scriptures? In Love in the Hebrew Bible, one of the first book-length studies of its kind, Suzie Park provides fascinating and essential insights into these questions, refreshing our understanding of the meaning of love in the Hebrew Bible. Pushing against characterizations of the loving God of the New Testament narrative universe versus the wrathful God of the Old Testament, Park shows that love is integral to the ways in which relationships, both among people and also between humanity and God, are imagined in the Hebrew text. Reflecting matrices of meaning and associations, love thus is a vital component of the ideology and theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, and an understanding of it remains fundamental to our knowledge of the biblical text.

Weapons Upon Her Body

Weapons Upon Her Body PDF Author: Sandra Ladick Collins
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443845868
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
The biblical stories of Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, share much in common – singular women who are left to rely upon their own wits to achieve some measure of victory over the men around them. Scholarly interpretation of these women often reduces them to mere stock characters who inform civic notions about Israel, the perennial underdog who, like these women, achieves against great odds. Or, they reflect the trickery and moral ambiguity inherent in their line as ancestresses of the House of David. However, when read for their gender information (and not for what they can tell readers about Israel), one finds women who employ strategies of deception and trickery, motivated by individual self-interest, in order to successfully maneuver within the system to their benefit. Such initiative can be seen as valorous: they save themselves through their own pluck and ingenuity. Thus, a close consideration of these stories finds that heroic biblical women carry their essential weapons upon and within themselves in their drive, their resolve and their cleverness. Using methods from biblical study as well as folklore, this study identifies biblical women motivated by self-interest coupled with deception and an incidence of the “bedtrick,” an instance of sexual trickery that challenges the text’s power and gender dynamics. This identification puts Lot’s daughters, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba, in league with female heroes from folk tale and legend. By contrasting and comparing common motifs and actions with traits established by other non-biblical female heroic narratives, strong heroic themes are located in all four narratives. This offers a dynamic argument for identifying the female biblical heroic. This work concludes that this new identification of heroic women in the Bible profoundly affects further interpretation of the Bible.

Reading the Women of the Bible

Reading the Women of the Bible PDF Author: Tikva Frymer-Kensky
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307490009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Reading the Women of the Bible takes up two of the most significant intellectual and religious issues of our day: the experiences of women in a patriarchal society and the relevance of the Bible to modern life.