Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings

Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings PDF Author: Klaas Smelik
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004258566
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In this volume twelve contributions discuss the relevance, accuracy, potential, and possible alternatives to a literary reading of ancient Jewish writings, especially the Hebrew Bible. Drawing on different academic fields (biblical studies, rabbinic studies, and literary studies) and on various methodologies (literary criticism, rhetorical criticism, cognitive linguistics, historical criticism, and reception history), the essays form a state-of-the-art overview of the current use of the literary approach toward ancient Jewish texts. The volume convincingly shows that the latest approaches to a literary reading can still enhance our understanding of these texts.

Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings

Approaches to Literary Readings of Ancient Jewish Writings PDF Author: Klaas Smelik
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004258566
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In this volume twelve contributions discuss the relevance, accuracy, potential, and possible alternatives to a literary reading of ancient Jewish writings, especially the Hebrew Bible. Drawing on different academic fields (biblical studies, rabbinic studies, and literary studies) and on various methodologies (literary criticism, rhetorical criticism, cognitive linguistics, historical criticism, and reception history), the essays form a state-of-the-art overview of the current use of the literary approach toward ancient Jewish texts. The volume convincingly shows that the latest approaches to a literary reading can still enhance our understanding of these texts.

Targums and Rabbinic Literature

Targums and Rabbinic Literature PDF Author: Zondervan,
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310495741
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies is a multivolume series that seeks to introduce key ancient texts that form the cultural, historical, and literary context for the study of the New Testament. Each volume will feature introductory essays to the corpus, followed by articles on the relevant texts. Each article will address introductory matters, provenance, summary of content, interpretive issues, key passages for New Testament studies and their significance. Neither too technical to be used by students nor too thin on interpretive information to be useful for serious study of the New Testament, this series provides a much-needed resource for understanding the New Testament in its first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman context. Produced by an international team of leading experts in each corpus, Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies stands to become the standard resource for both scholars and students. Volumes include: Apocrypha and the Septuagint Old Testament Pseudepigrapha The Dead Sea Scrolls The Apostolic Fathers Philo and Josephus Greco-Roman Literature Targums and Early Rabbinic Literature Gnostic Literature New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

The Song of Songs Through the Ages

The Song of Songs Through the Ages PDF Author: Annette Schellenberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110750821
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 613

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Book Description
The Song of Songs is a fascinating text. Read as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, the Church, or individual believers, it became one of the most influential texts from the Bible. This volume includes twenty-three essays that cover the Song’s reception history from antiquity to the present. They illuminate the richness of this reception history, paying attention to diverse interpretations in commentaries, sermons, and other literature, as well as the Song’s impact on spirituality, theological and intellectual debates, and the arts.

Metaphors in the Discussion on Suffering in Job 3–31

Metaphors in the Discussion on Suffering in Job 3–31 PDF Author: Hanneke van Loon
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004380930
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In Metaphors in the Discussion on Suffering in Job 3–31, Hanneke van Loon offers a new approach to the theme of suffering in the book of Job. Her analysis of metaphors demonstrates that Job goes through different stages of existential suffering in chapters 3–14 and that he addresses the social dimension of his suffering in chapters 17 and 19. Van Loon claims that Job’s existential suffering ends in 19:25, and that chapters 23–31 reflect a process in which Job translates his own experience into a call upon the audience to adopt a new attitude toward the unfortunate ones in society. The theoretical approach to metaphors is based on insights from cognitive linguistics.

Figuring Jerusalem

Figuring Jerusalem PDF Author: Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678746X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"For two thousand years, Hebrew writers imagined Jerusalem from a distance and used exile as a license for invention. The question at the heart of Figuring Jerusalem is this: how did these writers bring their imagination "home" in the Zionist century? Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, one of our leading scholars of modern Jewish literature, explores the perils of this newly acquired proximity to a people's sacred and inherited resources. Ezrahi finds that the same diasporic procedures-cultic, ethical, and aesthetic-that Hebrew writers practiced in exile were maintained throughout the first half of the twentieth century, even in proximity to the Temple Mount, while Jerusalem was under the successive control of the Ottomans, the British, and then the Jordanians. After 1948, when the state of Israel was founded but East Jerusalem and its holy sites remained under Arab control, Jerusalem continued to figure in the Hebrew imagination as mediated space. But after 1967, all this changed. Over the next half century, the claim to exclusive sovereignty reignited a messianic fervor that had been suppressed in Hebrew culture for two millennia. The temptations and dilemmas of proximity to the sacred would become acute in every area of Hebrew politics and culture. Figuring Jerusalem ranges from classical texts, biblical and medieval, to the post-1967 writings of work of S. Y. Agnon, and the uncrowned poet laureate of Jerusalem, Yehuda Amichai. Ezrahi shows, ultimately, that the wisdom Jews acquired through two thousand years of wandering and exile, as inscribed in their literary imagination, must be rediscovered if the diverse inhabitants of this City are not to slaughter each other once again in the name of an exclusive and vengeful God"--

Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism

Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism PDF Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000465969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. The study treats the concept of divine knowledge as the embodied divine presence in its full historical and interpretive complexity by tracing the theme through a broad variety of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish sources, including Mesopotamian traditions of cultic statues, creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and later Jewish mystical testimonies. Orlov demonstrates that some biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts postulate that the theophany expresses the unique, corporeal nature of the deity that cannot be fully grasped or conveyed in some other non-corporeal symbolism, medium, or language. The divine presence requires another presence in order to be transmitted. To be communicated properly and in its full measure, the divine iconic knowledge must be "written" on a new living "body" which can hold the ineffable presence of God through a newly acquired ontology. Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism will provide an invaluable research to students and scholars in a wide range of areas within Jewish, Near Eastern, and Biblical Studies, as well as those studying religious elements of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and gender studies. Through the study of Jewish mediatorial figures, this book also elucidates the roots of early Christological developments, making it attractive to Christian audiences.

An Introduction to the Study of the Pentateuch

An Introduction to the Study of the Pentateuch PDF Author: Bradford A. Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567656403
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The Pentateuch (or the Torah) consists of the first five books of the Bible and is a foundational scripture for millions of people, both Jews and Christians. In this book Paula Gooder and Brad Anderson provide a clear and accessible introduction for those beginning Bible study. Key themes such as creation and the flood, exodus and liberation, as well as covenant and law are presented and analyzed. These themes are explored in their ancient context and from the standpoint of contemporary concerns such as liberation theology, gender issues and ecology. For this new edition introductory sections on the five books of the Pentateuch have been expanded and supplemented, while recent developments in the quest for the origins of the Pentateuch have also been updated. A new chapter on academic approaches to the study of the Pentateuch has been added, along with a section on the 'afterlife' of the Pentateuch which focuses on its place in the history of interpretation, as well as in the arts and culture. Reading lists and references have been updated throughout to take account of the most recent scholarship.

Supernal Serpent

Supernal Serpent PDF Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197684149
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"A certain king built himself a palace and summoned two persons to decorate it for him. The king divided his palace into two parts, putting one person in charge of one half and the second in charge of the other. One of the persons decorated his part of the palace with beautiful paintings of birds and animals. But the second person painted his half of the palace with black dye which was reflecting everything like a mirror. When the king came to judge the two decorations, everything he had seen in the first person's part he also saw in the second's part, since it was reflected in its black dye like in a mirror. Not only that, but even all the king could wish to put in the first half of his palace appeared in the second half. This found favor in the eyes of the king"--

In the Wake of the Compendia

In the Wake of the Compendia PDF Author: J. Cale Johnson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501502506
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In the Wake of the Compendia presents papers that examine the history of technical compendia as they moved between institutions and societies in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia. This volume offers new perspectives on the development and transmission of technical compilations, looking especially at the relationship between empirical knowledge and textual transmission in early scientific thinking. The eleven contributions to the volume derive from a panel held at the American Oriental Society in 2013 and cover more than three millennia of historical development, ranging from Babylonian medicine and astronomy to the persistence of Mesopotamian lore in Syriac and Arabic meditations on the properties of animals. The volume also includes major contributions on the history of Mesopotamian “rationality,” epistemic labels for tested and tried remedies, and the development of depersonalized case histories in Babylonian therapeutic compendia. Together, these studies offer an overview of several important moments in the development of non-Western scientific thinking and a significant contribution to our understanding of how traditions of technical knowledge were produced and transmitted in the ancient world.

Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story

Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story PDF Author: Martin Worthington
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429754507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
This volume opens up new perspectives on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, through the lens of a pivotal passage in the Gilgamesh Flood story. It shows how, using a nine-line message where not all was as it seemed, the god Ea inveigled humans into building the Ark. The volume argues that Ea used a ‘bitextual’ message: one which can be understood in different ways that sound the same. His message thus emerges as an ambivalent oracle in the tradition of ‘folktale prophecy’. The argument is supported by interlocking investigations of lexicography, divination, diet, figurines, social history, and religion. There are also extended discussions of Babylonian word play and ancient literary interpretation. Besides arguing for Ea’s duplicity, the book explores its implications – for narrative sophistication in Gilgamesh, for audiences and performance of the poem, and for the relation of the Gilgamesh Flood story to the versions in Atra-hasīs, the Hellenistic historian Berossos, and the Biblical Book of Genesis. Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story will interest Assyriologists, Hebrew Bible scholars and Classicists, but also students and researchers in all areas concerned with Gilgamesh, word-play, oracles, and traditions about the Flood.