Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode

Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode PDF Author: Robert S. Kawashima
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
An analysis of the novelty of biblical prose narrative and its break with oral traditions.

Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode

Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode PDF Author: Robert S. Kawashima
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
An analysis of the novelty of biblical prose narrative and its break with oral traditions.

Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode

Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode PDF Author: Robert S. Kawashima
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253003201
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Informed by literary theory and Homeric scholarship as well as biblical studies, Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode sheds new light on the Hebrew Bible and, more generally, on the possibilities of narrative form. Robert S. Kawashima compares the narratives of the Hebrew Bible with Homeric and Ugaritic epic in order to account for the "novelty" of biblical prose narrative. Long before Herodotus or Homer, Israelite writers practiced an innovative narrative art, which anticipated the modern novelist's craft. Though their work is undeniably linked to the linguistic tradition of the Ugaritic narrative poems, there are substantive differences between the bodies of work. Kawashima views biblical narrative as the result of a specifically written verbal art that we should counterpose to the oral-traditional art of epic. Beyond this strictly historical thesis, the study has theoretical implications for the study of narrative, literature, and oral tradition. Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature -- Herbert Marks, General Editor

Reading Genesis

Reading Genesis PDF Author: Ronald Hendel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492780
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Reading Genesis presents a panoramic view of the most vital ways that Genesis is approached in modern scholarship. Essays by ten eminent scholars cover the perspectives of literature, gender, memory, sources, theology, and the reception of Genesis in Judaism and Christianity. Each contribution addresses the history and rationale of the method, insightfully explores particular texts of Genesis, and deepens the interpretive gain of the method in question. These ways of reading Genesis, which include its classic past readings, map out a pluralistic model for understanding Genesis in - and for - the modern age.

Created Equal

Created Equal PDF Author: Joshua Berman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199832404
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

Yahweh's Elegant Speeches of the Abrahamic Narratives

Yahweh's Elegant Speeches of the Abrahamic Narratives PDF Author: Matthew Michael
Publisher: Langham Monographs
ISBN: 1783689757
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
This work is a study in the attribution, aesthetics and representations of Yahweh’s speeches in the Hebrew Bible. It describes the literary elegance and beauty of the speeches of Yahweh in the Abrahamic narratives. Employing a synchronic reading of the Abrahamic cycle, it underscores the presence of various literary devices in the divine speeches (12:1-9, 13:1-18, 15:1-21, 17:1-27, 18:1-33, and 22: 1-19). Specifically, it engages the high concentration, literary effects and use of metaphors/metaphoric language, similes, alliterations, wordplays, euphemisms, hyperboles, repetitions, allusions and other distinctive literary features in the speeches of Yahweh which are deliberately denied, and glaringly absent in the speeches of the other main characters of the Abrahamic narratives (e.g. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar). Similarly, it demonstrates the importance of these elevated speeches in the narrative world of Abrahamic epic. Most importantly, it also highlights the ideological significance of these decorated speeches of Yahweh to the original audience of the narrator who presumably identified with their excessive optimism and rhetoric. Consequently, this book is a pioneering work in the contemporary study of stylistics, characterizations and functions of attributed speeches in the Hebrew narratives.

Judges 1

Judges 1 PDF Author: Mark S. Smith
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506480497
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 924

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Book Description
This groundbreaking volume presents a new translation of the text and detailed interpretation of almost every word or phrase in the book of Judges, drawing from archaeology and iconography, textual versions, biblical parallels, and extrabiblical texts, many never noted before. Archaeology also serves to show how a story of the Iron II period employed visible ruins to narrate supposedly early events from the so-called "period of the Judges." The synchronic analysis for each unit sketches its characters and main themes, as well as other literary dynamics. The diachronic, redactional analysis shows the shifting settings of units as well as their development, commonly due to their inner-textual reception and reinterpretation. The result is a remarkably fresh historical-critical treatment of 1:1-10:5.

Genesis 1-11

Genesis 1-11 PDF Author: Ronald Hendel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300175361
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
The first volume of a groundbreaking two-part commentary on the book of Genesis by leading biblical scholar Ronald Hendel The first eleven chapters of Genesis narrate the origin of the universe; the creation of the first human beings; the beginnings of moral reasoning, society, and culture; and the cataclysmic global flood. By showing how life and civilization came into being, Genesis 1–11 offers a richly drawn map for understanding the world as a meaningful cosmos and an ethical guide for human purpose and responsibility within it. The culmination of over thirty years of research, this long-awaited study by leading Genesis scholar Ronald Hendel is the first comprehensive scholarly commentary on Genesis 1–11 in a generation. Drawing on archaeological discoveries from Israel and the ancient Near East as well as contemporary methods of scholarship, it presents a multilayered view of the classic text. The extensive introduction, notes, and comments explore ancient textual versions and editions, historical contexts, literary style and design, compositional history, cosmology, ethics, and the book’s interpretive life in Judaism and Christianity. Featuring numerous illustrations, this engagingly written commentary is an indispensable, field-defining guide to the first eleven chapters of the Bible.

Divine Aggression in Psalms and Inscriptions

Divine Aggression in Psalms and Inscriptions PDF Author: Collin Cornell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108915558
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The aggression of the biblical God named Yhwh is notorious. Students of theology, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East know that the Hebrew Bible describes Yhwh acting destructively against his client country, Israel, and against its kings. But is Yhwh uniquely vengeful, or was he just one among other, similarly ferocious patron gods? To answer this question, Collin Cornell compares royal biblical psalms with memorial inscriptions. He finds that the Bible shares deep theological and literary commonalities with comparable texts from Israel's ancient neighbours. The centrepiece of both traditions is the intense mutual loyalty of gods and kings. In the event that the king's monument and legacy comes to harm, gods avenge their individual royal protégé. In the face of political inexpedience, kings honour their individual divine benefactor.

Judges

Judges PDF Author: Serge Frolov
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467437476
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This commentary is the eighteenth published volume in The Forms of the Old Testament Literature (FOTL), a series that aims to present a form-critical analysis of the books and units in the Hebrew Bible. Serge Frolov's valuable study of Judges, addressing both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, offers the first full-scale form-critical treatment of Judges since 1922 and represents an important application of form criticism as practiced today. Fundamentally exegetical, Frolov's work examines the structure, genre, setting, and intention of Judges. Focusing on the canonical Hebrew text, Frolov argues that what we know as the book of Judges is not a literary unit but rather a series of interconnected units that are for the most part closely linked to adjoining books. In particular, he shows how the sequence "apostasy-oppression-repentance-deliverance" traverses the boundary between Judges and Samuel. Frolov also analyzes the history behind the form-critical discussion of this book and exposes the exegetical process so as to enable students and pastors to engage in their own analysis and interpretation of Judges.

Optional-Narrator Theory

Optional-Narrator Theory PDF Author: Sylvie Patron
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496224523
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Twentieth-century narratology fostered the assumption, which distinguishes narratology from previous narrative theories, that all narratives have a narrator. Since the first formulations of this assumption, however, voices have come forward to denounce oversimplifications and dangerous confusions of issues. Optional-Narrator Theory is the first collection of essays to focus exclusively on the narrator from the perspective of optional-narrator theories. Sylvie Patron is a prominent advocate of optional-narrator theories, and her collection boasts essays by many prominent scholars—including Jonathan Culler and John Brenkman—and covers a breadth of genres, from biblical narrative to poetry to comics. This volume bolsters the dialogue among optional-narrator and pan-narrator theorists across multiple fields of research. These essays make a strong intervention in narratology, pushing back against the widespread belief among narrative theorists in general and theorists of the novel in particular that the presence of a fictional narrator is a defining feature of fictional narratives. This topic is an important one for narrative theory and thus also for literary practice. Optional-Narrator Theory advances a range of arguments for dispensing with the narrator, except when it can be said that the author actually “created” a fictional narrator.