Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible

Mira Morgenstern is Professor of Political Science, The City College of New York.

"The fields of Jewish political thought and political readings of the Hebrew Bible are newly emergent and rapidly growing, but prior to Mira Morgenstern's Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible, there has been no comprehensive scholarship that pulled everything together in a coherent way and served as a stimulus to new research—let alone to teaching. Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible achieves both aims and displays the same care, intelligence, and originality that characterize the author’s earlier scholarship. Morgenstern's selection of biblical passages is judicious, and her extensive Introduction and commentaries comprise a learned treatise that rivals any existing interpretation of the political meanings of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The pedagogical and scholarly quality of Morgenstern’s volume is suggestive of The Jewish Study Bible (Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2014), the standard reference work in the field and one that, like her own volume, is anything but a 'textbook.' Morgenstern’s biblical readings are a marvelous blend of literary and social-political analyses that are powerful and persuasive and yet subtle without being dogmatic, leaving open, and indeed encouraging, rival interpretations. To step into the figurative minefield of biblical interpretation and to retain the 'neutrality' that is central to all academic endeavors is no mean accomplishment, and with this new work, Morgenstern will cement her much-deserved place in biblical scholarship. A superb work in every respect."—Gordon Schochet, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Founding Executive Editor of Hebraic Political Studies