Susan Niditch - Böcker

Susan Niditch's commentary on the book of Judges pays careful attention to the literary and narrative techniques of the text and yields fresh readings of the book's difficult passages: stories of violence, ethnic conflict, and gender issues. Niditch aptly and richly conveys the theological impact and enduring significance of these stories.The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

Ancient Israelite Religion offers a brief, accessible, and perceptive account of the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Israelites, analyzing the complex and varied ways in which they present and preserve themselves in the Hebrew Bible. Drawing on the most recent literary scholarship and archaeological evidence, the author provides a compelling account of how the culture of the Israelites changed over three great historical periods--the distantpre-monarchic age, the monarchies of Israel and Judah, and the Babylonian exile and return. The heart of the book is a rich description of the Israelites' religious life as revealed in the Hebrew Bible.Exploring how they described their experience of God, Niditch draws out consistent themes in the Biblical stories. Most importantly, she allows us to see the world through the Israelites' eyes as she reconstructs both their habits and their larger worldview. Ideal for introduction to the Bible and introduction to religion courses, this insightful, subtly nuanced portrait is also easily understandable to general readers. It brings to life this ancient people whose legacy continuesto influence and captivate the world today.

The story of Jacob and Esau is told in the book of Genesis. With his mother's help, Jacob impersonates his hairy older twin by dressing in Esau's clothes and covering his own hands and the nape of his neck with the hairy hide of goats. Fooled by this ruse, their blind father, Isaac, is tricked into giving the younger son the blessing of the firstborn. This is only one of many biblical stories in which hair plays a pivotal role.In recent years,there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the relationship between culture and the body. Hair plays an integral role in the way we represent and identify ourselves. The way we treat ourhair has to do with aesthetics, social structure, religious identity, and a host of other aspects of culture. In societies modern and ancient, the hairdo is one key to a group's cultural code. In ancient Israel, hair signifies important features of identity with respect to gender, ethnicity, and holiness.Susan Niditch seeks a deeper understanding of Israelite culture as expressed, shaped, and reinforced in images of hair. Among her examples is the tradition's most famouslong-haired hero, Samson. The hair that assures Samson's strength is a common folktale motif, but is also important to his sacred status as a Nazirite. Niditch examines the meaning of the Naziriteidentity DL held by Samuel as well as Samson DL arguing that long hair is involved in a complex set of cultural assumptions about men, warrior status, and divine election. In addition to biblical texts, Niditch looks at pictorial and other material evidence. She concludes by examining the troubling texts in which men impose hair cutting or loosening upon women, revealing much about attitudes to women and their place in Israelite culture. Much has been written on the presentation of the body invarious literatures, including the Bible, but the role of hair in ancient Israel has been neglected. This book charts a new path for studies on the body, religion, and culture.

In Ethics in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, Susan Niditch takes soundings among those who have recently approached ethics in the Hebrew Scriptures, their methodological interests, their goals, and their definitions of "ethics" itself. By means of close exegesis of specific passages from the Hebrew Bible and a discussion of the interpretation and application of these ancient texts by post-biblical Jewish writers and other creative contributors from outside the Jewish tradition, this volume explores topics in religious ethics, social justice, political ethics, economic ethics, issues in ecology, gender and sexuality, killing and dying, and reproductive ethics. Certain goals inform all chapters: interest in tracing recurring themes concerning the definition of the good, and the various ways in which Jewish thinkers rely on the more ancient material, interpret, and appropriate it; the links between areas in ethics, for example, between gender and reproductive ethics or war-views and attitudes to political ethics and environmental ethics. Niditch carves out specific biblical texts and themes in order to explore them in depth with special interest in the meanings and messages that emerge from ancient Israelite writers' varied treatments of issues in ethics. Ethics in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond provides a thoughtful discussion of biblical composers' treatment of ethical issues and an engaging overview of the ways in which these texts have been appropriated, in particular by Jewish contributors. This volume serves to challenge readers' own assumptions about biblical ethics, the applicability and the various meanings and messages that might be derived from engagement with key biblical texts.

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.

Works created in the period from the Babylonian conquest of Judea through the takeover and rule of Judea and Samaria by imperial Persia reveal a profound interest in the religious responses of individuals and an intimate engagement with the nature of personal experience. Using the rich and varied body of literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible, Susan Niditch examines ways in which followers of Yahweh, participating in long-standing traditions, are shown to privatize and personalize religion. Their experiences remain relevant to many of the questions we still ask today: Why do bad things happen to good people? Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? How do I define myself? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being? How do I cope with chaos and make sense of my experience? What roles do material objects and private practices play within my religious life? These questions deeply engaged the ancient writers of the Bible, and they continue to intrigue contemporary people who try to find meaning in life and to make sense of the world.  The Responsive Self studies a variety of phenomena, including the use of first-person speech, seemingly autobiographic forms and orientations, the emphasis on individual responsibility for sin, interest in the emotional dimensions of biblical characters, and descriptions of self-imposed ritual. This set of interests lends itself to exciting approaches in the contemporary study of religion, including the concept of “lived religion,” and involves understanding and describing what people actually do and believe in cultures of religion.

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an innovative overview of ancient Israelite culture and history, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. Distinguished scholars provide original contributions that explore the tradition in all its complexity, multiplicity and diversity. A methodologically sophisticated overview of ancient Israelite culture that provides insights into  political and social history, culture, and methodologyExplores what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah, but also investigates how we know what we knowPresents fresh insights, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fieldsDelves into ‘religion as lived,’ an approach that asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experienceEach essay is an original contribution to the subject

Susan Niditch explores ways in which the literature of ancient Israel grapples with matters of identity, self, and Other. Drawing upon her experience in the fields of ethics, folklore, oral -traditional literatures, and women and gender studies, Niditch examines both universal concerns about “strangers” and the culturally-specific settings and socio-historical frames in which particular examples come to life.To study ancient Israelite self-definition and ways of viewing the Other or strangers, Niditch engages with biblical composers’ use of traditional language, recurring characterizations, and identity-rich stories that distinguish “us” from “them.” After analysing 'strange speech,' speech acts and Otherly origins, she examines numerous characters designated as 'other' in the texts, from mothers like Hagar, Rebecca and Ruth, to giants such as the Nephilim, Og of Bashan and Goliath, and the gendered otherness of hair in both women and men. Niditch finally delves into Ezra-Nehemiah, considering the implications for engagement with defining self, and the theme of identity and definitions of the author’s group, the true Israel vs. those portrayed as other.

Susan Niditch's commentary on the book of Judges pays careful attention to the literary and narrative techniques of the text and yields fresh readings of the book's difficult passages: stories of violence, ethnic conflict, and gender issues. Niditch aptly and richly conveys the theological impact and enduring significance of these stories.The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

This book is an essential resource for understanding the question of the Bible's relationship to orality. Susan Niditch offers a strong argument for the continuity of the literature of the Israelites. She helps the modern reader look at the Bible as living words, breathing life into us daily, instead of seeing the text as a foregone artifact.Volumes in the Library of Ancient Israel draw on multiple disciplines--such as archaeology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and literary criticism--to illuminate the everyday realities and social subtleties these ancient cultures experienced. This series employs sophisticated methods resulting in original contributions that depict the reality of the people behind the Hebrew Bible and interprets these insights for a wide variety of readers.

The Companion to Ancient Israel offers an innovative overview of ancient Israelite culture and history, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fields. Distinguished scholars provide original contributions that explore the tradition in all its complexity, multiplicity and diversity. A methodologically sophisticated overview of ancient Israelite culture that provides insights into  political and social history, culture, and methodologyExplores what we can say about the cultures and history of the people of Israel and Judah, but also investigates how we know what we knowPresents fresh insights, richly informed by a variety of approaches and fieldsDelves into ‘religion as lived,’ an approach that asks about the everyday lives of ordinary people and the material cultures that they construct and experienceEach essay is an original contribution to the subject