Biblical Literature – serie

Brennan W. Breed claims that biblical interpretation should focus on the shifting capacities of the text, viewing it as a dynamic process rather than a static product. Rather than seeking to determine the original text and its meaning, Breed proposes that scholars approach the production, transmission, and interpretation of the biblical text as interwoven elements of its overarching reception history. Grounded in the insights of contemporary literary theory, this approach alters the framing questions of interpretation from "What does this text mean?" to "What can this text do?"

Yitzhak Berger advances a distinctive and markedly original interpretation of the biblical book of Jonah that resolves many of the ambiguities in the text. Berger contends that the Jonah text pulls from many inner-biblical connections, especially ones relating to the Garden of Eden. These connections provide a foundation for Berger's reading of the story, which attributes multiple layers of meaning to this carefully crafted biblical book. Focusing on Jonah's futile quest and his profoundly troubled response to God's view of the sins of humanity, Berger shows how the book paints Jonah as a pacifist no less than as a moralist.

The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge reconstructs in carefully researched detail the worldview of the ancient Israelites writers responsible for the Hebrew Bible. What was the role of God in their lives? How did they see the relationship between God, nature, and themselves? Contrary to prevailing scholarly understanding, Robert Kawashima argues that the ancient Israelites saw God in a radically different way than the peoples around them. God no longer interconnected everything—humans, nature—but became seen as sharply separated from nature.Elegantly written and powerfully argued, The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge is essential reading for anyone wanting to grasp the Hebrew Bible and the ancient world that gave rise to it.

The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge reconstructs in carefully researched detail the worldview of the ancient Israelites writers responsible for the Hebrew Bible. What was the role of God in their lives? How did they see the relationship between God, nature, and themselves? Contrary to prevailing scholarly understanding, Robert Kawashima argues that the ancient Israelites saw God in a radically different way than the peoples around them. God no longer interconnected everything—humans, nature—but became seen as sharply separated from nature.Elegantly written and powerfully argued, The Archaeology of Ancient Israelite Knowledge is essential reading for anyone wanting to grasp the Hebrew Bible and the ancient world that gave rise to it.

The Invention of Dialogue in the Bible is an examination of the Bible's use of dialogue, a feature of literary writing often seen in prose, drama, and verse. Perhaps best known for its use in novels, it reflects characters' temperaments, social and educational backgrounds, their psychology, and their relationships with their interlocutors—and its use is rarely acknowledged within the narratives of the Bible.Comparing a wide range of dialogue specimens in the Hebrew Bible with examples from the works of writers such as Henry Fielding, George Eliot, Henry James, and E. M. Forster, author Robert Alter demonstrates that all the features we attribute to the dialogue in novels are also present in that of the Bible. Alter speculates that the principal reason for this innovation is the fact that the Bible's narratives were composed not orally, nor in verse, but in prose. While verse's formal requirements do not allow the flexibility that is crucial for novelistic dialogue, prose allows a writer to manipulate language and reshape syntax to reflect the character of the speakers, their relationships, and the narrative moment. An insightful look into one of Western culture's most important texts, The Invention of Dialogue in the Bible will be a useful resource for anyone studying the Bible, religion, literature, or narratology.

"This . . . is a brilliant work." —Choice"[Sternberg] has written a very important book, both for his comprehensiveness and for the clearly-avowed faith stance from which he understands and interprets the strategies of the biblical narratives. . . . a superb overview . . . " —Theological Studies" . . . rated very highly indeed. It is a book to read and then reread." —Modern Language Review" . . . Sternberg has accomplished an enormous task, enriching our understanding of the theoretical basis of biblical narrative and giving us insight into a remarkable number of particular texts." —Journal of the American Academy of Religion" . . . an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work because it shows, more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work—a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and successful narrative poetics." —Adele Berlin, Prooftexts

" . . . an important contribution to current literary concerns with the ideologies of texts . . . " —Society of Old Testament Study Book List" . . . she points the way into as yet little-explored territory, broadly engaging literary theory as well as ideological criticism . . . she moves beyond both narrowly historical and exclusively text-centered criticism . . . " —Theology Today" . . . Bal has given us both a coruscating feminist critique of biblical scholarship and a fund of provocative exegetical insights . . . required reading for anyone who wants to know where serious biblical scholarship is heading." —Shofar

"In this almost painfully beautiful book . . . Fishbane . . . explores the question of the kind of canon, privileged status, or Logos, the Torah actually has for the post-modern Western Jew. " —Theology Today"A book well worth reading." —The Jerusalem Post"This wonderful volume documents the intellectual and spiritual odyssey of one of North America's foremost Jewish biblical scholars." —Shofar

"[Polzin's] book . . . will profoundly affect biblical scholarship for at least a generation." —Frank Kermode"[A] suggestive and rich book, written in a clear and witty style." —Marc Z. Brettler, The Journal of Religion"Literary commentary at its best." —Adele Berlin

" . . . a superb example of modern Orthodox Jewish biblical interpretation." —Interpretation"This detailed and intriguing work represents years of thought and meticulous analysis as well as a fresh reading of several familiar prophetic narratives found in the OT." —The Catholic Biblical Quarterly". . . this book contains well-argued and thoughtful literary readings . . . Simon is thoroughly versed in the secondary literature but has managed to write a volume accessible to both scholars and informed general readers . . ." —ChoiceNoted biblical scholar Uriel Simon undertakes a systematic study of prophetic narratives in the Bible. He focuses on seven stories (including Samuel's call to prophecy, Saul at Endor, and David and Bathsheba), analyzing their form and structure, their rhetorical devices, their descriptions of character and motive, their narrative techniques—in short, on the ways in which the stories are told.

". . . [a] brilliant study . . . a valuable addition to the literature on the Psalms." —Indiana University Jewish Studies Program"A superbly interesting book on the Psalms. Levine understands the relationship between literary and religious questions and uses an impressive array of tools to get at them. His sophisticated methods of reading are presented in clear and often elegant writing." —Arthur Green, Brandeis University" . . . offers some remarkable new angles on familiar material. Literary and religious insights are not often woven together so closely as they are here." —Theological Book Review "The arrival of Herbert Levine's Sing Unto God a New Song came as both a surprise and a pleasure. It is full of absorbing insights. . . . This is a rich book which is concerned with not only the theory but also the practice of reading the same psalms in several different ways." —Church Times"This reading of the Psalms, from the twin perspectives of poetry and ritual, is quite an achievement: it is deeply Jewish and religious while, at the same time, profoundly scholarly." —Journal for the Study of the Old TestamentDrawing on a variety of critical perspectives, Herbert Levine offers revelatory readings of one of the most familiar and best loved books of the Bible.

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

" . . . brilliant . . . [Polzin's] splendid work deserves consideration by all serious students of 2 Samuel." —The Catholic Biblical QuarterlyThe figure of David is the focus of Polzin's provocative new reading of 2 Samuel. Polzin makes a strong case for a complex yet coherent picture of the monarchy within Israelite theology as he demonstrates the literary artfulness and ideological sophistication of the Deuteronomic History.

In From Metaphysics to Midrash, Shaul Magid explores the exegetical tradition of Isaac Luria and his followers within the historical context in 16th-century Safed, a unique community that brought practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into close contact with one another. Luria's scripture became a theater in which kabbalists redrew boundaries of difference in areas of ethnicity, gender, and the human relation to the divine. Magid investigates how cultural influences altered scriptural exegesis of Lurianic Kabbala in its philosophical, hermeneutical, and historical perspectives. He suggests that Luria and his followers were far from cloistered. They used their considerable skills to weigh in on important matters of the day, offering, at times, some surprising solutions to perennial theological problems.