Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible – serie

The historical-critical method that characterizes academic biblical studies too often remains separate from approaches that stress the history of interpretation, which are employed more frequently in the area of Second Temple or Dead Sea Scrolls research. Inaugurating the new series, Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible, A More Perfect Torah explores a series of test-cases in which the two methods mutually reinforce one another.The volume brings together two studies that investigate the relationship between the composition history of the biblical text and its reception history at Qumran and in rabbinic literature. The Temple Scroll is more than the blueprint for a more perfect Temple. It also represents the attempt to create a more perfect Torah. Its techniques for doing so are the focus of part 1, entitled “Revelation Regained: The Hermeneutics of KI and ‘IM in the Temple Scroll.” This study illuminates the techniques for marking conditional clauses in ancient Near Eastern literature, biblical law, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also draws new attention to the relationship between the Temple Scroll’s use of conditionals and the manuscript’s organized spacing system for marking paragraphs.Part 2 is entitled “Reception History as a Window into Composition History: Deuteronomy’s Law of Vows as Reflected in Qoheleth and the Temple Scroll.” The law of vows in Deut 23:22–24 is difficult in both its syntax and its legal content. The difficulty is resolved once it is recognized that the law contains an interpolation that disrupts the original coherence of the law. The reception history of the law of vows in Numbers 20, Qoh 5:4–7, 11QTemple 53:11–14, and Sipre Deuteronomy confirms the hypothesis of an interpolation. Seen in this new light, the history of interpretation offers a window into the composition history of the biblical text.

Readers of texts come from all generations, from different contexts and with different agendas. This book gives a sample of what both ancient and contemporary readers have brought to the book of Ecclesiastes in the quest for illumination of the text and for their own enlightenment, often furnishing their own agenda. Debates over meaning are formed, shaped, and illuminated by the interpreters themselves. Part One looks at ancient interpreters and at their methods of approaching the text. Jewish and Christian interpreters alike sought to find meaning amongst some of the key puzzles of the book—why does the author call himself “the son of David” and appear to be Solomon when his pen name also seems to be Qoheleth? Why the contradictions in content? How did such an unorthodox book come to be canonized? How did the dualistic contemptus mundi interpretation of the vanity theme perpetuated by Jerome and others come to hold the field for so long? And how did Luther and the reformers seek to rectify that approach? These questions and others are addressed in this book, looking through the lens of past interpretation. Part Two acknowledges our increasing self-awareness of the importance of method in approaching biblical texts and turns to a sample of modern interpretations from familiar reading groups such as the ecologist, the animal theologian, the liberationist, the post-colonialist, and the feminist. It will be seen that different modern approaches often enlighten the interpretation of specific verses within Ecclesiastes and hence that no one method is a wholesale “solution” to interpretive concerns.

The book offers an up-to-date and readable introduction to the manifold literary and historical problems of biblical prophecy. Reinhard Gregor Kratz provides the reader with a clear analysis of the development of the institution of prophecy in ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Through a close reading of the prophetic corpus he demonstrates that in biblical tradition we have to distinguish between the historical and the literary prophet. The historical prophet is a representative of ancient Israelite religion while the literary prophet – as presented in the biblical books—is part of the tradition of emerging Judaism. This development from historical representative to literary figure guides the analysis and it becomes clear that the special character of biblical prophecy as encountered in the books of the Bible is the result of a long process of tradition during which older material is reworked, restructured, and applied to new situations. The book takes the distinction between the historical and the literary phenomenon of prophecy seriously and, therefore, will focus primarily on the literary tradition. This tradition will be recognized as such and should not be confused with the historical prophet and his words. After an overview of various models of interpretation of biblical prophecy, Kratz will consider first the broader historical background and the phenomenology of prophecy in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel. Then he moves on to the literary evidence of prophecy in biblical tradition and its historical context, including the earliest commentaries on prophetic books, the Pesharim from Qumran. The study concludes with an appendix that will introduce the reader to the scholarship on the prophets and provide some suggestions for further reading.

For understanding biblical Greek in context, the importance of the discoveries of papyri was recognized early in the twentieth century, while inscriptions by comparison were left unexplored. Those scholars who had intended to turn their attention to the inscriptions were delayed by their work on the papyri and by the conviction that the greater results would come from these. As a result, undue focus has been placed on papyri, and biblical Greek words have been viewed only through their lens, leading to the inference that the Greek is specifically Egyptian and vernacular. This volume widens the focus on Septuagint words by demonstrating how the inscriptions, coming from a broader geographical region than papyri and containing a wider range of registers, are a source that should not remain untouched.This work explains the current state of the study of Septuagint vocabulary and outlines the competing roles of papyri and inscriptions in its interpretation, including the limitations of focussing solely on papyri. The practical issues for a biblical scholar in dealing with inscriptions are presented and some guidance is given for those wishing to explore the resources further. Finally, examples are drawn together of how inscriptions can illuminate our understanding of Septuagint vocabulary, and thereby inform the socio-historical position of the Septuagint. The origins of apparently new words in the Septuagint, the semantic and grammatical function of words, and the geographical distribution and register all demonstrate the need for further investigation into this field.

The Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of theological inquiries and debates in Judaism and Christianity. But is there something like theology already in the Hebrew Bible itself? Is it possible to describe the literary growth of the Hebrew Bible by means of an ongoing theological debate? Answers to these questions depend on how one conceives of the category “theology.” In this book, Konrad Schmid reconstructs the development of this category, then describes and discusses biblical texts in the Hebrew Bible that are relevant to the question Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible?The book consists of two main sections. In the first, Schmid traces the notion of “theology” from its earliest use, in Greek philosophy, through the medieval period and to today. He pays close attention to “biblical theology,” particularly the different understandings of this idea as something emanating from the Hebrew Bible itself versus something that readers impose onto the biblical text. He also tracks the influence of the discipline of comparative religion on biblical theology, especially with regard to the growing division between biblical and systematic theology. In the second part, Schmid focuses specifically on “implicit” biblical theology, that is, theological reflection apparent within the Hebrew Bible itself. He provides several examples, such as the theologization of the law that resulted from inner-biblical exegesis and Jeremiah’s universal theology of history.Is There Theology in the Hebrew Bible? will serve as an important reference to all those interested in the question posed by the title. Schmid provides a nuanced answer to this question that both takes into account the convoluted history of biblical theology and lays out new ways of approaching the subject.

A lengthy history of readers’ struggles with Joel lies behind Merx’s characterization of the book as “the problem child of Old Testament exegesis, insofar as the resources utilized by interpreters thus far are entirely insufficient to dispel its darkness”. Long before Vernes posited that chapters 3–4 were a composition distinct from 1–2, Augustine voiced his perplexity about how the book constituted a unity. Many attempts to expound it as a unity have subdued the book’s tensions through problematic harmonizations. On the other hand, theories of the book’s development within the construction of a Book of the Twelve not only bar understanding the book as a whole, but also fall short of explaining its composition.In this volume, Ronald L. Troxel acknowledges the perennial problems raised by the book, but argues that taking account of the signs of its genre elucidates numerous cruxes and spotlights salient interpretive features that are infrequently discussed. Recognizing that chapter four comprises a series of late additions permits recognition of narrative markers that unite the first three chapters as a product of schriftgelehrte Prophetie, “scribal prophecy”. The book’s features align well with those of two other prophetic narratives fashioned as composite works: Jonah and Haggai. All three books are better accounted for in this way than through the prism of redactional expansion. Correlatively, the long-standing arguments against chapter 3 as the literary continuation of chapters 1–2 prove reliant on social conceptions of prophecy that are alien to schriftgelehrte Prophetie. Instead, Troxel shows Joel 3 to be the culmination of a didactic narrative meant to prepare a future generation to survive the Day of the Lord.The first chapter of Troxel’s study illuminates the persistent conundrums addressed in the history of interpretation, as well as the social contexts from which resolutions have been proposed. Chapters two and three address the book’s composite texture and narrative marks, while chapter four expounds its distinctive eschatology. The fifth chapter synthesizes these observations in a synopsis of Joel’s genre, scope, and meaning.

From the Introduction: “The book of Job does not promote silence about God because we cannot say anything about him. Otherwise, this book would never have been written. But the book of Job does bid farewell to certain types of theology—and we need not bemoan their loss: theology as the wisdom of the world projected into heaven; theology as pious reflection on a higher being that then mistakes traditional or innovative ideas about God entirely for God himself; theology that purports to communicate direct revelation from God. The book of Job distrusts and disbelieves all this to its core. Instead, it states clearly that this is not God; these are only graven images. Such fundamental criticism of all pseudo-theology is—and here we can only agree with the book of Job—not the end but the very beginning of theology.”This book is not an attempt to cover every angle and answer every question that we have about the book of Job. Instead, Konrad Schmid, in the introductory chapter, provides us with an analysis of the structure of the book that helps us to see the book as a whole. And Manfred Oeming, in the chapters that follow, provides clear snapshots of various elements of the book, including a summary of the dialogues, Job’s monologue, Elihu’s speech (“the Anti-Monologue”), Job’s encounter with God, and the destination (of Job’s journey). Between them, the two authors provide an accessible scholarly and theological approach to the book that is richly satisfying.

The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Concise History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of Israel and Judah from the late second millennium BCE to the beginning of the Roman period. Considering archaeological material as well as biblical and extrabiblical texts, Schipper argues that the history of “Israel” in the preexilic period took place mostly in the hinterland of the Levant and should be understood in the context of the Neo-Assyrian expansion. He demonstrates that events in the exilic and postexilic periods also played out differently than they are recounted in the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In contrast to previous scholarship, which focused heavily on Israel’s origins and the monarchic period, Schipper’s history gives equal attention to the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, providing confirmation that a wide variety of forms of YHWH religion existed in the Persian period and persisted into the Hellenistic age.Original and innovative, this brief history provides a new outline of the historical development of ancient Israel that will appeal to students, scholars, and lay readers who desire a concise overview.

In this volume, Witte presents three case studies on biblical theology and demonstrates how the ways of speaking and thinking about God in the Old Testament constitute the religio-historical and theological basis for the discourse on God’s acts in the person of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The theology of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament are inseparably connected, even if discrete theologies of the Old and New Testaments can be identified. The first study traces the development of the understanding of God in the Old Testament through the Hebrew divine title, El Shaddai, and one of its most important Greek equivalents, pantokrator. The use of the title El Shaddai, its ancient Near Eastern religious background, its transfer into Hellenistic Judaism, and its theological significance reveal fundamental aspects of a biblical theology that is equally indebted to comparative philology and to the history of religion. The second essay discusses justice as a central theme of the theology of the Old Testament and as an essential category in defining the relationship between God and humanity through a selection of different texts from the canon of the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. The third study offers a short literary-historical biography of Yahweh as the creator of the world, the master of history, the guarantor of justice, and the donor of wisdom. It takes into account the approach of the first essay, which presents theology as a sort of religio-historical onomastics, and reflects, on the basis of the second essay, the traditio-historical presentation of images of God and his anointed in the Old Testament as a background for theology and christology in the New Testament.

Isaiah 1–39 uses the unique term אלילים—usually translated as “idols”— more than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Using this linguistic phenomenon as a point of departure, Matthew J. Lynch reexamines the rhetorical strategies of First Isaiah, revealing a stronger monotheizing rhetoric than previously recognized.Standard accounts of Israelite religion frequently insist that monotheism reached its apex during the exile, and especially in Deutero-Isaiah. By contrast, Lynch’s study brings to light an equally potent mode of monotheizing in First Isaiah. Lynch identifies three related rhetorical tendencies that emphasize yhwh’s supreme uniqueness: a rhetoric of avoidance, referring to other deities as idols (אלילים) to avoid conferring on them the status of gods (אלוהים); a rhetoric of exaltation, emphasizing yhwh’s truly exalted status in opposition to all that which exalted itself; and a rhetoric of abasement, fully subjugating all other claimants to absolute power—whether human or divine—before the divine king.Succinctly and persuasively argued, Lynch’s book will change how biblical scholars understand the nature and development of Israelite monotheism.

In this volume, Tova Forti shows how investigation of the poetics of the animal kingdom can elucidate the effect metaphors exert on psalmodic theology. The focus herein on the faunal imagery in Psalms—the literary perception of the animals adduced and the structural and stylistic rhetorical features of the imagery—serves as a lens through which the reader can perceive the poetic dynamics and their impact upon and interaction with the psalm as a prayer.Forti pays particular attention to the contextual meaning and cultural environment of animal imagery to show how faunal images are used in the formulation and communication of didactic truths and principles regarding human behavior. These depictions can occasionally function as imitato animalis by imbuing animals with human characteristics of language, thought, and empathy, animal life in order to illustrate basic moral precepts.This volume focuses upon two principal poetical devices—refrains and secondary interpolations—in which animal imagery in the Psalms is often employed as a stage-setting device. A literary analysis of the structure of the psalms in which this faunal imagery is employed reveals the figurative and symbolic impact of this particular domain upon the poetic texture of each psalm. This methodology has diachronic consequences, demonstrating that both poetical devices may function as means of composition in the ongoing process of creating liturgy.

The Torah Unabridged is a detailed examination of legal reasoning in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the exegetical operations by which biblical laws related to intermarriage were applied to circumstances and persons that lie outside the sphere of their explicit content, this book reconstructs the ways in which laws regarding intermarriage evolved, were interpreted, and were applied across time and place.William A. Tooman argues that the “exegetical impulse” to expand upon the gaps left by laws relating to marriage in the Torah is expressed in several distinctive ways in later texts in the Hebrew Bible. Adopting a diachronic approach, Tooman examines the techniques biblical writers used in their appropriation, expansion, and manipulation of legal ideas within earlier biblical texts in order to apply the laws to more situations, circumstances, and people. Tooman’s analysis reveals that from Exodus to Ezra-Nehemiah, legal reasoning on intermarriage moved in a singular direction: toward an ever-greater restriction of marriage between Israelites/Jews and gentiles. The final chapter sums up the ways that this was accomplished, summarizing the logical and exegetical operations executed in the process of expanding the relevance of these laws, and describing the hermeneutical assumptions that motivated the process.Grounded in a detailed philological analysis of the Hebrew texts, this tightly argued monograph is an important impetus to further debate in the field. It will be welcomed by biblical scholars and by specialists in the history of law.

The Torah Unabridged is a detailed examination of legal reasoning in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the exegetical operations by which biblical laws related to intermarriage were applied to circumstances and persons that lie outside the sphere of their explicit content, this book reconstructs the ways in which laws regarding intermarriage evolved, were interpreted, and were applied across time and place.William A. Tooman argues that the “exegetical impulse” to expand upon the gaps left by laws relating to marriage in the Torah is expressed in several distinctive ways in later texts in the Hebrew Bible. Adopting a diachronic approach, Tooman examines the techniques biblical writers used in their appropriation, expansion, and manipulation of legal ideas within earlier biblical texts in order to apply the laws to more situations, circumstances, and people. Tooman’s analysis reveals that from Exodus to Ezra-Nehemiah, legal reasoning on intermarriage moved in a singular direction: toward an ever-greater restriction of marriage between Israelites/Jews and gentiles. The final chapter sums up the ways that this was accomplished, summarizing the logical and exegetical operations executed in the process of expanding the relevance of these laws, and describing the hermeneutical assumptions that motivated the process.Grounded in a detailed philological analysis of the Hebrew texts, this tightly argued monograph is an important impetus to further debate in the field. It will be welcomed by biblical scholars and by specialists in the history of law.

Over the last few decades, the field of trauma studies has shed new light on biblical texts that deal with individual and collective catastrophe. In The Language of Trauma in the Psalms, Danilo Verde advances the conversation, moving beyond the emphasis on healing that prevails in most literary trauma studies. Using the lens of cognitive linguistics and combining insights from trauma studies and redaction criticism, Verde explores how trauma is expressed linguistically in the book of Psalms, how trauma-related language was rooted in ancient Israel’s external realities, and how psalms helped define Yehud’s cultural trauma in the Persian period (539–331 BCE). Rather than assuming the psalmists’ personal experiences are reflected in these texts, Verde focuses on the linguistic strategies used to express trauma in the Psalms, especially references to the body and highly dramatic metaphors. Current analyses often approach trauma texts as tools intended to help sufferers heal. Verde contends that many group laments in the book of Psalms were transmitted not only to heal but also to wound the community, ensuring that the pain of a previous generation was not forgotten.The Language of Trauma in the Psalms shifts our understanding of trauma in biblical texts and will appeal to literary trauma scholars as well as those interested in ancient Israel.

Julius Wellhausen was a monumental figure in the field of biblical studies, but his work has been denounced as antisemitic in recent years. This book offers a nuanced view of Wellhausen’s scholarship through a critical edition and translation of one of the last doctoral dissertations by a Jew in Nazi Germany: Friedemann Philipp Boschwitz’s Julius Wellhausen: Motives and Measures of His Historiography.Boschwitz presents a deep, holistic analysis of Wellhausen's thought, examining his work on ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and formative Islam within the framework of comparative religion and cultural history. He also situates Wellhausen in the context of German intellectual history, tracing the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder on Wellhausen and Wellhausen on Friedrich Nietzsche. In addition, Paul Michael Kurtz provides incisive commentary and archival materials that highlight Boschwitz’s scholarly achievements and open new vistas onto Jewish intellectual history. Piecing together fragments from private letters and official documents, Kurtz shows the formidable challenges Boschwitz faced as a Jewish scholar under a discriminatory political and academic regime. The correspondence also reveals Boschwitz’s rich social life and connections with major émigré thinkers such as Salo Baron, Leo Strauss, and Karl Löwith. Boschwitz on Wellhausen brings together a fascinating wealth of published and unpublished material to tell an original story of great importance to scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran as well as those interested in German Judaism and modern philosophy.