Text as Revelation analyses the shift of revelatory experiences from oral to written that is described in ancient Jewish literature, including rabbinic texts. The individual essays seek to understand how, why, and for whom texts became the locus of revelation. While the majority of the contributors analyze ancient Jewish literature for depictions of oral and written revelation, such as the Hebrew Bible and the literature of the Second Temple era, a number of articles also investigate textualization of revelation in cognate cultures, analyzing Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek sources. With subjects ranging from Ancient Egyptian and Sibylline oracles to Hellenistic writings and the books of Isaiah, Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, the studies in this volume bring together established and new voices reflecting on the issues raised by the interplay between writing and (divinatory) revelation.
The Brill Jubilee volumes are being prepared to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first scroll discoveries in Qumran Cave I. They will contain a comprehensive set of cutting-edge articles on topics that are archeological, historical, literary, sociological, or theological in character. The papers are being written by an international group of scholars who are actively engaged in the scrolls research today and are able to incorporate all of the Qumran evidence into their studies.
The authors have asked of the documents of the Dead Sea Library found at Qumran a simple question: how does each participate in a single Judaic religious system? They propose a reading of the Scrolls from the hypothesis that all of them, in one way or another, rest upon one, authoritative, Judaism. Their analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls describes how diverse writings hold together to make a single coherent statement, to stand for a religious system possessed of integrity and wisdom. This account of the world view of Judaism covers principal questions addressed to any Judaic religious system: the doctrine of God, the Torah, and matters of history, wisdom, and mysticism. When it comes to the way of life, they include the evidence of the material culture of the community as well as practical matters of religious conduct. How the community’s world view comes to realization is suggested by its treatment of the calendar, by its provision of laws that concern women, by questions of cultic and secular purity, by its piety and forms of worship and views of Temple, sacrifice, and the like. Finally, with the community’s definition of ‘Israel’ and of itself in relationship to ‘Israel’, inclusive of Israelites excluded from this ‘Israel’, an account is gained of the theory of who and what is Israel that animates the particular Judaism represented in these writings.
Much study has taken place of the prophetic and apocalyptic writings in recent decades, but the relationship between the two has been little explored. A major explicit debate on the question is very much needed and is now provided. This collection of essays addresses the subject from a variety of points of view, including studies on the issues of definitions, ancient Near Eastern "prophecies", social anthropology and modern apocalyptic movements. In the introduction, Lester Grabbe argues that many scholars operate with subconscious assumptions about how apocalyptic writings relate to the prophetic writings, but that many of these assumptions now need to be questioned in the light of the essays in this volume. Such a comprehensive attempt to tackle the main theoretical issues arising from the study of the prophetic and the apocalyptic has not been attempted for some time. This volume brings fresh questions and insights that both specialists and students will want to consider.
From Jesus to His First Followers examines to what extent early Christian groups were in continuity or discontinuity with respect to Jesus. Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce concentrate on the transformation of religious practices. Their anthropological-historical analysis focuses on the relations between discipleship and households, on the models of contact with the supernatural world, and on cohabitation among distinct religious groups. The book highlights how Matthew uses non-Jewish instruments of legitimation, John reformulates religious experiences through symbolized domestic slavery, Paul adopts a religious practice diffused in Roman-Hellenistic environments. The book reconstructs the map of early Christian groups in the Land of Israel and explains their divergences on the basis of an original theory of the local origin of Gospels’ information.
To better understand the phenomenon of Literature in the Second Degree – in Jewish and Biblical studies often characterized as parabiblical or Rewritten Bible – the current volume applies the theories of Gerard Genette to ancient and medieval literature from various cultures. Literature in the Second Degree realigns earlier (authoritative) texts to the dynamics of developing cultures and their changing cultural memories. In the case of authoritative base texts, Literature in the Second Degree reaffirms their authority by way of interpretative actualization. In the case of non-authoritative base texts it replaces them to effect cultural forgetting. Far from being just literary forgery (pseudepigraphy), Literature in the Second Degree has an important function in the development of the ancient and medieval cultures.
This volume deals with the primaeval history in the Book of Jubilees, an interpretative rewriting of the biblical narratives of Genesis through Exodus 19, written in the second century BCE. It contains a close comparison of Genesis 1-11 and Jubilees 2-10, in order to get a clear picture of the specific way the biblical story was rewritten. Each chapter offers an overall comparison of the parallel pericopes in Genesis and Jubilees, with special attention to the structure of the passages. It then gives a synoptic overview of the text of the parallel passages, along with a classification (e.g., addition, omission, variation, rearrangement), and analysis of the dissimilarities. The work is important for those interested in the history of biblical interpretation, in post-biblical Jewish literature and in intertexuality.
Beginning with the opening of Mishnah Kiddushin, 'A woman is acquired (in marriage)...by money, by document, or by sexual intercourse, ' and using other examples of commercial language applied to marriage across the rabbinic canon, this work demonstrates that rabbis used information from the realm of property and commercial transactions to structure their understanding and reasoning about marriage and gender relations through a metaphor of women as ownable and marriage as a purchase or acquisition
Finny Philip inquires into Paul's initial thoughts on the Holy Spirit. Paul's conviction that he was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles and that God bestowed the Spirit upon the Gentiles apart from Torah obedience is the basis for any inquiry on this subject. Central to Philip's argument is Paul's conviction that God graciously endowed his Gentile converts with the gift of the Spirit, an understanding that is rooted primarily in his conversion experience and secondarily in his experience with and as a missionary of the Hellenistic community in Antioch. In examining the range of expectations of the Spirit that were present in both Hebrew scripture and in the wider Jewish literature, the author comes to the conclusion that such a concept is rare, and that it is usually the covenant community to which the promise of the Spirit is given. Furthermore, Paul's own pre-Christian convictions about the Spirit, a result of his own self-perception as a Pharisee and persecutor of the church, display continuity between his thought patterns and those of Second Temple Judaism. Paul's Damascus experience was an experience of the Spirit. His experience of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 3:1-4:6) provided him with the belief that there was now a new relationship with God, which was possible through the sphere of the Spirit. In addition, Paul was influenced by the Hellenists, whose theological beliefs included the perception of the church as the eschatological temple in which the Spirit of God is the manifest presence of God. It is in these notions that one may trace the origins of Paul's thoughts on the Holy Spirit.