In Delicious Prose: Reading the Tale of Tobit with Food and Drink, Naomi S.S. Jacobs explores how the numerous references to food, drink, and their consumption within The Book of Tobit help tell its story, promote righteous deeds and encourage resistance against a hostile dominant culture. Jacobs’ commentary includes up-to-date analyses of issues of translation, text-criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, and issues of class and gender. Jacobs situates Tobit within a wide range of ancient writings sacred to Jews and Christians as well as writings and customs from the Ancient Near East, Ugarit, Greece, Rome, including a treasure trove of information about ancient foodways and medicine.
Blindness by bird excrement, seven husbands murdered by a love-sick demon, a father with the corpses of his sons-in-law interred in the backyard, and a magical fish. These farcical elements make the book of Tobit a striking work of humorous fiction in a long Jewish tradition of storytelling. But it is more than just an entertaining read. We might well laugh, but we cannot laugh too hard, for we also sympathize with the characters’ sincere struggles to understand God’s plan for their lives. This commentary considers the book of Tobit through a specifically feminist lens, discoursing on topics fundamental to the human experience in the story, such as grief, death, family relationships, belonging to a minority community, disability issues, and contending with why bad things happen to good people.
This volume explores the fundamentals of intertextual methodology and summarizes recent scholarship on studies of intertextuality in the deuterocanonical books. The essays engage in comparison and analysis of text groups and motifs between canonical, deuterocanonical and non-biblical texts. Moreover, the book pays close attention to non-literary relationships between different traditions, a new feature of research in intertextuality.
Previous scholars have largely approached Wisdom and Torah in the Second Temple Period through a type of reception history, whereby the two concepts have been understood as signifiers of independent, earlier “biblical” streams of tradition that later came together in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, largely under the process of a so-called “torahization” of wisdom. Recent studies critiquing the nature of wisdom and wisdom literature as operative categories for understanding scribal cultures in early Judaism, as well as newer approaches to conceptualizing Torah and authorizing-compositional practices related to the Pentateuchal texts, however, have challenged the foundations on which the previous models of Wisdom and Torah rested. This volume, therefore, brings together several essays that aim to reexamine and rethink the ways we can describe the developments of texts categorized as “Wisdom” that proliferated during the Second Temple Period and whose contents point to an engagement with a “Torah” discourse. By asking anew the question of whether “Wisdom” was transformed by/into “Torah” during this period, this volume offers reformulations on the discursive space between Wisdom and Torah through analyzing new identifications, confluences, and transformations.
The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha addresses the Old Testament Apocrypha, known to be important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches, non-canonical for other churches, and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, essays focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook acts as an authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time carves out future directions of study. This Handbook offers an overview of the various Apocrypha and relevant topics related to them by presenting updated research on each individual apocryphal text in historical context, from the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods to the early Roman era. The essays provided here examine the place of the Apocrypha in the context of Early Judaism, the relationship between the Apocrypha and texts that came to be canonized, the relationship between the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, Qumran, the Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, as well as their reception history in the Western world. Several chapters address overarching themes, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, theology and ethics, gender and the role of women, and sexual ethics.
The papers of the 12th Comenius Conference titled »Imago Dei« (20–23 April 2022, Pápa Reformed Theological Seminary, Hungary) discussed especially the question what it means to be human. Are we just biological beings, not substantially different from other living beings? Or are we created in the image of God, having a special value and dignity over all creatures? The special place of humankind in creation is often recognized in the ability of (abstract) thinking, speaking, creativity. However, can rationality define humans and set them apart from other creatures? How can we communicate the rule of God, or the responsibility and accountability of humankind toward the Creator and the people of modern ages? [Imago Dei. Die zwölfte Comenius-Konferenz] In den Vorträgen der 12. Comenius-Konferenz mit dem Titel "Imago Dei" (20.–23. April 2022, Reformiertes Theologisches Seminar Pápa, Ungarn) ging es insbesondere um die Frage, was es bedeutet, ein Mensch zu sein. Sind wir nur biologische Wesen, die sich nicht wesentlich von anderen Lebewesen unterscheiden? Oder sind wir nach dem Bilde Gottes geschaffen und haben gegenüber allen Geschöpfen einen besonderen Wert und eine besondere Würde? Die besondere Stellung des Menschen in der Schöpfung wird oft in der Fähigkeit zum (abstrakten) Denken, Sprechen und zur Kreativität erkannt. Kann Rationalität jedoch den Menschen definieren und ihn von anderen Lebewesen unterscheiden? Wie können wir die Herrschaft Gottes oder die Verantwortung und Rechenschaftspflicht der Menschheit gegenüber dem Schöpfer und den Menschen der Moderne vermitteln?
This book is an introduction to the Apocrypha and related literature, written for a non-specialist audience. Each chapter focuses on a specific book, examining its core themes and ideas, the cultural and historical context of its composition, and its later reception. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the Apocrypha can benefit from reading this book.
This volume presents a range of methodologically innovative treatments on ritual action in the Hebrew Bible. They treat a diverse range of ritual phenomena, including space, blessings and oath-taking, from the world of ancient Israel and Judah. The introduction engages with the dominant scholarly models drawn from ritual theory, and the volume explores their applicability to ancient textual material such as the Hebrew Bible. The chapters reflect high-level specialized engagement with specific ritual phenomena through the lens of appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches.
An ambitious introduction to the Apocrypha that encourages readers to reimagine what "canon" really means Challenging the way Christian and non-Christian readers think about the Apocrypha, this is an ambitious introduction to the deuterocanonical texts of the Christian Old Testaments. Lawrence Wills introduces these texts in their original Jewish environment while addressing the very different roles they had in various Christian canons. Though often relegated to a lesser role, a sort of "Bible-Lite," these texts deserve renewed attention, and this book shows how they hold more interest for both ancient and contemporary communities than previously thought.
A meticulous exploration of the reception history of Jonah in all its facets Jonah through the Centuries is a systematic examination of the reception history of the book of Jonah, long-recognized for its numerous theological implications and diverse interpretations. The first book of its kind written in English, this singular volume provides a lucid and coherent commentary on the most influential re-readings of Jonah in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular traditions. Author Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer progresses slowly through the book of Jonah verse-by-verse—even word-by-word through key verses such as Jonah 1:1 and 2:1—to offer readers deep insight into the many and multifaceted interpretations of Jonah from early Jewish readings to modern literary retellings. Structured thematically rather than strictly chronologically, the text begins with the earliest interpretation and follows its trendline all the way through to modern times before turning to the next-oldest interpretation. The commentary covers a broad range of retellings in many languages and in various media including commentaries, sermons, prose, poetry, theatrical drama, art, and music. Throughout the text, the author demonstrates how all these retellings ultimately originate within the biblical text itself and highlights how many of the interpretations are fueled and influenced by the interpreter's religious background, cultural assumptions, and their preconceived notions of what the text should say. Discusses how retellings of Jonah ultimately originate within the text's theological or literary ambiguities, choice of words, or syntactical construction Explains how cross-cultural interchanges between Jews, Christians, and Muslims at different points throughout the centuries influenced the reception of Jonah Highlights how several retellings form clusters according to the interpreters' religious affiliations Covers various interpretations of both often-cited and lesser-known verses from the book of Jonah Interacts with an international range of literary retellings of the book of Jonah, offered in English translation Jonah through the Centuries is an invaluable resource for educated clergy, undergraduate and graduate students in both seminaries and universities, scholars and academics, and general readers with interest in the reception of biblical texts in literature, art, and music.
