Esther, Judith, Tobit, Jonah, Ruth

Esther, Judith, Tobit, Jonah, Ruth

Author: John F. Craghan

Publisher:

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780894532498

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The five biblical books treated in this volume are stories, i.e., narratives which seek to arouse tension and then resolve it. However, they are more than ancient stories of God and humans. They are our stories as well. They challenge us to uncover the basic human experiences of life and death, success and failure, hope and despair. They urge us to gain new perspectives and regain lost values. - p. 1.


Ruth, Jonah, Esther

Ruth, Jonah, Esther

Author: Eugene F. Roop

Publisher: MennoMedia, Inc.

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0836197992

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In three of the Bible’s most compelling short stories, Eugene F. Roop draws attention to the distinctive narrative characteristics of these magnificent dramas. Such scrutiny opens new vistas of interpretation that can undergird the faith, life, and neighborly relations of the church. As we enter the world of these struggles and events, we will experience in the stories sorrow and laughter, hope and loyalty, and God’s mercy and grace.


Jonah's World

Jonah's World

Author: Lowell K. Handy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-05

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1317491262

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The story of Jonah, often read as a simple children's story, is a multifaceted and elaborate narrative with serious intent. Treating the biblical book as a fictitious story based on real locations and recognizable persons, 'Jonah's World' examines the background to the story and draws on social science approaches to describe its imaginative world. The book explores the geography, theology, myth, human characters, natural landscape, and the ideology behind the story to uncover a vision of reality shaped by literary technique. Jonah's World will be invaluable to students and scholars seeking a new approach to the reading of this colourful text.


Jonah

Jonah

Author: Susan Niditch

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2023-01-03

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1506486835

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In the new Hermeneia volume, the Jonah translation and commentary, renowned biblical scholar Susan Niditch encourages the reader to investigate challenging questions about ancient conceptions of personal religious identity. Jonah's story is treated as a complex reflection upon the heavy matters of life and death, good and evil, and human and divine relations. The narrative probes an individual's relationship with a demanding deity, considers vexing cultural issues of "us versus them," and examines the role of Israel's god in a universal and international context. The author examines the ways in which Jonah prods readers to contemplate these fundamental issues concerning group- and self-definition. In her technical study of Jonah's language, style, structure, content, and context, Niditch examines the text through the comparative lens of international folklore. The thread of appropriations of Jonah by post-biblical writers and artists is explored, and special attention is paid to rabbinic midrash, medieval Jewish manuscript illuminations, and Christian art of late antiquity. And in the tradition of Hermeneia volumes, the commentary evaluates and incorporates the insights of a long legacy of scholars who have explored this venerable text from varied perspectives.


Ruth

Ruth

Author: André Lacocque

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9780800695156

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This volume provides a readable introduction to the narrative book of Ruth appropriate for the student, pastor, and scholar. LaCocque combines historical, literary, feminist, and liberationist approaches in an engaging synthesis. He argues that the book was written in the post-exilic period and that the author was a woman. Countering the fears and xenophobia of many in Jerusalem, the biblical author employed the notion of h.esed (kindness, loyalty, steadfast love), which transcends any national boundaries. LaCocque focuses on redemption and levirate marriage as the two legal issues that recur throughout the text of Ruth. Ruth comes from the despised people of Moab but becomes a model for Israel. Boaz, converted to the model of steadfast love, becomes both redeemer and levir for Ruth and thus fulfills the Torah. In the conclusion to his study, the author sketches some parallels with Jesus' hermeneutics of the Law as well as postmodern problems and solutions.


Judith

Judith

Author: Lawrence M. Wills

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 1506463827

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Judith tells the story of a beautiful Jewish woman who enters the tent of an invading general, gets him drunk, and then slices off his head, thus saving her village and Jerusalem. This short novella was somewhat surprisingly included in the early Christian versions of the Old Testament and has played an important role in the Western tradition ever since. This commentary provides a detailed analysis of the text's composition and its meaning in its original historical context, and thoroughly surveys the history of Judith scholarship. Lawrence M. Wills not only considers Judith's relation to earlier biblical texts--how the author played upon previous biblical motifs and interpreted important biblical passages--but also addresses the rise of Judith and other Jewish novellas in the context of ancient Near Eastern and Greek literature, as well as their relation to cross-cultural folk motifs. Because of the popularity of Judith in art and culture, this volume also addresses the book's history of interpretation in paintings, sculpture, music, drama, and literature. A number of images of artistic depictions of Judith are included and discussed in detail.


The Eschatological Role of the Jerusalem Temple: An Examination of the Jewish Writings Dating from 586 BCE to 70 CE

The Eschatological Role of the Jerusalem Temple: An Examination of the Jewish Writings Dating from 586 BCE to 70 CE

Author: Eric W. Baker

Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)

Published: 2015-06

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 3954894270

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This research aims to investigate the role or roles of the physical Jerusalem temple within the second temple Jewish writings in terms of whether the physical temple has any role to play in relation to the pivot point in eschatology. The pivot point or fulcrum in time refers to the end of the exile and perhaps the beginning of the eschaton. The exile may be theological, but many second temple Jewish texts address the physical gathering of the children of Israel to the land of Israel (i.e., from physical exile, even if the text also addresses a theological exile), thus, making the return a complete ingathering of the children of Israel. The passages of these ancient texts have been analysed before, but never with this lens. Looking to see if there is any role the Jerusalem Temple performs in expected eschatological events will at least allow an answer to be given, which is better than never asking the question in the first place, which has been the case until now. This study produces results as the Jerusalem Temple has always been a place of great expectations.


Congress Volume Paris 1992

Congress Volume Paris 1992

Author: J.A. Emerton

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-09-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9004275851

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The twenty articles collected in this volume cover a wide range of subjects concerned with the Old Testament: religion (the divine name Shaddai; dominant religious ideas between 1500 and 600 B.C.; exclusiveness; the kingship of God), The Pentateuch (Genesis xviiii-xix; Og's iron bed; laws in Deuteronomy and Middle Assyrian laws; the Pentateuch, The Deuteronomist and Spinoza), the historical books, history and archaeology (Ugarit and Israelite origins; Arameans; the system of the twelve tribes of Israel; the text of the historical books; 1 Kings xiii; places for women in Israelite cities), the prophetical books (Amos and Hosea; Isaiah), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Women in Ecclesiasticus and Judith; the origin of evil in apocalyptic and the Dead Sea Scrolls), and literary conventions (the explicit and the implicit; proleptic summaries). The articles (in English, French or German) were written by scholars with varying religious backgrounds from various countries, and were originally read at a Congress in Paris of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament in 1992.


The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality

The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality

Author: William Loader

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2011-03-09

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 0802866662

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The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality is the third of five volumes by William Loader exploring attitudes toward sexuality in Judaism and Christianity during the Greco-Roman era. In this volume Loader investigates in detail a large, diverse collection of more than forty Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings and fragments composed between the third century b.c.e. and the end of the first century c.e. Judith, Tobit, 2 Enoch, Susannah these and many other writings reveal a complex and fascinating amalgam of attitudes and mores related to sexuality in early Jewish culture. Loader analyzes each book or fragment in its own literary context and draws out significant trends and themes that run through the entire corpus, offering a rich smorgasbord of reflection on sexuality during that period.