This book brings together fifteen articles representing the major thrusts of Prof. Wright's work over the last decade. They focus on three interrelated themes in the study of Early Judaism. (1) Translation. Several essays treat Jewish translation strategies as well as some of the social frameworks within which translation took place. (2) Social Location. The effort to locate texts in their social landscapes has helped to break down many traditional scholarly categories. Especially pertinent are the ways that wisdom and apocalyptic relate to each other, and he explores how specific wisdom and apocalyptic texts relate. (3) Transmission of Tradition. Several articles focus on how traditional material was shaped and framed in order to ensure its successful transmission to subsequent generations.
Essays from experts in the field of Septuagint studies The study of Septuagint offers essential insights in ancient Judaism and its efforts to formulate Jewish identity within a non-Jewish surrounding culture. This book includes the papers given at the XV Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS), held in Munich, Germany, in 2013. The first part of this book deals with questions of textual criticism. The second part is dedicated to philology. The third part underlines the increasing importance of Torah in Jewish self-definition. Features: Essays dealing with questions of textual criticism, mostly concerning the historical books and wisdom literature and ancient editions and translations Philological essays covering the historical background, studies on translation technique and lexical studies underline the necessity of both exploring general perspectives and working in detail
At first glance, it may seem strange that after more than two thousand years of biblical interpretation, there are still major disagreements among biblical scholars about what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures say and about how one is to read and understand them. Yet the range of interpretive approaches now available is the result both of the richness of the biblical texts themselves and of differences in the worldviews of the communities and individuals who have sought to make the Scriptures relevant to their own time and place. A History of Biblical Interpretation provides detailed and extensive studies of the interpretation of the Scriptures by Jewish and Christian writers throughout the ages. Written by internationally renowned scholars, this multivolume work comprehensively treats the many different methods of interpretation, the many important interpreters who have written in various eras, and the many key issues that have surfaced repeatedly over the long course of biblical interpretation. The first volume explores interpreters and their methods in the ancient period, from the very earliest stages to the time when the canons of Judaism and Christianity gained general acceptance. The second volume contains essays by fifteen noted scholars discussing major methods, movements, and interpreters in the Jewish and Christian communities from the beginning of the Middle Ages until the end of the sixteenth-century Reformation. The authors examine such themes as the variety of interpretive developments within Judaism during this period, the monumental work of Rashi and his followers, the achievements of the Carolingian era, and the later scholastic developments within the universities, beginning in the twelfth century. Included are bibliographical references for even deeper study. - Publisher.
First published in 2011, The Jewish Annotated New Testament was a groundbreaking work, bringing the New Testament's Jewish background to the attention of students, clergy, and general readers. In this new edition, eighty Jewish scholars bring together unparalleled scholarship to shed new light on the text. This thoroughly revised and greatly expanded second edition brings even more helpful information and new insights to the study of the New Testament. - Introductions to each New Testament book, containing guidance for reading and specific information about how the book relates to the Judaism of the period, have been revised and augmented, and in some cases newly written. - Annotations on the text--some revised, some new to this edition--provide verse-by-verse commentary. - The thirty essays from the first edition are thoroughly updated, and there are twenty-four new essays, on topics such as "Mary in Jewish Tradition," "Christology," and "Messianic Judaism." - For Christian readers The Jewish Annotated New Testament offers a window into the first-century world of Judaism from which the New Testament springs. There are explanations of Jewish concepts such as food laws and rabbinic argumentation. It also provides a much-needed corrective to many centuries of Christian misunderstandings of the Jewish religion. - For Jewish readers, this volume provides the chance to encounter the New Testament--a text of vast importance in Western European and American culture--with no religious agenda and with guidance from Jewish experts in theology, history, and Jewish and Christian thought. It also explains Christian practices, such as the Eucharist. The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Second Edition is an essential volume that places the New Testament writings in a context that will enlighten readers of any faith or none.
This handbook explores the formation of Christianity in Northern Africa from the second century CE until the present. It focuses on the reception of Scripture in the life of the Church, the processes of decision making, the theological and philosophical reflections of the Church Fathers in various cultural contexts, and schismatic or heretical movements. Volume one covers the first four centuries up until the time of Augustine.
The translation techniques employed by the Septuagint translators have recently awakened new interest. During the last decades a steady stream of scholarly works on the subject have appeared, but a comprehensive study is still lacking. In the present work, the author attempts to fill this need. employed by the LXX translators, with illuminating examples. While the main emphasis is on the translation technique, other important aspects of Septuagint studies are covered as well. Abundant references to modern scholarly studies on the Septuagint are given.
This book presents an analysis of translation technique, defining and measuring areas of literalness and of freedom, and discussing the evident acceptability of a non-literal approach, in both the original translation and later editorial work, to relevant communities. Because the Book of Jeremiah is so long, a quantitative analysis was valuable, showing: preservation of the sense of the Vorlage; freedom in selection of lexical equivalents even for important words such as "sin" and in making numerous additions in pursuit of precision; and a similar approach by later editors. Passages which are not represented in the translation despite their presence in the Hebrew Bible, and sometimes also in the Septuagint, are analysed, showing their value in illumination both the development of the Hebrew Bible itself from a number of earlier texts, and the precise wording of the text from which the Syriac translator worked. The strategies adopted to cope with the translation of particulary difficult Hebrew are analysed: these include taking guidance from the Septuagint, from other parts of the Hebrew Bible, and guesswork. Apart from its value to Peshitta scholars and Syriac specialists, the book is useful to biblical scholars and textual critics in general.
This pioneering anthology of Middle English prologues and other excerpts from texts written between 1280 and 1520 is one of the largest collections of vernacular literary theory from the Middle Ages yet published and the first to focus attention on English literary theory before the sixteenth century. It edits, introduces, and glosses some sixty excerpts, all of which reflect on the problems and opportunities associated with writing in the &"mother tongue&" during a period of revolutionary change for the English language. The excerpts fall into three groups, illustrating the strategies used by medieval writers to establish their cultural authority, the ways they constructed audiences and readerships, and the models they offered for the process of reading. Taken together, the excerpts show how vernacular texts reflected and contributed to the formation of class, gender, professional, and national identity. They open windows onto late medieval debates on women's and popular literacy, on the use of the vernacular for religious instruction or Bible translation, on the complex metaphorical associations contained within the idea of the vernacular, and on the cultural and political role of the &"courtly&" writing associated with Chaucer and his successors. Besides the excerpts, the book contains five essays that propose new definitions of medieval literary theory, discuss the politics of Middle English writing, the relation of medieval book production to notions of authorship, and the status of the prologue as a genre, and compare the role of the medieval vernacular to that of postcolonial literatures. The book includes a substantial glossary that constitutes the first mapping of the language and terms of Middle English literary theory. The Idea of the Vernacular will be an invaluable asset not only to Middle English survey courses but to courses in English literary and cultural history and courses on the history of literary theory.
