This work criticizes the terms "Pseudepigraphy" and "Rewritten Bible", which presuppose conceptions of textual fidelity foreign to ancient Judaism. It develops the concept of a discourse whose creativity and authority depend on repeated returns to the exemplary figure of a founder.
This volume, a tribute to John J. Collins by his friends, colleagues, and students, includes essays on the wide range of interests that have occupied John Collins’s distinguished career. Topics range from the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism and beyond into early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. The contributions deal with issues of text and interpretation, history and historiography, philology and archaeology, and more. The breadth of the volume is matched only by the breadth of John Collins’s own work.
Scholars have shown renewed interest in the Book of Tobit since fragments of the text were found at Qumran. However, the wisdom instructions of Tobit 4 have remained largely ignored. The present study provides an extensive treatment of this important section, reading Tobit's wisdom discourse as a vital component in the literary expression of the author and as a strong indication of the significant role of the sapiential tradition in the world of Diaspora living. In the context of Second Temple Judaism, Tobit's wisdom discourse is part of an essential avenue for shaping identity and creating a distinct ethos for those outside the land.
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 contains the papers presented at the 2017 meeting of the SBL Program Unit on Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature in Boston, MA. The theme of the sessions was the interpretation of Torah in deuterocanonical literature. The contributions cover a variety of concepts and themes related to Torah and trace these through the Hebrew Bible, into the Septuagintal deuterocanonical books and other relevant and cognate literature.
This volume draws together eleven essays by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Greco-Roman religion and early Judaism, to address the ways that conceptions of identity and otherness shape the interpretation of biblical and other religiously authoritative texts. The contributions explore how interpreters of scriptural texts regularly assume or assert an identification between their own communities and those described in the text, while ignoring the cultural, social, and religious differences between themselves and the text's earliest audiences. Comparing a range of examples, these essays address varying ways in which social identity has shaped the historical contexts, implied audiences, rhetorical shaping, redactional development, literary appropriation, and reception history of particular texts over time. Together, they open up new avenues for studying the relations between social identity, scriptural interpretation, and religious authority.
This book follows a reader’s logic of association through a series of overlapping constructs in biblical prescription of things prized and lofty—holy hair, unblemished beasts, sacred edibles, wholesome wombs, pristine precincts, esteemed ethnicities and, as unlikely as it seems, dismembered members. Thoroughly intersectional in disposition, Bernon Lee uncovers not just the precariousness of the contrived dichotomies through the identity-building sacred texts, but also the complexities and contentions of a would-be decolonizing hermeneutic bristling with its own tensions and temptations. This volume is an intertextual odyssey through law and ritual from impassioned positions fraught with ambivalence, reticence, and anxiety.
VOLUME ONE: Biblical Covenantalism in Torah: Judaism, Covenant Nomism, and Atonement. 330 pages. VOLUME TWO: Biblical Covenantalism in Prophets, Psalms, Early Judaism, and Gospels: Judaism, Covenant Nomism, and Kingdom Hope. 264 pages. VOLUME THREE: Biblical Covenantalism in New Testament Epistles: Engagement of the New Perspective and New Covenant Atonement. 302 pages. Biblical covenantalism is the backbone of the Old Testament and the root of salvation and ethics. This book offers a nuanced exploration of biblical theology with an emphasis on how biblical covenants set a complex trajectory for Israel's covenant relationships, salvation, ethics, and eschatology. Suzerainty treaty form positions the Mosaic covenant in a Deuteronomistic framework that elects Israel and rewards them with blessings based upon obedience to the stipulations of the covenant within which God has embraced them. Such a framework fits within covenant nomism (law), especially considering the majority of the stipulations' similarity to ancient Near Eastern law codes. This perspective deepens awareness of biblical trajectory in interaction with early Jewish and Christian sources. Jewish metaphors inform Old Testament, rabbinic, and Messianic atonement. This view positions itself between the New Perspective and traditional Reformation views as well as Covenant theology and Dispensationalism, even as it distances itself from American Covenantalism, Theonomy, Natural law, and the prayer of Jabez. The biblical and second temple Jewish material provides a nuanced new perspective of Judaism. From this same covenantal root, the Biblical covenants ground an eschatological hope for the nation of Israel.
VOLUME ONE: Biblical Covenantalism in Torah: Judaism, Covenant Nomism, and Atonement VOLUME TWO: Biblical Covenantalism in Prophets, Psalms, Early Judaism, and Gospels: Judaism, Covenant Nomism, and Kingdom Hope VOLUME THREE: Biblical Covenantalism in New Testament Epistles: Engagement of the New Perspective and New Covenant Atonement Biblical covenantalism is the backbone of the Old Testament and the root of salvation and ethics. This book offers a nuanced exploration of biblical theology with an emphasis on how biblical covenants set a complex trajectory for Israel’s covenant relationships, salvation, ethics, and eschatology. Suzerainty treaty form positions the Mosaic covenant in a Deuteronomistic framework that elects Israel and rewards them with blessings based upon obedience to the stipulations of the covenant within which God has embraced them. Such a framework fits within covenant nomism (law), especially considering the majority of the stipulations’ similarity to ancient Near Eastern law codes. This perspective deepens awareness of biblical trajectory in interaction with early Jewish and Christian sources. Jewish metaphors inform Old Testament, rabbinic, and Messianic atonement. This view positions itself between the New Perspective and traditional Reformation views as well as Covenant theology and Dispensationalism, even as it distances itself from American Covenantalism, Theonomy, Natural law, and the prayer of Jabez. The biblical and second temple Jewish material provides a nuanced new perspective of Judaism. From this same covenantal root, the Biblical covenants ground an eschatological hope for the nation of Israel.