Jeon & Jonker (eds.), Chronicles and the Priestly Literature of the Hebrew Bible (De Gruyter open access)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Chronicles and the Priestly Literature of the Hebrew Bible

Funded by: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
Edited by: Jaeyoung Jeon and Louis C. Jonker

Volume 528 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110707014

Hardcover £79.00

eBook
Published: November 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110707014

Hardcover
Published: November 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110706598

About this book

Open Access

The study of the Books of Chronicles has focused in the past mainly on its literary relationship to Historical Books such as Samuel and Kings. Less attention was payed to its possible relationships to the priestly literature. Against this backdrop, this volume aims to examine the literary and socio-historical relationship between the Books of Chronicles and the priestly literature (in the Pentateuch and in Ezekiel).

Since Chronicles and Pentateuch (and also Ezekiel) studies have been regarded as separate fields of study, we invited experts from both fields in order to open a space for fruitful discussions with each other. The contributions deal with connections and interactions between specific texts, ideas, and socio-historical contexts of the literary works, as well as with broad observations of the relationship between them.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Bledsoe, The Wisdom of the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar (Brill)

NEW BOOK FROM BRILL:

The Wisdom of the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar

Unravelling a Discourse of Uncertainty and Distress

Series: Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume: 199

Author: Seth Bledsoe

This book offers fresh readings of the Aramaic book of Ahiqar, an oft underappreciated ancient wisdom text. In undertaking a comprehensive literary analysis, incorporating both the drama and the sayings together, Bledsoe shows that Ahiqar’s didactic impulse is founded on a sense of uncertainty about life, offering advice for those in times of distress, much like the titular character himself. While Ahiqar shares many features with instructional literature like Proverbs, the ambiguous cosmic and social order imagined in the text resonate more strongly with the likes of Qoheleth or Job. Bledsoe also takes seriously the Elephantine context, suggesting that the social and political ethic evinced by the work would have resonated strongly with the Judean community in Achaemenid Egypt.

Copyright Year: 2022

Prices from (excl. VAT): €138.00 / $166.00

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-47312-6
Publication Date: 25 Oct 2021

Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-47311-9v Publication Date: 08 Dec 2021

The Wisdom of the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar. Unravelling a Discourse of Uncertainty and Distress.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Moore, Literary Depictions of the Scribal Profession in the Story of Ahiqar and Jeremiah 36 (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

Literary Depictions of the Scribal Profession in the Story of Ahiqar and Jeremiah 36

James D. Moore

Volume 541 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753042

PDF & EPUB £79.00
Hardcover £79.00

eBook
Published: December 6, 2021
ISBN: 9783110753042

Hardcover
Published: December 20, 2021
ISBN: 9783110752540

About this book

This is the first study to compare the allusions to scribal culture found in the Aramaic Story of Ahiqar and the Hebrew Tale of Jeremiah and Baruch’s Scroll in Jeremiah 36. It is shown that disguised in the royal propagandistic message of Ahiqar is a sophisticated Aramaic critique on the social practices of Akkadian scribal culture. Jeremiah 36, however, uses loci of scribal activity as well as allusions to scribal interactions and the techniques of the scribal craft to construct a subversive tale. When studied from a comparative perspective it is argued that the Story of Ahiqar, which has long been associated with the well-known court tale genre, is an example of a subgenre which is here called the scribal conflict narrative, and Jeremiah 36 is found to be a second example of or a response to it. This observation is arrived at by means of rigorous manuscript examination combined with narrative analysis, which identified, among other things, the development of autobiographical and biographical styles of the same ancient narrative. This study not only provides new perspectives on scribal culture, Ahiqar studies, and Jeremiah studies, but it may have far reaching implications for other ancient sources.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The first University of Chicago PhD

HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP: How the University’s first Ph.D. graduate strengthened ties between Chicago and Japan. Eiji Asada, who earned his doctorate in 1893, helped bring English education to his native country (Max Witynski, uchicago news).

In the late 1880s, a young Japanese scholar named Eiji Asada came to the Chicago area to pursue a bachelor’s degree in theology. He took a summer course from William Rainey Harper, and the two developed a friendship based on their shared interest in Semitic studies and linguistics.

[...]

That's right. He was a Hebraist and a Semitist.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Grappe, La Maison de Dieu / Das Haus Gottes/ The House of God (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: La Maison de Dieu / Das Haus Gottes. Edité par / Herausgegeben von Christian Grappe. [The House of God.] 2021. IX, 425 pages. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 471. 149,00 € including VAT. cloth ISBN 978-3-16-161008-0.

Published in German.
The present volume seeks to shed light on various facets of the theme of the House of God, primarily in biblical and parabiblical writings, but also in the writings of Jewish and Christian authors of antiquity and, beyond that, in the Qur'an, the Reformers, and up to the present day.

The essays are in German, French, and English.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Feder, Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERISTY PRESS:

Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible
From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor

AUTHOR: Yitzhaq Feder, University of Haifa, Israel
DATE PUBLISHED: November 2021
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Hardback
ISBN: 9781316517574

Description

In this book, Yitzhaq Feder presents a novel and compelling account of pollution in ancient Israel, from its emergence as an embodied concept, rooted in physiological experience, to its expression as a pervasive metaphor in social-moral discourse. Feder aims to bring the biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence into a sustained conversation with anthropological and psychological research through comparison with notions of contagion in other ancient and modern cultural contexts. Showing how numerous interpretive difficulties are the result of imposing modern concepts on the ancient texts, he guides readers through wide-ranging parallels to biblical attitudes in ancient Near Eastern, ethnographic, and modern cultures. Feder demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary and psychological research can be applied to ancient textual evidence. He also suggests a path of synthesis that can move beyond the polarized positions which currently characterize modern academic and popular debates bearing on the roles of biology and culture in shaping human behavior.

• Offers a thoroughly interdisciplinary account of pollution, incorporating theoretical and empirical developments in psychology and anthropology
• Demonstrates the role of pollution as an ancient concept of infectious disease
• Contextualizes the attitudes regarding pollution in Israel through comparison with comparable phenomena cross-culturally

I have noted essays by Yitzhaq Feder on related matters here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Gawlikowski, Tadmor – Palmyra (Open Access)

THE AWOL BLOG: Tadmor – Palmyra. A Caravan City between East and West.

“Tadmor – Palmyra. A Caravan City between East and West” is a new book by Prof. Michał Gawlikowski, the long-time director of PCMA UW expedition in this city. It has been published by IRSA Foundation for the Promotion of Culture and is available in Open Access.

For many posts on the ancient metropolis of Palmyra, its history and archaeology, the Aramaic dialect once spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic reversals of fortune, now trending for the better, start here and follow the links. Cross-file under Palmyra Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Herms et al. (eds.), The Spirit Says (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

The Spirit Says
Inspiration and Interpretation in Israelite, Jewish, and Early Christian Texts

Edited by: Ronald Herms, John R. Levison and Archie T. Wright

Volume 8 in the series Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110689297

PDF & EPUB £100.00

Hardcover £100.00

eBook
Published: October 25, 2021
ISBN: 9783110689297

Hardcover
Published: October 25, 2021
ISBN: 9783110688214 About this book

The Spirit Says offers a stunning collection of articles by an influential assemblage of scholars, all of whom lend considerable insight to the relationship between inspiration and interpretation. They address this otherwise intractable question with deft and occasionally daring readings of a variety of texts from the ancient world, including—but not limited to—the scriptures of early Judaism and Christianity.

The thrust of this book can be summed up not so much in one question as in four:

• What is the role of revelation in the interpretation of Scripture?
• What might it look like for an author to be inspired?
• What motivates a claim to the inspired interpretation of Scripture?
• Who is inspired to interpret Scripture?

More often than not, these questions are submerged in this volume under the tame rubrics of exegesis and hermeneutics, but they rise in swells and surges too to the surface, not just occasionally but often. Combining an assortment of prominent voices, this book does not merely offer signposts along the way. It charts a pioneering path toward a model of interpretation that is at once intellectually robust and unmistakably inspired.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Mendels, Hellenistic Inter-state Political Ethics and the Emergence of the Jewish State (T&T Clark)

NEW BOOK FROM BLOOMSBURY/T&T CLARK:

Hellenistic Inter-state Political Ethics and the Emergence of the Jewish State

Doron Mendels (Author)

Hardback
$115.00 $103.50

Ebook (PDF)
$103.50 $82.80

Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
$103.50 $82.80

Product details

Published Dec 16 2021
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 192
ISBN 9780567701398
Imprint T&T Clark
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Series Jewish and Christian Texts
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

Against the background of a reconstructed inter-state ethical code, the rise of the Hasmoneans,Judea's ruling dynasty, is given a new perspective. Doron Mendels explores how concepts such as liberty, justice, fairness, loyalty, reciprocity, adherence to ancestral laws, compassion, accountability and love of fatherland became meaningful in the relations between nations in the Hellenistic Mediterranean sphere, as well as between ruling empires and their subject states. The emerging Jewish state echoed this ethical system.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.