Brill books

NEW BOOKS FROM BRILL:

The Targums in the Light of Traditions of the Second Temple Period

Edited by Thierry Legrand and Jan Joosten both of University of Strasbourg

Although the Jewish Targums were written down only from the second century CE onward, and need to be studied against their Late Antique background, the issue of their connection to earlier sources and traditions is an important one. Do the existing Targums link up with an oral translation of Scripture and, if so, how far does it go back? Do the Targums transmit traditional exegetical material in a distinct form? What is the relation between the Targums and "parabiblical" literature of the Second Temple period (including the New Testament)?

In the present volume, these and other questions are studied and debated by an international group of scholars including some of the best specialists of Targumic literature in all its diversity, as well as specialists of various Second Temple writings.


A Vocabulary of Desire
The Song of Songs in the Early Synagogue

Laura S. Lieber, Duke University

In A Vocabulary of Desire, Laura Lieber offers a nuanced, multifaceted and highly original study of how the Song of Songs was understood and deployed by Jewish liturgical poets in Late Antiquity (ca. 4th-7th centuries CE). Through her examination of poems which embellish and even rewrite the Song of Songs, Lieber brings the creative spirit-liturgical, intellectual, and exegetical-of these poems vividly to the fore. All who are interested in the early interpretation of the Song of Songs, the ancient synagogue, early Jewish and Christian hymnography, and Judaism in Late Antiquity will find this volume both enriching and accessible.

The volume consists of two interrelated halves. In the first section, four introductory essays establish the broad cultural context in which these poems emerged; in the second, each chapter consists of an analytical essay structured around a single, complete poetic cycle, presented in new Hebrew editions with annotated original English translations.

More on Jan Joosten is here. Another book by Laura S. Lieber is noted here.