Bezzel & Kratz (eds.) David in the Desert (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER:

David in the Desert
Tradition and Redaction in the “History of David’s Rise"

In: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 514
Edited by: Hannes Bezzel and Reinhard G. Kratz
De Gruyter | 2021
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110606164

About this book

In the course of the last two decades, both the historical reconstruction of the Iron I–Iron IIA period in Israel and Judah and the literary-historical reconstruction of the Books of Samuel have undergone major changes. With respect to the quest for the “historical David”, terms like “empire” or “Großreich” have been set aside in favor of designations like “mercenary” or “hapiru leader”, corresponding to the image of the son of Jesse presented in I Sam. At the same time, the literary-historical classification of these chapters has itself become a matter of considerable discussion. As Leonhard Rost’s theory of a source containing a “History of David’s Rise” continues to lose support, it becomes necessary to pose the question once again: Are we dealing with a once independent ‘story of David’ embracing both the HDR and the “succession narrative” are there several independent versions of an HDR to be detected, or do I Sam 16–II Sam 5* constitute a redactional bridge between older traditions about Saul on the one hand and David on the other? In either case, what parts of the material in I Sam 16-II Sam 5 are based on ancient traditions, and may therefore serve as a source for any tentative historical reconstruction? The participants in the 2018 symposium at Jena whose essays are collected in this volume engage these questions from different redaction-critical and archaeological perspectives. Together, they provide an overview of contemporary historical research on the book of First Samuel.

Hardcover £91.00

Formats

eBook
Published: May 10, 2021
ISBN: 9783110606164

Hardcover
Published: May 24, 2021
ISBN: 9783110604061

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The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers (CUP)

NEW BOOK FROM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers

Part of Cambridge Companions to Religion

EDITORS:
Michael F. Bird, Ridley College, Melbourne
Scott Harrower, Ridley College, Melbourne
DATE PUBLISHED: June 2021
AVAILABILITY: Available
FORMAT: Paperback [also hardback & eBook]
ISBN: 9781108454452

£ 26.99
Paperback

Description

The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers offers an informative introduction to the extant body of Christian texts that existed beside and after the New Testament known to us as the apostolic fathers. Featuring cutting-edge research by leading scholars, it explores how the early Church expanded and evolved over the course of the first and second centuries as evidenced by its textual history. The volume includes thematic essays on imperial context, the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, the growth and diversification of the early church, influences and intertextuality, and female leaders in the early church. The Companion contains ground-breaking essays on the individual texts with specific attention given to debates of authorship, authenticity, dating, and theological texture. The Companion will serve as an essential resource for instructors and students of the first two centuries of Christianity.

• A cutting edge, thematic introduction to the Apostolic Fathers, a forgotten era in the history of the early church
• Integrates New Testament studies and the study of early Christianity (Patristics)
• Contains ground-breaking essays on the individual texts with specific attention given to debates of authorship, authenticity, dating, and theological texture

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Stefan Reif on his autobiography

INTERVIEW: The scholar who defied odds to unveil the treasures of the Cairo Genizah - Book Review. Stefan Reif brings post-World War II Edinburgh to life, conveying in indelible verbal images that are unstintingly honest what conditions were like in that bygone era for a child of Jewish immigrants (YAKIR FELDMAN, Jerusalem Post).

His book is Bouncing Back – and Forward. From Immigrant Household to Cambridge Fellowship (Vallentine Mitchell, 2021).

Some PaleoJudaica posts on Professor Reif and his long career directing Cambridge University's Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

For many, many posts on the Cairo Geniza and its priceless hoard of manuscripts, start here and follow the links.

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

Useful info for time-traveling bibliophiles

VARIANT READINGS: Buying Books in Rome circa 86 CE. With the help of Martial, Brent Nongbri has located not one, but two bookshops in first-century Rome. He has maps and everything.

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

Atonement without blood?

PROF. MARC ZVI BRETTLER, PROF. AMY-JILL LEVINE: Is Atonement Possible Without Blood? A Jewish-Christian Divide (TheTorah.com).

Blood has a significant role in many biblical stories and rituals, most prominently in the atonement sacrifices of Leviticus. With the destruction of the Temple and the loss of sacrifices, Judaism and Christianity took very different paths to achieving atonement.

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

Biblical Studies Carnival 184

ZWINGLIUS REDIVIVUS: It’s The ‘Year is Half Over and You Haven’t Done Much With it Yet’ Biblical Studies Carnival (Jim West). Thanks for the endorsement, Jim.

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

Preview of Ahuvia, On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Publication Preview | On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel.

Mika Ahuvia, On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2021.

Excerpt:

We need not look to “foreign influence” to make sense of Jewish belief in angels—there is plenty of biblical material on angels for Jews to draw on. That said, angels became very popular among the inhabitants of the Mediterranean in late antiquity, and Jewish thinkers had to find distinctively Jewish ways of conceptualizing them. My research shows that Jewish poets, practitioners, mystics, and rabbis rose to the challenge.

Cross-file under New Book.

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

Stroumsa, The Idea of Semitic Monotheism (OUP)

NEW BOOK FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS:

The Idea of Semitic Monotheism

The Rise and Fall of a Scholarly Myth

Guy G. Stroumsa

Description

The Idea of Semitic Monotheism examines some major aspects of the scholarly study of religion in the long nineteenth century—from the Enlightenment to the First World War. It aims to understand the new status of Judaism and Islam in the formative period of the new discipline. Guy G. Stroumsa focuses on the concept of Semitic monotheism, a concept developed by Ernest Renan around the mid-nineteenth century on the basis of the postulated and highly problematic contradistinction between Aryan and Semitic families of peoples, cultures, and religions. This contradistinction grew from the Western discovery of Sanskrit and its relationship with European languages, at the time of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Together with the rise of scholarly Orientalism, this discovery offered new perspectives on the East, as a consequence of which the Near East was demoted from its traditional status as the locus of the Biblical revelations.

This innovative work studies a central issue in the modern study of religion. Doing so, however, it emphasizes the new dualistic taxonomy of religions had major consequences and sheds new light on the roots of European attitudes to Jews and Muslims in the twentieth century, up to the present day.

£75.00

Hardback
Published: 20 May 2021
320 Pages
216x138mm
ISBN: 9780192898685

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Yoo & Watts, Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution (Routledge)

NEW BOOK FROM ROUTLEDGE:

Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution

By Yohan Yoo, James W. Watts

Copyright Year 2021

Hardback £120.00

eBook £33.29

ISBN 9780367712051 Published May 31, 2021 by Routledge 178 Pages

Book Description

This collaboration between two scholars from different fields of religious studies draws on three comparative data sets to develop a new theory of purity and pollution in religion, arguing that a culture’s beliefs about cosmological realms shapes its pollution ideas and its purification practices.

The authors of this study refine Mary Douglas’ foundational theory of pollution as "matter out of place," using a comparative approach to make the case that a culture’s cosmology designates which materials in which places constitute pollution. By bringing together a historical comparison of Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, an ethnographic study of indigenous shamanism on Jeju Island, Korea, and the reception history of biblical rhetoric about pollution in Jewish and Christian cultures, the authors show that a cosmological account of purity works effectively across multiple disparate religious and cultural contexts. They conclude that cosmologies reinforce fears of pollution, and also that embodied experiences of purification help generate cosmological ideas.

Providing an innovative insight into a key topic of ritual studies, this book will be of vital interest to scholars and graduate students in religion, biblical studies, and anthropology.

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

Nelson (trans.), Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (JPS 2006)

NOTABLE BOOK FROM THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY:

Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai

Translated and explicated by W. David Nelson
Edward E. Elson Classic Series
1100 pages

Hardcover
November 2006
978-0-8276-0799-6
$75.00

About the Book

A timeless collection of midrash never before available in English.

The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is a collection of classical midrashic interpretation of the biblical Book of Exodus. Lost for centuries, the text was reconstructed and recovered in the 19th and 20th centuries by both German and Israeli scholars from a variety of source materials, including medieval manuscripts of the text and midrashic anthologies. As one of the first collections of rabbinic biblical interpretation, the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is an indispensable source for understanding the history, beliefs, and practices of the earliest rabbis. This edition, translated and explicated for the first time in English by W. David Nelson, is The Jewish Publication Society’s latest contribution to making ancient Jewish literature accessible to modern readers. A critical introduction provides the reader with a firm grounding in the historical setting of the text, as well as its source material, reconstruction, subject matter, and significance for understanding the history of Judaism. Set in a modern, readable typeface, the Hebrew text faces the English translation with the author’s annotation beneath. Indexes include scriptural verse citations and rabbinic sages named in the text.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (Yochai) is the traditional (pseudepigraphic) author of the Zohar, the premier book of Jewish mysticisim.

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The four tiers of Paul

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Quest for the Historical Paul. James Tabor considers Biblical and external accounts of the apostle.

Baur put his finger squarely on the problem: There are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point.

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

The masculinities of Paul

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Becoming a Man: The Apostle Paul and Masculinity (Grace Emmett).

Grace Emmett, “Becoming a Man: Un/Manly Self-Presentation in the Pauline Epistles.” PhD diss., King’s College London, 2021.

... This continual process of reinterpreting Paul shows that in some ways he is also a man forever in the process of becoming.

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

Temple sites in Iron Age Transjordan

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: Temples and Cult Places in Iron Age Transjordan (Margreet L. Steiner).

But what was the situation across the River Jordan, where the kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom were flourishing? Many fewer excavations have taken place there than in ancient Israel. Nonetheless several cultic complexes have been unearthed: three in the Jordan Valley (part of ancient Ammon), four in Moab, and one in Edom. What do these tell us about cult practices among Israel and Judah’s rivals?

For more on the Balaam inscription from Tel Deir 'Alla (Deir Alla), see here and links.

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

Scrolling

VARIANT READINGS: The Vocabulary of Reading a Papyrus Roll (Brent Nongbri). It's harder than you'd think.

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

Review of NICOT Commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, & Zephaniah

READING ACTS: Thomas Renz, The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (NICOT) (Phil Long).

Renz, Thomas. The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. NICOT; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021. xxxix+703 pp. Hb; $56.00.

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The Society for Late Antiquity

THE AWOL BLOG: Society for Late Antiquity. With lots of print and online resources.

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

Tel Agol and Amos' earthquake

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Israel’s Earthquake, 8th Century B.C.E. (Nurit Feig, TheTorah.com).

Amos and Zechariah mention an earthquake in the time of King Uzziah. Its effects were uncovered in the excavations at Tel Agol in the Jezreel Valley: It turned the city, fortified for centuries to defend against the Assyrian threat, into a poor squatter town that could not recover.

For more on the archaeology of Amos' earthquake, see here.

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

The ancient coin market

NUMISMATICS: Four Reasons the Ancient Coin Market is Complicated (Tyler Rossi, CoinWeek). You may or may not be interested in the headline topic. But I note the article because it includes nice photos of coins of kings mentioned in the Bible: Alexander the Great (Daniel 8:5, 21 [the he-goat from the west], 11:3) and Antiochus III the Great (Daniel 11:10-19, the king of the north).

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Heller, Shul Going (Wipf & Stock)

RECENT BOOK FROM WIFP AND STOCK:

Shul Going
2500 Years of Impressions and Reflections on Visits to the Synagogue

by Charles Heller
Imprint: Resource Publications
178 Pages, 5.00 x 8.00 x 0.00 in

Paperback
9781532667152
Published: July 2019
$23.00 / £18.00 / AU$32.00

eBook
9781532667176
Published: July 2019
$23.00 / £17.00 / AU$34.00

Hardcover
9781532667169
Published: July 2019
$53.00 / £40.00 / AU$72.00

DESCRIPTION

Covering 2500 years, here are the impressions of synagogue worshipers and visitors, Jews and non-Jews, told in their own words, from Jeremiah to George Washington, Liszt, and Yossele Rosenblatt, from the slums of Rio to the shtetls of Ukraine to the temple in Jerusalem. Here is the Jewish experience--tragic, comic, and inspiring by turns.

The term "synagogue" is used pretty loosely for the earliest period. Nevertheless the book collects a good array of primary texts.

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

Teigen, A Manichaean Church at Kellis (Brill, open access)

NEW OPEN-ACCESS BOOK FROM BRILL:

A Manichaean Church at Kellis

Series: Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, Volume: 100

Author: Håkon Fiane Teigen

This volume offers a comprehensive account of a Manichaean community in fourth-century Roman Egypt. The study analyses papyrological material from Kellis, a village in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis, and their implications for Manichaeism as a socio-religious movement.

Drawing on social network theory and engaging with current trends in the study of lived ancient religion, Teigen explores how lay families at Kellis cohered as a religious community. Whereas recent scholarship has seen the laity here as largely detached from distinctively Manichaean traditions, he argues that the papyri in fac reveal a community immersed in Manichaean ideas and practices. The book thereby shows how new religious identities were deeply entangled in everyday social life in late antiquity.

Prices from (excl. VAT): €125.00 / $151.00 Hardback

E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-45977-9
Publication Date: 08 Jun 2021
Copyright Date: 01 Jan 2021

Hardback
Availability: Not Yet Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-45976-2
Publication Date: 10 Jun 2021
Copyright Date: 01 Jan 2021

Cross-file under Manichean Watch (Manichaean Watch) and Coptic Watch. I noted a book on the documentary texts from Kellis here and a PhD dissertation on the the Manichaeans of Kellis here.

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Nissinen, Reste altorientalischen Prophetentums in der Bibel (De Gruyter)

NEW BOOK FROM DE GRUYTER (IN GERMAN):

Martti Nissinen

Reste altorientalischen Prophetentums in der Bibel
Remnants of Ancient Near Eastern Prophethood in the Bible

In: Julius-Wellhausen-Vorlesung, 9
De Gruyter | 2021
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110748253

About this book

Current research has revealed that biblical prophecy was part of Ancient Near Eastern prophecy. The properties typical of Ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean prophecy are clear to discern in the Old and even in the New Testament. This includes, for instance, the concept of the word of God, the writing down of prophecy and its political significance, the temple as the "spiritual home," gender inclusivity, and prophetic ecstasy.

Paperback £18.00

Formats

eBook
Published: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110748253

Paperback
Published: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 9783110747188

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Römer et al. (eds.), The Joseph Story between Egypt and Israel (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK: The Joseph Story between Egypt and Israel. Edited by Thomas Römer, Konrad Schmid, and Axel Bühler 2021. VI, 178 pages. Archaeology and Bible 5. 64,00 € including VAT. sewn paper ISBN 978-3-16-160153-8.

Published in English.
Within the context of the Torah, the Joseph story can be read as a transition that explains why Jacob and his family came to Egypt. However, if one looks at other texts of the Hebrew Bible, there is no mention of the Joseph story; instead, the arrival of the Israelites is said to be the result of the decision of a »father« or of »fathers« to go down do Egypt. Indeed, there are very few references to Joseph at all in the whole Hebrew Bible. Apparently, the Joseph story is not necessary for explaining why the Israelites found themselves in Egypt. The question therefore arises: Why was this story written, when, and for what audience?
This volume offers an overview of the current discussion on the origins, composition, and historical contexts behind the Joseph narrative. There is a tendency to date the story (or its original version) to the Persian period, but this volume includes divergent voices about this issue. The volume also shows that scholarly discussion about the historical location of the Joseph story requires to bring together Egyptologists and biblical scholars.

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