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The essays in this volume examine the relationship between ancient fiction in the Greco-Roman world and early Jewish and Christian narratives. They consider how those narratives imitated or exploited conventions of fiction to produce forms of literature that expressed new ideas or shaped community identity within the shifting social and political climates of their own societies. Major authors and texts surveyed include Chariton, Shakespeare, Homer, Vergil, Plato, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Daniel, 3 Maccabees, the Testament of Abraham, rabbinic midrash, the Apocryphal Acts, Ezekiel the Tragedian, and the Sophist Aelian. This diverse collection reveals and examines prevalent issues and syntheses in the making: the pervasive use and subversive power of imitation, the distinction between fiction and history, and the use of history in the expression of identity.
Educating Palestine, through the story of education and the teaching of history in Mandate Palestine, reframes our understanding of the Palestinian and Zionist national movements. It argues that Palestinian and Hebrew pedagogy could only be truly understood through an analysis of the conscious or unconscious dialogue between them. The conflict over Palestine, the study shows, shaped the way Arabs and Zionists thought, taught, and wrote about their past. British rule over Palestine promised the Jews a national home, but had no viable policy towards the Palestinians and established an education system that lacked a sustainable collective ethos. Nevertheless, Palestinian educators were able to produce a national pedagogy that knew how to work with the British and simultaneously promoted an ideology of progress and independence that challenged colonial rule.
Arguing with Aseneth reads the ancient romance Joseph and Aseneth as a participant in ancient Jewish debates around gentile access to Israel's God. It traces how Joseph and Aseneth builds a case through its heroine for gentile incorporation and how other ancient Jewish thinkers, including Paul, would have argued back.
The Letter of Aristeas has been an object modern scholarly interest since the seventeenth century. It is best known for containing the earliest version of the translation of the Hebrew Law into Greek, and this story accounts for much of the scholarly attention paid to the work. Yet, this legend only takes up a small percentage of the work. Looking at Aristeas as a whole, the work reveals an author who has acquired a Greek education and employs both Jewish and Greek sources in his work, and he has produced a Greek book. Even though Aristeas has garnered scholarly attention, no fully fledged commentary has been written on it. The works of R. Tramontano, M. Hadas and others, often referred to as commentaries, only contain text and annotated notes. This volume fills the gap in the scholarship on Aristeas by providing a full, paragraph-by-paragraph commentary, containing a new translation, text-critical notes, general commentary, and notes on specific words, phrases and ideas.
Following their first conference and volume on peach and war, the Josephus Institute in Komárom organized second international conference on Josephus in 2024, this time on the topic of Josephus' account of the Maccabees. The selection of speakers include not only well-known scholars but also Central European scholars who have worked on the subject in depth. This has resulted in a truly colorful volume of studies that can be read not only by specialists but also by a wider readership interested in the subject. In most cases, the literature on the books of the Maccabees considers Josephus as a supplementary source. In this volume, we take Josephus as our primary source and explore how and what he wrote about the Maccabees. With 11 essays in English and German and an introduction by Steve Mason on the history of research, this volume aims to bring the reader closer to Josephus' view of the Maccabees and his interpretation of these works.
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This volume analyzes the wide variety of the Qumran community s liturgical practices in light of their social and ideological structures, discussing their implications for community identity formation, boundary formation, and instruction of new members."
This collection of essays, papers originally given at a colloquium in Oxford 2008 involving scholars from the universities of Oxford, Leiden and Bonn, focuses on the theme of Feasts and Festivals in Biblical and extra-Biblical traditions. The topics include studies of the festal gathering in Deuteronomy and funerary rites for children in the Hebrew Bible, feasts in some extra-biblical texts (including 2 and 3 Maccabees), through to treatments of a number of New Testament themes and topics in the gospels and Paul. The focus on the theme of 'feast' brings out new aspects of some well-known texts and sheds new light on a number of themes in ancient Judaism and in early Christianity. This volume will be of interest to all those engaged in Biblical studies and its ramifications in the study of Judaism and early Christianity.
How did ancient scribes interpret their own reality by means of scriptural exegesis? The essays in this volume explore this question from various perspectives by examining the earliest known exegetical texts of Jewish origin, namely, the exegetical texts from the Qumran library. Scholars have debated the precise nature of the exegetical techniques used in the Qumran texts. To bring clarity to the discussion, this book analyzes the phenomenon of reading the present in the Qumran library and asks how far comparable phenomena can be observed in authoritative literature in ancient Israel and Judah, in the textual tradition of the Hebrew and Greek Bible, in ancient Judaism, and in early Christian literature. "Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)"
In a new study Bible based on The New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha, 60 scholars provide background and insight on the biblical text, in a book that features extensive historical and theological annotations, brief introductions and outlines for each biblical book, 19 newly commissioned historical maps and more.