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Find out moreSee below for a selection of the latest books from Biblical studies & exegesis category. Presented with a red border are the Biblical studies & exegesis books that have been lovingly read and reviewed by the experts at Lovereading. With expert reading recommendations made by people with a passion for books and some unique features Lovereading will help you find great Biblical studies & exegesis books and those from many more genres to read that will keep you inspired and entertained. And it's all free!
Basics of Hebrew Accents provides readers of biblical Hebrew with a comprehensive working knowledge of accentuation. Hebrew accents can be perplexing but knowing them and their functions will help students become better readers of the Hebrew Bible. The book is an ideal tool for beginning students who are learning to read the language as well as for more advanced students who are reading and translating the Hebrew text. Mark Futato has carefully organized his book to emphasize accessibility while providing: Clear explanations of the primary functions of Hebrew accents A student-friendly presentation Accessibility for independent study A practical and handy reference resource for all students of the Hebrew Bible
This volume examines the 'counter-narratives' of the core Christian story, proposed by texts from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere. A noteworthy body of highly respected scholars examine material that is often difficult and little known, contributing to the ongoing effort to integrate Nag Hammadi and related literature into the mainstream of New Testament and early Christian studies. By retracing the major elements of the Christian story in sequence, they are able to discuss how and why each aspect was disputed on inner-Christian grounds, and to reflect on the different accounts of Christian identity underlying these disputes. Together the essays in this book address a central issue: towards the end of the second century, Irenaeus could claim that the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the world were agreed on a version of the core Christian story which is still recognisable today. Yet, as Irenaeus concedes and as the Nag Hammadi texts have confirmed, there were many who wished to tell the core Christian story differently. Those who criticized and rejected the standard story did so not because they were adherents of another religion, 'Gnosticism', but because they were Christians who believed that the standard account was wrong at point after point. Ranging from the Gospels of Judas and Mary to Galatians and Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, this volume provide a fascinating analysis of how the Christian story as we know it today developed, against counter-readings from other early Christian traditions.
Michael Whitenton offers a fresh perspective on the characterization of Nicodemus, focusing on the benefit of Hellenistic rhetoric and the cognitive sciences for understanding audience construals of characters in ancient narratives. Whitenton builds an interdisciplinary approach to ancient characters, utilizing cognitive science, Greek stock characters, ancient rhetoric, and modern literary theory. He then turns his attention to the characterization of Nicodemus, where he argues that Nicodemus would likely be understood initially as a dissembling character, only to depart from that characterization later in the narrative, suggesting a journey toward Johannine faith. Whitenton presents a compelling argument: many in an ancient audience would construe Nicodemus in ways that suggest his development from doubt and suspicion to commitment and devotion.
Karalina Matskevich examines the structures that map out the construction of gendered and national identities in Genesis 2-3 and 12-36. Matskevich shows how the dominant 'Subject' - the androcentric ha'adam and the ethnocentric Israel - is perceived in relation to and over against the 'Other', represented respectively as female and foreign. Using the tools of narratology, semiotics and psychoanalysis, Matskevich highlights the contradiction inherent in the project of dominance, through which the Subject seeks to suppress the transforming power of difference it relies on for its signification. Thus, in Genesis 2-3 ha'adam can only emerge as a complex Subject in possession of knowledge with the help of woman, the transforming Other to whom the narrator (and Yahweh) attributes both the agency and the blame. Similarly, the narratives of Genesis 12-36 show a conflicted attitude to places of alterity: Egypt, the fertile and seductive space that threatens annihilation, and Haran, the 'mother's land', a complex metaphor for the feminine. The construction of identity in these narratives largely relies on the symbolic fecundity of the Other.
Paul T. Sloan presents a detailed interpretation of Mark's Olivet Discourse in light of the Gospel's many allusions to the book of Zechariah, and argues that previous studies have rightly demonstrated the influence of Zechariah 9-14 on the Passion Narratives. Sloan shows that this influence is not merely confined to Mark's description of Jesus' final week, but also permeates much of his narrative; informing the Gospel's presentation of Jesus' royal identity, his action in the temple, the role of suffering in the bringing of God's kingdom, and the arrangement and interpretation of the Olivet Discourse. Sloan begins with an extensive review of scholarship on the presence of Zechariah in Mark before analyzing the reception of relevant texts from Zechariah in Second Temple literature. He proceeds to a fresh examination of potential allusions to Zechariah throughout Mark, focusing especially on Mark's use of Zechariah 13:7 and 14:5. In addition to influencing significant themes in Mark's Gospel, Sloan argues that Zechariah provides a helpful framework by which to interpret Mark 13, offering a potential solution to a notorious crux interpretum, namely, why Jesus answers a question about the temple with reference to the coming of the son of man.
The Bible has always enjoyed notoriety within the genres of crime fiction and drama; numerous authors have explicitly drawn on biblical traditions as thematic foci to explore social anxieties about violence, religion, and the search for justice and truth. The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama brings together a multi-disciplinary scholarship from the fields of biblical interpretation, literary criticism, criminology, and studies in film and television to discuss international texts and media spanning the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. The volume concludes with an afterword by crime writer and academic, Liam McIvanney. These essays explore both explicit and implicit engagements between biblical texts and crime narratives, analysing the multiple layers of meaning that such engagements can produce - cross-referencing Sherlock Holmes with the murder mystery in the Book of Tobit, observing biblical violence through the eyes of Christian fundamentalists in Henning Mankell's Before the Frost, catching the thread of homily in the serial murders of Se7en, or analysing biblical sexual violence in light of television crime procedurals. The contributors also raise intriguing questions about the significance of the Bible as a religious and cultural text - its association with the culturally pervasive themes of violence, (im)morality, and redemption, and its relevance as a symbol of the (often fraught) location that religion occupies within contemporary secular culture.
Callie Callon investigates how some early Christian authors utilized physiognomic thought as rhetorical strategy, particularly with respect to persuasion. Callon shows how this encompassed denigrating theological opponents and forging group boundaries (invective against heretics or defence of Christians), self-representation to demonstrate the moral superiority of early Christians to Greco-Roman outsiders, and the cultivation of collective self-identity. The work begins with an overview of how physiognomy was used in broader antiquity as a component of persuasion. Callon then examines how physiognomic thought was employed by early Christians and how physiognomic tropes were employed to prove their orthodoxy and moral superiority. Building on the conclusions of the earlier chapters, Callon then focuses on the representation of the physiognomies of early Christian martyrs, before addressing the problem of the acceptance or even promotion of the idea of a physically lacklustre Jesus by the same authors who otherwise utilize traditional physiognomic thought.
This fascinating collection of essays charts, for the first time, the range of responses by scholars on both sides of the conflict to the outbreak of war in August 1914. The volume examines how biblical scholars, like their compatriots from every walk of life, responded to the great crisis they faced, and, with relatively few exceptions, were keen to contribute to the war effort. Some joined up as soldiers. More commonly, however, biblical scholars and theologians put pen to paper as part of the torrent of patriotic publication that arose both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. The contributors reveal that, in many cases, scholars were repeating or refining common arguments about the responsibility for the war. In Germany and Britain, where the Bible was still central to a Protestant national culture, we also find numerous more specialized works, where biblical scholars brought their own disciplinary expertise to bear on the matter of war in general, and this war in particular. The volume's contributors thus offer new insights into the place of both the Bible and biblical scholarship in early 20th-century culture.
In the modern period, the space we inhabit and through which we move has predominately been conceived as the mere setting for human action, ontologically separate from the body. In Markan studies, the result has been the multiplication of textual geographies that hide the spatiality of Jesus's narrativized and, thus, living body. Rather than representing Jesus's body as replicating the spatial configurations of dominant scribal cartographic practice (including imperial practice), James B. Pendleton shows that Mark portrays Jesus's body as a living production of space that troubles dominant maps. Against readings of Mark that argue that Jesus is either an imperial or an anti-imperial figure, Pendleton argues that Mark presents Jesus's body, and thus his spatiality, as both inside (as an insider) and outside (as an outsider) simultaneously, in what has more commonly being theorized recently as third spatiality, or Thirdspace. Rather than an imperial or anti-imperial economy of spatial production, Pendleton argues, Mark presents Jesus's body within a both-and, and more economy that is kenotic, revealing God's own royal yet emptying body.
