Seven-year-old Miriam places her baby brother's basket in the Nile River, watches the Pharoah's daughter draw him out and name him Moses, and ponders a vision of other water parting. Includes note on the biblical story on which this is based.

"An essential exploration of a rich literary tradition from the Bible to modern times, by a "rare literary authority" (New York Times Book Review). Jews have long embraced their identity as "the people of the book." But outside of the Bible, much of the Jewish literary tradition remains little known. The People and the Books shows how central questions and themes of our history and culture are reflected in the Jewish literary canon: the nature of God, the right way to understand the Bible, the relationship of the Jews to their Promised Land, and the challenges of living as a minority in Diaspora. Adam Kirsch explores eighteen classic texts including the biblical books of Deuteronomy and Esther, the philosophy of Maimonides, the autobiography of the medieval businesswoman Gluckel of Hameln, and the Zionist manifestos of Theodor Herzl. From the Jews of ancient Rome to the mystical devotees of Hasidism in Eastern Europe, The People and the Books brings the treasures of Jewish literature to life and offers new ways to think about their enduring power and influence"--

"This title considers archaeological evidence to shed light on how the Bible came into existence. It argues that the Bible was created by the people of the nation of Judah in a last-ditch attempt to keep their religion alive after the demise of the larger, wealthier nation of Israel to the north. A fascinating reinterpretation of the political reality, as revealed through archaeology, which lies behind the creation of this sacred text."--

This volume seeks to show how Jews, Catholics, and Protestants can and do read the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament simultaneously from a critical and religious perspective. It points out the similarities and differences in how biblical texts are read, interpreted, and applied in each tradition. In particular, it explores how biblical criticism, especially the historical-critical method, can provide a sound basis for a religious reading. While the authors were trained academically in biblical criticism and teach it in their classes, they continue to read the Bible as a meaningful religious document central to their lives. The heart of the book is three essays on reading the Bible critically and religiously from a Jewish (Brettler), Catholic (Harrington), and Protestant (Enns) perspective; each author also offers a response to each of his colleague’s essays. Also included are an introduction to the history of biblical interpretation, a brief conclusion, and a glossary of technical terms.

The accounts of the Holy Land's history in the Bible have for years been taken for granted. But recently, a body of dramatic discoveries has raised questions about many of the most widely accepted Biblical narratives. Amy Dockser Marcus examines this research, which is changing not only our understanding of Scripture but the face of the Middle East today. Marcus takes the reader on a tour of the Old Testament to reveal startling new discoveries about the history of that time, and reminds us that the problems that plague the modern Middle East have their roots in Biblical times -- and may find their solutions there, as well. -- Marcus's extensive research included visits to digs in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank, where she interviewed archaelogists, Bible scholars, government officials, and historians. -- Controversial new revelations include that Egyptian pyramids were not built by slaves, and probably not even by Israelites, and that the United Monarchy of David and Solomon was in fact separate states. -- Marcus presents a new solution to the problems in the Middle East.

In this book noted Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever attacks the minimalist position head-on, showing how modern archaeology brilliantly illuminates both life in ancient Palestine and the sacred scriptures as we have them today. Assembling a wealth of archaeological evidence, Dever builds the clearest, most, complete case yet for the existence of a real Israel during the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (1200-600 B.C.).

This pioneering study wrestles with the perpetual problem of chronology in the Books of Kings. Starting from the conservative assumptions that the courts of Israel and Judah maintained regnal records, and that these for the most part accurately reflect regnal length, the author arrives at a new and persuasive dating for the reigns and their synchronisms. In addition, his chronological scheme includes all points of contact between Israel and Judah and external powers, especially Assyria. The result is one of the most responsible and yet most critical chronologies proposed to date, and will be the standard chronological reference for the next decade, if not longer.

This account of the historical context for the Hebrew Bible explores the diverse origins of such stories as the creation and the flood in the cultures of the ancient Near East. The authors show the striking parallels in the foundational stories told in the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Hebrew cultures of the time.

"This book is a history of the Near East from the point of view of a single nation, covering not only what is known about the prophets themselves--including Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel--but also the stories of King David, King Saul, and how the ancient Israelites were affected by the great Near Eastern empires that surrounded them. Layered into this work of history is a piece of extraordinary literary criticism. Podhoretz's very close reading of the verse and imagery used by the biblical prophets restores them to the top reaches of the poetic pantheon, for these books contain some of the greatest poetry ever written. The historical chronicle and the literary criticism will transport readers to a time that is both exotic and familiar and will evoke a distinct and original world. But the third perspective of The prophets is that of moral philosophy, and it serves to bring the prophets' message into the twenty-first century. For to Norman Podhoretz, the real relevance of the prophets today is more than the excitement of their history or the beauty of their poetry: it is their message. Podhoretz sees, in the words of the biblical prophets, a war being waged, a war against the sin of revering anything made by the hands of man--in short, idolatry. In their relentless battle against idolatry, Podhoretz finds the prophets' most meaningful and enduring message: a stern warning against the all-consuming worship of self that is at least as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was three thousand years ago"--Jacket

The Bible took shape over the course of centuries, and today Christian groups continue to disagree over details of its contents. The differences among these groups typically involve the Old Testament, as they mostly accept the same 27-book New Testament. An essential avenue for understanding the development of the Bible are the many early lists of canonical books drawn up by Christians and, occasionally, Jews. Despite the importance of these early lists of books, they have remained relatively inaccessible. This comprehensive volume redresses this unfortunate situation by presenting the early Christian canon lists all together in a single volume. The canon lists, in most cases, unambiguously report what the compilers of the lists considered to belong to the biblical canon. For this reason they bear an undeniable importance in the history of the Bible. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity provides an accessible presentation of these early canon lists. With a focus on the first four centuries, the volume supplies the full text of the canon lists in English translation alongside the original text, usually Greek or Latin, occasionally Hebrew or Syriac. Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade orient readers to each list with brief introductions and helpful notes, and they point readers to the most significant scholarly discussions. The book begins with a substantial overview of the history of the biblical canon, and an entire chapter is devoted to the evidence of biblical manuscripts from the first millennium. This authoritative work is an indispensable guide for students and scholars of biblical studies and church history.

Provides a concise and up-to-date introduction to the books of Kings, covering all the historical and interpretive issues. Grabbe pays particular attention to how the history of ancient Israel can be reconstructed through the text and introduces students to the key ways of reading the books of Kings as religious and political history.

The world's major religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-find a common root in one man: Abraham. Yet Abraham looms so large in the realm of world religions that he has remained a ward of the Divine rather than a flesh-and-blood citizen of Humanity. In his monumental new book, David Rosenberg provides a long-overdue history of the patriarch; while revealing that the original story embedded in the Bible is actually our oldest historical biography. We also discover that the wandering ascetic of tradition cannot explain our deep-seated feelings for Abraham and his God. The road that Abraham traveled was marked by signs of civilization that we still recognize: libraries, museums, hotels, and houses of worship. He is a sophisticated, educated Sumerian; an artisan who became the first Jew. Moreover, through Rosenberg's audacious translation of the Abraham story from Genesis, we learn that many of the core tenets of the monotheistic tradition-the idea of God's covenant and the soul-are Sumerian in origin. Rosenberg first finds Abraham at his father's workshop in the cosmopolitan city of ancient Ur and follows his journey through what is today the Middle East. What kind of baggage-emotional, material, and spiritual-would Abraham have taken with him on his migration to a new land? Abraham does more than present a founding spiritual figure and his dynamic relationships with father, wife, and son. We witness this man as he transforms his heritage into an anxious embrace of religion with secular culture-the human condition in which we are still enfolded today.

Jews, Christians and Muslims describe elements of their origins with close reference to the narrative of Abraham, including the complex story of Abraham's relations with Hagar. This volume sketches the significance of this narrative in the three traditions.

The book of Joshua memorializes a transitional episode in Israel's national history. The heroic figure Joshua, imbued with strength, courage and faith, leads the new generation of Israel across the Jordan into the land of promise. Richard S. Hess explores the historical, theological and literary dimensions of the book of Joshua.

New insights into how the Book of Samuel offers a timeless meditation on the dilemmas of statecraft The Book of Samuel is universally acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements of biblical literature. Yet the book's anonymous author was more than an inspired storyteller. The author was also an uncannily astute observer of political life and the moral compromises and contradictions that the struggle for power inevitably entails. The Beginning of Politics mines the story of Israel's first two kings to unearth a natural history of power, providing a forceful new reading of what is arguably the first and greatest work of Western political thought. Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes show how the beautifully crafted narratives of Saul and David cut to the core of politics, exploring themes that resonate wherever political power is at stake. Through stories such as Saul's madness, David's murder of Uriah, the rape of Tamar, and the rebellion of Absalom, the book's author deepens our understanding not only of the necessity of sovereign rule but also of its costs--to the people it is intended to protect and to those who wield it. What emerges from the meticulous analysis of these narratives includes such themes as the corrosive grip of power on those who hold and compete for power; the ways in which political violence unleashed by the sovereign on his own subjects is rooted in the paranoia of the isolated ruler and the deniability fostered by hierarchical action through proxies; and the intensity with which the tragic conflict between political loyalty and family loyalty explodes when the ruler's bloodline is made into the guarantor of the all-important continuity of sovereign power. The Beginning of Politics is a timely meditation on the dark side of sovereign power and the enduring dilemmas of statecraft.

Is the concept of God dead? Or is the experience to which the concept points, and the supreme value which it expresses, dead? In other words, shouldn't the question for today's world be, "Is Man Dead?" rather than "Is God Dead?" In this major book from the author of "The Sane Society" and "Man for Himself," we explore the evolution in the Old Testament of the basic concepts of God, Man, History, Sin, and Repentance. Erich Fromm shows how the concept of God evolved from that of a "jealous" God to that of a "constitutional monarch" and finally to that of the nameless God bound by the same principles that govern man. Conversely, he shows how Man, once the obedient servant of God, became free to the point of making his own history. While his vast knowledge and wide-ranging insights cover a broad area, Erich Fromm's greatest appeal to today's readers will be in his urgent cry for a rebirth of humanism—and in his implicit answer to the question, "Is religious experience necessarily connected with a belief in God?"

In their lyrical new translation of the Song of Songs, Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch restore the sensuousness of the original in language that is rich, joyous, and passionate. Scrupulously faithful to the Hebrew text, the Blochs strip away the veils of mistranslation that have obscured this great love poem to reveal it in all its magical freshness. In her Introduction, Chana Bloch reflects on the centrality of women in the Song and on the role of King Solomon. She discusses the poem's authorship and date, as well as the tortuous (and often amusing) history of misinterpretation, and suggests how such an unabashedly secular work came to be included in the canon of Holy Scripture. Ariel Bloch's Commentary offers imaginative new readings of passages that have puzzled exegetes for centuries. In his Afterword, the biblical scholar Robert Alter surveys the newly revealed sensuousness of the poem's erotic landscape.

"From one of the most acclaimed biblical commentators at work today, the third book in her award-winning series of commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Numbers is the narrative of a great failure. What should have been for the Israelites a brief journey from Mount Sinai to the Holy Land becomes a forty-year death march. Both before and after the devastating report of the spies, the narrative centers on the people's desire to return to Egypt, to undo the miraculous work of the Exodus. This view of the wilderness history invites us to a different kind of listening to the many cries of distrust, lament, resentment that issue from the Israelites throughout the Book of Numbers. Is there a way to integrate this narrative of dark murmurings, of obsessive fantasies of return to Egypt, with the celebration of a love-intoxicated wilderness discourse? The question touches not only on the language the Israelites speak but also on the very nature of human utterance. Who are these people? Who are we who listen to them? What effect does the cumulative trauma of slavery, the miracles of Exodus, the revelation at Sinai have on a nation that is beginning to speak? In Bewilderments, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg posits fascinating answers to these questions through the magnificent literary, scholarly, and psychological analysis of the text that is her trademark"--

"Lester Grabbe here distills his wide body of work on the subject of prophecy. The volume considers prophecy in different cultural contexts across ancient Israel and surrounding areas. Beginning with a consideration of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, Grabbe then looks at it as phenomenon in the ancient near east, including Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. From this background in the immediate context of ancient Israel, Grabbe then widens the cultural lens to consider prophecy in more global environments, including Africa and the Americas, and recent examples of pseudo-biblical prophets such as Joseph Smith. In the final part of the book Grabbe then analyses these different prophetic types and forms, looking at the continuing traditions of prophecy alongside their ancient roots"--Publisher website.

In this stimulating work, one of the most renowned scholars of ancient Judaism explores how Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom and the earliest Jesus movement fit into the Jewish world of Judea and Galilee. In this revised edition of an earlier work, Vermes includes five new chapters.