Download or read book Jewish Fictional Letters from Hellenistic Egypt written by L. Michael White and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Greek text of the Epistle of Aristeas published in more than a century The Greek text Epistle of Aristeas is a Jewish work of the late Hellenistic period that recounts the origins of the Septuagint. Long recognized as a literary fiction, the Epistle of Aristeas has been variously dated from the third century BCE to the first century CE. As a result, its epistolary features, and especially those in which the putative author, Aristeas, addresses his brother and correspondent, Philocrates, have largely been ignored. In light of more recent scholarship on epistolary literature in the Greco-Roman world, however, this volume presents for the first time a complete Greek text and English Translation with introduction, notes, and commentary of the Epistle of Aristeas with key testimonia from Philo, Josephus, and Eusebius, as well as other related examples of Jewish fictional letters from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Features Relevant excerpts from Eupolemus, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, and the Greek Additions to Esther with translations and introductions A critical introduction to ancient Greek letter-writing An outline of epistolary features in the text

Download or read book Letters from Home written by Malka Z. Simkovich and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The announcement by the Persian king Cyrus following his conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE that exiled Judahites could return to their homeland should have been cause for celebration. Instead, it plunged them into animated debate. Only a small community returned and participated in the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. By the end of the sixth century BCE, they faced a theological conundrum: Had the catastrophic punishment of exile, understood as marking God’s retribution for the people’s sins, come to an end? By the Hellenistic era, most Jews living in their homeland believed that life abroad signified God’s wrath and rejection. Jews living outside of their homeland, however, rejected this notion. From both sides of the diasporic line, Jews wrote letters and speeches that conveyed the sense that their positions had ancient roots in Torah traditions. In this book, Malka Z. Simkovich investigates the rhetorical strategies—such as pseudepigraphy, ventriloquy, and mirroring—that Egyptian and Judean Jews incorporated into their writings about life outside the land of Israel, charting the boundary-marking push and pull that took place within Jewish letters in the Hellenistic era. Drawing on this correspondence and other contemporaneous writings, Simkovich argues that the construction of diaspora during this period—reinforced by some and negated by others—produced a tension that lay at the core of Jewish identity in the ancient world. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of ancient Judaism and to laypersons interested in the questions of a Jewish homeland and Jewish diaspora.

Download or read book The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-11-21 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume honors L. Michael White, whose work has been influential in exploring the “social worlds” of ancient Jews and Christians. Fifteen original essays highlight his scholarly contributions while also signaling new directions in the study of ancient Mediterranean religions.

Download or read book Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism written by Steven D. Fraade and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Steven Fraade explores the practice and conception of multilingualism and translation in ancient Judaism. Interrogating the deep and dialectical relationship between them, he situates representative scriptural and other texts within their broader synchronic - Greco-Roman context, as well as diachronic context - the history of Judaism and beyond. Neither systematic nor comprehensive, his selection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek primary sources, here fluently translated into clear English, best illustrate the fundamental issues and the performative aspects relating to translation and multilingualism. Fraade scrutinizes and analyzes the texts to reveal the inner dynamics and the pedagogical-social implications that are implicit when multilingualism and translation are paired. His book demonstrates the need for a more thorough and integrated treatment of these topics, and their relevance to the study of ancient Judaism, than has been heretofore recognized.

Download or read book Review of Biblical Literature 2021 written by Alicia J. Batten and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The annual Review of Biblical Literature presents a selection of reviews of the most recent books in biblical studies and related fields, including topical monographs, multi-author volumes, reference works, commentaries, and dictionaries. RBL reviews German, French, Italian, and English books and offers reviews in those languages.

Download or read book Gospel Media written by Nicholas A. Elder and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-04 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contextualizing the gospels in ancient Greco-Roman media practices New Testament scholars have often relied on outdated assumptions for understanding the composition and spread of the gospels. Yet this scholarship has spread myths or misconceptions about how the ancients read, wrote, and published texts. Nicholas Elder updates our knowledge of the gospels’ media contexts in this myth-busting academic study. Carefully combing through Greco-Roman primary sources, he exposes what we take for granted about ancient reading cultures and offers new and better ways to understand the gospels. These myths include claims that ancients never read silently and that the canonical gospels were all the same type of text. Elder then sheds light on how early Christian communities used the gospels in diverse ways. Scholars of the gospels and classics alike will find Gospel Media an essential companion in understanding ancient media cultures.

Download or read book The Reception of Jewish Tradition in the Social Imagination of the Early Christians written by John M.G. Barclay and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume take as their theme the reception of Jewish traditions in early Christianity, and the ways in which the meaning of these traditions changed as they were put to work in new contexts and for new social ends. Special emphasis is placed on the internal variety and malleability of these traditions, which underwent continual processes of change within Judaism, and on reception as an active, strategic, and interested process. All the essays in this volume seek to bring out how acts of reception contribute to the social formation of early Christianity, in its social imagination (its speech and thought about itself) or in its social practices, or both. This volume challenges static notions of tradition and passive ideas of 'reception', stressing creativity and the significance of 'strong' readings of tradition. It thus complicates standard narratives of 'the parting of the ways' between 'Christianity' and 'Judaism', showing how even claims to continuity were bound to make the same different.

Download or read book The Studia Philonica Annual XXXV 2023 written by David T. Runia and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2023-11-17 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (circa 15 BCE to circa 50 CE).

Download or read book The Origins of Judaism written by Yonatan Adler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking new study that utilizes archaeological discoveries and ancient texts to revolutionize our understanding of the beginnings of Judaism Throughout much of history, the Jewish way of life has been characterized by strict adherence to the practices and prohibitions legislated by the Torah: dietary laws, ritual purity, circumcision, Sabbath regulations, holidays, and more. But precisely when did this unique way of life first emerge, and why specifically at that time? In this revolutionary new study, Yonatan Adler methodically engages ancient texts and archaeological discoveries to reveal the earliest evidence of Torah observance among ordinary Judeans. He examines the species of animal bones in ancient rubbish heaps, the prevalence of purification pools and chalk vessels in Judean settlements, the dating of figural representations in decorative and functional arts, evidence of such practices as tefillin and mezuzot, and much more to reconstruct when ancient Judean society first adopted the Torah as authoritative law. Focusing on the lived experience of the earliest Torah observers, this investigative study transforms much of what we thought we knew about the genesis and early development of Judaism.

Download or read book Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters written by Matthias Henze and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.

Download or read book Class and Power in Roman Palestine written by Anthony Keddie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how socioeconomic relations between Judaean elites and non-elites changed as Palestine became part of the Roman Empire.

Download or read book Shaping the Past to Define the Present written by Gregory E. Sterling and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering ancient texts and rethinking early Christian identity with the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles Shaping the Past to Define the Present comprises both new and revised essays by esteemed New Testament scholar Gregory E. Sterling on Jewish and early Christian historiography. A sequel to his seminal work, Historiography and Self-Definition, this volume expands on Sterling’s reading of Luke-Acts in the context of contemporary Jewish and Greek historiography. These systematically arranged essays comprise his new and revised contributions to the field of biblical studies, exploring: the genre of apologetic historiography exemplified by Josephus and Eusebius the context of Josephus’s work within a larger tradition of Eastern historiography the initial composition and circulation of Luke and Acts the relationship of Luke-Acts to the Septuagint the interpretation of the Diaspora in Luke-Acts the structure of salvation history as it is manifested in Luke-Acts Socratic influences on Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’s death the early Jerusalem Christian community as depicted in Acts compared with other Hellenized Eastern traditions such as Egyptian priests and Indian sages the establishment of Christianity’s “socially respectability” as a guiding purpose in Luke-Acts Engaging with current critical frameworks, Sterling offers readers a comprehensive analysis of early Christian self-definition through Judeo-Christian historiography.

Download or read book Hebrews written by Debra J. Bucher and published by MennoMedia, Inc.. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What constitutes a faithful life? At its most basic level, the New Testament book of Hebrews considers this essential question and pleads with its audience to find in faithful living the rest that Christ offers. The book begins with a poetic reflection on the one who lived the most faithful of lives—Jesus—and concludes with words of exhortation to go and do likewise. In the 37th volume in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, scholars Debra J. Bucher and Estella Horning examine at great length one important aspect of Hebrews: Jesus as the “new covenant” and the “once for all,” better sacrifice who replaces the daily and yearly sacrifices offered in the temple in Jerusalem. The authors give attention to the ways this idea has been used to minimize the value of other religious traditions and even to legitimize the horrors of the mid-twentieth century. They carefully unpack the language around sacrifice and covenant based on the saving work of Jesus, drawing out encouragement found in Hebrews to live as individuals and as a community led by Jesus, the pioneer and high priest. Bucher and Horning don’t shy away from the difficult language in Hebrews, but rather help readers understand its historical context and then how to use the text with love within our own context. About the Believers Church Bible Commentary series This readable commentary series is for all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today—Sunday school teachers, members of Bible study groups, students, pastors, and other seekers. —From the Series Foreword

Download or read book A Reader in Biblical Greek written by Richard A. Wright and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-22 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A graduated intermediate reader of biblical Koine Greek with selections from the New Testament, the Septuagint, and noncanonical early Christian writings. This intermediate reader is for students, clergy, and scholars who have completed at least one year of Greek instruction and want to build reading proficiency. Through twenty-nine texts from the New Testament, the Septuagint, and noncanonical early Christian writings, readers will be exposed to a variety of different genres and authors while still being given enough content from each author to become acquainted with that author’s individual style. Notes within each selection gloss low-frequency words and clarify syntactical intricacies, and each new section of texts gradually increases in its level of difficulty, so that lessons can be worked through sequentially or as stand-alone exercises, as needed. Wright’s selections are all texts that Christians in the fourth century CE would have read, with intertextual connections between them that will stimulate discussion and reflection on the development of important ideas in the early church. Thus, this useful resource encourages progress both in Koine reading proficiency and in knowledge of Christian tradition.

Download or read book The Psalms of Solomon written by Patrick Pouchelle and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore new approaches to the Psalms of Solomon The Psalms of Solomon: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts explores a unique pseudepigraphal document that bears witness to the 63 BCE Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Essays address a variety of themes, notably their political, social, religious, and historical contexts, through the lens of anthropology of religion, cognitive science, socioeconomic theory, and more. Contributors include Kenneth Atkinson, Eberhard Bons, Johanna Erzberger, Angela Kim Harkins, G. Anthony Keddie, Patrick Pouchelle, Stefan Schreiber, Shani Tzoref, and Rodney A. Werline.

Download or read book The Virtue of Harmony written by Chenyang Li and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time marked by profound polarisation, this volume draws our attention to a virtue that is of key importance in many non-Western cultures but is largely neglected in modern Western thought: the virtue of harmony. The book comprises 13 chapters that examine harmony from a particular cultural or disciplinary perspective. A broad variety of cultural traditions are represented, including the Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, Judaist, Greek, Christian, Islamic, African, and Native American traditions, as well as different disciplinary approaches, such as philosophy, religious studies, linguistics, psychology, and political theory. This book is suitable for general readers, students, as well as researchers interested in this flourishing topic of research.

Download or read book The Translation Studies Reader written by Lawrence Venuti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Translation Studies Reader provides a definitive survey of the most important and influential developments in translation theory and research, with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The introductory essays prefacing each section place a wide range of seminal and innovative readings within their various contexts, thematic and cultural, institutional and historical. The fourth edition of this classic reader has been substantially revised and updated. Notable features include: Four new readings that sketch the history of Chinese translation from antiquity to the early twentieth century Four new readings that sample key trends in translation research since 2000 Incisive commentary on topics of current debate in the field such as world literature, migration and translingualism, and translation history A conceptual organization that illuminates the main models of translation theory and practice, whether instrumental or hermeneutic This carefully curated selection of key works, by leading scholar and translation theorist, Lawrence Venuti, is essential reading for students and scholars on courses such as the History of Translation Studies, Translation Theory, and Trends in Translation Studies.