Download or read book Nameless Blameless and Without Shame written by Gina Hens-Piazza and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employing three venues of literary analysis (conventional literary criticism, new literary criticism, and postmodern literary criticism), this book conducts a character study of the two cannibal mothers before a king (2 Kings 6:24-33). Training our attention upon these minor characters yields major insights. In particular, the postmodern literary assessment discloses the violence encoded in texts by the privileging of the powerful and the empowering of the privileged. Moreover, the broader ties that such a character study yields connect these cannibal mothers to portraits of other pairs of biblical mothers and their plight (the two mothers before Solomon, Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah) and prompt us to search for counter-stories in the biblical tradition and in our own lives opposing the violence embedded there. Book jacket.
Download or read book Mourner Mother Midwife written by L. Juliana M. Claassens and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juliana Claassens explores alternative Old Testament metaphors that portray God as mourner, mother, and midwife--images that resist the violence and bloodshed associated with the dominant warrior imagery
Download or read book Isn t This Bathsheba written by Sara M. Koenig and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bathsheba is undeniably a minor character in the biblical plotline, appearing in only four chapters in Samuel and Kings combined, and even therein saying and doing very little. Thus she is often ignored or mentioned merely parenthetically. When Bathsheba has been considered, she has been depicted in a myriad of ways on the spectrum from helpless victim to hapless seductress. In fact, with so many different interpretations of her throughout the centuries, it is easy to find oneself asking, along with the anonymous informant in 2 Sam 11:3, "Isn't this Bathsheba?"This study argues that while she is a minor character, Bathsheba is complex and positive, and shows development from when she first appears in Samuel to when she fades out of the story in Kings. Koenig compares close and careful reading of Bathsheba in the Masoretic Text with the story as it appears in the versions of the Septuagint, the Peshitta, and the Targum of Jonathan. In those versions, Bathsheba's characterization as a complex, generally positive individual and as a character who shows development remains consistent with the Masoretic Text: not in spite of the changes from the Hebrew into Greek, Syriac, and Aramaic, but because of them. This study also considers how Bathsheba is portrayed in early Jewish interpretations from Josephus, the Talmud, and rabbinic Midrash. Even there, the portrayal of Bathsheba is rich and positive. Studying Bathsheba's character has implications for a broader understanding of how texts are read, how meanings are gathered, and how characters are built.
Download or read book Lamentations written by Gina Hens-Piazza and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminist biblical interpretation has reached a level of maturity that now makes possible a commentary series on every book of the Bible. It is our hope that Wisdom Commentary, by making the best of current feminist biblical scholarship available in an accessible format ... will aid readers in their advancement toward God's vision of dignity, equality, and justice for all. - Book jacket.
Download or read book Transgression and Transformation written by L. Juliana Claassens and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume on feminist, postcolonial and queer biblical interpretation gathers perspectives from a global body of researchers; in offering innovative interpretations of key texts from the Hebrew Bible, both established and emerging biblical scholars consider the question of how commonplace interpretative practices may be considered to be transgressive in nature. Utilizing innovative strategies, they read against the grain of the text and in support of the marginalized, the subordinated or subaltern others both in the text and in our world today. Important questions regarding power and privilege are constantly raised: whose voices are being heard, and whose interests are being served? Knowing all too well the harm that stereotypical constructions of the Other can do in terms of feeding racism, sexism, homophobia and imperialism in their respective interpretative communities, the essays in this volume interrogate constructions of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and class, both in the text as well as in their respective contexts. By means of these thought-provoking interpretations, the contributors show their commitment not merely the sake of scholarship but to a scholarly ethos, which in some shape or form contributes to the cultivation of more just, equitable societies.
Download or read book Exploring Christian Spirituality written by Bruce H. Lescher and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sandra Schneiders commands respect as one of the most significant and influential figures in the emergence of the study of Christian spirituality as an academic discipline, as the focused and disciplined exploration of religious experience. This book honors her contributions to the field by addressing issues that are emerging at the creative "edges" of the discipline. In this volume, colleagues and students of Dr. Schneiders and other collaborators in the academic discipline of Christian spirituality examine crucial issues from their various disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Questions of methodology address the status of spirituality as a discipline, interdisciplinarity, and self-implication. Other essays explore the "edges" of Christian spirituality and biblical spirituality, gender studies, the natural sciences, nature writing, the social sciences, and interfaith issues. This collection of essays will provoke students and scholars of Christian spirituality, as well as practitioners, to continue critically thinking, discussing, writing, and practicing it.
Download or read book Valuable and Vulnerable written by Julie Faith Parker and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as women in the Bible have been overlooked for much of interpretative history, children in the Bible have fascinating and compelling stories that scholars have largely ignored. This groundbreaking book focuses on children in the Hebrew Bible. The author argues that the biblical writers recognized children as different from adults and used these ideas to shape their stories. She provides conceptual and historical frameworks for understanding children and childhood, and examines Hebrew terms related to children and youth. The book introduces a new methodology of childist interpretation and applies it to the Elisha cycle (2 Kings 2-8), which contains forty-nine child characters. Combining literary insights with social-scientific evidence, the author demonstrates that children play critical roles in the world of the text as well as the culture that produced it.
Download or read book Violence against Women and Children in the Hebrew Bible written by Kristine Henriksen Garroway and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did violence against women and children mean for ancient audiences and how do modern audiences hear and process the meaning of violence in the texts of the Hebrew Bible? The rape of Tamar, the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, babes ripped from the womb during war-texts such as these are hardly fodder for Sunday School classes; yet we are left with the reality that the Bible is a violent text full of war, murder, genocide, and destruction, often carried out at the behest of God. The essays in this volume explore ways in which the Hebrew Bible uses and abuses women and children to make indelible points concerning the people of Israel, the lived realities of the Israelite society, and God's relationship to His people. Where other works turn to the study of the violence itself, or to the divine nature of violence, this volume focuses in on the human component. As a result, these studies are reminders that women and children born out of trauma are at once vulnerable and valuable, fragile and resilient.
Download or read book Elisha s Profile in the Book of Kings written by Keith Bodner and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elisha's Profile in the Book of Kings uses the tools of literary criticism to read the Elisha narrative as an integral component of the Deuteronomistic History compiled in the aftermath of the Babylonian invasion and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. From his investiture in 1 Kings 19 to his final cameo in 2 Kings 13, Elisha the prophet has one of the most extensively-narrated careers in Israel's royal history. During a particularly dark and contested era where the corrupt northern kings hold sway, Elisha enters the ideological battleground and boldly raises his voice and performs remarkable signs to stem the tide of injustice and religious inconstancy. Empowered by a double portion of his master Elijah's spirit, Elisha is a double agent who continues the task of dismantling the Omride dynasty. Moving between the international stage and more domestic locales, Elisha travels widely and interacts with a host of characters from virtually every socio-economic category, visiting foreign capitals and cities under siege as well as wealthy homes and obscure villages. With actions that range from feeding a multitude to mind-reading and raising the dead, Elisha's performance eclipses that of his master and ensures a lasting place in ancient Israel's prophetic heritage.
Download or read book Searching for Sarah in the Second Temple Era written by Joseph McDonald and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeking to build upon recent scholarship based on Biblical women, Joseph McDonald uses a character-centered literary approach to read the story of Sarah as it was told and retold in the Second Temple period. McDonald offers an alternative to the usual approaches to “rewritten Bible” narratives, which often emphasize near-context, synoptic comparison of retold stories and their scriptural precursors, arguing that examination of retold narratives as narratives reveals important aspects of their internal literary effects, that may otherwise go unnoticed. Taken together, McDonald suggests that such readings reveal one of Sarah's trans-narrative or “deep traits,” as a curious, multi-faceted resemblance to the character of Abraham. The richness of her images, however, shows that this resemblance is not the ultimate distillation of Sarah, but a symptom of the kind of restriction that she consistently faces in this literature. McDonald concludes that creative readings of the narratives featuring Sarah in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, the Genesis Apocryphon, and the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus illuminate Sarah as a complex and sometimes contradictory figure, whose individuality and agency often struggle to escape limitations placed upon her – both by other characters, such as Abraham and God, and by the narrators of her tales.
Download or read book Material Culture and Women s Religious Experience in Antiquity written by Mark D. Ellison and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can material artifacts help illuminate the religious lives of women in antiquity? In what ways do archaeological and art historical studies recover women’s religious perspectives and experiences that the literary record misses or underrepresents? The authors of the essays in this volume set out to answer such questions in fascinating, new case studies of women and ancient religions in the Near East and Mediterranean world. They cover a broad historical, geographic, and religious spectrum as they explore women’s lives from the time of ancient Egypt in the second millennium BCE into the early medieval period, from the Syrian Desert to Western Europe, in the religious traditions of Egypt, Canaan, Greece, Rome, ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. Working at the intersections of religion, archaeology, art history, and women’s history, these authors make fresh contributions to interdisciplinary studies, and their essays will be of interest to students and scholars across these academic fields.
Download or read book The Supporting Cast of the Bible written by Gina Hens-Piazza and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book spotlights the Old Testament’s “supporting cast,” the vast array of nameless characters wedged in the margins of biblical stories. Often categorized as literary props or aspects of scenery, these anonymous figures (“laborers,” “a creditor,” “the crowd,” “servants,” “elders,” “a midwife,” etc.) frequently shoulder the burden of a story that is never theirs. Grounded in literary theory, Gina Hens-Piazza sets forth a new taxonomy for these often anonymous characters.
Download or read book Life Land and Elijah in the Book of Kings written by Daniel J. D. Stulac and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Daniel J. D. Stulac brings a canonical-agrarian approach to the Elijah narratives and demonstrates the rhetorical and theological contribution of these texts to the Book of Kings. This unique perspective yields insights into Elijah's iconographical character (1 Kings 17-19), which is contrasted sharply against the Omride dynasty (1 Kings 20-2 Kings 1). It also serves as a template for Elisha's activities in chapters to follow (2 Kings 2-8). Under circumstances that foreshadow the removal of both monarchy and temple, the book's middle third (1 Kings 17-2 Kings 8) proclaims Yhwh's enduring care for Israel's land and people through various portraits of resurrection, even in a world where Israel's sacred institutions have been stripped away. Elijah emerges as the archetypal ancestor of a royal-prophetic remnant with which the reader is encouraged to identify.
Download or read book Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 3 2 written by Stephen J. Andrews and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament (JESOT) is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the academic and evangelical study of the Old Testament. The journal seeks to fill a need in academia by providing a venue for high-level scholarship on the Old Testament from an evangelical standpoint. The journal is not affiliated with any particular academic institution, and with an international editorial board, open access format, and multi-language submissions, JESOT cultivates and promotes Old Testament scholarship in the evangelical global community. The journal differs from many evangelical journals in that it seeks to publish current academic research in the areas of ancient Near Eastern backgrounds, Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinics, Linguistics, Septuagint, Research Methodology, Literary Analysis, Exegesis, Text Criticism, and Theology as they pertain only to the Old Testament. JESOT also includes up-to-date book reviews on various academic studies of the Old Testament.
Download or read book Retelling the Siege of Jerusalem in Early Modern England written by Vanita Neelakanta and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book explores sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English retellings of the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the way they informed and were informed by religious and political developments. The siege featured prominently in many early modern English sermons, ballads, plays, histories, and pamphlets, functioning as a touchstone for writers who sought to locate their own national drama of civil and religious tumult within a larger biblical and post-biblical context. Reformed England identified with besieged Jerusalem, establishing an equivalency between the Protestant church and the ancient Jewish nation but exposing fears that a displeased God could destroy his beloved nation. As print culture grew, secular interpretations of the siege ran alongside once-dominant providentialist narratives and spoke to the political anxieties in England as it was beginning to fashion a conception of itself as a nation. Distributed for the University of Delaware Press
Download or read book Exile and Suffering written by Bob Becking and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the fiftieth anniversary of the Old Testament Society of South Africa a conference was organized on the theme Exile and Suffering. This volume contains a selection of the papers presented. Focal questions are such themes as: What do we really know about the Exile? To what degree did suffering take place? How did the Ancient Israelites cope with the disaster? Where the ancinet traditions sufficient to deal with the Exile? Or did this period produce new forms of 'theology'? The significance of the Exile as a matrix for understanding suffering until this day is also dealt with.
Download or read book History of Catholic Theological Ethics A written by Keenan, James F., SJ and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to Catholic theological ethics through the lens of its historical development from the beginning of the church until today.
