Download or read book Now I Know Five Centuries of Aqedah Exegesis written by Albert van der Heide and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes how medieval Jewish Bible scholars sought to answer the question of what is meant by the Angel’s message from God to Abraham: ‘Now I Know’, as written in Genesis 22 verse 12. It examines these scholars’ comments on the nineteen verses in Genesis that tell the story of Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his own son Isaac, the Aqedat Yiṣḥaq. It explores the answers they found to the question of what, indeed, this story is trying to tell us. Is it a drastic way to condemn the practice of child sacrifice? Does it call for replacing human sacrifices with animal sacrifices? Is it a trial by which the Almighty tests the fidelity of one of His followers? Or is it His way to show the world the nature of true belief? The book starts with an introduction to familiarize readers with the many and varied manifestations of the Aqedah theme in Jewish culture and with the developments of medieval Jewish Bible exegesis in general. Next, it offers translations and analyses of the classical medieval Jewish Bible commentaries that deal with the exegesis of Genesis 22, exploring the many angles from which the Aqedah story has been understood. No less than five centuries of medieval Aqedah exegesis are reviewed, from Saadya (882-942) to Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508). These texts from the commentaries are combined with hermeneutical key passages by Moses Maimonides, Joseph Ibn Kaspi, Ḥasdai Crescas, and others, which were familiar to the minds of the exegetes, or which, conversely, reflect the impact of biblical Aqedah exegesis on religious thought. Together, the passages discussed illustrate the growth and development of Jewish Bible exegesis in dialogue with the rabbinic sources and with the various trends of thought and theology of their times. The consistent focus on the Aqedah constitutes a unifying theme, while the insights presented here greatly advance our understanding of the various developments in medieval Jewish Bible exegesis.

Download or read book Abraham s Silence written by J. Richard Middleton and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.

Download or read book History Metahistory and Evil written by Barbara Krawcowicz and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much post-Holocaust Jewish thought published in North America has assumed that the Holocaust shattered traditional religious categories that had been used by Jews to account for historical catastrophes. But most traditional Jewish thinkers during the war saw no such overwhelming of tradition in the death and suffering delivered to Jews by Nazis. Through a comparative reading of postwar North American and wartime Orthodox Jewish texts about the Holocaust, Barbara Krawcowicz shows that these sources differ in the paradigms—modern and historicist for North American thinkers, traditional and covenantal for Orthodox thinkers—in which they emplot historical events.

Download or read book Gendering Modern Jewish Thought written by Andrea Dara Cooper and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of brotherhood has been an important philosophical concept for understanding community, equality, and justice. In Gendering Modern Jewish Thought, Andrea Dara Cooper offers a gendered reading that challenges the key figures of the all-male fraternity of twentieth-century Jewish philosophy to open up to the feminine. Cooper offers a feminist lens, which when applied to thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, reveals new ways of illuminating questions of relational ethics, embodiment, politics, and positionality. She shows that patriarchal kinship as models of erotic love, brotherhood, and paternity are not accidental in Jewish philosophy, but serve as norms that have excluded women and non-normative individuals. Gendering Modern Jewish Thought suggests these fraternal models do real damage and must be brought to account in more broadly humanistic frameworks. For Cooper, a more responsible and ethical reading of Jewish philosophy comes forward when it is opened to the voices of mothers, sisters, and daughters.

Download or read book Interpreting Maimonides written by Charles H. Manekin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moses Maimonides (1138–1204) was arguably the single most important Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, with an impact on the later Jewish tradition that was unparalleled by any of his contemporaries. In this volume of new essays, world-leading scholars address themes relevant to his philosophical outlook, including his relationship with his Islamicate surroundings and the impact of his work on subsequent Jewish and Christian writings, as well as his reception in twentieth-century scholarship. The essays also address the nature and aim of Maimonides' philosophical writing, including its connection with biblical exegesis, and the philosophical and theological arguments that are central to his work, such as revelation, ritual, divine providence, and teleology. Wide-ranging and fully up-to-date, the volume will be highly valuable for those interested in Jewish history and thought, medieval philosophy, and religious studies.

Download or read book New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity written by Gary A. Anderson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-03-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2007 marked the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls. The 11th International Orion Symposium (January, 2007), “New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity,” provided a measure of the ways in which the discovery of the scrolls has altered the paradigms for textual and historical studies in the intervening six decades. The papers in this volume address such issues as the connections and distinctions between Jewish interpretation within the Land of Israel and outside of it; between Jewish and Christian exegesis in earlier and later periods; between biblical interpretation in literature and in art; between interpretation and the formation of the biblical canon.

Download or read book Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy written by Isaac Kalimi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Series: Jewish and Christian Heritage Series, 2 Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy is an important collection of essays on aspects of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament theology, the reception of biblical texts in Judaism and Christianity; the Aqedah, and related topics. The book comprises three main parts: a) the Aqedah and the Temple, b) Biblical Texts in Polemical Contexts, and c) Biblical Theology, Judaism and Christianity. Although each part deals with a specifically defined topic, all are linked by some common themes: all the sections discuss early Jewish exegesis, namely the early scriptures’ interpretation in late Biblical literature, in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, in Jewish-Hellenistic writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a variety of Rabbinic sources, essentially the Targumim and midrashim. Each chapter of the book covers theological controversies, either among the Jewish groups themselves, and/or between Judaism and other religious denominations, especially Christianity. “By now Isaac Kalimi is recognized the world over as one of the last of the vanishing breed of biblical historians and as one of a handful of experts in the biblical books of Chronicles. Kalimi demonstrates in the first five chapters of Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy that he is also fully grounded in Second Temple literature and qualified to discuss the exegesis of Hebrew Scripture reflected in rabbinic literature, Samaritan lore, the New Testament, and the Nag Hammadi library. The message conveyed by prefacing five important studies on ancient exegesis—Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan—to his two essays on biblical theology at the dawn of the twenty-first century is that Kalimi’s mastery of all relevant dialects of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and his unquestioned competence as a historian of both events and ideas qualifies him to offer some very original and timely advice to the world community of biblical scholars concerning biblical theology.” – Mayer I. Gruber, In: Review of Biblical Literature (2004). “This book belongs on the shelves of every serious Judaica library; it also addresses a general readership, and it is of interest to undergraduate as well as graduate students... [it states] the important engagement and willingness of the author to approach the virtual minefield of discussion about biblical history and exegesis.” – Rivka Ulmer, In: Review of Rabbinic Judaism 7 (2004). “As is necessary in interdisciplinary studies, Isaac Kalimi emerges as a jack of many trades in this book: rabbinic, Samaritan studies, patristics and theology. He has also demonstrated that he is a master in biblical studies... Kalimi’s book is a necessary, timely and much appreciated offering. It serves as a model of mutual scholarly benefit for Jewish and Christian scholars engaged in the literature of their formative periods.” — T. Meacham, In: Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity (2006). “Kalimi’s argumentation is thorough, wide-ranging, and impressionistic. His technique is to collect evidence from a variety of sources, to construct a history, and then to propose a single circumstantial explanation... There is much to discuss in these essays. Kalimi is an energetic, thoughtful, and challenging scholar...a fine collection by a scholar who represents one of the most interesting traditions in Israeli biblical scholarship.” – Francis Landy, In: Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 4 (2002-2003).

Download or read book The Idea of Biblical Interpretation written by Hindy Najman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2003-12-01 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Festschrift, James Kugel's creative scholarship in biblical interpretation provides the inspiration for a wide-ranging collection of essays that treat the history of Jewish and Christian scriptural interpretation from antiquity to the present

Download or read book The Binding aqedah and Its Transformations in Judaism and Islam written by Mishael Caspi and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Binding of Isaac (Aqedah) has long attracted the attention of scholars. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers still search for the most significant interpretations in order to strengthen their unique theological perceptions of the tale. Christian scholars have often focused on parallels between the binding of Isaac and the crucifixion of Jesus. However, little serious research has been undertaken to examine the story of the binding as it appears in Jewish and Islamic traditions, and see whether the parallel components could be found in the binding of Isaac vis a vis the binding of Ishmael. The Koranic story does not mention a name for the one who is bound, and Muslim scholars until the 12th century disputed the missing name, some suggesting that it was Isaac, others arguing that it was Ishmael.

Download or read book A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism written by Matthias Henze and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents eighteen commissioned articles on biblical exegesis in early Judaism, covering the period after the Hebrew Bible was written and before the beginning of rabbinic Judaism. -- from publisher description

Download or read book Paul and the Stories of Israel written by A. Andrew Das and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much recent scholarship on Paul has searched for implicit narratives behind Paul’s scriptural allusions, especially in the wake of Richard B. Hays’s groundbreaking work on the apostle’s appropriation of Scripture. A. Andrew Das reviews six proposals for “grand thematic narratives” behind the logic of Galatians—potentially, six explanations for the fabric of Paul’s theology: the covenant (N. T. Wright); the influx of nations to Zion (Terence Donaldson); Isaac’s near sacrifice (Scott Hahn, Alan Segal); the Spirit as cloud in the wilderness (William Wilder); the Exodus (James Scott, Sylvia Keesmaat); and the imperial cult (Bruce Winter et al.). Das weighs each of these proposals exegetically and finds them wanting—more examples of what Samuel Sandmel famously labeled “parallelomania” than of sound exegetical method. He turns at last to reflect on the risks of (admittedly alluring) totalizing methods and lifts up a seventh proposal with greater claim to evidence in the text of Galatians: Paul’s allusions to Isaiah’s servant passages.

Download or read book Reading and Re Reading Scripture at Qumran 2 vol set written by Moshe J. Bernstein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-06-21 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading and Re-reading Scripture at Qumran, Moshe J. Bernstein gathers more than three decades of his work on diverse aspects of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays range from broad surveys of the genres of biblical interpretation in these texts to more narrowly focused studies and close readings of specific documents. Volume I focuses on the book of Genesis, with a substantial portion being dedicated to studies of the Genesis Apocryphon and Commentary on Genesis A. Volume II contains several historical and programmatic essays, with specific studies focusing on legal material in the DSS and the pesharim. Under the former rubric, the documents known as 4QReworked Pentateuch, 4QOrdinancesa, 4QMMT, and the Temple Scroll are discussed.

Download or read book LXX Isaiah as Translation and Interpretation written by Ronald Troxel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a fresh understanding of how Isaiah was translated into Greek, by considering the impact of the translator's Alexandrian milieu on his work. Whereas most studies over the past fifty years have regarded the book's free translation style as betraying the translator's conviction that Isaiah's oracles were being fulfilled in his day, this study argues that he was primarily interested in offering his Greek-speaking co-religionists a cohesive representation of Isaiah's ideas. Comparison of the translator's interpretative tacks with those employed by the grammatikoi in their study of Homer offers a convincing picture of his work as an Alexandrian Jew and clarifies how this translation should be assessed in reconstructing early textual forms of Hebrew Isaiah.

Download or read book Glory and Agony written by Yael Feldman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glory and Agony is the first history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting "primal scene" of sacrifice, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, this study unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female—Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. Glory and Agony traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel as elsewhere.

Download or read book The New Isaac written by Leroy Huizenga and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-09-14 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gospel scholarship has long recognized that Matthean Christology is a rich, multifaceted tapestry weaving multifold Old Testment figures together in the person of Jesus. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that scholarship has found little role for the figure of Isaac in the Gospel of Matthew. Employing Umberto Eco's theory of the Model Reader as a theoretical basis to ground the phenomenon of Matthean intertextuality, this work contends that when read rightly as a coherent narrative in its first-century setting, with proper attention to both biblical texts and extrabiblical traditions about Isaac, the Gospel of Matthew evinces a significant Isaac typology in service of presenting Jesus as new temple and decisive sacrifice.

Download or read book Paul and the Gentile Problem written by Matthew Thiessen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul and the Gentile Problem provides a new explanation for the apostle Paul's statements about the Jewish law in his letters to the Romans and Galatians. Paul's arguments against circumcision and the law in Romans 2 and his reading of Genesis 15-21 in Galatians 4:21-31 belong within a stream of Jewish thinking which rejected the possibility that gentiles could undergo circumcision and adopt the Jewish law, thereby becoming Jews. Paul opposes this solution to the gentile problem because he thinks it misunderstands how essentially hopeless the gentile situation remains outside of Christ. The second part of the book moves from Paul's arguments against a gospel that requires gentiles to undergo circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law to his own positive account, based on his reading of the Abraham Narrative, of the way in which Israel's God relates to gentiles. Having received the Spirit (pneuma) of Christ, gentiles are incorporated into Christ, who is the singular seed of Abraham, and, therefore, become materially related to Abraham. But this solution raises a question: Why is it so important for Paul that gentiles become seed of Abraham? The argument of this book is that Paul believes that God had made certain promises to Abraham that only those who are his seed could enjoy and that these promises can be summarized as being empowered to live a moral life, inheriting the cosmos, and having the hope of an indestructible life.

Download or read book The Messenger of the Lord in Early Jewish Interpretations of Genesis written by Camilla Hélena von Heijne and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of this book is on early Jewish interpretations of the ambiguous relationship between God and ‛the angel of the Lord/God’ in texts like Genesis 16, 22 and 31. Genesis 32 is included since it exhibits the same ambiguity and constitutes an inseparable part of the Jacob saga. The study is set in the wider context of the development of angelology and concepts of God in various forms of early Judaism. When identifying patterns of interpretation in Jewish texts, their chronological setting is less important than the nature of the biblical source texts. For example, a common pattern is the avoidance of anthropomorphism. In Genesis ‛the angel of the Lord’ generally seems to be a kind of impersonal extension of God, while later Jewish writings are characterized by a more individualized angelology, but the ambivalence between God and his angel remains in many interpretations. In Philo's works and Wisdom of Solomon, the ‛Logos’ and ‛Lady Wisdom’ respectively have assumed the role of the biblical ‛angel of the Lord’. Although the angelology of Second Temple Judaism had developed in the direction of seeing angels as distinct personalities, Judaism still had room for the idea of divine hypostases.