Download or read book In God s Shadow written by Michael Walzer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the commentary of the ancient biblical writers and discusses the implications for such urgent modern topics as the nature of political society, hierarchy and justice, the use of political power, the justification for and rules of warfare, and the responsibilities of clerical figures, monarchs, and their subjects./divDIV DIVBecause there are many biblical writers, and because they represent different political views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics, Walzer observes. Yet pluralism is never explicitly defended in the Bible—indeed it couldn't be defended since God's word is one. There is, however, an anti-political teaching which recurs in biblical texts: if you have faith in God, you have no need for particular political institutions or prudent political leaders or deliberative assemblies or loyal citizens. And, Walzer finds a strong moral teaching common to the Bible's authors. He identifies God's decree for ethics and investigates its implications for just policymaking in our own times./div
Download or read book Politics in the Hebrew Bible written by Matthew B. Schwartz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Politics in the Hebrew Bible: God, Man, and Government, Kalman J. Kaplan and Matthew B. Schwartz offer a genre-straddling examination of the political themes in the Jewish Bible. By studying the political implications of 42 biblical stories (organized into the categories Social Order, Government and Leadership, Domestic Relations, Societal Relations, Morale and Mission, and Foreign Policy), the authors seek to discern a cohesive political viewpoint embodied by the Jewish Bible.
Download or read book The Hebrew Republic written by Eric Nelson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization—the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book’s central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson’s work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light. Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.
Download or read book John Locke s Political Philosophy and the Hebrew Bible written by Yechiel J. M. Leiter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Locke, whose ideas helped give birth to the United States, predicated his political theory on the Hebrew Bible. Why?
Download or read book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture written by Yoram Hazony and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-30 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new framework for reading the Bible as a work of reason.
Download or read book The Politics of Ancient Israel written by Norman Karol Gottwald and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a reconstruction of the politics of ancient Israel within the wider political environment of the ancient Near East. Gottwald begins by questioning the view of some biblical scholars that the primary factor influencing Israel's political evolution was its religion.
Download or read book War Memory and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible written by Jacob L. Wright and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how biblical authors, like more recent architects of national identities, constructed identity in direct relation to memories of war.
Download or read book The Bible as Political Artifact written by Susanne Sholza and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-10-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biblical studies and the teaching of biblical studies are clearly changing, though it is less clear what the changes mean and how we should evaluate them. Susanne Scholz casts a feminist eye on the politics of pedagogy, higher education, and wider society, decrypting important developments in "the architecture of educational power." She also examines how the increasingly intercultural, interreligious, and diasporic dynamics in society inform the hermeneutical and methodological possibilities for biblical exegesis. Taken as a whole, the fourteen chapters demonstrate that the foregrounding of gender, placed into its intersectional contexts, offers intriguing and valuable alternative ways of seeing the world and the Bible‘s place in it.
Download or read book Conceiving a Nation written by Mira Morgenstern and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ways of a King written by Geoffrey P. Miller and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2011-11-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoffrey P. Miller argues that the narratives from Genesis to Second Kings present a sophisticated argument for political obligation and for limited monarchy as the best form of government. The Hebrew Bible, in this sense, can be considered as one of the earliest political philosopies of the western world.The Garden of Eden story identifies revelation, consent, utopia, natural law, ownership, power, patriarchy, and justice as bases for political obligation. The stories of life after the expulsion from Eden argue that government and law are essential for a decent life. The Genesis narratives recognize patriarchal authority but also identifies limits based on kinship, higher authority and power. The book of Exodus introduces the topic of political authority, arguing that nationhood strictly dominates over other forms of political organization. The Sinai narratives explore two important sources of authority: revelation and consent of the governed. The book of Joshua presents a theory of sovereignty conceived of as the exclusive and absolute control over territory. The book of Judges examines two types of national government: military rule and confederacy. It argues that military rule is inappropriate for peacetime conditions and that the confederate form is not strong enough to deliver the benefits of nationhood. The books of Samuel and Kings consider theocracy and monarchy. The bible endorses monarchy as the best available form of government provided that the king is constrained by appropriate checks and balances. Contrary to the view of some scholars, no text from Genesis to Second Kings disapproves of monarchy as a form of government.
Download or read book The Beginning of Politics written by Moshe Halbertal and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.--
Download or read book God and Earthly Power written by J. G. McConville and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compares perspectives from critical methodologies in Old Testament study with perspectives from the history of interpretation of key Old Testament political texts
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible written by Brad E. Kelle and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible offers 36 essays on the so-called "Historical Books": Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, Ezra-Nehemiah, and 1-2 Chronicles. The essays are organized around four nodes: contexts, content, approaches, and reception. Each essay takes up two questions: (1) what does the topic/area/issue have to do with the Historical Books?" and (2) how does this topic/area/issue help readers better interpret the Historical Books?" The essays engage traditional theories and newer updates to the same, and also engage the textual traditions themselves which are what give rise to compositional analyses. Many essays model approaches that move in entirely different ways altogether, however, whether those are by attending to synchronic, literary, theoretical, or reception aspects of the texts at hand. The contributions range from text-critical issues to ancient historiography, state formation and development, ancient Near Eastern contexts, society and economy, political theory, violence studies, orality, feminism, postcolonialism, and trauma theory-among others. Taken together, these essays well represent the variety of options available when it comes to gathering, assessing, and interpreting these particular biblical books"--
Download or read book From Deborah to Esther written by Lillian Rae Klein and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebrew Bible's fascinating narratives about women have occasioned some of the most important biblical scholarship of the last generation. Lillian Klein contributes to that wealth with her absorbing studies of key figures in the narrative material: Deborah, Jephtha's daughter, Delilah, Jael, the whore of Gaza, Kaleb's daughter Achsah, Hannah, Esther, the wife of Job, David's wife Michal, and Bathsheba. With a marvelous eye for the telling detail -- or its absence -- Klein examines the biblical portraits, often unfortunately brief, of these women and the dynamics of gender, power, and honor at work in their stories. A remarkably lucid and careful scholar, Klein has surfaced the underlying and ironic ideals of womanhood in a society that both honored and marginalized women in stories of seduction and rivalry, deviation and obedience, public shame and private power.
Download or read book The Hebrew Bible the Old Testament and Historical Criticism written by Jon Douglas Levenson and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing from a Jewish perspective, Jon Levenson reviews many often neglected theoretical questions. He focuses on the relationship between two interpretive communities--the community of scholars who are committed to the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation and the community responsible for the canonization and preservation of the Bible.
Download or read book King and Kin written by Joel Rosenberg and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A useful addition to collections on the study of the Bible as literature." --Choice "... reflects not only on what the Bible is saying, but on how and why. The result is an illumination of the role of compositional art in the analysis of the past and its consequent political implications." --Shofar "Clearly, there is much to gain from a careful reading of this book." --Journal of the American Oriental Society Joel Rosenberg explores the fundamental concepts and contradictions in the history of pre-exilic Israel, emphasizing the transition from tribal confederation to national kingdom. The result is a fascinating illumination of the role of compositional art in the analysis of the past and its consequent political implications.
Download or read book Women in the Hebrew Bible written by Alice Bach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in the Hebrew Bible presents the first one-volume overview covering the interpretation of women's place in man's world within the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Written by the major scholars in the field of biblical studies and literary theory, these essays examine attitudes toward women and their status in ancient Near Eastern societies, focusing on the Israelite society portrayed by the Hebrew Bible.
