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The series explores our ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of the social world that produced the biblical texts, also analysing aspects of the Bible''s role in the history of our civilization and the many perspectives – religious, theological, cultural, political, and aesthetic – which drive modern scholarship.

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34 results in BibleWorld

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Jonah's World
  • Social Science and the Reading of Prophetic Story
  • Lowell K. Handy
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 January 2008
  • The story of Jonah, often read as a simple children's story, is a multifaceted and elaborate narrative with serious intent. Treating the biblical book as a fictitious story based on real locations and recognizable persons, Jonah's World examines the background to the story and draws on social science approaches to describe its imaginative world. The book explores the geography, theology, myth, human characters, natural landscape, and the ideology behind the story to uncover a vision of reality shaped by literary technique. Jonah's World will be invaluable to students and scholars seeking a new approach to the reading of this colourful text.

History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles
  • Ehud Ben Zvi
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 November 2006
  • History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles presents a new way of approaching this key biblical text, arguing that the Book employs both multiple viewpoints and the knowledge of the past held by its intended readership to reshape social memory and reinforce the authority of God. The Book of Chronicles communicates to its intended readership a theological worldview built around multiple, partial perspectives which inform and balance each other. This is a worldview which emphasizes the limitations of all human knowledge, even of theologically 'proper' knowledge. When Chronicles presents the past as explainable it also affirms that those who inhabited it could not predict the future. And, despite expanding an 'explainable' past, the Book deliberately frames some of YHWH's actions - crucial events in Israel's social memory - as unexplainable in human terms. The Book serves to rationalise divinely ordained, prescriptive behaviour through its emphasis on the impossibility of adequate human understanding of a past, present and future governed by YHWH.

Sodomy
  • A History of a Christian Biblical Myth
  • Michael Carden
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 October 2004
  • The biblical narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah has served as an archetypal story of divine antipathy towards same sex love and desire. Sodomy offers a study of the reception of this story in Christian and Jewish traditions from antiquity to the Reformation. The book argues that the homophobic interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah is a Christian invention which emerged in the first few centuries of the Christian era. The Jewish tradition - in which Sodom and Gomorrah are associated primarily with inhospitality, xenophobia and abuse of the poor - presents a very different picture. The book will be of interest to students and scholars seeking a fresh perspective on biblical approaches to sexuality.

Israel's History and the History of Israel
  • Mario Liverani
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 November 2005
  • In Israel's History and the History of Israel one of the world's foremost experts on antiquity addresses the birth of Israel and its historic reality. Many stories have been told of the founding of ancient Israel, all rely on the biblical story in its narrative scheme, despite its historic unreliability. Drawing on the literary and archaeological record, this book completely rewrites the history of Israel. The study traces the textual material to the times of its creation, reconstructs the evolution of political and religious ideologies, and firmly inserts the history of Israel into its ancient-oriental context.

Women Healing/Healing Women
  • The Genderization of Healing in Early Christianity
  • Elaine Wainwright
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 December 2006
  • Women Healing/Healing Women begins with a search for women who were healers in the Graeco-Roman world of the late Hellenistic and early Roman period. Women healers were honoured in inscriptions and named by medical writers, and were familiar enough to be stereotyped in plays and other writings. What emerges by the first century of the Common Era is a world in which women functioned as healers but where healing becomes a contested site for gender relations. By the time the gospels are written the place of women as healers is effectively erased. The book uses the historical and cultural evidence to re-read the gospel texts and discover healers in a woman pouring out ointment, healed women bearing on their bodies the language describing Jesus, and even in women possessed by demons.

Sectarianism in Early Judaism
  • Sociological Advances
  • Edited by David J. Chalcraft
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 September 2007
  • Sectarianism in Early Judaism applies recent developments in sociological analysis to sect formation and development in early Judaism. The essays examine sectarianism in a wide range of different forms: the many layers of redaction in religious texts; the development arcs of sectarian groups; the role of sectarianism across Jewish history as well as in the time of the Second Temple; and the relations within and between sects and between sects and wider society. The book aims to establish a conceptual framework for the analysis of sects and, in doing so, makes particular use of the work of Max Weber and Bryan Wilson, exploring the limits of their typologies and sociological theories.

The Mythic Mind
  • Essays on Cosmology and Religion in Ugaritic and Old Testament Literature
  • N. Wyatt
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 June 2005
  • The Israelite world-view was essentially a western Semitic world-view in origin. This view drew deeply on influences from Egypt and Mesopotamia and produced - by a process of synthesis and reaction - its own distinctive character. The Mythic Mind explores this process, historically and cosmologically, arguing for the necessity of comparative study in any assessment of ancient Israel and challenging orthodox views largely based on understanding Israel in isolation. The study particularly highlights the importance of Ugaritic texts in reflecting the cultural context in which ancient Israel developed into two symbiotic kingdoms, heirs to a common 'Canaanite' tradition.

The Morality of Paul's Converts
  • Edwin D. Freed
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 April 2005
  • A careful analysis of Paul's letters shows that in every church there were two main groups of converts: those who were baptized and those being instructed for baptism. Such analysis also makes it possible to determine which parts of each letter were directed towards which group. Baptism was the rite by which converts were forgiven their past sins and became members of a renewed community of God, from which any who continued to sin were expelled. The Morality of Paul's Converts argues that Paul was always more concerned with how converts behaved than with what they believed about Christ. Paul remained a Jew even after he accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Paul eventually developed beliefs about Jesus as the Son of God in order to win Gentile converts to faithfulness, but this careful analysis of his writings reveals that his primary concern was always the morality of converts. His message always remained focused on faithfulness toward God and moral probity.

O Mother, Where Art Thou?
  • An Irigarayan Reading of the Book of Chronicles
  • Julie Kelso
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 January 2008
  • The Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. O Mother, Where Art Thou? argues that Chronicles has two principal strategies of silencing women: disavowal and repression of the maternal body. The silencing of women is enacted by excluding them from the central action. The disavowal of the maternal body as 'origin' of the masculine subject effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling 'man' to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. O Mother, Where Art Thou? argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence. The book suggests that the work of Luce Irigaray offers a viable mode of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as 'woman', enabling a rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy.

The Origins of the 'Second' Temple
  • Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem
  • Diana V. Edelman
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    30 September 2005
  • Darius I, King of Persia, claimed to have accomplished many deeds in the early years of his reign including rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. The books of Haggai and Zechariah and the Book of Ezra confirm this. The genealogical information contained in the book of Nehemiah, however, suggests otherwise. The Origins of the 'Second' Temple presents a ground-breaking study which re-dates the temple to the reign of Artaxerxes I. The book argues that the editor of Haggai and Zechariah mistakenly set the rebuilding under Darius I because he was influenced by Darius' widely circulated autobiography of his rise to power and by a desire to show the fulfilment of inherited prophecy. Artaxerxes I instituted a plan to incorporate Yehud into the Persian road, postal, and military systems and the rebuilding of the temple was a minor part of this plan. The temple was rebuilt to provide soldiers stationed in the fortress in Jerusalem and civilians living in the new provincial seat with a place to worship their native god whilst also providing a place to store taxes and monies collected on behalf of the Persian administration.

Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism
  • Quests, Scholarship and Ideology
  • James G. Crossley
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 July 2012
  • Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism analyses the ideology underpinning contemporary scholarly and popular quests for the historical Jesus. Focusing on cultural and political issues, the book examines postmodernism, multiculturalism and the liberal masking of power. The study ranges across diverse topics: the dubious periodisation of the quest for the historical Jesus; 'biblioblogging'; Jesus the 'Great Man' and western individualism; image-conscious Jesus scholarship; the 'Jewishness' of Jesus and the multicultural Other; evangelical and 'mythical' Jesuses; and the contradictions between personal beliefs and dominant ideological trends in the construction of historical Jesuses. Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism offers readers a radical revisioning of contemporary biblical studies.

Symposia
  • Dialogues Concerning the History of Biblical Interpretation
  • Roland Boer
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 May 2007
  • Symposia illuminates the central issues and concerns of biblical studies by presenting a series of stories. The model for the stories is the ancient Greek idea of the symposium, a 'sitting down together for the purpose of drinking'. In Plato's writings, the symposium becomes a genre of writing with Socrates at its centre, a character who perpetually questions in order to develop the pursuit of knowledge. Some of the most influential figures in the history of biblical studies - Julius Wellhausen, Hermann Gunkel, Martin Noth, Brevard Childs, Norman Gottwald, Phyllis Trible, and the Bible and Culture Collective - become the central characters in these stories. Each aims to voice their central arguments, to highlight and confront the key challenges they see and, of course, to dispute the positions of others.

Yours Faithfully
  • Virtual Letters from the Bible
  • Edited by Philip R. Davies
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    31 October 2004
  • Yours Faithfully presents an anthology of virtual letters from the Bible, in which leading scholars imagine correspondence between biblical characters. Each letter conveys the insights that a given character might have and, together, the letters provide a rich sense of the concerns which propel and characters who inhabit the Bible. The letters are written in a range of styles - from the strictly historical to the very contemporary - and embrace the serious and the playful. The aim is to offer a commentary on familiar texts and events and to continue a long tradition of retelling stories from the Bible.

Opening the Books of Moses
  • Diana V. Edelman, Philip R. Davies, Christophe Nihan
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    28 February 2012
  • Opening the Books of Moses presents an introduction to the first five books of the Bible. It is written for any student engaged in the scholarly study of these most central of biblical texts. The aim throughout is to examine the books with a view to illuminating the ideas, beliefs and experiences of the time. This broad overview provides: a survey of the current state of Pentateuchal research; an analysis of how the texts were shaped by their time and audience; an outline of Jewish areas in the Persian period; the study concludes with an analysis of key concerns in the study of the Pentateuch, notably the Torah, geography, ethnicity, the nature of Yahweh and other deities, theories of cult, treaties and oaths, and Moses himself.

Mark and its Subalterns
  • A Hermeneutical Paradigm for a Postcolonial Context
  • C. I. David Joy
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    30 June 2008
  • Palestine in the 1st Century CE was subject to colonial rule, leading to the marginalisation of the native people and the victimisation of the poor. Mark and its Subalterns offers a fresh appraisal of the identity and involvement of subalterns in Mark's Gospel, arguing that the presence of subalterns in Mark provides a hermeneutical tool for re-reading the Bible in a postcolonial context. Drawing on liberation and feminist readings of Scripture, the book examines postcolonial biblical interpretations that failed to take native peoples into account. The book presents a postcolonial reading of the Gospel of Mark - highlighting key issues of gender, race, hybridity, class, nationalism, purity and the representation of the poor - and uses this analysis to construct a framework for understanding religion in contemporary India.

Redrawing the Boundaries
  • The Date of Early Christian Literature
  • J. V. M. Sturdy
  • Edited by Jonathan Knight
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    31 January 2008
  • Was the New Testament written in the early first century CE or at a much later date? Sturdy's work was conceived as a reply to John Robinson's Reading the New Testament, which dated the New Testament material very early. Sturdy argued that the Pauline letters are in places interpolated, Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastorals are pseudonymous, and that Luke and Acts are not by the same author. He believed that Matthew was the last Synoptic Gospel to be written, with John assigned to the period 140 CE. Redrawing the Boundaries offers a radical approach to New Testament Studies that stands in a long tradition of scholarship represented by the Tuebingen School in Germany.

Sex Working and the Bible
  • Avaren Ipsen
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    30 November 2009
  • The Bible contains many stories of prostitution. Feminist and liberation readings of these biblical narratives have often made sex workers invisible. Sex Working and the Bible examines stories of biblical prostitution through the experiences and understanding of sex workers today. The Bible narratives - ranging across Rahab in the Book of Joshua, the story of Solomon and the two prostitutes, the anointing women traditions, and the apocalyptic vision of the whore of Babylon in Revelation - are set within both a practical and theoretical framework. This radical book offers a new, more inclusive way of approaching issues of gender, sexuality and prostitution in the Bible.

The Bible Says So!
  • From Simple Answers to Insightful Understanding
  • Edwin D. Freed, Jane F. Roberts
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    31 March 2009
  • Is it possible to apply teachings from the Bible to our world today, given the vast differences between biblical times and ours? Biblical passages are often taken out of context and interpreted to support a particular viewpoint or justify a particular action. The Bible Says So! examines the origins of well-known biblical stories - from Adam and Eve, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, to the birth of Jesus, his resurrection and the writings of St Paul. The book argues that the meaning of these stories becomes apparent when we read between the lines, using the techniques of biblical scholars. The Bible Says So! explores the original intentions of the biblical writers in their particular context and examines key biblical values. The book does justice to the origins of the biblical text, whilst also affirming the relevance of the Bible today.

A Compendium of Musical Instruments and Instrumental Terminology in the Bible
  • Yelena Kolyada
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    31 October 2009
  • A Compendium of Musical Instruments and Instrumental Terminology in the Bible draws on extensive historical research, comparative linguistic analysis and musical study to offer the first compilation of its kind. The volume examines the entire range of musical instruments in the Bible - stringed, wind and percussion - drawing on ancient and modern translations of the Bible and the works of rabbinic teachers, Church Fathers and medieval, renaissance and contemporary scholars. The book offers a historical survey of Hebrew instrumental music - its origins and links with neighbouring cultures, the role of instruments in the religious, social, public and private life of ancient Israel, and the system of musical education - and explores the understanding of Hebrew musical instruments in post-biblical times. This comprehensive volume will be invaluable to musicologists, archaeologists, theologians, historians, philologists and Bible translators, as well as general readers in the subject.

Land, Credit and Crisis
  • Agrarian Finance in the Hebrew Bible
  • Philippe Guillaume
  • Published by:
    Acumen Publishing
    Published online:
    05 May 2014
    Print publication:
    31 January 2012
  • Land, Credit and Crisis presents a new understanding of the financial culture of the Bible. Biblical Palestine was characterized by an over-abundance of arable land combined with a chronic lack of manpower and agricultural credit - circumstances which lead to much prophetic fulminating against merchants and the rich. The book reveals how the financial instruments and institutions of the time reflected a tough economic realism and argues that the image of the biblical prophet as a champion of social justice must be revised.

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