Biblical Studies

Genesis is a literary unity, and is the foundation for the Pentateuch and for the entire Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings). This unity is complex, like the human body with its many diverse parts. As with the body, no major part preexisted other parts; all came to birth simultaneously. Three features of Genesis are pivotal. (1) Genesis is encyclopedic, synthesizing literature, religion, the science of the time, and experience (2) Genesis is artistic literature. The many variations and apparent contradictions of the text reflect a unified artistic strategy. Above all, Genesis is like a series of two‐part paintings or diptychs – two accounts of creation, two of sin, two genealogies, and so on. Every piece fits, and the diverse parts set up a dialog. (3) Genesis illustrates intertextuality; its sources include extant documents, especially from Mesopotamia, from Judea (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), and from western Asia (Homer's Odyssey). The documentary theory (JEDP) is unnecessary and misleading.

For more than a century, scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have assumed that ancient Jews viewed Gentiles as ritually impure, and that this alleged principle of Gentile ritual impurity was the basis for a strict and burdensome policy of separation between Jews and non‐Jews. The present volume corrects decades of erroneous scholarship on the question of Gentile ritual impurity and the history of Jewish perceptions of Gentiles in antiquity. Although purity and impurity were intimately connected with questions of identity and otherness in ancient Jewish culture, the terms “pure” and “impure” were employed in various ways by different groups of Jews to describe and inscribe sociocultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Close analysis of biblical, Second Temple, New Testament, patristic, and rabbinic sources, shows that at least four distinct modes of impurity were associated with Gentiles by different groups – ritual impurity, moral impurity, genealogical impurity, and carnal impurity. This unexpected diversity of ancient Jewish views of Gentile impurity is tied to widely differing definitions of Jewish group identity and the access of Gentiles to that identity. Consequently, ancient Jews exhibited widely varying attitudes towards intermarriage and conversion – the two processes by which group boundaries might be penetrated. These diverse views of the permeability of the Jewish–Gentile boundary through intermarriage or conversion, deriving in turn from diverse conceptions of Gentile impurity and Jewish identity, contributed to the rise of sectarianism in Second Temple Judaism, and to the separation of the early church from what would later become rabbinic Judaism.

This book, which is the first in a series providing authoritative texts of key non-canonical gospel writings, comprises a critical edition, with full translations, of all the extant manuscripts of the Gospel of Mary. In addition, an extended Introduction discusses the key issues involved in the interpretation of the text, as well as locating it in its proper historical context, while a Commentary explicates points of detail. The gospel has been important in many recent discussions of non-canonical gospels, of early Christian Gnosticism, and of discussions of the figure of Mary Magdalene. This book should provoke future discussions of this important early Christian text.

Hermeneutics of Holiness focuses on the historical, theological, and literary trajectories of the Hebrew biblical notions of holiness from the biblical context into the fourth-century Jewish and Christian interpretive traditions. This work is particularly interested in how holy communities are formed and in what ways these individuals or communities derive their notions of holiness from the biblical texts. Moreover, this book examines how and why these notions of holy-community often intersect with ideals of sexuality, sexual practice, and asceticism. The book first examines biblical constructs of holiness but then follows these ideas along their various interpretive developments through the Second Temple Literature (Ezra, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls), early Christian literature (New Testament) and the early Syriac Christian tradition (Odes of Solomon, Acts of Judah Thomas, Aphrahat) on the one hand, and the Rabbinic literature on the other. This study ends with a comparative analysis between the Syriac Christian literature and early Rabbinic writings in order to better understand both the similarities between and the diversity of holiness and sexuality constructs, as well as biblical interpretive practices and traditions in these communities. In the end, this book argues that early Christian and Jewish notions of sexual production and sexual restraint derive from shared interpretive traditions of biblical holiness.

Is the Bible historically true? Or are its narratives the expression of the ideologies of partisan groups far removed in time from the events depicted? The questions are not new, but are now being posed in a different terminology and outlook, often characterized as postmodernism. The book goes back to redefine the term ‘biblical criticism’ and concentrates on some examples from the history of Israel. An attempt is made to clarify the possible meanings of ‘ideology’ and some relations between postmodernism and theology are examined. Tradition and continuity are to be prized in contrast to the feverish grasp at novelty.

More people read the Bible than any other book. Indeed, many try to live their lives according to its words. The question is, do they understand what they're reading? As this book shows, quite often the answer is, “No.” This book argues that to comprehend the Bible we must grasp the intentions of the biblical authors themselves—what sort of texts they thought they were writing and how they would have been understood by their intended audience. In short, we must recognize the genres to which these texts belong. The book examines several genres that are typically misunderstood, offering careful readings of specific texts to show how the confusion arises, and how knowing the genre produces a correct reading. The book of Jonah, for example, offers many clues that it is meant as a humorous satire, not a straight-faced historical account of a man who was swallowed by a fish. Likewise, the book explains that the very names “Adam” and “Eve” tell us that these are not historical characters, but figures who symbolize human origins (“Adam” means man, “Eve” is related to the word for life). Similarly, the authors of apocalyptic texts—including the Book of Revelation—were writing allegories of events that were happening in their own time. Not for a moment could they imagine that centuries afterwards, readers would be poring over their works for clues to the date of the Second Coming of Christ, or when and how the world would end.

Christianity is understood to be a “universal” religion that transcends the particularities of history and culture, including differences related to kinship and ethnicity. This portrait of Christianity has been maintained by an interpretive tradition that claims that Paul eliminates ethnicity or at least separates it from what is important about Christianity. This study challenges that perception. Through an examination of kinship and ethnic language in Paul's letters, this book demonstrates that notions of peoplehood and lineage are not rejected or downplayed by Paul; instead they are central to his gospel. Paul's chief concern is the status of the gentile peoples who are alienated from the God of Israel. Ethnicity defines this theological problem, just as it shapes his own evangelizing of the ethnic and religious “other”. According to Paul, God has responded to the gentile predicament through Christ. Using the logic of patrilineal descent, Paul constructs a myth of origins for gentiles: through baptism into Christ the gentiles become descendants of Abraham, adopted sons of God and coheirs with Christ. Although Jews and gentiles now share a common ancestor, Paul does not collapse them into one group. They are separate but related lineages of Abraham. Kinship and ethnicity work well in Paul's arguments, for at the same time that they present themselves as natural and fixed, they are also open to negotiation and reworking. This paradox renders them effective tools in organizing people and power, shaping self-understanding and defining membership. This analysis demonstrates that Paul's thinking is immersed in the story of a specific people and their God. He speaks not as a Christian theologian, but as a 1st-century Jewish teacher of gentiles responding to concrete situations in the communities he founded.

Examines the relationship between imperial cults and the Book of Revelation, focusing especially on the Roman province of Asia during the early Empire. The main argument is that Revelation and imperial cult institutions were in direct contradiction regarding cosmology and eschatology. The exaggerated cosmology of imperial cult institutions resulted in an absurd eschatology – their emphasis on Roman imperial order was so strong that they could not envision an end to Roman rule. Revelation, on the other hand, denigrated all temporal authority and focused attention on the throne of God in heaven and the eschatological inauguration of the New Jerusalem. In this way, the author of Revelation produced one of humanity's great religious critiques of hegemony, a critique that attempted to establish and maintain a just community in the face of imperial oppression.