Although primogeniture is commonly assumed to have prevailed throughout the world and firstborns are regarded as most likely to achieve success, many of the most prominent figures in biblical literature are younger offspring, including Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, and Solomon.
This cogently argued and richly illustrated book rejects the dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers to argue that the two are one.
In this book, Hayes addresses the central concern in talmudic studies over the genesis of halakhic (legal) divergence between the Talmuds produced by the Palestinian rabbinic community (c.
Unnamed characters--such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharaoh's baker, and the witch of Endor--are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible and appear in a wide variety of roles.
This is the study of an anonymous ancient work, usually called Joseph and Aseneth, which narrates the transformation of the daughter of an Egyptian priest into an acceptable spouse for the biblical Joseph, whose marriage to Aseneth is given brief notice in Genesis.
This book examines the ways in which two distinct biblical conceptions of impurity-"e;ritual"e; and "e;moral"e;-were interpreted in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, and the New Testament.
This study examines the history of the psychoanalytic theory of mysticism, starting with the seminal correspondence between Freud and Romain Rolland concerning the concept of "e;oceanic feeling.
From the days of Plato, the problem of the efficacy and adequacy of the written word as a vehicle of human communication has challenged mankind, yet the mystery of how best to achieve clarity and exactitude of written expression has never been solved.
This book compares a variety of biblical narratives with the stories found in several Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the ancient kingdom of Judah and its contemporary Syro-Palestinian neighbors.
Comprising well over a thousand pages of densely written Aramaic, the compilation of texts known as the Zohar represents the collective wisdom of various strands of Jewish mysticism, or kabbalah, up to the thirteenth century.
Positioned at the boundary of traditional biblical studies, legal history, and literary theory, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation shows how the legislation of Deuteronomy reflects the struggle of its authors to renew late seventh- century Judean society.
This is the sequel to the author's iconoclastic Toward a Grammar of Biblical Poetics (Oxford, 1992), in which Brichto argues for the aesthetic wholeness of the Hebrew Bible, and the consistency of Scripture's preachment on God, nature, and the human condition--in direct opposition to current source criticism, which maintains that inconsistencies within the text support an atomistic reading of multiple authors.
The anthology is a ubiquitous presence in Jewish literature--arguably its oldest literary genre, going back to the Bible itself, and including nearly all the canonical texts of Judaism: the Mishnah, the Talmud, classical midrash, and the prayerbook.
Bringing together contributions from established scholars as well as promising younger academics, the seventeenth volume of this established series offers a broad-ranging view of why Judaism, a religion whose observance is more honored in the breach in most western Jewish communities, has garnered attention, authority, and controversy in the late twentieth century.
This book deconstructs the boundaries between Jewish and Christian cultures while at the same time redefining what it means to be Jewish in relation to Christianity in the twentieth century.
The newest volume of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry series features essays on the varied and often controversial ways Communism and Jewish history interacted during the 20th century.
Bringing together contributions from established scholars from multiple disciplines and countries, Volume XIX of Studies in Contemporary Jewry offers a comparative view of alliances between Jewish communities and the state.
"e;Operation Solomon"e; was one of the most remarkable rescue efforts in modern history, in which more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in little more than a day.
Volume XXI of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry marks sixty years since the end of the Second World War and forty years since the Second Vatican Council's efforts to revamp Church relations with the Jewish people and the Jewish faith.
Isolated passages from the writings of Josephus are routinely cited in general studies of early Jewish prophecy, but the present work is the first comprehensive examination of this material.