Sin and Expiation

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-300
Author(s):  
David Janzen
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

Expiation refers to a ritual attempt to deal with sin, and while in the Hebrew Bible it can include such things as prayer and acts of mourning, we most frequently find it manifested in sacrifice. Biblical texts rarely explain how sacrifice functions in relation to sin, but sacrifice is described at greatest length in the Priestly writing, particularly in Leviticus 1–7, which has been described as a manual of sacrifice. Even here, however, P does not provide a theory of sacrificial expiation—does not, that is, explain how or why sacrifice functions as the proper ritual response to sin. Jacob Milgrom’s re-creation of the worldview that stands behind P’s understanding of sacrifice claims that the Priestly tradents understood sin as creating a miasma of impurity that polluted the sancta, and saw the blood of the sin or purification offering as a ritual detergent that cleansed the sanctuary. If we read the Priestly narrative without trying to reconstruct this worldview, but look rather for the ways in which P portrays sacrifice and expiation, we see that sacrifice functions as a way for Israelites to publically acknowledge their sin and to signal that they have no intentions of violating God’s commandments again. Part of this ritual message involves honoring God as sovereign, thus also acknowledging God’s right to command and indicating the sacrificers’ awareness that they must act as loyal subjects to their divine sovereign.

How Old Is the Hebrew Bible? A Response to Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten

2020 ◽  
Vol 132 (4) ◽  
pp. 622-631
Author(s):  
Konrad Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Biblical Texts

AbstractThe book »How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?« by Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten is an apt introduction to dating biblical texts linguistically. However, this approach is not capable to reliably determine how old the texts and writings of the Hebrew Bible are. Rather, different dating methods need to be balanced against each other in order to get sound results in that respect.

scholarly journals Praise by animals in the Hebrew Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-513
Author(s):  
Peter Joshua Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Biblical Texts

Among ancient Near Eastern societies was a widespread and particularly intriguing belief that animals were able to worship and praise deities. This study shows the Hebrew Bible evidences the idea that animals were capable of praising God too and proceeds to observe and document the presence of numerous examples of this in specific biblical texts. Through understanding the place of animals in the Hebrew Bible, and their perceived activity in the ancient Near East, this study suggests animals are distinct agents of praise in their own right in the biblical texts.

A Gold Ring in a Swine’s Snout (Prov 11:22)

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Golden Calf ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Votive Offerings

This chapter explores jewellery in the Hebrew Bible in light of the material evidence from the ancient Levant. I consider the function of jewellery in biblical texts, focused upon how these objects modify and ritualize the body. The ability of jewellery to index personhood is utilized in order to explore and unpack the use of jewellery in votive offerings. Moving beyond these insights, I then turn to the recovery of amulets inscribed with biblical passages—the earliest written evidence for biblical literature. As amulets, these objects served an apotropaic, ritual function. In biblical texts, we see this in action in the production of the golden calf, which is made from the jewellery of the Israelites. Such items therefore provide access to dimensions of personal religion and religious worship carried out outside of the official sphere. But by making sure that jewellery was utilized in the furnishing of the Temple, the biblical writers circumscribe this personal piety, making it compliant to the larger dominant model of the official Temple cult.

5. The canon, authoritative scriptures, and the scrolls

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Lim
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Shed Light

The Dead Sea Scrolls have shed light on the canonization of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible in the Second Temple period. They provide us with exemplars of their biblical texts and how they used them in an authoritative manner. ‘The canon, authoritative scriptures, and the scrolls’ explains that the sectarian concept of authoritative scriptures seemed to reflect a dual pattern of authority by which the traditional biblical texts served as the source of the sectarian interpretation that in turn was defined by it. The authority was graded, beginning with the biblical books and extending to other books that were not eventually included in the canon.

4. New light on the Hebrew Bible

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Lim
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Text Types ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Biblical Texts

‘New light on the Hebrew Bible’ investigates what the Dead Sea Scrolls can tell us about the textual diversity and canonicity of the Hebrew Bible. Before the scrolls were discovered, Hebrew manuscripts generally dated back to the medieval period. The Qumran texts, dating to between 250 bce and 100 ce, tell us what the Bible was like before its standardization. Errors from copying gave rise to different text-types, and the Dead Sea Scrolls showed that there were far more text-types than previously thought. Variations in readings of the Hebrew Bible and other ancient sources show there was greater diversity in biblical texts than previously realized.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Lipka
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Methodological Foundation ◽  
Women In The Bible ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

There was relatively little scholarship focusing on women, gender, and sexuality in the Hebrew Bible until the 1970s, when modern feminist biblical scholarship first started to emerge as an outgrowth of second-wave feminism. In the 1980s, feminist biblical criticism fully blossomed as a discipline, inspiring a large body of work focusing on issues such as the depiction, treatment, and roles of women, the interrelationship between gender and power, and views toward women’s sexuality in biblical texts, and what can be discerned about various aspects of the lives of women in ancient Israel based on biblical and other evidence. In the past few decades, as the body of scholarship on women in the Bible has continued to grow, it has also broadened its scope as new methodologies and hermeneutical approaches have been introduced. Inspired in part by the rise of third wave feminism in the 1990s, there has also been an increasing amount of scholarship focusing on the intersection of race, class, and ethnicity with gender and sexuality in biblical texts, and an increasing awareness of the need to include more voices from the “two-thirds” world in the scholarly dialogue. In addition to being subjects covered by those engaging in feminist criticism, gender and sexuality studies both emerged as discrete fields in the 1980s, as biblical scholars, building upon the methodological foundation established by theorists such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, began to examine the social, cultural, and historical construction of gender and sexuality in biblical texts. The last few decades have seen a flourishing of scholarship on gender and sexuality in the Bible that continues to both build on these foundations and go beyond them, as scholars incorporate new approaches and methodologies from the areas of gender theory, queer studies, masculinities studies, and, most recently, intersex studies into their work, offering innovative and incisive readings that shed a vivid new light on seemingly familiar biblical texts.

The Rise and Impending Demise of Wisdom Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Near East ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Biblical Texts

After summarizing the growing doubts about the Wisdom category, this chapter traces the development of Wisdom scholarship in the twentieth century, focusing on the question of the category’s limits. Despite efforts to limit its spread, in recent scholarship Wisdom has extended both across the Hebrew Bible and to the “heart of the Israelite experience of God.” As in the similar expansion of Wisdom in the Psalter, Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Near East (analogous to the spread of Deuteronomistic texts), attempts to define Wisdom resort eventually to the scholarly consensus concerning which biblical texts make up the category’s core. This factor carries all the weight in the current debates about Wisdom, and yet little research has been put into how this consensus developed or how it affects interpretation.

The Value of Ancient Children

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn W. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This chapter reviews previous scholarship on children in the Hebrew Bible and identifies successes and common methods, but also some gaps. Children have rarely been considered a valid interpretive lens for elucidating biblical texts. No study has yet undertaken to examine the stages of a child’s life. While many of the historically based studies begin to suggest discussions of a child’s value, they do not explore those further. To begin the discussion, the chapter takes a linguistic analysis of terms for children both in Mesopotamian literature and the Hebrew Bible to begin framing the stages while demonstrating the fruits of the comparative methods.

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