Introduction

Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle ◽  
Brent A. Strawn

This brief chapter introduces the Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible. It notes the secondary and constructed nature of the category “Historical Books” (which is not native to the Hebrew Bible) and how this category might be potentially misleading as to the content and genre of these books, many of which are devoid of historiographic intent in anything like the modern sense. With these caveats entered, the introduction next explains how the essays in the book touch on four critical nodes: context (sources, history, texts), content (themes, concepts, issues), approaches (composition, synthesis, theory), and reception (literature, traditions, figures). Further, each essayist was asked to speak to how the topic/area/issue addressed in the essay relates to the Historical Books, as well as how the topic/area/issue helps one better interpret the Historical Books. In conclusion, this introduction notes the diversity that marks recent research in these books.

The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible offers thirty-six 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.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Wills

Judith is one of the books of the Apocrypha, the Jewish texts that were included in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments (including Armenian, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox Bibles), but not in the Protestant Old Testament or Jewish scriptures. Judith was placed with the history texts of the Old Testament, and, more specifically, it was located with Tobit and Esther, texts that were probably also seen as entertaining or didactic history. (The question of why Judith was not canonized as part of the Hebrew Bible is raised in Why Wasn’t the Book of Judith Included in the Hebrew Bible? [Atlanta: Scholars, 1992] and Esther not Judith: Why One Made it and the Other Didn’t (Crawford 2002), [Bible Review 18 [2002]: 22–31, 45] both cited under Texts of Judith and Reviews of Scholarship.) That Judith seemed to be inaccurate “history” was noticed in the ancient church, but the genre is now much discussed. It is sometimes taken as didactic or parabolic history, but it (along with Tobit, Esther, Susanna, and Joseph and Aseneth) is compared also with the developing genre of short and long novels (see Das Buch Judit (Haag 1995) [Dusseldorf, Germany: Patmos, 1995] cited under Commentaries and The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World (Wills 1995) [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press] cited under Comparative).


2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-233
Author(s):  
Ana Fund Patron de Smith
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme

This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine.  In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Mustafa Ibrahim Salman Al - Shammari ◽  
Dhari Sarhan Hammadi Al-Hamdani

The topic area of that’s paper dealing with role of Britain in established of Israel, so the paper argued the historical developments of Palestinian question and Role of Britain Government toward peace process since 1992, and then its insight toward plan of Palestinian State. That’s paper also argued the British Policy toward Israeli violations toward Palestinians people, and increased with settlement policy by many procedures like demolition of houses, or lands confiscation, the researcher argued the Britain position toward that’s violations beside the political developments which happens in Britain after Theresa May took over the power in Ten Downing Street


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Miller-Naudé ◽  
Jacobus A Naudé

The concern of the paper is to highlight how computational analysis of Biblical Hebrew grammar can now be done in very sophisticated ways and with insightful results for exegesis. Three databases, namely, the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC) Database, the Accordance Hebrew Syntactic Database, and the Andersen-Forbes Syntactic Database,are compared in terms of their relation to linguistic theory (or, theories), the nature and spectrum of retrieved data, and the representation of synchronic and diachronic linguistic variation. Interaction between different contexts, including the African context, are promoted namely between linguists working on Biblical Hebrew and exegetes working on the Hebrew Bible by illustrating how exegesis and language are intimately connected, as well as among geographical contexts by comparing a European database (ETCBC), a North American database (Accordance) and a Southern hemisphere database (Andersen-Forbes).


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-98
Author(s):  
Temba T. Rugwiji

The Hebrew Bible depicts that music and dance formed part of worship and reverence of Yahweh in which various musical instruments were played during ancient biblical times. In the modern post-biblical world, music and dance characterise every context of human existence either in moments of love, joy, celebration, victory, sorrow or reverence. In Zimbabwe, music — which is usually accompanied by dance — serves various purposes such as solidarity towards or remonstration against the land reform, despondency against corruption, celebration, giving hope to the sick, worship as in the church or appeasing the dead by those who are culturally-entrenched. Two fundamental questions need to be answered in this article: 1) What was the significance of music and dance in ancient Israel? 2) What is the significance of music and dance in Zimbabwe? In response to the above questions, this essay engages into dialogue the following three contestations. First, texts of music, musical instruments and dance in the Hebrew Bible are discussed in view of their spiritual significance in ancient Israel. Second, this study analyses music and dance from a faith perspective because it appears for the majority of Gospel musicians the biblical text plays a critical role in composing their songs. Third, this article examines music and dance in view of the spirituality which derives from various genres by Zimbabwean musicians in general. In its entirety, this article attempts to show that the Zimbabwean society draws some spirituality from music and dance when devastated by political, cultural or socio-economic crises.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document