The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Bible Studies ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Many ◽  
Feminist Hermeneutics

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible brings together thirty-seven essential essays written by leading international scholars, examining crucial points of analysis within the field of feminist Hebrew Bible studies. Organized into four major areas — globalization, neoliberalism, media, and intersectionality, the essays provide vibrant, relevant, and innovative contributions to the field. The topics of analysis focus heavily on gender and queer identity, with essays touching on African, Korean, and European feminist hermeneutics, womanist and interreligious readings, ecofeminist and animal biblical studies, migration biblical studies, the role of gender binary voices in evangelical-egalitarian approaches, oand the examination of scripture in light of trans women’s voices. The volume includes essays examining the Old Testament as recited in music, literature, film, and video games. In short, the book offers a vision for feminist biblical scholarship beyond the hegemonic status quo prevalent in the field of biblical studies, in many religious organizations and institutions that claim the Bible as a sacred text, and among the public that often mentions the Bible to establish religious, political, and socio-cultural restrictions for gendered practices. The exegetically and hermeneutically diverse essays demonstrate that feminist biblical scholarship forges ahead with the task of engaging the many issues and practices that keep the gender caste system in place even in the early part of the twenty-first century. The essays of this volume thus offer conceptual and exegetical ways forward at a historic moment of global transformation and emerging possibilities.

Laws in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Greengus
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The People ◽  
Divine Origin ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Behaviors ◽  
The Many

Biblical laws are found mainly in the Pentateuch (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). The laws are linked to the figure of Moses, who is depicted as having received them directly from God in order to transmit them to the people of Israel during the years in the Wilderness after being released from slavery in Egypt. Biblical laws are thus presented as being of divine origin. Their authority was further bolstered by a tradition that they were included in covenants (i.e., formal agreements made between God and the people as recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy). Similar claims of divine origin were not made for other ancient Near Eastern laws; their authority flowed from kings, who issued the laws, although these kings might also be seen as having been placed on their thrones through the favor of the gods. The biblical law collections are unlike other ancient Near Eastern “codes” in that they include sacral laws (i.e., governing cult, worship, and ritual, as well as secular laws: namely, governing civil, and criminal behaviors). This mingling of sacral and secular categories is the likely reason both for the many terms used to denote the laws, as well as for the unexpected number of formulations in which they are presented. The formulations used in biblical law can be classified as “casuistic” or “non-casuistic.” They are not equally distributed in the books of the Pentateuch nor are they equally used with secular and sacral laws. While there are similarities in content between secular laws found in the Hebrew Bible and laws found in the ancient Near Eastern law “codes,” the latter do not exhibit a comparable variety in the numbers of law terms and formulations. The Hebrew Bible tended to “blur” the differences between the law terms and their formulations, ultimately to the point of subsuming them all under the law term torah (“teaching”) to describe the totality of the divinely given laws in the Pentateuch. Biblical studies in general and Pentateuchal studies in particular are challenged by the fact that manuscripts contemporary with the events described have not survived the ravages the time. Scholars must therefore rely on looking for “clues” within the texts themselves (e.g., the laws cited by the prophets, the reform of Josiah, the teaching of torah by Ezra, and evidence for customs and customary laws found in books of the Hebrew Bible outside of the Pentateuch).

Martin Luther's Practice of Old Testament Commentary

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Maxfield
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Justification By Faith ◽  
University Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
The Many

Scholarly analysis of biblical interpretation and commentary in the history of Christianity has become an important subfield in history as well as biblical studies and theology. From the Reformation and into the modern era, Martin Luther has been appreciated first of all as an expositor of the Bible and a confessor of its teachings. His vocation as a theologian called to teach in the University of Wittenberg was especially focused on the exposition of scripture, and his development as a theologian and eventually as an evangelical reformer was deeply tied to his experience in interpreting the Bible in his university classroom, in the Augustinian cloister, and in his household. His interpretation of scripture was the basis of his “Reformation discovery” of justification by faith, and his conflict with the papal church was largely the result of Luther’s conviction that the message of scripture, in particular “the gospel,” was being overwhelmed in the theology and churchly practice of his time by “human teachings” not supported by and contradicting scripture. As a result, Luther and other evangelical reformers of the 16th century appealed to scripture alone (sola scriptura) as the highest authority in shaping their theology and proposals for reform. Luther’s teachings and leadership in the Reformation were shared and celebrated not only through his doctrinal and polemical treatises and catechetical writings, but also through the many sermons, biblical commentaries on both Old and New Testament books, and prefaces on the books of the Bible that were published in his lifetime and thereafter. Old Testament commentary was an especially important genre of Luther’s published works, as it encapsulated much of his work as a university professor of theology and evangelical reformer.

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.

Orthodox Variants from old Biblical Manuscripts

1931 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-296
Author(s):  
H. W. Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
University Library ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

In our days and in our country very little interest is taken in the contents of MSS. of the Hebrew Bible. This statement is supported by the facts of my own experience. For five years, 1917–22, I was working among Bible MSS. in the Library at Trinity College and in the University Library at Cambridge, and for the last seven years I have been working among similar treasures in the British Museum. The Register of MSS., given above in Section I, will shew that at present I have in use what is practically the whole collection of MSS. of ancient date belonging to the Museum which contain the Hebrew Psalms, as well as MS. 42, kindly lent me by the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, and MS. 20, reproduced as regards Psalms in photograph. And throughout all these years it has always been matter of surprise when, at rare intervals, some other scholar has applied for permission to consult some one of the many MSS. in use by me. So it is that the corner of the field in which I find myself growing old is a very lonely corner; indeed, the whole field, as well as my corner in it, cries aloud for workers, and is unheeded. By the rulers of Biblical studies in our times the field of the Hebrew MSS. of the Bible has been treated as an expanse of desert, wholly unprofitable for working, and rightly condemned to be left severely unvisifeed. As regards my own corner of this field, under date 11th July, 1925, the whole bulk of my own work among the Bible MSS. and Editions, itself in manuscript, was accepted by the Trustees of the British Museum, under the title “Studies in Hebrew Bible”, and with the Press-mark for the whole, Oriental 9624. The number of volumes of notes and texts to be eventually included will be large, but the first seven volumes already catalogued and available for use by scholars are complete in themselves, in so far as they contain the whole of the Text of Psalms in Ginsburg's (1913) edition, with full tables, notes, and a complete Concordance of the accents of every word of Psalms in that edition.

Israel Knohl. The Divine Symphony: The Bible's Many Voices. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003. xv, 207 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-163
Author(s):  
Marvin A. Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Per Se

In this wide-ranging overview of biblical literature, Israel Knohl argues that the Hebrew Bible does not present a consistent or monolithic viewpoint concerning ancient Israel's or Judaism's understanding of God, itself, and the world in which it lived. Rather, Knohl contends that the Bible presents a pluralism of viewpoints that to a great degree anticipates the pluralistic outlook of Rabbinic Judaism. This will hardly come as a surprising thesis to anyone familiar with modern biblical and theological scholarship. Indeed, it takes up the classic question of unity and diversity within the Hebrew Bible that might be illustrated by Gerhard von Rad's well-known Old Testament Theology. Von Rad recognized the diversity of traditions that informed the various writings and viewpoints now gathered in the Bible while simultaneously trying to systematize them into a general concept of Heilsgeschichte, that is, “salvation history” or “sacred history.” Such Heilsgeschichte moved inexorably to what von Rad believed would be the ultimate culmination of human history. Knohl's contribution comes not in relation to the model of pluralism in the Bible per se, but in relation to his argument that so much of the priestly literature that engages in pluralistic debate with other biblical works is rooted in the monarchic period of ancient Israel's (or Judah's) history. In this respect, Knohl's own work—although original in its own right—owes much to an earlier model advocated by Yehezkel Kaufmann, one of the founding fathers of modern Israeli biblical scholarship.

scholarly journals Professor David Tuesday Adamo's Biblical Scholarship on Women: Reflections from an African-South African Mosadi

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Madipoane Masenya
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Subject

One of the prolific writers in the discipline of African Biblical Hermeneutics is the Nigerian Old Testament (OT) scholar, Professor Tuesday David Adamo. In his tireless efforts to unlock the OT reality for African contexts, persuaded by his commitment to decolonise the subject of Biblical Studies, Adamo has made successful efforts to reflect on the African presence in the Old Testament. The present study seeks to engage Adamo's concept of African Biblical hermeneutics in order to investigate whether the author sufficiently discussed the theme of gender in his discourses. This research attempts to respond to the following two main questions in view of Adamo's discourses: (1) In Adamo's concerted effort of confirming the presence of Africa and Africans in the Hebrew Bible, does the woman question feature? (2) If so, how does Adamo navigate the question?

Latino/a/x Biblical Interpretation Related to the Hebrew Bible

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-262
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Sandoval
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Educational Needs ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship

Since approximately the turn of the millennium, Latino/a/x biblical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible has focused on: (1) questions of identity—both what constitutes Latino/a/x identity and what sort of scholarly work can be characterized as Latino/a/x biblical scholarship; (2) offering analyses of biblical texts that can serve as theological-ethical resources for exploring contemporary questions of migration; (3) development of Latino/a/x hermeneutic lenses and the reading of scriptures from these perspectives, as well as the development of interdisciplinary studies of the Bible that implicitly and explicitly critique aspects of dominant modes of biblical studies and introject a Latino/a/x presence in biblical studies; and (4) the resourcing of local Latino/a/x communities of faith through the publication of works focused on the educational needs of such local communities. Two or more of these trajectories of Latino/a/x biblical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible are often discernible in single published works of Latino/a/x scholars.

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