Saturday, 24 March 2012

The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East

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John G. Gammie, Leo G. Perdue
Eisenbrauns, 1990 - 545 pages

Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period 

Front CoverOded Lipschitz, Manfred Oeming
Eisenbrauns, 2006 - 721 pages
"In July 2003, a conference was held at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), focusing on the people and land of Judah during the 5th and early 4th centuries B.C.E. - the period when the Persian Empire held sway over the entire ancient Near East. This volume publishes the papers of the participants in the working group that attended the Heidelberg conference." "Participants whose contributions appear here include: Y. Amit, B. Becking, J. Berquist, J. Blenkinsopp, M. Dandamayev, D. Edelman, T. Eskenazi, A. Fantalkin and O. Tal, L. Fried, L. Grabbe, S. Japhet, J. Kessler, E. A. Knauf, G. Knoppers, R. Kratz, A. Lemaire, O. Lipschits, H. Liss, M. Oeming, L. Pearce, F. Polak, B. Porten and A. Yardeni, E. Stern, D. Ussishkin, D. Vanderhooft, and I. Wright." "The conference was the second of three meetings: the first, held at Tel Aviv in May 2001, was published as Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period by Eisenbrauns in 2003. A third conference focusing on Judah and the Judeans in the Hellenistic era was held in the summer of 2005, at Munster, Germany, and will also be published by Eisenbrauns.

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Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin literature

Front CoverAlbert de Jong
BRILL, 1997 - 496 pages
This is the first full treatment of the Greek and Latin references to Zoroastrianism since the pioneering works of Benveniste, Bidez & Cumont, and Clemen. It focuses on the possibilities offered by the classical reports on Zoroastrianism to reconstruct the history of that faith.The book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with introductory problems concerning ancient religious ethnography and current views of the history of Zoroastrianism. The second section consists of commentaries on five selected passages. The third section offers a thematical overview of the materials and their relevance for the history of Iranian religions.Apart from offering introductions to a wide range of debates and topics in Classics and Iranian studies, the book aims to illustrate the diversity of beliefs and practices in ancient Zoroastrianism.
 

Diodorus Siculus The Persian Wars to the Fall of Athens: Books 11-14.34 (480-401 BCE)

Diodorus (Siculus.), Peter Green
University of Texas Press, 2010-02-15 - 332 pages
Front CoverOnly one surviving source provides a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great--the Bibliotheke, or "Library," produced by Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 90-30 BCE). Yet generations of scholars have disdained Diodorus as a spectacularly unintelligent copyist who only reproduced, and often mangled, the works of earlier historians. Arguing for a thorough critical reappraisal of Diodorus as a minor but far from idiotic historian himself, Peter Green published Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1, a fresh translation, with extensive commentary, of the portion of Diodorus's history dealing with the period 480-431 BCE, the so-called "Golden Age" of Athens.
This is the only recent modern English translation of the Bibliotheke in existence. In the present volume--the first of two covering Diodorus's text up to the death of Alexander--Green expands his translation of Diodorus up to Athens' defeat after the Peloponnesian War. In contrast to the full scholarly apparatus in his earlier volume (the translation of which is incorporated) the present volume's purpose is to give students, teachers, and general readers an accessible version of Diodorus's history. Its introduction and notes are especially designed for this audience and provide an up-to-date overview of fifth-century Greece during the years that saw the unparalleled flowering of drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts for which Greece still remains famous.

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Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium 

Front CoverEmma Bridges, Edith Hall, Peter John Rhodes
Oxford University Press, 2007-04-12 - 453 pages
Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars addresses the huge impact on subsequent culture made by the wars fought between ancient Persia and Greece in the early fifth century BC. It brings together sixteen interdisciplinary essays, mostly by classical scholars, on individual trends within the reception of this period of history, extending from the wars' immediate impact on ancient Greek history to their reception in literature and thought both in antiquity and in the post-Renaisssance world. Extensively illustrated and accessibly written, with a detailed Introduction and bibliographies, this book will interest historians, classicists, and students of both comparative and modern literatures.
 

Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars

Jon D. Mikalson
Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003-09-15 - 269 pages
Front CoverThe two great Persian invasions of Greece, in 490 and 480-79 B.C., both repulsed by the Greeks, provide our best opportunity for understanding the interplay of religion and history in ancient Greece on a large scale. Using the Historiesof Herodotus as well as other historical and archaeological sources, Jon Mikalson shows how the Greeks practiced their religion at this pivotal moment in their history. In the period of the invasions and the years immediately afterward, the Greeks--internationally, state by state, and sometimes individually--turned to their deities, using religious practices to influence, understand, and commemorate events that were threatening their very existence. Greeks prayed and sacrificed; made and fulfilled vows to the gods; consulted oracles; interpreted omens and dreams; created cults, sanctuaries, and festivals; and offered dozens of dedications to their gods and heroes--all in relation to known historical events. By portraying the human situations and historical circumstances in which Greeks practiced their religion, Mikalson advances our knowledge of the role of religion in fifth-century Greece and reveals a religious dimension of the Persian Wars that has been heretofore overlooked.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels, Volume 2 The Gospel of Matthew

Front CoverThomas R. Hatina
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008 - 256 pages
The second title in a proposed five-volume work; volume two, following on from the volume on Mark's Gospel, concentrates on Matthew's Gospel. Contributors consider the function of embedded scripture texts in the context of the Gospels written and read/heard in their early Christian settings. The project is wide ranging, with essays on the function of scripture in the compositional history of the gospels and the collection is broad in scope as a result of current interest in the integration of methods (especially historical and narrative ones).
Advancements over the last 20 years in the study of genre and narrative criticism have left a void in the study of the function of embedded biblical texts in the Gospels. This collection of essays will move the study of scripture within scripture forwards.

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Matthew

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Margaret Davies
Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd, 2009-03-31 - 254 pages
Margaret Davies takes up the insights of reader-response criticism to explore how the conventions and strategies of the Gospel of Matthew draw the reader into the world that the text creates. There is a recognition also of the text's significance as authoritative scripture for modern Christians, and the bias that this gives to any interpretative strategy. This is a reprint of the 1993 edition.

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The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew's Gospel: With Special Reference to the Messianic Hope

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Robert Horton Gundry
E. J. Brill, 1967 - 252 pages
 

The Concept of Disciple in Matthew's Gospel

 
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Michael J. Wilkins
BRILL, 1988 - 261 pages

The Royal Son of God: The Christology of Matthew 1-2 in the Setting of the Gospel

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Brian M. Nolan
Éditions universitaires, 1979 - 282 pages
 

The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel According to St Matthew

Front CoverDouglas R. A. Hare
Cambridge University Press, 2005-10-06 - 220 pages
It has long been recognized that in the Gospel according to St Matthew the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees has been intensified and it has often been suggested that this intensification reflects the continued struggle between the Church and the synagogue. The theme of Jewish persecution of Christians in the Gospel according to St Matthew is examined in this book with two questions in mind: 1. Has Matthew exaggerated the severity of the persecution? 2. How has the persecution influenced Matthew's theology? Professor Hare examines the historical data relating to the suffering imposed upon the Christians and refers to Rabbinic literature and Christian sources other than Matthew in order to evaluate Matthew's portrayal of the persecutions. He concludes that persecution was directed primarily against Christian missionaries, not against rank-and-file Christians.
 

The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew

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Leroy Andrew Huizenga
BRILL, 2009-09-15 - 337 pages
This work contends that when rightly read as a coherent narrative in its first-century setting, the Gospel of Matthew evinces a significant Isaac typology which coheres well with the Matthean themes of Jesus as new temple and ultimate sacrifice.
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The Halakhah of Jesus of Nazareth According To The Gospel of Matthew

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Phillip Sigal
Society of Biblical Literature, 2007-07-01 - 262 pages

The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel


Howard W. Clarke
Indiana University Press, 2003-07-01 - 297 pages
The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers is a biblical commentary with a difference. Howard Clarke first establishes contemporary scholarship's mainstream view of Matthew's Gospel, and then presents a sampling of the ways this text has been read, understood, and applied through two millennia. By referring forward to Matthew's readers (rather than back to the text's composers), the book exploits the tensions between what contemporary scholars understand to be the intent of the author of Matthew and the quite different, indeed often eccentric and bizarre ways this text has been understood, assimilated, and applied over the years. The commentary is a testament to the ambiguities and elasticity of the text and a cogent reminder that interpretations are not fixed, nor texts immutably relevant. And unlike other commentaries, this one gives space to those who have questioned, rejected, or even ridiculed Matthew's messages, since Bible-bashing, like Bible-thumping, is a historically significant part of the experience of reading the Bible.
 

Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew


Front CoverDavid C. Sim
Cambridge University Press, 2005-10-06 - 304 pages
This study reconstructs the apocalyptic eschatology in Matthew's Gospel so that we may understand his time and concerns. Sociological analysis of apocalypticism in Judaism and early Christianity shows that such a comprehensive world view, which emphasized the final judgement and its aftermath within a dualistic and deterministic framework, was adopted by minority of sectarian groups undergoing a situation of great crisis. The Matthean community, after the first Jewish war against Rome, came into conflict with Judaism, gentiles and the larger Christian movement. Matthew's distinctive and often vengeful vision must be set against both his acute need to enhance his community's sense of itself and his pastoral concern. Dr Sim offers for the first time in English an extended and comprehensive comparison of Matthew's outlook with contemporary eschatological literature.
 

Matthew's Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community

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J. Andrew Overman
Fortress Press, 1990 - 174 pages
 

The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary

 
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Raymond Edward Brown
Liturgical Press, 1988 - 136 pages
Revised to the 1986 NAB translation of the Bible.
 

Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne

Henry Mayr-Harting
Oxford University Press, 2007 - 308 pages
 
Front CoverIntegrating the brilliant biography of Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne (953-65) and brother of Emperor Otto I, by the otherwise obscure monk Ruotger, with the intellectual culture of Cologne Cathedral, this is a study of actual politics in conjunction with Ottonian ruler ethic. Our knowledge of Cologne intellectual activity in the period, apart from Ruotger, must be pieced together mainly from marginal annotations and glosses in surviving Cologne manuscripts, showing how and with what concerns some of the most important books of the Latin West were read in Bruno's and Ruotger's Cologne. These include Pope Gregory the Great's Letters, Prudentius's Psychomachia, Boethius's Arithmetic, and Martianus Capella's Marriage of Philology and Mercury. The writing in the margins of the manuscripts, besides enlarging our picture of thinking in Cologne in itself, can be drawn into comparison with the outlook of Ruotger.

Exploring how distinctive Cologne was, compared with other centres, Henry Mayr-Harting brings out an unexpectedly strong thread of Platonism in the tenth-century intellect. The book includes a critical edition of probably the earliest surviving, and hitherto unpublished, set of glosses to Boethius's Arithmetic, with an extensive study of their content.
 

Rome in the Bible and the Early Church

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Peter S. Oakes
Baker Academic, 2002 - 166 pages
Six notable scholars illuminate key aspects of Rome and its impact on early Christianity, emphasizing Roman culture, Roman authority, and the Christian community in Rome.