SBL is pleased to offer, in association with Logos Bible Software, a new, critically edited Greek New Testament in electronic and print formats. The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, edited by Michael W. Holmes, is freely available for download at
www.sblgnt.com . The print edition can be purchased at the SBL Store
Hebrew Bible & Early Judaism
Mark Leuchter and Jeremy M. Hutton, editors
Despite more than a century of critical research, questions still abound regarding social location and definitions of the various priestly groups in the Hebrew Bible, the depictions of their origins, their ritual functions, the role of the laity and family religion, the relationship between prophecy and the priesthood, and the dating of texts. This volume provides a representative look at the state of current research into various aspects of priesthood in ancient Israel.
Bezalel Porten
This important volume contains 175 documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Syene (Aswan), which yielded hundreds of papyri in hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Coptic, spanning a period of 3000 years. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines, such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language, and onomastics.
Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad Schmid, Thomas Römer, editors
The theories of a Tetrateuch, a Hexateuch, or a Deuteronomistic History have played a central role in recovering the literary history of the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets. The breakdown of these methodologies in recent research has forced scholars to reevaluate the criteria for identifying literary works in the formation of the Hebrew Bible. The present volume explores anew the criteria by which interpreters identify literary works in these books as a resource for recovering the composition history of the literature.
Volkmar Fritz. Translated by James W. Barker
By carefully separating fact from fiction, Fritz offers an insightful and enlightening depiction of the time before the Israelite state.
David T. Runia and Gregory E. Sterling, editors
The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to furthering the study of Hellenistic Judaism, and in particular the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria (circa 15 B.C.E. to circa 50 C.E.).
Eric F. Mason and Kevin B. McCruden
This volume provides an introduction to contemporary scholarship on Hebrews. With contributions from leading scholars on Hebrews and in related fields, it reflects the most recent trends in the study of Hebrews and is designed for classroom use by students in both undergraduate and graduate programs.
Lester L. Grabbe and Martti Nissinen, editors
This collection of essays examines how prophecy has been constructed in biblical literature such as the Former Prophets, the Latter Prophets, Chronicles, and Daniel, and even in the Qur’an. Recognizing that these texts do not simply describe the prophetic phenomena but rather depict prophets according to various conventional categories or their own individual points of view, the essays analyze the way prophecy or prophets are portrayed in these writings to understand better how they were structured by their respective authors.
Jason von Ehrenkrook
This book investigates the discourse on idolatry and images, especially statues, in the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, with a particular focus on his numerous accounts of a contentious and at times iconoclastic relationship between Jews and images. Josephus articulates in this discourse on images an idea of Jewish identity that functioned to mitigate an increasingly tense relationship between Romans and Jews in the wake of the Jewish revolt against Rome.
Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, Jacob L. Wright, editors
This volume considers forced displacement and deportation in ancient Israel and comparable modern contexts in order to offer insight into the realities of war and exile in ancient Israel and their representations in the Hebrew Bible. The volume as a whole places Israel’s experiences and expressions of forced displacement into the broader context of similar war-related phenomena from multiple contexts.
Erhard S. Gerstenberger. Translated by Siegfried S. Schatzmann
The Persian period (539–331 B.C.E.) gave new shape to ancient Israel, as the biblical text evolved and the foundations of the Judeo-Christian tradition were laid. Against the backdrop of the history and intellectual world of Persia, Gerstenberger describes this exciting 200-year period in the history of Israel, which saw both the creation of biblical literature and important theological developments.
Lisbeth S. Fried, editor
The books of Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras tell the story of the Judean return from exile in Babylon, of rebuilding the temple, and of creating a new community in Zion. In is volume, scholars discuss the relationship between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras, delving into these books’ dates and methods of composition, the sources used, their respective historical and social milieus, their original languages, and their authority and status in antiquity.
Matthias Henze, editor
The Hazon Gabriel or Gabriel Revelation is a Hebrew inscription of the first century B.C.E. written in black ink on a slab of gray limestone. This book makes accessible in one place all existing editions of the Hazon Gabriel together with annotated English translations and offers initial interpretations of the text as a whole, its language, and its most prominent motifs. The volume compares the Gabriel Revelation to other literature of the time—the book of Daniel, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament in particular—to determine its place in early Judaism.
Eberhard Bons and Jan Joosten, editors
Discusses problems related to the vocabulary of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The discussion shows how religion and theology can affect the meaning and usage of words and how, conversely, the use of specific words can have an impact on the understanding and interpretation of Scripture.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Peter W. Flint, Jean Duhaime, and Kyung S. Baek, editors
This volume celebrates the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, their contents, the movement that produced many of them, the community that preserved them all, and new questions and scientific issues that arise from Scrolls studies. Essays explore the origins and text of scripture, the interpretation of scripture in Second Temple Judaism, the identity and practices of the movement associated with Qumran and the Scrolls, and the extensive contributions of Canadian projects and scholarship.
Eric D. Reymond
This volume explores the language and poetic structure of the seven non-Masoretic poems preserved in the Dead Sea Scroll labeled 11Q5 or 11QPsa. It presents fresh readings of the Hebrew poems, stressing their structural and conceptual coherence and incorporating insights gained from the scholarship of recent decades.
Mary L. Coloe and Tom Thatcher, editors
The essays in this book, ranging from focused studies of key passages in the Fourth Gospel to its broader social world, consider the past and potential impact of the Scrolls on Johannine studies in the context of a growing interest in the historical roots of the Johannine tradition and the origins and nature of the “Johannine community” and its relationship to mainstream Judaism.
New Testament
Klaus Wachtel and Michael W. Holmes, editors
This collection of essays represents the state of the art of textual criticism as applied to the New Testament. Addressing core topics such as the causes and forms of variation, contamination and coherence, and the goals and the canons of textual criticism, it presents a first-class overview of traditional and innovative methodologies as they are applied to reconstructing the initial wording of the New Testament writings.
Andrew B. McGowan and Kent Harold Richards, editors
Harold W. Attridge has contributed authoritatively to many of the disciplines that underlie approaches to understanding the canonical texts of the New Testament, other early Christian literature, and the history of the emergent Christian movement that was to become the church: textual criticism, exegesis, comparative literary and historical studies, and numerous other areas. In honor of his work, this volume discusses both new and traditional methods of New Testament study.
Matthew S. Rindge
Rindge reads Luke’s parable of the Rich Fool (12:16–21) as a sapiential narrative and situates this parable within a Second Temple intertextual conversation on the interplay of death and possessions. A rich analysis of Jewish (Qoheleth, Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, Testament of Abraham) and Greco-Roman (Lucian, Seneca) texts reveals a web of disparate perspectives regarding how possessions can be used meaningfully, given life’s fragility and death’s inevitability and uncertain timing.
Gerald J. Donker
In this text-critical study of the Apostolos (all of the New Testament apart from the Gospels) of the fourth-century Greek father Athanasius of Alexandria, an initial review of Athanasius’s life and writings and a survey of the Alexandrian text-type precede an analysis of Athanasius’s text to determine its classification within the major New Testament text-types, and particularly its suspected Alexandrian character.
David L. Eastman
Ancient iconography of Paul is dominated by one image: Paul as martyr. This study integrates literary, archaeological, artistic, and liturgical evidence to describe the development of the Pauline cult within the cultural context of the late antique West.
Ron Cameron and Merrill P. Miller, editors
This second volume of studies by members of the SBL Seminar on Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins reassesses the agenda of modern scholarship on Paul and the Corinthians. The contributors challenge the theory of religion assumed in most New Testament scholarship and adopt a different set of theoretical and historical terms for redescribing the beginnings of the Christian religion.
Kelly R. Iverson and Christopher W. Skinner, editors
This volume celebrates Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (1982) and offers critique, engagement, and exploration of the new hermeneutical vistas that emerged in the wake of this pioneering study. In these essays, leading international Markan scholars discuss various texts and themes in the Second Gospel, reflect upon the rise of narrative criticism, and offer a glimpse at future trends in Gospels research.
Robert K. McIver
Before they were written in the Gospels, the teachings and deeds of Jesus were preserved in human memory—with all its frailties and strengths—for perhaps as long as 30 to 60 years. This study uses the insights gained from over a century of psychological experimentation to investigate the qualities and potential reliability of individual and collective memories underlying the various elements that make up the Gospel traditions.
Biblical Interpretation
Nasili Vaka'uta
Reading tu’a-wise (Tongan lau faka-tu’a) is an attempt to interpret the Bible based on Tongan cultural resources and social arrangements, through the “eye-/I-s” of a Tongan commoner (tu’a). Lau faka-tu’a offers “an-other,” uniquely Oceanic, way of reading. The volume engages critically with existing literature on contextual biblical interpretation and existing interpretations of the chosen text, Ezra 9–10, and aims at making biblical interpretation practice-based, nonelitist, noncontinental, transparent, and accountable.
Christian A. Eberhart, editor
The sanctuary and rituals that formed the heart of ancient Judaism ceased to exist a long time ago, yet their images and concepts, especially that of “sacrifice,” have remained essential to the rhetoric of politics, religion, and secular culture. The essays in this volume deal with central aspects of sacrificial rituals and processes of metaphor development and spiritualization in Judaism and Christianity.
Irmtraud Fischer and Mercedes Navarro Puerto, editors
This volume presents a history of the reception of the Bible as embedded in Western cultural history with a special focus on the history of women and issues of gender.
Teresa J. Hornsby and Ken Stone, editors
The essays in this volume engage queer theories for purposes of biblical interpretation. This volume “troubles” not only the boundaries between biblical scholarship and queer theory but also the boundaries between different frameworks currently used in the analysis of biblical literature, including sexuality, gender, race, class, history, and literature.
Knut Holter and Louis C. Jonker, editors
This collection of essays—the first volume in a new online series started by the International Cooperation Initiative of the Society of Biblical Literature—hopes to stimulate and facilitate a global hermeneutic in which centers and margins fade.
Rome
Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan L. Reed
This book presents an up-to-date discussion of the Roman imperial cult (the divinization of the emperor) and its general importance in early Christianity and ancient Mediterranean religions. It features opening and closing essays by Karl Galinsky, a foremost authority on Roman history and culture. Thirteen other essays explore related aspects and draw on a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, including theory, method, archaeology, epigraphy, and art.
Michele Renne Salzman and Michael Roberts, translators
This introduction to, commentary on, and translation into English of the first book of letters by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, a leading orator and statesman of the fourth-century Roman Senate, highlights the influence of the late Roman aristocracy that flourished in the century after Constantine. One hundred and seven letters discuss literature, religion, politics, and social life. They provide a unique window into the private lives of Rome’s leaders, pagan and Christian, in late antiquity.