Congress Volume Leiden 2004

This volume presents all the main lectures of the XVIIIth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament (IOSOT) held in Leiden (August 2004). It is a very good sample of the main trends and progress of current biblical research on textual criticism (Qumran and Septuagint), biblical archaeology, literary criticism (especially Pentateuch, Joshua, Kings), biblical themes (especially in wisdom literature), as well as about the light thrown on biblical exegesis by current cognitive linguistics. An appendix deals with the connection between world Christianity and the study of the Old Testament. The twenty authors are among the main international figures of current biblical exegesis and their contributions are representative of the study of the Old Testament at the beginning of the third millenium.

André Lemaire, Ph.D (1973) in Oriental Studies, University of Paris III, is Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic Philology and Epigraphy at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne, Paris). He has published extensively on Bible and West Semitic Epigraphy, including Naissance du monothéisme. Point de vue d'un historien (Paris, Bayard, 2003).

"The twenty contributors, drawn from Africa, East Asia, Europe, Israel, and North and South America, fitly represent the world-wide community of Old Testament scholarship; the range of topic and variety of approach illustrate, often brilliantly, the state of the art in many areas of the discipline.[...] In this rich and diverse collection there will be something for everyone." – William Johnstone, in: Review of Biblical Literature, 2007