Journal of Ancient Judaism - Supplements

This collection of articles is tightly focused on metaphors in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible and their later afterlife in Jewish and Christian texts. The essays deal with a wide range of historical, literary, and methodological issues. First, several contributions employ metaphor theory in analysing the biblical texts, both conceptual frameworks such as blending theory and more traditional methods. Second, metaphors are studied both synchronically, that is, in relation to their current literary contexts, and diachronically, that is, mapping how they have been employed and re-interpreted in different ways and different texts throughout time. Third, other contributions read metaphors in light of theoretical frameworks such as feminist criticism, post-colonial theories, or power discourses that uncover aspects of significance often missed in historical studies. Finally, yet other contributions deal with the issue of how to translate metaphors in contemporary contexts.

In the broadest sense, political theology refers to “God talk” in the context of multiple and often competing perspectives on social life. While political history is firmly established within biblical studies, it is frequently separated from the study of theology and religion. And if political theology has found a place in scholarly conversations within biblical studies, it has often been reduced to specific comparisons with political genres in the ancient world, such as treaty/covenant, or kingship. This volume is an edited collection of 17 essays that seek to broaden the scope of what might count as political theology, throwing new light on older studies and demonstrating the diversity of political theologies in the Hebrew Bible. Each essay demonstrates the integration of political theology with other strands of innovative research in current biblical studies. The essays cover a range of topics such as sovereignty, nation, migration, cultural politics, land holding, and gender.

This book is an analysis of early Jewish thought on human nature, specifically, the complex of characteristics that are understood to be universally innate, and/or God-given, to collective humanity and the manner which they depict human existence in relationship, or lack thereof, to God. Jewish discourse in the Greco-Roman period (4th c. BCE until 1st c. CE) on human nature was not exclusively particularistic, although the immediate concern was often communal-specific. Evidence shows that many of these discussions were also an attempt to grasp a general, or universal, human nature. The focus of this work has been narrowed to three categories that encapsulate the most prevalent themes in Second Temple Jewish texts, namely, creation, composition, and condition.