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The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which biblical judges served as temporary leaders. The stories follow a consistent pattern: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh; he therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which he sends in the form of a leader or champion ; the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression and they prosper, but soon they fall again into unfaithfulness and the cycle is repeated. Scholars consider many of the stories in Judges to be the oldest in the Deuteronomistic history, with their major redaction dated to the 8th century BCE and with materials such as the Song of Deborah dating from much earlier.
The Book of Proverbs is a book in the third section of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) it became Παροιμίαι ; in the Latin Vulgate the title was Proverbia, from which the English name is derived.
The documentary hypothesis (DH) is one of the models used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah. A version of the documentary hypothesis, frequently identified with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen, was almost universally accepted for most of the 20th century. It posited that the Pentateuch is a compilation of four originally independent documents: the Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P) sources. The first of these, J, was dated to the Solomonic period. E was dated somewhat later, in the 9th century BCE, and D was dated just before the reign of King Josiah, in the 7th or 8th century. Finally, P was generally dated to the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE. The sources would have been joined together at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors."
The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's relationship to history—covering not just the Bible's acceptability as history but also the ability to understand the literary forms of biblical narrative. One can extend biblical historicity to the evaluation of whether or not the Christian New Testament is an accurate record of the historical Jesus and of the Apostolic Age. This tends to vary depending upon the opinion of the scholar.
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from later post-critical orientation, and from the many different types of criticism which biblical criticism transformed into in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018.
John Van Seters is a Canadian scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, he was formerly James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his Ph.D. at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies (1965) and a Th.D. h.c. from the University of Lausanne (1999). His honours and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, and research fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and National Research Foundation of South Africa. His many publications include The Hyksos: A New Investigation (1966); Abraham in History and Tradition (1975); In Search of History ; The Edited Bible (2006); and The Biblical Saga of King David (2009).
Narrative criticism focuses on the stories a speaker or a writer tells to understand how they help us make meaning out of our daily human experiences. Narrative theory is a means by which we can comprehend how we impose order on our experiences and actions by giving them a narrative form. According to Walter Fisher, narratives are fundamental to communication and provide structure for human experience and influence people to share common explanations and understandings. Fisher defines narratives as "symbolic actions-words and/or deeds that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them." Study of narrative criticism, therefore, includes form, genre, structure characterization, and communicator's perspective.
Jewish English Bible translations are English translations of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the Masoretic Text, in the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. Most Jewish translations appear in bilingual editions (Hebrew–English).
The Judgement of Solomon is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which Solomon ruled between two women both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon revealed their true feelings and relationship to the child by suggesting the baby be cut in two, each woman to receive half. With this strategy, he was able to discern the non-mother as the woman who entirely approved of this proposal, while the actual mother begged that the sword might be sheathed and the child committed to the care of her rival. Some consider this approach to justice an archetypal example of an impartial judge displaying wisdom in making a ruling.
Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, is a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:
- that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and
- that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study.
Adele Berlin is an American biblical scholar and Hebraist. Before her retirement, she was Robert H. Smith Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Maryland.
Yairah Amit is an Israeli biblical scholar. Amit studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before doing a PhD at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Meir Sternberg. She is currently Professor of Biblical Studies at Tel Aviv University. In 2012 a Festschrift was published in her honor. Words, Ideas, Worlds: Biblical Essays in Honour of Yairah Amit (ISBN 1-90753-450-4) included contributions from Athalya Brenner, Cheryl Exum, and Yael Feldman.
David Miller Gunn is an academic and religious scholar. He is the A. A. Bradford Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University.
Danna Nolan Fewell is an Old Testament scholar. She is John Fletcher Hurst Professor of Hebrew Bible at Drew University Theological School.
The Hebrew Bible contains a number of references to rape and other forms of sexual violence, both in the Law of Moses, its historical narratives and its prophetic poetry.
Shimon Bar-Efrat (1929–2010) was an Israeli Old Testament scholar. He was Head of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University Secondary School in Jerusalem, and is best known for his book, Narrative Art in the Bible, in which he "provides a catalogue of literary techniques and devices found in Old Testament narratives." Jeffrey Staley suggests that, along with Robert Alter, Adele Berlin, and Meir Sternberg, Bar-Efrat is a master of "leading the reader through the sudden twists and sharp turns, the steep ridges and dizzying drop-offs that make up the art of ancient Hebrew characterization."
Gary A. Rendsburg is a professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and ancient Judaism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He holds the rank of Distinguished Professor and serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History at Rutgers University (2004–present), with positions in the Department of Jewish Studies and the Department of History.
The Art of Biblical Narrative is a 1981 book by Robert Alter in which he outlines a literary approach to the Hebrew Bible. He proposes that "the Bible in its final form constitutes an artistic document with a full texture of interconnected unity."
The composition of the Torah was a process that involved multiple authors over an extended period of time. While Jewish tradition holds that all five books were originally written by Moses sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE, leading scholars have rejected Mosaic authorship since the 17th century.
References
- ↑ Crenshaw, James L. (2004). "Foreword". The Psalms In Israel's Worship. Eerdmans. p. xxx.
- ↑ Ann, Moor (1979). Untitled. p. 426-428.
- ↑ Bleich, David; L. Sammons, Jeffrey; Watson, George; Black, Edwin; Empson, William; Norris, C. C.; Watkins, Evan (1980). Untitled. p. 237-244.
- ↑ Berlin, Adele (2008). "Literary approaches to biblical literature". The Hebrew Bible: New Insights and Scholarship. NYU Press. p. 54. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
- ↑ Freedman, Amelia Devin (2005). God as an Absent Character in Biblical Hebrew Narrative. p. 17. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
- ↑ R. Christopher Heard, "Narrative Criticism and the Hebrew Scriptures," Restoration Quarterly 38.1 (1996), 33.
- ↑ J. Daniel Hays, "An Evangelical Approach to Old Testament Narrative Criticism," Bibliotheca Sacra 166 (2009), 7.
- ↑ Staley, Jeffrey (2002). Reading with a Passion: Rhetoric, Autobiography, and the American West in the Gospel of John. A&C Black. p. 31. Retrieved 3 April 2016.
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