New Books In Biblical Studies

Recent scholarship focused on the role of embodiment within cognition and communication reminds us that part of how we “know” is through our physical senses. We only know the softness of a kitten by touching its fur, or the tastiness of bread by eating. How might this influence our understanding of biblical texts, such as Jesus’s claim, “I am the bread of life,” and the invitation to eat? Sensing Salvation in the Gospel of John: The Embodied, Sensory Qualities of Participation in the I Am Sayings (Brill, 2023) explores the I am sayings of John’s Gospel, their sensory elements providing an imaginative entry into the narrative and contributing tangible value to the participatory theology of the Fourth Gospel. Jeannine Hanger has been involved in the Biola community since 2000. She earned a Master of Arts (2004) and Master of Theology (2009) at Talbot in New Testament Studies and has been teaching undergraduates in an adjunct role since 2009. She recently completed her doctoral studies (2021) at the University o

Ancient Christians and their non-Christian contemporaries lived in a world of 'magic.' Sometimes, they used curses as ritual objects to seek justice from gods and other beings; sometimes, they argued against them. Curses, and the writings of those who polemicized against curses, reveal the complexity of ancient Mediterranean religions, in which materiality, poetics, song, incantation, and glossolalia were used as technologies of power. Laura Nasrallah's book Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice (Cambridge UP, 2023) reframes the field of religion, the study of the Roman imperial period, and the investigation of the New Testament and ancient Christianity. Her approach eschews disciplinary aesthetics that privilege the literature and archaeological remains of elites, and that defines curses as magical materials, separable from religious ritual. Moreover, Nasrallah's imaginative use of art and 'research creations' of contemporary Black painters, sculptors, and poets offer ins

Dive into the timeless wisdom of Ecclesiastes in Jay Garfinkel's groundbreaking work, Kohelet's Cocktail: Beyond the Pursuit of Happiness (Illuminated Press, 2024) This exquisite "illuminated" digital masterpiece marries the ancient with the avant-garde, offering a fresh, poetic voice to the biblical text that has resonated with humanity for millennia. The book contains: • 83 Stunning Illustrations: Each piece is a visual symphony that invites you on a visual journey through Kohelet's philosophical and existential musings. • A Modern Poetic Voice: Garfinkel reimagines the ancient text with a contemporary poetic flair, making the profound teachings of Ecclesiastes accessible and relatable to a 21st-century audience. • A Fusion of Art and Wisdom: "Kohelet's Cocktail" is not just a book but a multimedia experience that blends vivid imagery with evocative poetry. It illuminates the timeless questions of life, purpose, and human existence. The title, Kohelet's Cocktail, is a metaphor, a blended mixture of life's c

Powerful religious elements for living in the aftermath of trauma are embedded within North African Christian hagiographies. The texts of (1) The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, (2) The Account of Montanus, Lucius, and their Companions, and (3) The Life of Cyprian of Carthage are stories that offered post traumatic pathways to recovery for its historical readership. These recovery-oriented beliefs and behaviors promoted positive religious coping strategies that revolved around a sense of safety, re-establishing community relationships, an integrated sense of self, and a hopeful story beyond trauma. This book vividly demonstrates that hagiographies played a vital therapeutic role in helping early Christian trauma survivors recover and flourish in the aftermath of disastrous persecutions. Scott Harrower (PhD, Systematic Theology) is Associate Professor of Theology, Church History, and Philosophy of Religion at Ridley College (Melbourne, Australia). He is also an ordained Anglican minister and has wide-ranging

The book of Job is challenging. Its Hebrew is often obscure, its length and subject matter are intimidating, and its meaning has been debated throughout the history of biblical interpretation. Thankfully, in Job: Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Lexham Academic, 2024), Duane A. Garrett presents a fresh argument for the book's meaning. Job demonstrates the inability of Wisdom, as a theological tradition, to solve the problem of evil. Tune in as we speak with Duane Garrett about the book of Job! Duane Garrett is the John R. Sampey Professor of Old Testament Interpretation and Professor of biblical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption (IV

The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in 5 Minutes (Equinox Books, 2024), co-edited by Philippe Guillaume and Diana V. Edelman, is a digestible, concise, reader-friendly introduction to biblical scholarship for undergraduate students and lay readers alike. Written without technical language or jargon by diverse specialists in Hebrew Bible, its 83 chapters welcome readers into a range of topics, including the enduring questions of date, authorship, and source criticism for biblical books in addition to timely contributions of interest to 21st-century audiences, such as the Hebrew scriptures and archaeology, ecology, abortion, and sexual orientation/LGBTQIA issues. Meanwhile, although not a book-by-book or verse-by-verse commentary on the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament, their volume introduces familiar prophets and figures from the scriptural collection in novel and enlightening ways. Dr. Edelman and Dr. Guillaume joined the New Books Network to discuss the development of this primer on the Hebrew Scrip

In The Countercultural Victory of 1 John in Greco-Roman Context: Conquering the World (T&T Clark, 2023), Ahreum Kim re-examines conquering language in 1 John, arguing that when the letter is read with the context of Greco-Roman culture in mind, the conflict extends beyond in-fighting within the Johannine community. She suggests that the letter's author presents a consistent countercultural narrative due to concern about the predominant world, and proposes that the author exhorts the minority Johannine community to hold onto their belief while proclaiming that they are triumphant conquerors against the prevailing “world”. Kim first examines how conquering language toward a Johannine nike utilizes militaristic undertones already familiar in Greco-Roman culture. She argues that each of the opponents mentioned is affiliated with “the world”, and it is ultimately the conquering of the world itself which marks the Johannine victory. Kim demonstrates that the author references the negative fear of the divine in the

The Second Epistle to Timothy is, by any standard, a remarkable document. Even as the apostle urges his friend and coworker hasten to Rome for a final meeting, the intimacy and urgency of Paul's words make clear his awareness that Timothy might not arrive in time to say goodbye. This makes the epistle deeply personal. But Paul has a much larger purpose in view than just Timothy's consolation. The epistle vibrates with Paul's concern for Timothy's endurance in the apostle's mission after Paul's death. Paul is at pains to emphasize for Timothy the seriousness of his responsibility, the difficulty of the context in which that duty will be discharged, and the divine assistance that will allow him to preserve and transmit the apostolic deposit to 'faithful men'. Even as he addresses Timothy, Paul is deliberately speaking beyond him to everyone who remains faithful to the apostolic gospel in the 'last days' following the apostle's departure.  Mark Sweetnam's Paul's Last Letter: A Commentary on the Second Epistle to

The New Testament and the Theology of Trust (Oxford UP, 2022) argues for the recovery of trust as a central theme in Christian theology, and offers the first theology of trust in the New Testament. 'Trust' is the root meaning of Christian 'faith' (pistis, fides), and trusting in God and Christ is still fundamental to Christians. But unlike faith, and other aspects of faith such as belief or hope, trust is little studied. Building on her ground-breaking study Roman Faith and Christian Faith, and drawing on the philosophy and psychology of trust, Teresa Morgan explores the significance of trust, trustworthiness, faithfulness, and entrustedness in New Testament writings. Trust between God, Christ, and humanity is revealed as a risky, dynamic, forward-looking, life-changing partnership. God entrusts Christ with winning the trust of humanity and bringing humanity to trust in God. God and Christ trust humanity to respond to God's initiative through Christ, and entrust the faithful with diverse forms of work for hum

In this episode, I speak with Marc Redfield, professor of Comparative Literature, English, and German Studies at Brown University about his most recent work, Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan, published in 2020 by Fordham University Press. In this short but intricate and dense work, Redfield investigates the “shibboleth”—the word, if it is one, and the concept—from its roots in the Book of Judges to the contemporary global regimes of technics that are defined by constantly proliferating technologies and practices of encryption, decryption, exclusion, and inclusion.  At the heart of this book is an insightful interpretation of two poems by the Romanian-Jewish, German-language poet Paul Celan. Redfield places Celan into a polyphonic dialogue with others who invoked “the” shibboleth: the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, William Faulkner, and the Colombian visual artist Doris Salcedo (whose 2007 installation at the Tate Modern, which bears the title Shibboleth, provides the cover image for the book). In doing

In A History of the Hasmonean State: Josephus and Beyond (T&T Clark, 2019), Kenneth Atkinson tells the exciting story of the nine decades of the Hasmonean rule of Judea (152 - 63 BCE) by going beyond the accounts of the Hasmoneans in Josephus in order to bring together new evidence to reconstruct how the Hasmonean family transformed their kingdom into a state that lasted until the arrival of the Romans. Atkinson reconstructs the relationships between the Hasmonean state and the rulers of the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic Empires, the Itureans, the Nabateans, the Parthians, the Armenians, the Cappadocians, and the Roman Republic. He draws on a variety of previously unused sources, including papyrological documentation, inscriptions, archaeological evidence, numismatics, Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, and textual sources from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. Atkinson also explores how Josephus's political and social situation in Flavian Rome affected his accounts of the Hasmoneans and why any study of

Written in Rome as a book with revelatory intentions, the early Christian work known as the Shepherd of Hermas flourished especially in the second, third, and fourth centuries CE, was quoted as scripture by several church fathers, and, on the balance of manuscript attestation and translations from Greek to other languages, “is one of the most widely attested early Christian texts” (Lookadoo, 25). By contrast, outside of a niche of scholars, the book is widely unknown and underappreciated in the 21st century.  In The Shepherd of Hermas: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Handbook (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021), Jonathon Lookadoo seeks to enable a wide range of readers to engage with this unfamiliar book via a focus on the text and message of Hermas, the theological themes with coherence to more familiar books of the New Testament, metaphors unique to Hermas’s “apocalyptic” imagination, and a digestible introduction to the enduring questions of critical scholarship such as authorship, date, authority/canonic

The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one's last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text among all the books of the Hebrew Bible. A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) clarifies the world of late ancient Judaism through the versatile and powerful lens of the Psalter. It asks a simple set of questions: Where did late ancient Jews encounter the Psalms? How did they engage with the work? And what meanings did they produce? A. J. Berkovitz answers these queries by reconstructing and contextualizing a diverse set of religious practices performed with and on the Psalter, such as handling a physical copy, reading from it, interpreting it exegetically, singing it as liturgy, invoking it as magic and reciting it as an act of piety.

The development of Christian scriptures did not terminate once, for example, following Irenaeus and other influential patristic figures, the four gospels that would later be located at the front of the church’s New Testament were accepted by most churches and transmitted together in the same codex. Instead, erudite Christian readers employed new and innovative technologies to transform reading practices, calling attention to both narrative and other thematic similarities present across the gospels, and enabling cross-referential access from one gospel’s narrative sequence to another without amending the individual texts themselves. Such practices were facilitated by the sections and canon tables of Eusebius (ca. 260–339 CE), bishop of Caesarea Maritima in Roman Palestine. In Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2023), Jeremiah Coogan discusses the editorial intervention of Eusebius within gospel manuscripts, including paratextual sectioning, tables

Joel, Obadiah, and Micah all prophesied not after a calamity struck but right before a potential crisis or during the crisis itself. Facing immanent catastrophe, the Jewish people had to decide where their loyalties lay. Join us as we speak with Rav Yaakov Beasley about his book Joel, Obadiah, and Micah: Facing the Storm (Maggid, 2024). He draws from the best of traditional and contemporary scholarship to guide us through the prophets’ trials and tribulations, providing historical overviews of the period, and revealing the messages and meanings of these crucial prophetic works. Rabbi Yaakov Beasley is the Tanakh Coordinator at Yeshivat Hesder Lev HaTorah and the host of the TanachTalks podcast. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Ol

Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studies, Yosefa Raz's book The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition (Cambridge UP, 2023) reveals how Romantic poetry is linked to modern biblical scholarship's development. On the one hand, scholars, intellectuals, and artists discovered models of strong prophecy in biblical texts, shoring up aesthetic and nationalist ideals, while on the other, poets drew upon a counter-tradition of destabilizing, indeterminate, weak prophetic power. Yosefa Raz considers British and German Romanticism alongside their margins, incorporating Hebrew literature written at the turn of the twentieth century in the Russia Empire. Ultimately she explains the weakness of modern poet-prophets not only as a crisis of secularism but also, strikingly, as part of the instability of the biblical text itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Su

The Hellenistic period was a pivotal moment in the history of the Jewish priesthood. The waning days of the Persian empire coincided with the continued ascendance of the high priest and Jerusalem temple as powerful political, cultural, and religious institutions in Judea. The Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran, only recently published in full, testify to the existence of a flourishing but previously unknown Jewish literary tradition dating from the end of Persian rule to the rise of the Hasmoneans.  In Priesthood, Cult, and Temple in the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran: Analyzing a Pre-Hasmonean Jewish Literary Tradition (Brill, 2023), Robert Jones analyzes how Israel's priestly institutions are represented in these writings, and he demonstrates that they are essential for understanding the Jewish priesthood at this crucial stage in its history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

What if the original teachings of Jesus were different from the Bible's sanitized 'orthodox' version? What covert motivations might inspire those who decide what the text of the Bible 'says' or what it 'means'? For some who ask conspiratorial questions like these, the Bible is the vulnerable victim of secular forces seeking to divest the USA of its founding identity. For others, the biblical canon suppresses religious truths that could upend the status quo.  Such suspicions surrounding the Bible find full expression in Gospel Thrillers: a 1960s fictional genre that endures and still commands a substantial following. These novels imagine a freshly discovered first-century gospel and a race against time to unlock its buried secrets. They also reflect the fears and desires that the Bible continues to generate. In Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible (Cambridge UP, 2023), Andrew Jacobs reveals, in his authoritative examination, how this remarkable fictional archive opens a window onto d

Media studies is an emerging discipline that is quickly making an impact within the wider field of biblical scholarship. The Dead Sea Scrolls in Ancient Media Culture (Brill, 2023) is designed to evaluate the status quaestionis of the Dead Sea Scrolls as products of an ancient media culture, with leading scholars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and related disciplines reviewing how scholarship has addressed issues of ancient media in the past, assessing the use of media criticism in current research, and outlining potential directions for future discussions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

In contrast to scholarly belief that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews envisions the transcendent, heavenly world as the eschatological inheritance of God's people, Jihye Lee argues that a version of an Urzeit-Endzeit eschatological framework - as observed in some Jewish apocalyptic texts - provides a plausible background against which the arguments of Hebrews are most comprehensively explained. Instead of transcendence to the heavenly world that will come after the destruction of the shakable creation, Lee suggests the possibility of a more dualistic new world.  By first defining Urzeit-Endzeit eschatology, Lee is then able to explore its place in both pre and post 70 CE Second Temple Judaism. In examining Enoch, the Qumran Texts, Jubilees, the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch and finally the Book of Revelation, Lee compares a multitude of eschatological visions and the different depictions of the transformation of the world, judgement and the new world to come. Bringing these texts