Discovering the Traditions of Prose Prayers in Early Jewish Literature

Discovering the Traditions of Prose Prayers in Early Jewish Literature PDF Author: Michael D. Matlock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567458105
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In this volume Michael D. Matlock analyses five lengthy biblical prose prayers from the exilic and post-exilic period: Solomon's prayer (1 Kings 8.14-61), Ezra's prayer (Ezra 9.5-15), Nehemiah's prayer (Nehemiah 1.4-11), the Levites' prayer (Nehemiah 9.4-37), and the prayer of Daniel (Daniel 9:3-19). He also examines prayers from Second Temple literature including texts from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the writings of Philo and Josephus and texts from Qumran, and discusses the Septuagintal versions of the five biblical prayers and Targum Jonathan's treatment of Solomon's prayer. He offers a new English translation of each prayer, examines the prayers' rhetorical characteristics, and demonstrates how each prayer draws upon and reinterprets traditional images and materials. Matlock describes how each prayer relates to its larger narrative context and examines its functions within that context. Finally, he appraises the various similarities and differences in these prayers in terms of their different contexts in the Second Commonwealth period noting particular theologies and ideologies.

Discovering the Traditions of Prose Prayers in Early Jewish Literature

Discovering the Traditions of Prose Prayers in Early Jewish Literature PDF Author: Michael D. Matlock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567458105
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
In this volume Michael D. Matlock analyses five lengthy biblical prose prayers from the exilic and post-exilic period: Solomon's prayer (1 Kings 8.14-61), Ezra's prayer (Ezra 9.5-15), Nehemiah's prayer (Nehemiah 1.4-11), the Levites' prayer (Nehemiah 9.4-37), and the prayer of Daniel (Daniel 9:3-19). He also examines prayers from Second Temple literature including texts from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the writings of Philo and Josephus and texts from Qumran, and discusses the Septuagintal versions of the five biblical prayers and Targum Jonathan's treatment of Solomon's prayer. He offers a new English translation of each prayer, examines the prayers' rhetorical characteristics, and demonstrates how each prayer draws upon and reinterprets traditional images and materials. Matlock describes how each prayer relates to its larger narrative context and examines its functions within that context. Finally, he appraises the various similarities and differences in these prayers in terms of their different contexts in the Second Commonwealth period noting particular theologies and ideologies.

Petitioners, Penitents, and Poets

Petitioners, Penitents, and Poets PDF Author: Timothy J. Sandoval
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110624524
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This volume contributes to the growing interest in understanding the phenomenon of prayer and praying in the Hebrew Bible, Early Judaism, and nascent Christianity. Papers by the leading scholars in these fields revisit long-standing questions and chart new paths of inquiry into the nature, form, and practice of addressing the divine in the ancient world. The essays in this volume deal with particular texts of and about prayer, practices of prayer, as well as figures and locations (historical and literary) that are associated with prayer and praying. These studies apply a range of methods and theoretical approaches to prayer and the language of prayer in literatures of Early Judaism and Christianity. Some studies apply the classical methods of biblical studies to Second Temple texts of prayer, including form critical and text critical approaches; others engage in literary and narrative analysis of ancient works that recount discourse directed to the divine. Still other studies draw on anthropological and sociological analyses of prayer or marshal particular theories of discourse, ethics, and moral agency to offer fresh interpretations of address to God in the literature of Second Temple Judaism and earliest Christianity.

Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters

Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters PDF Author: Matthias Henze
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 0884144828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description
An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.

Prayers and the Construction of Israelite Identity

Prayers and the Construction of Israelite Identity PDF Author: Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 0884143678
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Substantial insights into various identity discourses reflected in the biblical prayers This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel. Features Thorough study of prayers that play a key role for a biblical book’s (re)construction of the people’s history and identity An examination of ways biblical figures are remodeled by their prayers by introducing other, sometimes even contradictory, discourses on identity An exploration of different ways in which psalms from postexilic times shaped, reflected, and modified identity discourses

Various Aspects of Worship in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Various Aspects of Worship in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature PDF Author: Géza G. Xeravits
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110467402
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The volume contains papers read at the International Conference of the ISDCL, held in Budapest in 2015. The contributors explore various aspects of worship as reflected in the literature of Judaism from the Second Temple period to Late Antiquity. The volume provides a fresh reading of various crucial issues especially within Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Rabbinic literature, Gnostic traditions, and the emerging synagogue. The papers analyse texts and artefacts that reveal how various groups of Judaism understood the concept of worship—a pre-eminent form of expressing religious identity and interpreting fundamental traditions.

Institutionalized Routine Prayers at Qumran: Fact or Assumption?

Institutionalized Routine Prayers at Qumran: Fact or Assumption? PDF Author: Paul Heger
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN: 3647571318
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This book examines the development of institutionalized prayer in ancient Israel at a crucial time in the history of Western civilization: from the period of the Qumran writings, in the last three centuries BCE, through to the rabbinic period, after 70 CE. It explores the shift from sacrificial worship by priests to abstract, unmediated, direct approaches to the deity by laypeople. It demonstrates the transition from voluntary, freely composed prayers to obligatory prayers with fixed texts. The study shows how Qumran and Samaritan prayer contrast with rabbinic prayer, shedding light on Jewish customs before the rabbinic reform. Posthumously edited by Bernard M. Levinson.

Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature

Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature PDF Author: Jeremy Corley
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311041693X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This volume explores the fundamentals of intertextual methodology and summarizes recent scholarship on studies of intertextuality in the deuterocanonical books. The essays engage in comparison and analysis of text groups and motifs between canonical, deuterocanonical and non-biblical texts. Moreover, the book pays close attention to non-literary relationships between different traditions, a new feature of research in intertextuality.

Prayer in John’s Farewell Discourse

Prayer in John’s Farewell Discourse PDF Author: Scott Adams
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532686854
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
It was reported that a doctoral student at Princeton once asked Albert Einstein, "What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?" He replied by saying, "Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer." Since Einstein's day, a great deal has been written on the topic of prayer in general. However, relatively little has been written about prayer in John's Farewell Discourse in particular. Therefore, this analysis not only seeks to understand the relationship between Johannine and Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Christian prayer traditions, but also seeks to discern the unique function and application of prayer as it is prescribed in the Farewell Discourse.

Before the Bible

Before the Bible PDF Author: Judith H. Newman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190212225
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Before the Bible reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work, but the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible, but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period. Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that the key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding this revelatory phenomenon. The book considers the entwinement of prayer and scriptural formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive tradition in accounts of how the Bible came to be.

The Book of Deuteronomy, Chapters 1–11

The Book of Deuteronomy, Chapters 1–11 PDF Author: Bill T. Arnold
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467462934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
“The book of Deuteronomy can rightly be called a compendium of the most important ideas of the Old Testament.” So begins this commentary on the book of Deuteronomy, which Bill Arnold treats as the heart of the Torah and the fulcrum of the Old Testament—crystallizing the themes of the first four books of the Bible and establishing the theological foundation of the books that follow. After a thorough introduction that explores these and other matters, Arnold provides an original translation of the first eleven chapters of Deuteronomy along with verse-by-verse commentary (with the translation and commentary of the remaining chapters following in a second volume). As with the other entries in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Arnold remains rooted in the book’s historical context while focusing on its meaning and use as Christian Scripture today. Ideal for pastors, students, scholars, and interested laypersons, this commentary is an authoritative yet accessible companion to the book of Deuteronomy.