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In this useful work, Dormeyer assesses the influence of Hellenistic culture upon the New Testament as a literary work. There is no denying the impact of Jewish literature upon the New Testament, but even those Jewish antecedents were themselves not infrequently imprinted with Hellenistic characteristics. Dormeyer''s method is to consider in turn the literary forms (Gattungen) of the New Testament, outlining with many examples the parallels between the New Testament and Hellenistic literature. The Synoptic sayings, for instance, are closest in character to the Hellenistic gnome, though the representation of Jesus as an eschatological and prophetic wisdom teacher shows a marked difference from other teachers of wisdom in Hellenistic circles. Other areas of close correspondence with Hellenistic literature lie in the form and rhetoric of the New Testament epistles, and in the structure of the Gospels, which invoke the canons of Hellenistic historiography and biography. Throughout, Dormeyer is at pains to stress the contours of the special quality of the New Testament literature as the product of a quite small community that nevertheless brought into being a number of authors of exceptional talent.

Hebrew Biblical narratives are sparing in their portrayal of character, leaving much to the reader. Here scholars assume the identities of some biblical characters, using clues in the text, their own exegetical skills and knowledge of the biblical world, and their imaginations to fill in the gaps.

Collected here in one volume are the best examples of social-scientific Old Testament criticism from the last 20 years of the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, an essential introduction to the field. Divided into six sections, this volume presents essays on the central methodological and theoretical issues as well as a series of applications to the study of early Israelite social forms, the formal and informal regulation of life, the distribution of power and justice, and the performance of social roles and the process of group formation. The volume brings home how indispensable a social-science approach is for the reconstruction of the Israelite social world-not to say our own worlds and productions as well, enbodying the finest traditions of classical social theory and the interface with exciting new developments.

This volume is part of a series which brings together the best articles on major fields of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies from the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. The aim of the series is to provide for scholars and students a convenient and up-to-date briefing on developments in the field. The so-called historical books embrace a vast amount of diverse biblical material, from Joshuah to Nehemiah, and this selection of 20 essays covers a breadth of biblical material using a wide range of methodological approaches. The breadth of its scope combined with the depth of scholarship makes this Reader a useful and comprehensive resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses.

This volume contains studies of Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", all of which are set against the backdrop of images drawn from the Pauline Epistles.

This study of dream accounts in the Bible and in ancient Near Eastern literature suggests two main lines of interpretation: on the one hand it defines the function of dream accounts from a literary, social, political and religious point of view on the basis of literary genre (practitioners'' manuals, royal inscriptions, prophetic texts, etc.). On the other hand, in adopting a rather larger typology than is usual (message dreams, symbolic dreams, but also prophetic, premonitory and judgment dreams), it seeks to clarify both the relationship between the fiction implied by the literary form and the actual dream experience of individuals, as well as the different ritual practices related to this experience (interpretation, conjuration, incubation, etc.).

Scholarly discussions of biblical interpretation often ignore the fact that language and literature form an integral part of a people''s culture, that interpretation therefore implies the total cultural system of the relevant literature, and that biblical interpretation consequently implies inter-cultural communication. This book explores the theoretical and practical implications of this observation from a cultural anthropological perspective, looks at recent anthropological studies of ancient Israelite society, supplies practical examples of a cultural interpretation of ancient Hebrew narratives, and discusses the impact of the notions ''cultural relativity'' and ''inter-cultural communication'' for biblical interpretation.

This group of feminist readings of parables about women and their work aims to fill a gap in the scholarly literature on parables. It brings to life vignettes from ancient Mediterranean women's lives, covering the place of women in the ministry of Jesus, the early church and Christian theology.

Biblical semantic logic states that the study of biblical and ancient Near Eastern languages and literatures can be established on a logical basis. Gibson addresses topics of originality and infinity, and suggests that deep areas of literary creativity resemble cosmology and pure mathematics.

This text provides an introduction to Marxist literary criticism. It comprises studies of major figures in the tradition, specifically Althusser, Gramsci, Eagleton, Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Lefebvre, Lukacs and Jameson.

This translation and commentary on the Ugaritic texts is aimed at general readers, students and specialists. The texts are seen as background material for Old Testament study, as Ugaritic deities, myths, religious terminology, poetic techniques and general vocabulary are found in the Hebrew Bible.

The connections between New Testament texts, classic works of literature and cinematic interpretations of those works are explored in this book, which contains studies of writings by T.S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Margaret Atwood, as well as the films "Star Trek", "Apocalypse Now" and "High Noon".