A Study Of The Interpretation Of Noah And The Flood In Jewish And Christian Literature

This volume opens with an analysis of the biblical Flood story within its ancient Oriental context and with two essays devoted to the study of the Flood in Greek literature. Several essays are devoted to the interpretation of the biblical story in diverse ancient Jewish and Christian texts (Old Testament apocrypha, Gnostic mythology, patristic and rabbinic literature). The volume ends with a study about the interpretation of the Flood in the period of the Scientific Revolution and with an interpretation from the perspective of a twentieth-century psycho-analyst.

Over 15 years in the making, an unprecedented one-volume reference work. Many of today's students and teachers of literature, lacking a familiarity with the Bible, are largely ignorant of how Biblical tradition has influenced and infused English literature through the centuries. An invaluable research tool. Contains nearly 800 encyclopedic articles written by a distinguished international roster of 190 contributors. Three detailed annotated bibliographies. Cross-references throughout.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have opened up for modern readers the ancient world of Jewish interpretation of the Bible during the Second Temple period. Among these scrolls are several manuscripts dating to the first century BC, the oldest surviving texts dealing with interpretation of the Genesis Flood. A literary analysis of the four primary Qumran Flood texts (1QapGen, 4Q252, 4Q370, and 4Q422) reveals how ancient Jews interpreted and employed the Genesis Flood narrative. These texts contain commentary, paraphrase, and admonition, among other things, addressing issues such as the cause, chronology, and purpose of the Flood. In addition, these fragmentary treasures reveal such ancient understandings of the Flood as a reversal and renewal of creation, a restoration of Eden and anticipation of the Promised Land, and an archetype of eschatological judgment.

The story of Noah's flood is one of the best-loved and most often retold biblical tales, the inspiration for numerous children's books and toys, novels, and even films. Whether as allusion, archetype, or literal presence--the American landscape is peppered with "recreations" of the ark--the story of Noah's animals and the ark resonates throughout American culture and the world.While most think of Noah's ark as a dramatic myth, others are consumed by the quest for geological and archeological proof that the flood really occurred. Persistent rumors of a large vessel on the mountain of Ararat in Turkey, for instance, have led many pilgrims and explorers over the centuries to visit that fabled peak. Recent finds suggest that there may have been a catastrophic flood on the shores of the Black Sea some 7,600 years ago. Is this then the reality behind the ancient tale of Noah? More to the point, why does it matter?What does the story of the Flood mean to us and why does it so stir the collective imagination? When the Great Abyss Opened examines the history of our attempts to understand the Flood, from medieval Jewish and Christian speculation about the physical details of the ark to contemporary efforts to link it to scientific findings. Unraveling the mythical dimensions of the parallel Mesopotamian flood stories and their deeper social and psychological significance, J. David Pleins also considers the story's positive uses in theology and moral instruction. Noah's tale, however, has also been invoked as a means of justifying exclusion, racism, and anti-homosexual views. Pro-slavery advocates, for example, used the story of Noah's Curse on Ham's son Canaan to rationalize the enslavement of Africans.Throughout this expansive and lively book, Pleins sheds new light on our continuing attempts to understand this ancient primal myth. Noah's Flood, he contends, offers a unique case study that illuminates the timeless and timely question of how fact and faith relate.

As father of all humanity and not exclusively of Israel, Noah was a problematic ancestor for some Jews in the Second Temple period. His archetypical portrayals in the Dead Sea Scrolls, differently nuanced in Hebrew and Aramaic, embodied the tensions for groups that were struggling to understand both their distinctive self-identities within Judaism and their relationship to the nations among whom they lived. Dually located within a trajectory of early Christian and rabbinic interpretation of Noah and within the Jewish Hellenistic milieu of the Second Temple period, this study of the Noah traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls illuminates living conversations and controversies among the people who transmitted them and promises to have implications for ancient questions and debates that extended considerably beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This volume publishes papers delivered at the Second International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books (Pápa, Hungary). This conference dealt with the Books of the Maccabees. As such, this was the most extended discussion of these books that ever took place at a scholarly meeting. The volume contains articles on the textual forms, traditions, theology and ideology of the books, and demonstrates the books’ relationship with the contemporary literature of early Judaism.