Handbook On Biblical Reception In The World S Folklores

the Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception (HBR) provide comprehensive introductions to individual topics in biblical reception history. They address a wide range of academic fields and interdisciplinary matters, including reception of the Bible in various contexts and historical periods; in diverse geographic areas; in particular cultural, social, and political contexts; and in relation to important biblical themes, topics, and figures.

This first volume of a two-volume Handbook treats a challenging, largely neglected subject at the crossroads of several academic fields: biblical studies, reception history of the Bible, and folklore studies or folkloristics. The Handbook examines the reception of the Bible in verbal folklores of different cultures around the globe. This first volume, complete with a general Introduction, focuses on biblically-derived characters, tales, motifs, and other elements in Jewish (Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ashkenazi), Romance (French, Romanian), German, Nordic/Scandinavian, British, Irish, Slavic (East, West, South), and Islamic folkloric traditions. The volume contributes to the understanding of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the New Testament, and various pseudepigraphic and apocryphal scriptures, and to their interpretation and elaboration by folk commentators of different faiths. The book also illuminates the development, artistry, and “migration” of folktales; opens new areas for investigation in the reception history of the Bible; and offers insights into the popular dimensions of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities around the globe, especially regarding how the holy scriptures have informed those communities’ popular imaginations.

In recent decades, reception history has become an increasingly important and controversial topic of discussion in biblical studies. Rather than attempting to recover the original meaning of biblical texts, reception history focuses on exploring the history of interpretation. In doing so it locates the dominant historical-critical scholarly paradigm within the history of interpretation, rather than over and above it. At the same time, the breadth of material and hermeneutical issues that reception history engages with questions any narrow understanding of the history of the Bible and its effects on faith communities. The challenge that reception history faces is to explore tradition without either reducing its meaning to what faith communities think is important, or merely offering anthologies of interesting historical interpretations. This major new handbook addresses these matters by presenting reception history as an enterprise (not a method) that questions and understands tradition afresh. The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible consciously allows for the interplay of the traditional and the new through a two-part structure. Part I comprises a set of essays surveying the outline, form, and content of twelve key biblical books that have been influential in the history of interpretation. Part II offers a series of in-depth case studies of the interpretation of particular key biblical passages or books with due regard for the specificity of their social, cultural or aesthetic context. These case studies span two millennia of interpretation by readers with widely differing perspectives. Some are at the level of a group response (from Gnostic readings of Genesis, to Post-Holocaust Jewish interpretations of Job); others examine individual approaches to texts (such as Augustine and Pelagius on Romans, or Gandhi on the Sermon on the Mount). Several chapters examine historical moments, such as the 1860 debate over Genesis and evolution, while others look to wider themes such as non-violence or millenarianism. Further chapters study in detail the works of popular figures who have used the Bible to provide inspiration for their creativity, from Dante and Handel, to Bob Dylan and Dan Brown.

"The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters and themes in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres; "lived" examples; and a concluding section in which we take stock of methodologies like Reception History and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. These topics are all addressed by focusing on specific examples from film, television, comics, music, literature, video games, science fiction, material culture, museums, and theme parks, to name a few. This book represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of Bible and American popular culture"--

A Handbook to the Reception of Classical Mythology presents a collection of essays that explore a wide variety of aspects of Greek and Roman myths and their critical reception from antiquity to the present day. Reveals the importance of mythography to the survival, dissemination, and popularization of classical myth from the ancient world to the present day Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance Features chronologically organized essays that address different sets of myths that were important in each historical era, along with their thematic relevance Offers a series of carefully selected in-depth readings, including both popular and less well-known examples

A welcome supplement to the bestselling How to Read the OT and How to Read the NT, indicating more recent developments in biblical studies especially in the area of narrative criticism.

The Bible is interpreted in a variety of ways and through a myriad of lenses. But how we interpret Scripture depends first of all on how we read it. This handbook focuses on the process of reading itself, taking a cognitive-stylistic approach grounded in recent research on language and the mind. Through accessible explanations of twelve key stylistic elements, How We Read the Bible provides all who study Scripture with the tools to understand what happens when we read and draw meaning from biblical texts. Rather than problematizing the divide between authors from the ancient world and a modern-day audience, Karolien Vermeulen and Elizabeth Hayes bridge the gap by exploring the interaction between the cues of the text and the context of the reader. With numerous examples from the Old and New Testaments and helpful suggestions for further study, How We Read the Bible can be used within any framework of biblical study—historical, theological, literary, and others—as a pathway to meeting Scripture on its own terms.