Textual And Literary Criticism Of The Books Of Kings

This volume contains a collection of Julio Trebolle’s papers on textual and compositional history of 1-2 Kings, via Septuagint, Old Latin. His research is a key contribution to the landscape of textual plurality in the history of the Bible.

2 Kings is Volume 10 of The Forms of the Old Testament Literature, a series that aims to present a form-critical analysis of every book and each unit in the Hebrew Bible. Fundamentally exegetical, the FOTL volumes examine the structure, genre, setting, and intention of the biblical literature in question. They also study the history behind the form-critical discussion of the material, attempt to bring consistency to the terminology for the genres and formulas of the biblical literature, and expose the exegetical process so as to enable students and pastors to engage in their own analysis and interpretation of the Old Testament texts. Long views 1 & 2 Kings as a substantially unified written work of historiography, produced during the Babylonian exile. Hence he begins his detailed form-critical commentary on 2 Kings where he left off in his volume on 1 Kings. Following the series format, Long discusses the text of 2 Kings unit by unit in terms of structure, genre, setting, and intention, concluding each unit with a bibliography. As in his volume on 1 Kings, Long here integrates his form-critical work with a discussion of the book's literary art (e.g., style, metaphor, imagery) to expose "the narrative genius which awakens imaginative response in the reader." The volume concludes with a glossary of the genres and formulas identified in 2 Kings. - Publisher.

Preliminary material /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam -- Myth, Meta-Narrative, and Historical Reconstruction - Rethinking the Nature of Scholarship on Israelite Origins /Hugh R. Page -- Diaspora Dangers, Diaspora Dreams /Sharon Pace -- King Og's Iron Bed (Deut 3:11) - Once Again /Timo Veijola -- A New Reconstruction of 4Qsamuela 24:16-22 /Frank Moore Cross -- \'How Many Vessels\'? An Examination of MT 1 Sam 2:14/4Qsama 1 Sam 2:16 /Donald W. Parry -- Samuel/Kings and Chronicles: Book Divisions and Textual Composition /Julio Trebolle -- Who is the Ṣaddiq of Isaiah 57:1-2? /Joseph Blenkinsopp -- Daniel Outside the Traditional Jewish Canon: in the Footsteps of M. R. James /Robert A. Kraft -- Origen and the First Christian Testament /James A. Sanders -- The Social Configuration of the Rabbi-Disciple Relationship: Evidence and Implications for First Century Palestine /Dean O. Wenthe -- \'Holy War\' Texts Among the Qumran Scrolls /Daniel J. Harrington -- Les Manuscrits 4Qjugesc ( = 4Q50A) ET 1Qjuges ( = 1 Q6) /Émile Puech -- \'And he Shall Answer and Say ...\' - A Little Backlighting /Martin Abegg -- The Time of the Teacher: An Old Debate Renewed /John J. Collins -- Two \'Scientific\' Fictions: The So-Called Book of Noah and the Alleged Quotation of Jubilees in CD 16:3-4 /Devorah Dimant -- The Blessing of Judah in 4Q252 /Curt Niccum -- Joseph at Qumran: The Importance of 4Q372 Frg. 1 In Extending A Tradition /Robert A. Kugler -- Creating Community Halakhah /Sarianna Metso -- To What End? Functions of Scriptural Interpretation in Qumran Texts /James C. Vanderkam -- Rewritten Bible Or Imitatio? The Vestments of the High-Priest /Natalio Fernández Marcos -- The Use of Computers in Biblical Research /Emanuel Tov -- Faith, Hope and Interpretation: A Lexical and Syntactical Study of the Semantic Field of Hope in the Greek Psalter /Anneli Aejmelaeus -- The Septuagint of Isaiah and the Hebrew Text of Isa 2:22 and 36:7 /Arie Van Der Kooij -- Edom - Adam in Ezekiel, in the MT and LXX /Johan Lust -- Greek Jeremiah and the Land of Azazel /Albert Pietersma -- 1. Scripture Index /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam -- 2. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam -- 3. Dead Sea Scrolls Index /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam -- 4. Other Ancient Writings /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam -- 5. Index of Modern Authors /Peter W. Flint , Emanuel Tov and James C. VanderKam.

This book is an examination of characters in the books of Kings; showing how understanding and interpretation of key characters affects readings of the story. The volume begins with more general pieces addressing how the study of characters can shed light on the composition history of Kings and on how characters and characterization can be considered with respect to ethics, particularly with respect to the moral complexity of biblical characters. Contributors then consider key characters within the Kings narrative in depth, such as Nathan, Bathsheba, Solomon and Jezebel. The contributors use their own specific expertise to analyze these characters and more, drawing on insights from literary theory and considering such approaches as questioning our view of a particular character with based on the character within the text with whom we identify. Contributors also assess whether or not characters as portrayed in the biblical text necessarily match up to their possible counterparts in history.

Since the beginning of critical scholarship biblical texts have been dated using linguistic evidence. Until now there has been no introduction to and comprehensive overview of the field. Volume 2 of Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts contains an extensive overview of dates attributed to different books and corpora of the Hebrew Bible in modern scholarship, demonstrating the lack of consensus on the dating of biblical texts. A synthesis of the main arguments of the work is presented, drawing also on many points from volume 1, followed by 50 pages of case studies, a list of linguistic features attributed to LBH in earlier research, a bibliography of 70 pages and several indexes.

Editorial Techniques in the Hebrew Bible: Toward a Refined Literary Criticism presents and applies a model for understanding and reconstructing the diachronic development of the Hebrew Bible through historical criticism (or the historical-critical method). Reinhard Müller and Juha Pakkala refine the methodologies of literary and redaction criticism through a systematic investigation of the evidence of additions, omissions, replacements, and transpositions that are documented by divergent ancient textual traditions. At stake is not only historical criticism but also the Hebrew Bible as a historical source, for historical criticism has been and continues to be the only method to unwind those scribal changes that left no traces in textual variants.

In this important collection of studies, copublished by Eerdmans and Brill, one of the world's foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls outlines a comprehensive theory that reconstructs the complex development of the ancient texts that eventually came to form the Old Testament.

In the history of the Greek translation of the Bible, there are two recensions that play a very important role. The first is the Hexaplaric recension of Origen. In this work, Origen displayed the different versions of the Biblical text and aimed at bringing the Greek text as it had been submitted so far closer to the then current Hebrew text. His intervention in the Greek text has "opened the gates to a flood of approximations of the Greek text to the Hebrew" (dixit Anneli Aejmelaeus). Indeed, one can find Hexaplaric readings in many manuscripts, and even in texts, manuscripts and versions that have never been labeled like that. Filtering out what are Hexaplaric readings is of utmost importance to the reconstruction of the Old Greek text, which may then point to another Hebrew text. A similar enterprise was undertaken by Lucian, and his work too needs to be reconstructed and traced in order to establish the Old Greek text. The current volume deals with the books of 1-2 Sam, 1-2 Kings, as well as Joshua and Esther.