The Valediction Of Moses

Moses Wilhelm Shapira's infamous Deuteronomy manuscripts -- long believed to be forgeries -- are of far greater significance than ever imagined. Idan Dershowitz shows that the text preserved in these manuscripts is not based on the book of Deuteronomy. On the contrary, it is a proto-biblical book, the likes of which has never before been seen.

It is often presumed that biblical redaction was invariably done using scribal methods, meaning that when editors sought to modify or compile existing texts, they would do so in the process of rewriting them upon new scrolls. There is, however, substantial evidence pointing to an alternative scenario: Various sections of the Hebrew Bible appear to have been created through a process of material redaction. In some cases, ancient editors simply appended new sheets to existing scrolls. Other times, they literally cut and pasted their sources, carving out patches of text from multiple manuscripts and then gluing them together like a collage. Idan Dershowitz shows how this surprising technique left behind telltale traces in the biblical text - especially when the editors made mistakes - allowing us to reconstruct their modus operandi. Material evidence from the ancient Near East and elsewhere further supports his hypothesis.

Reopening the Most Controversial Case in the History of Biblical Scholarship

Waking to find himself shipwrecked on a strange shore before a dark wood, the pilgrim of the Divine Comedy realizes he must set his sights higher and guide his ship to a radically different port. Starting on the sand of that very shore with Dante, John Freccero begins retracing the famous voyage recounted by the poet nearly 700 years ago. Freccero follows pilgrim and poet through the Comedy and then beyond, inviting readers both uninitiated and accomplished to join him in navigating this complex medieval masterpiece and its influence on later literature. Perfectly impenetrable in its poetry and unabashedly ambitious in its content, the Divine Comedy is the cosmos collapsed on itself, heavy with dense matter and impossible to expand. Yet Dante’s great triumph is seen in the tiny, subtle fragments that make up the seamless whole, pieces that the poet painstakingly sewed together to form a work that insinuates itself into the reader and inspires the work of the next author. Freccero magnifies the most infinitesimal elements of that intricate construction to identify self-similar parts, revealing the full breadth of the great poem. Using this same technique, Freccero then turns to later giants of literature— Petrarch, Machiavelli, Donne, Joyce, and Svevo—demonstrating how these authors absorbed these smallest parts and reproduced Dante in their own work. In the process, he confronts questions of faith, friendship, gender, politics, poetry, and sexuality, so that traveling with Freccero, the reader will both cross unknown territory and reimagine familiar faces, swimming always in Dante’s wake.

Religious and Intellectual Diversity in the Islamicate World and Beyond is a collection of essays in honor of Sarah Stroumsa, an eminent scholar who through the years has embodied and advanced the possibility of collaboration across borders. The volume is presented to her by scholars working on the study of the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, the intercultural contact and migration of knowledge in the Islamic world, and many other topics. Contributors: Binyamin Abrahamov, Camilla Adang, Anna Ayse Akasoy, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Meir M. Bar-Asher, José Bellver, Menachem Ben-Sasson, Haggai Ben-Shammai, Glen W. Bowersock, Rémi Brague, Godefroid de Callataÿ, Jonathan Decter, Michael Ebstein, Hussein Fancy, Carlos Fraenkel, Gil Gambash, Robert Gleave, Miriam Goldstein, Frank Griffel, Jaakko Hämeen Anttila, Steven Harvey, Warren Zev Harvey, Meir Hatina, Geoffrey Khan, Gudrun Krämer, Ehud Krinis, Y. Tzvi Langermann, Daniel J. Lasker, Reimund Leicht, Gideon Libson, Menachem Lorberbaum, Maria Mavroudi, Jon McGinnis, Omer Michaelis, Yonatan Moss, David Nirenberg, Sari Nusseibeh, Olaf Pluta, Meira Polliack, James T. Robinson, Marina Rustow, Sabine Schmidtke, Gregor Schwarb, Ahmed El Shamsy, Mark Silk, Uriel Simonsohn, Daniel De Smet, Josef Stern, Guy G. Stroumsa, Sara Sviri, Alexander Treiger, Roy Vilozny, Ronny Vollandt, Elvira Wakelnig, Paul E. Walker, David J. Wasserstein, Tanja Werthmann, Dong Xiuyuan, Arye Zoref.

In this broad yet detailed account of one of the world's oldest, holiest, and most contested cities, leading expert Jodi Magness incorporates the most recent archaeological discoveries and original research to weave an authoritative history of Jerusalem's ancient and medieval periods.

Combining recent archeological findings with what scholars have learned about the motives of the authors of the Bible, this book reconstructs the history behind the Bible, from the patriarchs to the Babylonian exile. What it finds will surprise you. The stories of the patriarchs are based on one core legend of four different tribes about their patriarch, and this core legend shows, along with other evidence, that Ephraim and Manasseh are the tribes that went to Egypt. Moses was probably a follower of the monotheism of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who had to flee from Egypt when the followers of Akhenaten were persecuted and who developed a deeper form of monotheism. The Bible distorts the history of Israel to show that leaders who are dedicated to God will have military success. For example, Joshua did not conquer Canaan; the Israelites settled unoccupied land there. The kingdoms of David and Solomon were much smaller than the Bible says. One of the texts of the Bible was written in the royal court of Judah and combined Israelite and pagan religion. This syncretistic text helped to shape the text of the Bible. The authors of the history texts wanted desperately to save Judah from being exiled, as the northern kingdom of Israel had already been exiled, and so they carried out a harsh and cruel religious reform. Their cruelty helped to shape the text of the Bible. But despite all the later distortions, we can still see that the religion of Moses—passed down by the Levites who believed they were descended from Moses and by the prophets—was a form of ethical monotheism that has inspired world religion for thousands of years.

Shows how biblical authors, like more recent architects of national identities, constructed identity in direct relation to memories of war.