Commentaries often give the impression that a singular reading of a text like Revelation is possible, even though feminist, womanist, and queer scholars challenge this idea, highlighting instead the multiplicity of meanings within any given narrative.
Commentaries often give the impression that a singular reading of a text like Revelation is possible, even though feminist, womanist, and queer scholars challenge this idea, highlighting instead the multiplicity of meanings within any given narrative.
The book-length treatment provided by the Wisdom Commentary allows its volumes to take their place alongside long-hallowed reference commentaries. But cracking open these pages is something altogether different.
This commentary does something that is not standard in the literary genre of commentary; it espouses multi-faceted interpretation as its goal rather than its nemesis or foil.
The commentary builds upon, supplements, and expands an already rich repertoire of reflections upon, interpretations of, and interventions in contemporary as well as ancient receptions of Revelation, a book which cannot, does not, and will not let us — our culture, our students, our guild, our imaginations — go.
Whereas scholarship has tended to investigate this question by analyzing the development of Jewish apocalypticism, afterlife beliefs, and theodicy during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, my analysis of consolatory rhetoric in Hellenistic Judaism offers a more comprehensive approach.
A bold, programmatic attempt to fill a significant methodological lacuna, Mastnjak’s Before the Scrolls argues that the study of the prophetic literature must begin with—and answer to—the material realities of textual production in ancient Israel and the Second Temple period.
To be frank, I just don’t think any of our texts say this. Or, if some of them do, alternative readings are available and perhaps more plausible. In fact, the Manichaeans themselves do not have a single model of prophethood (although they do exhibit a push for systematicity).
Yarbro Collins’s goal in Paul Transformed is to capture the multiple images of Paul that early Christ-confessors created from reading the apostle’s letters.
“The pioneering study of Thea Gomelauri unfolds the history of the Lailashi Codex, and presents the paleographical and codicological description of one of the most ancient Bible codices.”
Women and the Polis is a welcomed addition to the scholarly conversation not only about ancient Greek benefactresses in particular but also about ancient Greek benefaction in general.
By methodically reading through its chapters and working through its exercises and chrestomathy, a user of Allen’s grammar can rapidly increase their familiarity with a good amount of the variation found in Coptic texts, then have the book on hand as a quick initial resource for whatever they might happen to read afterwards.
Readers will learn a great deal from G. Smith and Landau about paleography, apocrypha, monasticism, the history of sexuality, and the strange academic environments in which all of these are explored: filled with curiosity, envy, ambition, and flashes of brilliance.