John Kampen has built a meritorious career in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. In this book he makes an argument in which he deftly weaves together his expertise in each so as to study the gospel of Matthew as the work of a Jewish sect.
Read MoreBook Note | The Birth of Christian History
![Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rome from the Vatican (1820) Tate Modern [WikiArt]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1586094608247-LSTOEXDA5P9B02S5JC8F/rome-from-the-vatican.jpg%21Large.jpg)
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rome from the Vatican (1820) Tate Modern [WikiArt]
Book Note | Outsider Designations and Boundary Construction in the New Testament
![Piet Mondriaan, Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black (1921) Kunstmuseum Den Haag [Wikimedia]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1585573389657-QX85KI6N3EGVRARW6V6T/Piet_Mondriaan%2C_1921_-_Composition_en_rouge%2C_jaune%2C_bleu_et_noir.jpg)
Piet Mondriaan, Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black (1921) Kunstmuseum Den Haag [Wikimedia]
Book Note | The Ways That Often Parted
![Georges Braque, Road near L'Estaque (1908) The Museum of Modern Art [Artstor]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5449167fe4b078c86b41f810/1572645695040-YYJ2SKRLY3MUVT2MITRX/AMOMA_10312310398.jpg)
Georges Braque, Road near L'Estaque (1908) The Museum of Modern Art [Artstor]
Georges Braque, Road near L'Estaque (1908) The Museum of Modern Art [Artstor]
This collection of essays reflects a core assumption that Marcus shares with his scholarly contemporaries: the parting between Christianity and Judaism did not happen at one definite moment, but occurred in different places and at different times in different communities.
Read MoreBook Note | Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity
Ceiling of the Temple of Hathor within the complex of Denderah (Image courtesy of Wikimedia).
Ceiling of the Temple of Hathor within the complex of Denderah (Image courtesy of Wikimedia).
In Christianizing Egypt, David Frankfurter continues this trend. He examines by what standards scholars should dissect the process of Christian conversion in Egypt and investigate the continued presence of traditional Egyptian religious behaviors and practices.
Read MoreBook Note | The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
Shoemaker’s study is a contribution to a rapidly expanding body of scholarship that locates Islam firmly within the contexts of late antiquity. He points to imperial eschatology as the crucial late ancient discourse for the development of early Islam.
Read MoreBook Note | Children in Ancient Israel
Recent studies on the legal, social, and religious status of children are part of this development. Reconstructing the voices and lived realities of children and, indeed, other groups largely overlooked by biblical writers requires scholars to utilize different strategies in interpreting the extant evidence.
Read MoreBook Note | The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field
Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), Francis Picabia (1913); Oil on canvas © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic), Francis Picabia (1913); Oil on canvas © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Like so many feminist works on the Bible, the concern in this volume is not simply ancient gender politics, but also modern ones; as the terrain of the field shifts, so must our maps.
Read MoreBook Note | Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature
Christ Cleansing a Leper by Melchior Doze (1864). Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Christ Cleansing a Leper by Melchior Doze (1864). Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
For early Christians, questions of embodiment, ethics, and the construction of communal boundaries turned around (im)purity discourse as a central node.
Read MoreBook Note | The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World
Frankish Disk Brooch, mid-seventh century (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York)
Frankish Disk Brooch, mid-seventh century (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York)
Merovingian Kingdoms makes a cogent argument about the place of post-Roman Europe in the world of late antiquity: though no longer under the aegis of the Empire, it remained well-integrated within what could still be described as a Mediterranean-wide Roman cultural sphere.
Read MoreBook Note | Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period
Because of its breadth, Priests in Exile is bound to become essential reading, not only for those interested in Oniad history, but also for anyone interested in Egyptian Judaism or Hellenistic-Jewish literature.
Read MoreBook Note | Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity
Doubting Saint Thomas, Béla Iványi Grünwald (unknown date); Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.
Book Note | Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle
Trotti, Giovanni Battista, Circle of, Italian; 1555-1619. 1590-1610. Saint Paul. Drawings and Watercolors, ink with wash, Drawing, Prints and Drawings. Place: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1922.598, http://www.artic.edu/aic/. https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_CHICAGO_1031150000.
Trotti, Giovanni Battista, Circle of, Italian; 1555-1619. 1590-1610. Saint Paul. Drawings and Watercolors, ink with wash, Drawing, Prints and Drawings. Place: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1922.598, http://www.artic.edu/aic/. https://library.artstor.org/asset/AMICO_CHICAGO_1031150000.
How does Paul come to understand himself as a messenger of Jesus? How did that message change in those hazy decades between the life of the historical Jesus and Paul’s co-writings?
Read MoreBook Note | Ethics in Ancient Israel
James Nati reviews Barton’s Ethics in Ancient Israel: “Barton’s work is thus meant not at offering clarity for believers as they try to live more “biblically,” but rather to argue that ancient Israelite thinkers deserve a seat at the table among other ethical thinkers throughout history.”
Read MoreBook Note | In the Image of Origen
Hiroshi Sugito. 2005. mirror. Paintings. https://library.artstor.org/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10312611076.
Hiroshi Sugito. 2005. mirror. Paintings. https://library.artstor.org/asset/LARRY_QUALLS_10312611076.
To whom are we entrusting ourselves when we follow a particular instructor? To what extent should our will be constrained by a teacher, friend, rabbi, abba? Or is it an image of these figures? What do we make of teaching practices that restrain habits of thinking and opinion? What is the role of Tradition?
Read MoreBook Note | Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans
Noam shies away from firmly positing the existence of a concrete document or text that served as the shared source of rabbinic and Josephan traditions. Rather, she suggests that we conceive of a “pool of traditions,” a shared storehouse of stories and narratives, perhaps containing multiple documents, likely written in Hebrew and Aramaic, to which the rabbis and Josephus both had access.
Read MoreBook Note | Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works: A Literary Study
Fresco from Saint John’s Church (Karşı Kilise) in Cappadocia, Turkey (Image courtesy of Tiberio Frascari).
Fresco from Saint John’s Church (Karşı Kilise) in Cappadocia, Turkey (Image courtesy of Tiberio Frascari).
“With this steadily growing interest in Gregory, specialization in particular texts has become the norm. Radde-Gallwitz, having done some of that slow, careful work in his previous books, translations, and articles, argues that there is value in panning back to look at broader patterns, parallels, and divergences.”
Read MoreBook Note | Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity
Gillian Glass reviews Hicks-Keeton’s Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity.
Read MoreBook Note | Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First-Century Jewish Institutions
This nuance does not help scholars reconstruct detailed synagogue practices, but helps us understand an idea of what synagogues could mean for Jews of the first-century CE.
Read MoreBook Note | Rewriting Masculinity
"Gideon thanks God for the Miracle of the Dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
"Gideon thanks God for the Miracle of the Dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)
Kelly Murphy’s Rewriting Masculinity: Gideon, Men, and Might (OUP 2019)offers a fascinating journey through the multiple and layered maculinities of the biblical character Gideon (Judges 6-8), while providing a methodological model for biblical masculinity studies to emulate.
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