Theology

In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the complete Old and New Testaments were translated from Latin into English, first very literally, and then revised into a more fluent, less Latinate style. This outstanding achievement, the Middle English Bible, is known by most modern scholars as the "Wycliffite" or "Lollard" Bible, attributing it to followers of the heretic John Wyclif. Prevailing scholarly opinion also holds that this Bible was condemned and banned by the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, at the Council of Oxford in 1407, even though it continued to be copied at a great rate. Indeed, Henry Ansgar Kelly notes, it was the most popular work in English of the Middle Ages and was frequently consulted for help in understanding Scripture readings at Sunday Mass. In The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment, Kelly finds the bases for the Wycliffite origins of the Middle English Bible to be mostly illusory. While there were attempts by the Lollard movement to appropriate or coopt it after the fact, the translation project, which appears to have originated at the University of Oxford, was wholly orthodox. Further, the 1407 Council did not ban translations but instead mandated that they be approved by a local bishop. It was only in the early sixteenth century, in the years before the Reformation, that English translations of the Bible would be banned.

Taubes, Badiou, Agamben, Zizek, Reinhard, and Santner have found in the Apostle Paul's emphasis on neighbor-love a positive paradigm for politics. By thoroughly reexamining Pauline eschatology, L. L. Welborn suggests that neighbor-love depends upon an orientation toward the messianic event, which Paul describes as the "now time" and which he imagines as "awakening." Welborn compares the Pauline dialectic of awakening to attempts by Hellenistic philosophers to rouse their contemporaries from moral lethargy and to the Marxist idea of class consciousness, emphasizing the apostle's radical spirit and moral relevance.

Religion, ethnicity and race are facets of human identity that have become increasingly contested in the study of the Bible - largely due to the modern discipline of biblical studies having developed in the context of Western Europe, concurrent with the emergence of various racial and imperial ideologies. The essays in this volume address Western domination by focusing on historical facets of ethnicity and race in antiquity, the identities of Jews and Christians, and the critique of scholarly ideologies and racial assumptions which have shaped this branch of study. The contributors critique various Western European and North American contexts, and bring fresh perspectives from other global contexts, providing insights into how biblical studies can escape its enmeshment in often racist notions of ethnicity, race, empire, nationhood and religion. Covering issues ranging from translation and racial stereotyping to analysing the significance of race in Genesis and the problems of an imperialist perspective, this volume is vital not only for biblical scholars but those invested in Christian, Jewish and Muslim identity.

Excavating Exodus analyzes adaptations of Exodus in novels, newspapers, and speeches from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights era. Although Exodus has perennially served to mobilize resistance to oppression, Black writers have radically reinterpreted its meaning over the past twocenturies. Changing interpretations of Moses' story reflect evolving conceptions of racial identity, religious authority, gender norms, political activism, and literary form. Black writers transformed Moses from a paragon of race loyalty into an avatar of authoritarianism. Excavating Exodusidentifies a rhetorical tradition initiated by David Walker and carried on by Martin Delany and Frances Harper that treats Moses' loyalty to his fellow Hebrews as his defining characteristic. By the twentieth century, however, a more skeptical group of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, RalphEllison, and William Melvin Kelley, associated Moses with overbearing charismatic authority.This book traces the transition from Walker, who treated Moses as the epitome of self-sacrifice, to Kelley, who considered Moses a flawed model of leadership and a threat to individual self-reliance. By asking how Moses became a touchstone for notions of racial belonging, Excavating Exodusilluminates how Black intellectuals reinvented the Mosaic model of charismatic male leadership.

Jewish and early Christian authors discussed Abraham in numerous and diverse ways, adapting his Old Testament narratives and using Abrahamic imagery in their works. However, while some areas of study in Abrahamic texts have received much scholarly attention, other areas remain nearly untouched. Beginning with a perspective on how Abraham was used within Jewish literature, this collection of essays follows the impact of Abraham across biblical texts-including Pseudigraphic and Apocryphal texts - into early Greek, Latin and Gnostic literature. These essays build upon existing Abraham scholarship, by discussing Abraham in less explored areas such as rewritten scripture, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers and contemporary Greek and Latin authors. Through the presentation of a more thorough outline of the impact of the figure and stories of Abraham, the contributors to this volume create a concise and complete idea of how his narrative was employed throughout the centuries, and how ancient authors adopted and adapted received traditions.

In 1894, Anna Ely Rhoads became the first woman to join the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, an academic society devoted to the study of the Bible and its ancient context. Since Rhoads, the participation of women in the Society has increased dramatically. In this volume essays from more than thirty leading women biblical scholars from around the world reflect on the accomplishments and challenges that women have encountered in the Society of Biblical Literature over the last 125 years. The volume provides a window into the personal dimensions behind the academic study of the Bible in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for scholars and students.