Search results for ""jcb mohr (paul siebeck)""

La figure céleste des anges constitue une part importante des représentations du monde divin dans la littérature biblique. Se déclinant selon des nuances variées, leur fonction s'adapte aux diverses nécessités de mise en scène dans le déroulement de l'histoire du salut. Les anges sont notamment sollicités pour préserver la transcendance de Dieu, tout en la révélant par leur présence ou par leur action en son nom. Le présent volume contribue à l'étude de l'angélologie biblique, non sans déborder le champ strict du canon en direction du judaïsme ancien proche de la période néotestamentaire qui accorde une place importante aux représentations apocalyptiques du monde céleste. Les différentes contributions s'intéressent aux actions des anges dans les textes et récits étudiés, mais elles étendent cette recherche à la détermination de leur fonction littéraire. Si cette dernière peut être d'ordre poétique, mythologique ou cosmogonique, elle a toujours une visée théologique. En effet, le dénominateur commun à tous les rôles tenus par des anges est de dévoiler quelques traits caractéristiques du portrait de Dieu et de révéler certains aspects de son dessein salvifique.

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In this volume, Karol Piotr Kulpa offers a coherent analysis of the reception of 2 Thess. 2:3-12 by Tyconius in his Liber Regularum and his reconstructed Expositio Apocalypseos . The author proposes and applies his own method for a reception history composed of historical, literary, and theological levels, which is constructive as well as analytical. In this way he writes a history of reception that not only finds its anchor in the past, but also builds bridges to theological questions of the present. In particular, the author identifies that motifs of homo peccati , mysterium facinoris , and discessio drawn from 2 Thess. 2:3 and 2:7 become Tyconius' "world-constructing verses" in his understanding of Scripture, and of the bipartition in the church's reality, in human nature, and in eschatological temporality. As a result, he offers a refreshingly 'ecumenical' reading of Tyconius, refusing to reduce his significance to that of a 'heretical voice' but re-envisaging him as a potentially authoritative theologian and exegete.

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Faith, freedom, and family together form the bedrock of a good life and a just society. But this foundation has suffered seismic shocks from vibrant religious pluralism, profound political changes, and new conceptions of marriage. This volume retrieves the major legal and theological teachings that have shaped these institutions and suggests ways to strengthen and integrate them anew. Part I highlights the work of several scholars of law and religion who have defined and defended the place of faith in law, politics, and society. Part II documents the development of freedom in the West and parries the attacks of skeptics of modern rights. Part III reaffirms the family as a cornerstone of faith and freedom historically and today, even while defending some modern marital reforms. Opening essays by the editors and closing interviews of the author place Witte's work in biographical and intellectual context and map some of the new frontiers and challenges of faith, freedom, and family around the globe.

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Arthur Darby Nock (1902-1963) made lasting contributions to classical scholarship and the history of religion, including the study of ancient religion, magic, and the relationship of paganism to ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Almost ninety years after its publication, his work, Conversion: The Old and New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo , serves as an introduction to what is today an entire area of research encompassing history, literature (i.e., "conversion" as a literary genre), philosophy, psychology, and theology. The present volume features essays exploring the circumstances of religious transformation not only in early Christianity but also in other ancient religions and in philosophical schools - the various converts, the means by which followers attracted adherents, and the factors influencing and limiting their success.

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Wie gelangen die Vermögenswerte eines verstorbenen Menschen in die Hände der auserkorenen Empfänger? Das deutsche Erbrecht bedient sich hierzu eines hochkomplexen Vollzugsapparats, der sich mit den Begriffen "Universalsukzession", "Vonselbsterwerb" und "Erbenhaftung" immer nur in Ausschnitten erfassen lässt. Auf der Grundlage einer eigens entwickelten Taxonomie der Nachlassabwicklung stellt Jan Peter Schmidt die BGB-Lösung in einen breiten historischen und rechtsvergleichenden Kontext und legt hierdurch die unter den nationalen Regeln und Begrifflichkeiten verborgenen Strukturelemente frei. Er zeigt, wieso sich die vielfältigen Interessenkonflikte nur in begrenztem Maße auflösen lassen, ermöglicht eine neue Sichtweise insbesondere auf das Thema der Erbenhaftung und leuchtet Spielräume für eine Reform der seit langem als unbefriedigend empfundenen deutschen Regelung aus.

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This volume is a collection of articles and new essays by Israel Finkelstein that offers an outline for reconstructing the evolution of biblical historiography over 700 years, starting with Israel in the early eighth century BCE and ending with the days of the Hasmoneans in the late second century BCE. Special emphasis is given to North Israelite traditions which were committed to writing in the days of Jeroboam II; to the arrival of these traditions in Judah after the takeover of Israel by Assyria; to Judahite ideology of the seventh century BCE; and to the legitimacy needs of the Hasmoneans in the days of John Hyrcanus. The analysis is based on the most recent archaeological discoveries, biblical exegesis and ancient Near Eastern records.

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In the Book of Acts, Paul is portrayed as a messenger who brings the good news of God to the world. He is a commanding orator who captivates his audiences, including a Roman senatorial proconsul and a Jewish king, with his gestures, appearance, and speeches. His performances appeal to both Greco-Roman and Jewish cultural scripts alike. But why does Luke portray Paul in this way? Using insights from both modern performance studies and ancient rhetoric, Arco den Heijer analyses five episodes from Acts (in Paphos, Pisidian Antioch, Lystra, Athens, and before Agrippa in Caesarea) to suggest that Luke's portraits of Paul's performance served to counter negative views of Christians in both Roman and Jewish circles, views that circulated in the social network of Theophilus, the addressee of the book.

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In this monograph, Hryhoriy Lozinskyy studies five feasts contained in Num 28:16-30:1. Each of them is first treated in the light of biblical calendars and other related texts. The calendar in Numbers is later than an earlier version of Leviticus 23; yet the final form of Lev 23:1-44 is also a result of some later additions that took place after Num 28:1-30:1 had been composed. The author also focuses on the history of interpretation: he examines several pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Jewish writers from 200 BCE to 100 CE. He shows how these ancient sources reworked the biblical texts by expansions, clarifications, and omissions. In sum, the calendar in Numbers employs several previous traditions that dealt with the feasts, sacrifices, and calendars in order to compose the detailed list of the offerings for the appointed times. Moreover, it is a text that has been used by many ancient sources, especially in the matter of the sacrifices.

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Moses Wilhelm Shapira's infamous Deuteronomy fragments - long believed to be forgeries - are authentic ancient manuscripts, and they are of far greater significance than ever imagined. The literary work that these manuscripts preserve - which Idan Dershowitz calls "The Valediction of Moses" or "V" - is not based on the book of Deuteronomy. On the contrary, V is a much earlier version of Deuteronomy. In other words, V is a proto-biblical book, the likes of which has never before been seen. This conclusion is supported by a series of philological analyses, as well as previously unknown archival documents, which undermine the consensus on these manuscripts. An excursus co-authored with Na'ama Pat-El assesses V's linguistic profile, finding it to be consistent with Iron Age epigraphic Hebrew.V contains early versions of passages whose biblical counterparts reflect substantial post-Priestly updating. Moreover, unlike the canonical narratives of Deuteronomy, this ancient work shows no signs of influence from the Deuteronomic law code. Indeed, V preserves an earlier, and dramatically different, literary structure for the entire work - one that lacks the Deuteronomic law code altogether.These findings have significant consequences for the composition history of the Bible, historical linguistics, the history of religion, paleography, archaeology, and more. The volume includes a full critical edition and English translation of V.

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In this study, John-Paul Harper critically compares how Paul and Philo rethought the significant Jewish symbols of Land, Jerusalem, and Temple. Drawing particular attention to their political significance, he demonstrates how these symbols offer important insights into how both Paul and Philo conceptualised authority in the local community (Temple), within the wider "people of God" (Jerusalem), and in relation to the Roman Empire (Land). The author argues that, while both conceptualised authority in charismatic terms, Philo's appropriation tended to be more individualistic and focussed on otherworldly realities, whereas Paul's tended to be more communal and focussed on this-worldly realities. Along the way, the author contributes to contemporary discussions of Paul and Philo's Jewish identity, their perspectives on community leadership and order, and their perspectives on the Roman Empire.

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Thomas Wetzel offers a new way to understand the violence and religious absence long emphasized in readings of the Hebrew version of the Esther story. By tracing the vestiges of Jewish liturgical activity described in the story as well as the story's reliance on the tradition of the Divine Combat myth, the author uncovers a profound, yet intentionally hidden, religious sensibility within the story's narrative world. These connections link the Esther story to the great acts of deliverance in the larger biblical tradition, but also bring into sharp focus the biblical view that Israel's survival and sometimes violent deliverance remain the definitive sign of the Lord's ongoing and active presence in creation. The author's conclusion suggests that this understanding has profound implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue and for the future existence and practice of the two communities.

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This volume includes a wide range of studies on pain and its representation in texts and non-literary remains of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean, suggesting both the richness and complexity of the topic and the need for scholars to address it from a variety of perspectives. The essays engage the subject of pain and its representation in a multitude of ways, including consideration of the representation of physical pain, of psychological anguish, and the often complex relationship between the two. Several essays focus on the representation of pain in a particular genre of ancient literature such as Greek medical texts, narratives, prophetic texts, poetry, or legal texts. The volume also explores descriptions of concrete pain and the metaphorical use of pain imagery and idioms, as well as pain's relationship to shame, illness and torture. Finally, both communal and individual dimensions of pain are of interest to the contributors, as is the role pain might have had in ritual action and the part rites might play in the imposition of pain.

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In this critical exploration of the role of manuscripts in textual scholarship, Liv Ingeborg Lied studies the Syriac manuscript transmission of 2 Baruch. These manuscripts emerge as salient sources to the long life of 2 Baruch among Syriac speaking Christians, not merely witnesses to an early Jewish text. Inspired by the perspective of New Philology, Lied addresses manuscript materiality and paratextual features, the history of ownership, traces of active readers and liturgical use, and practices of excerption and re-identification. The author's main concerns are the methodological, epistemological and ethical challenges of exploring early Jewish writings that survive only in Christian transmission. Through engagement with the established academic narratives, she retells the story of 2 Baruch and makes a case for manuscript- and provenance-aware textual scholarship.

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Inter- and supranational courts derive their legitimacy partly from an institutional comparison: judges' legal expertise and the quality of judicial procedures justify a court's claim to authority towards other branches of government and other courts with overlapping jurisdiction. To provide a benchmark for assessing judicial outcomes that is compatible with democratic commitments, Johann Laux suggests a new normative category, Public Epistemic Authority (PEA). It builds on the mechanisms behind theories of collective intelligence and empirical research on judicial decision-making. PEA tracks judges' collective ability to reliably identify breaches of law. It focuses on cognitive tasks in adjudication. The author applies PEA to the Court of Justice of the European Union and offers suggestions for improving its institutional design.

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This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the use and manipulation of ancient textual sources from different settings across the ancient Mediterranean as a key to understanding the dissemination of religious and mythological knowledge in different historical contexts. In a series of case studies focusing on texts and artifacts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, and Rome, and their ancient as well as modern reuse, this volume displays multiple approaches to and perspectives on strategies of incorporation of derivative materials in antiquity and beyond. Contributors:Ilaria Andolfi, Heike Behlmer, Francesca Boldrer, Laura Carlson Hasler, Michael Chen, Silvia Gabrieli, Szilvia Jáka-Sövegjártó, Gina Konstantopoulos, Chiara Meccariello, Tonio Mitto, So Miyagawa, Dustin Nash, Przemysław Piwowarczyk, Jennifer Singletary, Georgios Vassiliades, Nereida Villagra, Mathias Winkler, David P. Wright, Marie Young, Carlos Gracia Zamacona

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Anat Israeli presents the first feminist commentary in the series on a chapter from the "Order of Women." She discusses the last chapter of Tractate Qiddushin, devoted to "betrothals." Chapter 4 deals in general with two major topics: the first is Jewish genealogies (what parts the mother and father play in deciding who is a Jew and who can marry whom). The second topic is about forbidden seclusions between members of the opposite sex (since they can bring about promiscuity, adultery and other unwanted sexual contacts). In this study, Anat Israeli and her collaborators first analyze the Mishnah and show what its authors had considered important about these two topics, and then they show how the emphases had shifted on the way between the land of the Mishnah (Israel) and the land of the Talmud (Babylonia).

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In this study, Tyler A. Stewart investigates narrative explanations for evil in Galatians set in the context of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Scholarship has typically interpreted Paul's view of evil based on Adam's fall or a mere reflex of Christology. In contrast, the author argues that in Galatians Paul's view of evil is based on the narrative of rebellious angels found in the Book of Watchers. Additionally, he claims that Paul's use of Enochic tradition is consistent with Second Temple Jewish literature and finds support in early Christian reception of Galatians.

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Robert E. Norton offers the first comprehensive study in any language devoted to Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) and his activities during the First World War. Troeltsch was one of the most famous figures of his day, a renowned historian, philosopher, sociologist, and theologian. But he did not just comment on events, he also actively served in a number of public roles before, during, and after the war. Throughout the last decade of his life, Troeltsch was a central participant in many of the most significant political debates and struggles that took place in his country, and in the process he became one of the most forceful and committed proponents of democracy in Germany. Tracing the gradual rise and growth of democratic thought during the war, Robert E. Norton shows how democracy itself emerged as the pivotal question within German domestic politics around which everything else came to revolve. In this process, Ernst Troeltsch emerged as one of the most eloquent and persuasive voices advocating for democracy and peace, and always promoting the ideals of freedom and human dignity for all peoples. "Robert Norton’s The Crucible of German Democracy: Ernst Troeltsch and the First World War is a work of great insight and erudition." Helmut Walser Smith in The German Quarterly, Fall 2021, pp. 545

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In this study, Brian Carrier provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that seismic language plays within the Matthean Gospel narrative. After reconstructing what connotations seismic language likely carried in Matthew's cultural context, the author utilizes an historically informed author-oriented narrative criticism that is complemented with redaction criticism to analyze the relationships that Matthew's seismic references display with regards to each other and to the overall narrative. This analysis leads to the conclusion that Matthew's seismic references collectively indicate that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus together represent the partial fulfillment of the Old Testament eschatological Day of the Lord.

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Translated from German into English for the first time, this monograph seeks to reclaim the original sense of humility as an ethical mindset that is of community-building value. This exploration of humility begins with a consideration of how the concept plays into current cultural crises before considering its linguistic and philosophical history in Western culture. In turning to the roots of Christian humility, Eve-Marie Becker focuses on Philippians 2, a passage in which Paul appeals to the lowliness of Christ to encourage his fellow Christians to persevere. She shows that humility both formed the basis of the ethic Paul instilled in Christ-believing communities and acted as a mimetic device centered on Jesus' example that was molded into the earliest Christian identity and community.

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Till Markus untersucht die Bedeutung der Rechtsvergleichung für das Völkerrecht, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Gestaltung, Bestimmung und Anwendung seiner drei primären Rechtsquellen. Aufbauend auf einer Rekonstruktion der Entscheidungspraxis verschiedener internationaler Gerichte sowie ausgewählter Arbeiten der Völkerrechtskommission entwickelt er den Grundriss einer Methodik der Rechtsvergleichung im Völkerrecht. Die Untersuchung basiert auf der Annahme, dass methodisch angeleitete Rechtsvergleiche einen Beitrag zur Effektuierung und Ordnung des Völkerrechts leisten, indem sie das Maß an Rationalität, dogmatischer Klarheit und Legitimität völkerrechtlicher Vertragsgestaltung und gerichtlicher Entscheidungsfindung steigern.

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In this study, Domenico Lo Sardo shows that the section of MT Exod 35-40 dedicated to the construction of the Tabernacle involves textual and literary problems. It has different textual forms according to MT, LXX, and Vetus Latina (Monacensis ms): LXX Exod 35-40 shows a different order of the literary material and its extension is shorter than the MT. One of the most important differences is the absence of MT Exod 36:8b-34 in the LXX. The Monacensis ms is even shorter than the Greek text. In a text-critical analysis, the author demonstrates that the 'Short Hebrew Vorlag e' behind the Latin manuscript is the oldest text. In the MT there was post-priestly editorial work marked by expansions, rewritings, and reinterpretations. Employing literary criticism, the author proves that with the expansion of Exod 36:8b-34 and the stressed use of the term miškān (Tabernacle), MT points to legitimate the centralization of the Jerusalem Temple.

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Trotz der erheblichen ökonomischen Bedeutung von Daten existiert kein Recht, das Daten im Sinne eines Ausschließlichkeitsrechts umfassend einer Person zuweist. Dies führte zu einer intensiven rechtspolitischen Diskussion, ob ein solches Recht geschaffen werden soll. Die Einführung scheiterte jedoch an den erheblichen konzeptionellen Hürden. In der Praxis werden Daten ungeachtet dessen zunehmend vertraglich gehandelt, indem unter anderem sog. Datenlizenzen erteilt werden. In Anbetracht der steigenden Bedeutung dieser Vertragsform ordnet Nico B. Schur die Datenlizenz dogmatisch in das Lizenzvertragsrecht ein, bestimmt dessen rechtliche Grenzen und zeigt schließlich die rechtspolitischen Möglichkeiten einer Abbildung des Datenhandels über vertragliche Zugangs- und Datennutzungsrechte auf.

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In this volume, Francesco Arena investigates false prophecy and prophetic conflicts, taking Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah as the three books in the Bible most concerned with prophesying falsehood and false prophets. By building on the studies of G. Auld, R. Carroll, and G. Garbini, who first posited that the Writing Prophets were not prophets at all, but rather intellectuals or poets, the author puts the vexed question of false prophecy into a new perspective. If we accept that Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Micah were not originally true prophets (or prophets at all) what should we do with their quarrels with the alleged false prophets? Can we still consider prophetic conflicts as expressions of a socio-religious phenomenon? Or should we instead consider them as some later creations to serve ideological purposes?

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The Jewish "Life of Jesus" or Toledot Yeshu provides one of the most extraordinary accounts of the beginnings of Christianity. The narrative describes Jesus as child born of adultery, a charlatan, and a false prophet who performed would-be miracles through the use of magic. Throughout the centuries, the story aroused the ire of anti-Jewish polemicists, delighted anti-clerical authors, and was viewed by Jewish scholars as a subject of embarrassment. Toledot Yeshu presents us with a formidable counter-history of the origins of Christianity. In the eighteenth century, Voltaire went so far as to proclaim that Toledot Yeshu, however extravagant, was perhaps more truthful than the Christian gospels. The object of this volume is to consider this narrative as an object of history, to question its transmission, reception and function within the various historical settings in which it circulated, and seek to understand its meaning for both Jews and non-Jews from antiquity to the modern era.

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In this book, Andrei A. Orlov examines the imagery of "inclination" or yetzer found in the Apocalypse of Abraham. He argues that the text operates with several yetzer anthropologies, some of which are reminiscent of early biblical models, while others are similar to later rabbinic notions. Although the author focuses on the traditions found in the Apocalypse of Abraham, he also treats the evolution of the yetzer symbolism in its full historical and interpretive complexity through a broad variety of Jewish and Christian sources, from the creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible to later rabbinic testimonies. He further argues that a close analysis of the yetzer anthropologies found in the Apocalypse of Abraham challenges previous scholarly hypotheses that yetzer was only sexualized and gendered for the first time in post-Amoraic sources.

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Jerome of Stridon argued that 'the most distinguished privilege loses its prestige when lavished on a crowd' ( Ep. 66.7). Recent imperial changes left the senatorial aristocracy with a devaluation of their order. When a number of its illustres showed an appetite for asceticism, Jerome took up his quill to offer them a nobilitas- model that preserved their exclusivity through appropriation of Christian asceticism. Jessica van 't Westeinde shows how Jerome's design restored the Roman exclusivist notion of nobilitas as an antidote to the opening up of senatorial rank to 'country boors' by creating a status group of Christian elites. The nouveau riche may have attempted to enter this social circle, but they could never attain the same level of perfection as the illustres. As such, Jerome offered a 'Christian ascetic' nobilitas- model that embodies continuation which breathes Roman aristocratic status culture of the illustres.

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Jan G. van der Watt analyses in detail the ethics of John's Letters against their respective socio-historical backgrounds. He then compares the ethics of the Gospel and Letters, showing that the basic core narrative overlaps in these writings, although some ethical material is applied in different ways to different situations. A rich ethical landscape is revealed, addressing issues like the importance of inter-personal relations, which results in co-operation through mutual love. The author shows that the focus in 1 John is pastoral, aiming at convincing the addressees not to be deceived by the schismatics but to strengthen their relationship with the eyewitness group. In 2 John, advice is given about visitors who threaten the church with false teachings, while 3 John deals with a conflict about receiving travelling missionaries. In both cases ethical guidelines are given which aim at protecting the group.

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In this monograph, Carl Johan Berglund reassesses Origen's references to the second-century philologist Heracleon, without presuming that Heracleon's exegesis is determined by views described in heresiological sources or that every reference is equivalent to a verbatim quotation. The author uses variations in Origen's attribution formulas to categorize almost two hundred references as either verbatim quotations, summaries, explanatory paraphrases, or mere assertions. Heracleon's views are assessed by considering the over fifty quotations and seventy summaries so identified in a context of literature to which Heracleon refers - John, a gospel similar to Matthew's, a collection of Pauline epistles, and the Preaching of Peter. The author concludes that Origen is likely to have inferred views he knew from his exegetical opponents (the heterodox and "those who bring in the natures") that were never expressed by Heracleon.

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Jan Jakob Bornheim analyses the hypothesis about the inherent efficiency of common law compared to civil law. He examines key commercial property law concepts (i.e., ownership and security interests in relation to movables) and determines the characteristics of each system with regard to these. Using the Canadian experience as a model, he then takes a close look at how the two legal systems interact, arguing that efficient interaction can take place on both vertical and horizontal planes. On the vertical plane, property law would be able to interact with higher-level law (e.g., federal law in a federal state); on the horizontal plane, property laws of different jurisdictions could interact through the conflict of laws. The author also contends that equitable property rights, including constructive trusts as a response to unjust enrichment, should be governed by property law choice-of-law rules.

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Scholarly interest in intersections between Jews and Syriac Christians has experienced a boom in recent years. This is the result of a series of converging trends in the study of both groups and their cultural productions. The present volume contributes to this developing conversation by collecting sixteen studies that investigate a wide range of topics, from questions of origins to the development of communal boundaries, from social interactions to shared historical conditions, involving Jews and Syriac Christians over the first millennium CE. These studies not only reflect the current state of the question, but they also signal new ways forward for future work that crosses disciplinary boundaries between the fields of Jewish Studies and Syriac Studies, in some cases even dismantling those boundaries altogether.

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Over the last few decades scholarly interest in the Epistle to the Hebrews has experienced something of a renaissance. This volume, which grew out of presentations at the 2011-2013 sessions of the revived Hebrews program unit of the Society of Biblical Literature's International Meeting, is a testament to the still growing interest in this text. The essays deal with a variety of issues in three major portions of Hebrews - chapters 1-2, 8-10, and 13. Each study analyzes an important and often disputed aspect of one of these three sections of Hebrews, aiming to provide fresh insight into how the argument of Hebrews and/or its engagement with its larger religious, social, literary, rhetorical, philosophical, and ethical contexts might be understood.

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The first American commentary on all books of the Old and New Testaments, Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) is a unique record of how European Enlightenment criticism (Newtonianism, Cartesianism, philosophical materialism, Spinozism, cultural historicism) of the Bible impacted Reformed theology and biblical hermeneutics in colonial New England before the American Revolution. Biblia Americana contains more than 3,000,000 words and represents Mather's collective thoughts on all manner of issues, from the Mosaic creation account to the Second Coming and Judgment Day. In Volume 2 (Exodus - Deuteronomy), Mather harmonizes miracles with natural philosophy, Israelite uniqueness with cultural archaeology, and textual variants and authenticity with up-to-date philological criticism. Particularly noteworthy is his comparative approach to Israelite rituals and iconography with those of their Egyptian and Canaanite neighbors, and the transmission of religious ideas from Egypt to Greece and Rome. He was fully vested in virtually every theological and scientific debate of his age, perhaps the last American of his generation to possess such all-encompassing knowledge. This never-before-published document demonstrates that Mather fully participated in the European debate as he disseminated his new ideas from his Boston pulpit and in his numerous publications.

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This collection of articles places the frequently discussed question of the introvert Self into a new interdisciplinary context: rather than tracing a linear development from social forms of life with an outward orientation to individual introspection, it argues for significant overlaps between interior and exterior dimensions, between the Self and society. A team of internationally renowned experts from different fields examines Pagan, Jewish and Christian voices on an equal basis and explores the complexity of their messages. Philosophical texts are analyzed next to letters, legal sources, Bible interpretation and material evidence. Not only is the experience of individuals examined, but also instructions from authoritative figures in a position to shape constructions of the Self. The book is divided into three parts; namely, "Constructing the Self", a field usually treated by philosophers, "Self-Fashioning", generally associated with literature, and "Self and Individual in Society", commonly the domain of historians. This volume shows the complexity of each category and their overlaps by engaging unexpected sources in each section and interrogating internal as well as external dimensions.

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In this book, Chris W. Lee examines the early Jewish reception of the divine death warning (Gen 2:16-17) in relation to its interpretative association with the introduction of physical death to humanity. The long-time rationale has been that the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought sin and death 'for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die' (Gen 2:17). In this study, the author begins by examining the meaning of Gen 2:17 in its original context, then tracing its interpretation in subsequent Second Temple Jewish Literature. He examines the Greek translation of Gen 2:16-17 and its translational elements that expand the possible range of understanding of the death warning that would not have originated from the Hebrew text of Genesis. Chris W. Lee then continues with an exegetical analysis of allusions and references to the death warning in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Ben Sira, 1 Corinthians and Romans. He argues, firstly, that there are no explicit narrative clues in the HB as to the physical status of Adam and Eve either as immortal or mortal before their disobedience to God's command in Gen 2:17, and that the death warning itself does not provide textual support for the understanding of the death warning in the sense of becoming mortal. He also argues that Paul's explicit attribution of death to the disobedience of Adam and Eve (1 Cor 15:21-22; Rom 5:12) finds its earlier traces in the course of interpretation of the aforementioned literature: 1) clarification of the meaning of the death warning, i.e. death in the sense of becoming 'mortal' and death due to the violation of the command as applicable not only to Adam, but also to Eve and other human beings; 2) reinforcement of the presumptive association between the death warning and the introduction of death to humanity.

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Tractate Menahkot in the Babylonian Talmud considers the proper composition, formation, and presentation of offerings of grain and flour brought to the Jerusalem Temple. Redacted centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of the sacrificial cult, the tractate focuses on the work of the priests and the centrality of intent in validating or invalidating offerings. There is minimal consideration of the role or experience of the men and women who brought offerings. The tractate also contains a detailed discussion of major ritual objects: Torah scrolls, mezuzah, tsitsit, and tefillin. Dvora Weisberg's commentary focuses attention on the tractate's treatment of women and gender issues, considering the ways that the Talmud presents women's engagement with the sacrificial system and with key religious symbols.

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Throughout the Middle Ages, the religious women of Nivelles Abbey governed one of the most venerable and powerful ecclesiastical institutions in the Holy Roman Empire, which played a critical role, not only as the center of the cult of St Gertrude, but also as a lynchpin in the power politics of the empire. The recent discovery of the oldest surviving manuscript from the abbey, its Liber ordinarius, thus represents a significant addition to knowledge, not only of Nivelles' liturgy and the development of the cult of its patron saint, but also of the history of female monasticism in the High Middle Ages. In addition to a wealth of detail concerning the abbey's liturgical ceremonies, the Liber ordinarius permits fresh insight into the balance of power in this politically highly competitive region in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It also sheds light on the history, religious life, and the architectural history of the building, which was badly damaged in WWII. The documents incorporated in the manuscript, most of which were previously unknown and which are edited here for the first time, enhance greatly what is known about the politics of the period as well as the inner workings of the abbey at a time of economic and administrative conflict.

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Intelligente Computerprogramme und Computersysteme fordern die Demokratie heraus. Das gilt nicht nur für den Vorgang der demokratischen Meinungsbildung angesichts neuer Möglichkeiten der Beeinflussung und Manipulation im Netz, sondern auch für den Einsatz intelligenter Computerprogramme und Computersysteme durch Hoheitsträger, der den demokratischen Zurechnungszusammenhang schwächt oder unterbricht. Der Band entfaltet die Implikationen für das im Grundgesetz gewährleistete Demokratieprinzip und gibt Antworten auf die Frage, wie unser Verständnis von Demokratie als Legitimationsordnung angesichts des technischen Fortschritts fortentwickelt werden kann, ohne zentrale Errungenschaften preiszugeben. Er trägt dabei zugleich zur allgemeinen Diskussion über die Veränderung der Öffentlichkeit und den Stellenwert des Menschen im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung bei.

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The dietary prohibitions in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 represent one of the most detailed textual overlaps in the Pentateuch between the Priestly material and Deuteronomy, yet study of them is often stymied by the rare terminology. This is especially the case for the birds: their identities are shrouded in mystery and the reasons for their prohibition debated. Peter Altmann attempts to break this impasse by setting these flyers within the broader context of birds and flying creatures in the Ancient Near East. His investigation considers the zooarcheological data on birds in the ancient Levant, iconographic and textual material on mundane and mythic flyers from Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as studying the symbolic functions of birds within the texts of the Hebrew Bible itself. Within this context, he undertakes thorough terminological studies of the expressions for the types of birds, concluding with possible reasons for their exclusion from the prescribed diet and the proposed composition-critical location for the texts in their contexts.

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Die Eucharistiefeier zählt neben der Taufe zu den ältesten liturgischen Vollzügen des Christentums und kann bis in die neutestamentliche Zeit zurückverfolgt werden. Schon der früheste Beleg im 1. Korintherbrief setzt die Praxis des Herrenmahls voraus und beruft sich auf eine vorgegebene Tradition. Ab dem 4. Jahrhundert wird die zuvor vorherrschende Pluralität der eucharistischen Feierformen im Rahmen der großkirchlichen Standardisierung zugunsten einer ökumeneweit einheitlichen Gattung, dem Hochgebet, aufgegeben. In diesen Prozeß gehen viele Vorstufen aus vorkonstantinischer Zeit ein, andere Feiergestalten werden hingegen abgestoßen. Durch die jüngeren Entwicklungen in der Forschung wurde bereits anhand bestimmter Textcorpora die lange Zeit gültige Theorie vom unilinearen Wachstum der Feiergestalt revidiert; Predrag Bukovec unternimmt in Weiterführung dieser Erkenntnisse den Versuch einer frühchristlichen Eucharistiegeschichte. Besonderes Augenmerk legt er dabei auf den aktuellen Paradigmenwechsel, der die Pluralität der Feierformen im Kontext der Oralität akzentuiert. Zudem zieht er sämtliche relevante eucharistische und eucharistietheologische Passagen im Neuen Testament, in den Apostolischen Vätern, antiken Kirchenordnungen, Kirchenschriftstellern, Apostelakten u. a. heran. Darüber hinaus werden die Zeugnisse der sog. Gnosis erstmalig als gleichwertige christliche Quellen für die Liturgiegeschichte stark gemacht: Sie können die Basis des bisher bekannten Materials entscheidend vergrößern und wichtige Einblicke in die Vielfalt frühchristlicher Liturgie geben.

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Recently reconstructed by scholars, Q is one of the New Testament's earliest source documents. Arguing that Q's participation in the apocalyptic worldview of late Second Temple Judaism has greater consequences for its compositional history than previously recognized, Olegs Andrejevs performs a new literary-critical, narrative, and philological analysis of a number of Q passages, supplementing it with recent advances made in the study of Jewish apocalyptic literature, particularly the Enochic book of Parables and Qumran wisdom documents 4QInstruction and 1Q/4QMysteries. The end result is an updated stratigraphic model which synthesizes the insights of several scholars, most notably John S. Kloppenborg and Dale C. Allison, Jr., and highlights the feasibility of Q's diachronic study.

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The present volume presents a selection of studies by Ranon Katzoff on Jews in the ancient Roman world. Common to them is that they deal with Jews in liminal situations - confronted with non-Jewish, mainly Roman, laws, places, government, and modes of thought. In these studies - in which texts in Greek and Latin and rabbinic texts (all in translation) elucidate each other - Jews are shown to be rather loyal to their Jewish traditions, a controversial conclusion.The first two sections concern law. Section one searches the remains of popular Jewish culture for evidence on the degree to which rabbinic law really prevailed, through the study of Judaean Desert documents, mainly those of Babatha. Section two sifts through rabbinic law for traces of Roman law. Section three comprises studies of Jews in, to, and from the city of Rome, and section four a miscellany of studies on Jews confronted with non-Jewish life.

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The essays in this volume from the 2017 session of the Colloquium Ioanneum in Jerusalem treat aspects of John 2:23-5:18, employing a variety of methods. These early chapters present interpreters with a challenging series of issues, including the strategy of revelation in John 3-4, the characterization of Nicodemus, the only references to the kingdom of God in John, Jesus' role as Son of Man, the erga concept in the Fourth Gospel and the references to John's baptism and Jesus' baptism, the background and universal program of the narrative of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, the universal program in John 4, and the harvest proverbs in John 4:35-38. The last two essays explore the characterization of the royal official in John 4:46-54 and the evidence for associating the Pool of Bethzatha with healing. The essays demonstrate the astuteness of an observation made by Adele Reinhartz: the closer we look at a text the more it "pixilates" and the more open to interpretation it becomes.

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In this study, Allison L. Gray analyzes three biographical narratives by the fourth-century Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 CE). When the Life of Moses, the Life of Macrina, and the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus are examined in light of Greco-Roman rhetoric, biography, hagiography, and the history of education, it becomes evident that Gregory's attention to audience is critical to understanding the texts' form and function. Gregory recounts the lives of exemplary figures to inform his readers about lived virtue while simultaneously preparing them to be skilled readers and interpreters. He adopts and adapts familiar rhetorical and literary techniques to imagine, construct, and teach a new sort of ideal audience, training Christians to interpret Scripture. This study contributes to a more complete picture of how early Christian biographical writing shaped an emerging Christian paideia.

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Impliziert die Rede von Gott als König Kritik an der Institution menschlichen Königtums? Gehören göttliches und irdisches Königtum eng zusammen? Oder stehen sie unverbunden nebeneinander? Auf der Grundlage der Psalmen und im Horizont altorientalischer Königtumsvorstellungen vergleicht Marcel Krusche die Konzeptionen von göttlichem und irdischem Königtum und beschreibt deren Verhältnis. Daraus ergibt sich, dass in den Psalmen zwar vereinzelt antithetische Verhältnisbestimmungen zur Sprache kommen, aber über weite Strecken eine harmonische Verbindung zwischen göttlicher und menschlicher Königsherrschaft vorausgesetzt ist, auch wenn sie in den JHWH-König-Psalmen und den Königspsalmen selten explizit ausgesprochen wird. Diese Zusammengehörigkeit zeigt sich nicht nur auf der Ebene der Einzelpsalmen, sondern auch in deren Anordnung in der Komposition des Psalters.

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'Symbolising' - i.e., representing through the use of media - is a more elementary, more foundational activity than the self-conscious use of the intellect. Its exploration is central to this investigation of the transformation of the pre-exilic Yahweh religion into the monotheism of the post-exilic period. That transformation was triggered by a new constellation of key media in the pre-exilic and exilic periods: writing, images, and money. The central objective is to understand how their use contributed to a decisive increase in abstraction in representation and led to changes in the conceptualisation of divine presence and its representation that ultimately resulted in the transition from monolatry to monotheism. In this study, Joachim Schaper explores neglected areas of Judahite material culture and contributes to an in-depth reconstruction of Judah's religious history in its most important epoch, and thus of one of the key developments in the religious history of humanity.

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In this work, Laura J. Hunt looks at Latin use in Ephesus, Antioch, and Alexandria. The evidence of intersections between Roman and Greek languages in those cities suggests that the Roman cultural encyclopaedia could shed light on the Gospel of John, particularly the trial narrative. Words that intersect with important Roman concepts include πραιτώριον, βασιλεύς, υἱὸς θεοῦ and ἐξουσία. The phrase Ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος in John 19:5 approximates hic vir, hic est from Vergil's Aeneid (6.791), marking it as a literary allusion. A semiotic analysis of John 18:28-19:22 reveals a Jesus depicted with the words and images of a Caesar. The Roman Pilate tests the loyalty of both Jesus and 'the Jews' to Caesar, emerging as weak only in relation to Caesar. Although other scholars have looked at empire in the Gospel of John, this study offers a sustained Roman reading of the Johannine trial narrative.

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According to a persistent popular stereotype, early Judaism is seen as a "legalistic" religious tradition, in contrast to early Christianity, which seeks to obviate and so to supersede, annul, or abrogate Jewish law. Although scholars have known better since the surge of interest in the question of the law in post-Holocaust academic circles, the complex stances of both early Judaism and early Christianity toward questions of law observance have resisted easy resolution or sweeping generalizations. The essays in this volume aim to bring to the fore the legalistic and antinomian dimensions in both traditions, with a variety of contributions that examine the formative centuries of these two great religions and their legal traditions. They explore how law and lawlessness are in tension throughout this early, formative period, and not finally resolved in one direction or the other.

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