Jens Bruun Kofoed addresses the methodological issues that must lie behind the use of the biblical text and its validation as a source for historical information. --from publisher desscription.

Christianity believes in a God who acts in history. The Bible tells us the story of God’s actions in Israel, culminating in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and the spreading of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. The issue of history is thus unavoidable when it comes to reading the Bible. Volume 4 of the Scripture and Hermeneutics Series looks at how history has dominated biblical studies under the guise of historical criticism. This book explores ways in which different views of history influence interpretation. It considers the implications of a theology of history for biblical exegesis, and in several case studies it relates these insights to particular texts. “Few topics are more central to the task of biblical interpretation than history, and few books open up the subject in so illuminating and thought-provoking a manner as this splendid collection of essays and responses.” Hugh Williamson, Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Oxford, England “. . . breaks new ground in its interdisciplinary examination of the methodology, presuppositions, practices and purposes of biblical hermeneutics, with a special emphasis on the relation of faith and history.” Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University, United States “This volume holds great promise for the full-fledged academic recovery of the Bible as Scripture. It embodies an unusual combination of world-class scholarship, historic Christian orthodoxy, bold challenges to conventional wisdom, and the launching of fresh new ideas.” Al Wolters, Professor of Religion and Theology, Redeemer University College, Ontario, Canada “The essays presented here respect the need and fruitfulness of a critical historiography while beginning the much-needed process of correcting the philosophical tenets underlying much modern and postmodern biblical research. The result is a book that mediates a faith understanding, both theoretical and practical, of how to read the Bible authentically as a Christian today.” Francis Martin, Chair, Catholic-Jewish Theological Studies, John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington, D.C. Not only is history central to the biblical story, but from a Christian perspective history revolves around Jesus Christ. All roads of human activity before Christ lead up to him, and all roads after Christ connect with him. A concern with history and God’s action in it is a central characteristic of the Bible. The Bible furnishes us with an account of God's interactions with people and with the nation of Israel that stretches down the timeline from creation to the early church. It tells us of real men, women, and children, real circumstances and events, real cultures, places, languages, and worldviews. And it shows us God at work in human affairs, revealing his character and heart through his activities. “Behind” the Text examines the correlation between history and the Bible. For the scholar, student, and informed reader of the Bible, this volume highlights the importance of history for biblical interpretation, and looks at how history has and should influence interpretation.

DigiCat present this meticulously edited collection of the most sacred texts of Judaism, as well as most important historical and theological books about the Jewish faith. Content: Religious Texts: "Tanakh" – The Hebrew Bible "Talmud" – The Central Text of Rabbinic Judaism "Torah – Bilingual (English/Hebrew)" – Five Books of Moses "Tales and Maxims from the Midrash" – Biblical Exegesis by Ancient Judaic Authorities "The Kabbalah Unveiled" – Translations and commentaries of the Books of Zohar "The Sepher Ha-Zohar" – Zohar, or Splendor is the most important text of Kabbalah. "Siddur – The Standard Prayer Book" – The Authorized Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations "The Union Haggadah" – Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. History: The Jewish Wars (Flavius Josephus) Antiquities of the Jews (Flavius Josephus) History of the Jews (Heinrich Graetz) The Legends of the Jews (Louis Ginzberg) Philosophical Works: Kitab al Khazari (Kuzari) (Judah Halevi) The Guide for the Perplexed (Moses Maimonides) Ancient Jewish Proverbs (Abraham Cohen)

In New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History, colleagues, students, and friends of Hans M. Barstad offer essays in honour of his esteemed career in biblical studies. Contributions on prophecy include: the debate on prophets as historical figures, the biblical books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos, and Micah, and issues of methodology and interpretation. Essays devoted to history address various historiographic issues as well as specific historical topics such as the monarchy in ancient Israel, the relationship of Judah to Edom, and the ritual of reading the law. In ways that reflect Hans Barstad’s innovative insights and methodological critiques, this collection of essays probes beyond the oft-trodden paths of biblical studies and challenges the status quo within the field.

Historical Information Science is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by almost 6,000 citations, detailing developments in information technology since the advent of personal computers and the convergence of several social science and humanities disciplines in historical computing. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form) and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, techniques, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, data archives, and museums.

This book is a collection of essays by leading practitioners of modern European intellectual history, reflecting on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the field. The essays each attempt to assess their respective disciplines, giving an account of their development and theoretical evolution, while also reflecting on current problems, challenges, and possibilities.

This book deals with many aspects of the land of Israel. In the first part, the emphasis is on descriptions of the land in Joshua and other books of the Hebrew anf Greek Bible. In the second part, the focus shifts to the land in history and theology: reception-history of biblical texts dealing with the land, archaeology of Palestine, and theological-hermeneutical implications of taking the land traditions of the Bible seriously. The result is a rich collection of articles on one of the main themes of the Old Testament; a theme that has a fascinating, although not always unproblematic reception history.

For the first time in four decades, there exists an authoritative and up-to-date survey of the literature of the United States, from prehistoric cave narratives to the radical movements of the sixties and the experimentation of the eighties. This comprehensive volume—one of the century's most important books in American studies—extensively treats Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, and other long-cherished writers, while also giving considerable attention to recently discovered writers such as Kate Chopin and to literary movements and forms of writing not studied amply in the past. Informed by the most current critical and theoretical ideas, it sets forth a generation's interpretation of the rise of American civilization and culture. The Columbia Literary History of the United States contains essays by today's foremost scholars and critics, overseen by a board of distinguished editors headed by Emory Elliott of Princeton University. These contributors reexamine in contemporary terms traditional subjects such as the importance of Puritanism, Romanticism, and frontier humor in American life and writing, but they also fully explore themes and materials that have only begun to receive deserved attention in the last two decades. Among these are the role of women as writers, readers, and literary subjects and the impact of writers from minority groups, both inside and outside the literary establishment.

Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning point in European culture: the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century. Why do texts considered at that time to be masterpieces seem now to be fragmentary and full of contradictions? Morrison maintains that the answer comes from ideas about art. Viewing histories as artifacts made according to the same aesthetic principles as paintings and theater, he shows that twelfth-century authors and audiences found unity not in what the reason read in a text but in what the imagination read into it: they prized visual over verbal imagination and employed a circular, or nuclear, spectator-centered perspective cast aside in the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Twelfth-century writers assimilated and transformed a tradition of the conceptual unity of all the arts and attributed that unity to the fact that art both conceals and discloses. Recovering that tradition, especially the methods and motives of concealment, provides extraordinary insights into twelfth-century ideas about the kingdom of God, the status of women, and the nature of time itself. It also identifies a strain in European thought that had striking affinities to methods of perception familiar in Oriental religions and that proved to be antithetic to later humanist traditions in the West. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Half a century ago, the primary contours of the history of the Jews in Roman times were not subject to much debate. This standard account collapsed, however, when a handful of insights undermined the traditional historical method, the method long enlisted by historians for eliciting facts from sources. In response to these insights, a new historical method gradually emerged. Rewriting Ancient Jewish History critiques the traditional historical method and makes a case for the new one, illustrating how to write anew ancient Jewish history. At the heart of the traditional historical method lie three fundamental presumptions. The traditional historical method regularly presumes that multiple versions of a text or tradition are equally authentic; it presumes that many ancient Jewish sources are the products of largely immanent forces of cloistered Jewish communities; and, barring any local grounds for suspicion, it presumes that most ancient Jewish texts faithfully reflect their sources and reliably recount events. Rewriting Ancient Jewish History unfurls the failings of this approach; it promotes the new historical method which circumvents the flawed traditional presumptions while plotting anew the limits of rational argumentation in historical inquiry. This crucial reappraisal is a must-read for students of Jewish and Roman history alike, and a fascinating case-study in how historians should approach their ancient sources.