Mendelsohn, S. The Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews. Compiled from the Talmud and other Rabbinical Writings, and Compared with Roman and English Penal Jurisprudence. Baltimore: M. Curlander, 1891. 270 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 00-056304. ISBN 1-58477-150-X. Cloth. $80. * Mendelsohn offers his interpretation of criminal jurisprudence based on his analysis of the Talmud, and makes comparisons to Roman and English systems of same. Part titles are: Crimes and Punishments, The Synhedrion, The Trial, The Execution. Well annotated and indexed.

"Freed from contemporary theological categories that have been informed by ideological and psychological issues, but ever mindful of the social location of gender analysis, these essays provide fresh and exciting looks at otherwise unfamiliar texts. They jar our minds and our biases.... This book is a valuable contribution to gender-oriented biblical scholarship. Its content is accessible to both the scholarly and the less technically trained reader. All will be well served by this important collection of essays."? Naomi Steinberg, DePaul University"This book is a credit to the quality and breadth of feminine biblical scholarship and presents some creative interpretations of the texts and a wealth of Ancient Near Eastern material."? J. Massyngbaerde Ford, University of Notre Dame

The appearance in 1992 of 'In Search of Ancient Israel' generated a still raging controversy about the historical reality of what biblical scholars call 'Ancient Israel'. But its argument not only takes in the problematic relationship between Iron Age Palestinian archaeology and the biblical 'Israel' but also outlines the processes that created the literature of the Hebrew bible-the ideological matrix, the scribal milieu, and the cultural adoption of a national literary archive as religious scripture as part of the process of creating 'Judaisms'. While challenging the whole spectrum of scholarly consensus about the origins of 'Israel' and its scriptures, it is written more in the style of a textbook for students than a monograph for scholars because, its author believes, it offers an agenda for the next generation of biblical scholars. 'In this reader-friendly polemic, Davies brilliantly addresses an essential issue and at numerous points represents a vanguard in biblical studies' (Robert B. Coote, Interpretation). 'A rich mine of provocative quotations, will provoke considerable opposition and debate, and deserves to be read and reflected on by all biblical scholars' (Keith Whitelam, SOTS Book List).

In Hebrew Lexical Semantics and Daily Life in Ancient Israel, Kurtis Peters hitches the world of Biblical Studies to that of modern linguistic research. Often the insights of linguistics do not appear in the study of Biblical Hebrew, and if they do, the theory remains esoteric. Peters finds a way to maintain linguistic integrity and yet simplify cognitive linguistic methods to provide non-specialists an access point. By employing a cognitive approach one can coordinate the world of the biblical text with the world of its surroundings. The language of cooking affords such a possibility – Peters evaluates not only the words or lexemes related to cooking in the Hebrew Bible, but also the world of cooking as excavated by archaeology.