This remarkable survey introduces critical knowledge and insights that have emerged over the past forty years, including targum manuscripts discovered this century and targums known in Aramaic but only recently translated into English. Prolific scholars Flesher and Chilton guide readers in understanding the development of the targums; their relationship to the Hebrew Bible; their dates, language, and place in the history of Christianity and Judaism; and their theologies and methods of interpretation.

"This book includes a chronology and an introduction that presents an overview of all aspects of Judaism. Numerous cross-referenced dictionary entries detail important people, writings, institutions, concepts, Hebrew words, philosophy, theology, and religious law, and an extensive bibliography provides access for further study."--Jacket.

In Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages fifteen scholars offer specialist studies on Jewish education from the areas of their expertise. This tightly themed volume in honour of Philip S. Alexander has some essays that look at individual manuscripts, some that consider larger literary corpora, and some that are more thematically organised. Jewish education has been addressed largely as a matter of the study house, the bet midrash. Here a richer range of texts and themes discloses a wide variety of activity in several spheres of Jewish life. In addition, some notable non-Jewish sources provide a wider context for the discourse than is often the case.

This book conducts a study of contradictions and coherence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and suggests that the alleged contradictions are ultimately given to resolution, once the greater context of biblical and Jewish tradition is taken into consideration.

This collection focuses on the Hebrew Bible, its ancient versions and textual history. These are the fields in which the late Dr Weitzman had made his name, and the volume commemorates his lifetime's work, so prematurely ended. But it also stands on its own as an authoritative statement of current research in these and closely related fields. Contributors include Edward Ullendorff, Andrew Macintosh, Robert Gordon, Hugh Williamson, Gillian Greenberg, Jan Joosten, Sebastian Brock, Michael Knibb, Philip Alexander, George Brooke and Alison Salvesen.

In 1946 the first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries was made near the site of Qumran, at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Despite the much publicized delays in the publication and editing of the Scrolls, practically all of them had been made public by the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the first discovery. That occasion was marked by a spate of major publications that attempted to sum up the state of scholarship at the end of the twentieth century, including The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (OUP 2000). These publications produced an authoritative synthesis to which the majority of scholars in the field subscribed, granted disagreements in detail. A decade or so later, The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls has a different objective and character. It seeks to probe the main disputed issues in the study of the Scrolls. Lively debate continues over the archaeology and history of the site, the nature and identity of the sect, and its relation to the broader world of Second Temple Judaism and to later Jewish and Christian tradition. It is the Handbook's intention here to reflect on diverse opinions and viewpoints, highlight the points of disagreement, and point to promising directions for future research.

In Exodus 32-34, through a series of dialogues, Moses persuades God to spare the Israelites from destruction after they have made and worshipped a golden calf. The significance of this passage was not lost on ancient interpreters. At the heart of their concerns was the relationship between Moses and God, as well as the extent to which the Divine could be swayed by human reason and passion. For some, the idea that God could be moved by human efforts was welcome, providing hope in difficult times. For others, it was alarming; after all, God was not only supposed to be all-powerful, but immune to change. This book evaluates the ancient reworkings of these dialogues - translations, rewritten Bible, Midrash, and Targum - in light of the difference in power and position between Moses and God and its influences on the form of their communication.

This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Judaism covers the history of the Jewish religion, ranging from its biblical roots, through its formulation in the era of the Talmud, to the present day. This collection covers the development of Judaism in the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds, its varied responses to Enlightenment and modernity, the creation of new philosophies of Judaism in the wake of the Holocaust, and the establishment of the State of Israel, and contemporary issues such as feminism, secularism, and the ethics of war and medicine. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on important personalities in Jewish religious history, including biblical personalities with an emphasis on how they are understood in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Judaism.

With the torrent of publications on the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, the time is ripe for a dictionary dedicated to this incredibly rich yet diverse field. This companion volume to the well-received Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (CNTUOT) brings together leading evangelical biblical scholars to explore and explain the many facets of how the New Testament writers appropriated the Old Testament. This definitive resource covers a range of interpretive topics and includes summary articles on each biblical book and numerous themes. It also unpacks concepts mentioned in the CNTUOT, demonstrates how the Old Testament uses the Old Testament, and addresses a wide range of biblical-theological, hermeneutical, and exegetical topics. This handy reference book is for all serious students of the Bible as they study how and why Old Testament texts reappear and are reappropriated throughout the Bible.