This book explores the role of the biblical patriarch Abraham in the formation and use of authoritative texts in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. It reflects a conference session in 2009 focusing on Abraham as a figure of cultural memory in the literature of these periods. Cultural memory is the shared reproduction and recalling of what has been learned and retained. It also involves transformation and innovation. As a figure of memory, stories of Abraham served as guidelines for identity-formation and authoritative illustration of behaviour for the emerging Jewish communities.

Previous generations of scholars believed that prophecy was unique to ancient Israel. However, recent archaeological discoveries reveal that numerous societies in the ancient Near East practiced prophecy. This study examines the similarities and differences between Neo-Assyrian and biblical prophecy, particularly focusing on the 7th c. BCE prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, and discusses what implications these differences may have for our understanding of these prophets.

The foundational period of Hebrew Bible scholarship promulgated the assumption that the original “authors” were incapable of the sophisticated literary technique displayed in that work. Complexity was ascribed to a later stage. Yet in that later stage the supposedly more sophisticated redactors were unable to see blatant contradictions and redundancies. This work investigates Genesis, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles looking at how the message conveyed has been misunderstood through assumptions about the capacities and intentions of original writers. It shows how retaining the assumptions about the inability of early writers inevitably leads to conclusions of a late provenance.

Authors of the Hebrew Bible had at least 17 different verbs which they could use to represent “leading” or “guiding” in the Hebrew Bible. What are these “verbs of leading” and how are they related to one another? Why did an author choose the particular “leading” verb he chose in a particular context? Every occurrence of a verb of leading in the Hebrew Bible is examined through the lens of semantic-role theory by assigning roles to each of the phrases typically used with the verbs. This study resolves some problem passages and supplements traditional lexicographical research.

Does God take into account only the physical act, or does He also consider intention? Does inward motivation truly matter in the areas of criminal or cultic law? Were there differences between the biblical, hellenistic and rabbinic views on intention? This book explores what the Old Testament, Philo, and the early Rabbis thought about human intentionality in a legal context.

The dating of some Archaic Biblical Hebrew poems to the late second millennium – early first millennium BCE on the basis of a handful of linguistic forms in common with second millennium Ugaritic and Amarna-Canaanite texts is brought into question. This critique highlights the problems with the arguments and hypotheses presented in the literature, and concludes that there is no compelling evidence to support the use of linguistic data for dating purposes.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volume 9 (2009) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

Ancient Egyptian leaders sought to preserve the status quo by using not only their military might, but also enlisting magical rituals to help control any perceived threats to their way of life. Biblical leaders also sought to control their respective peoples by means of divine authority, brute force, and/or ritual actions. Examples of ritual actions by Moses and Jeremiah mimic those used by the ancient Egyptians in order to preserve or restore order to their given societies.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volume 8 (2008) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

A volume of collected essays that explores what we can learn about the producers and readers of biblical books by looking into matters of language, rhetoric, style, and ideology. What do they teach us about these literati’s world of knowledge and imagination, about the issues they had in mind and the ways they came to deal with them through authoritative literature? The book includes essays on such issues as whether linguistic theories can solve literary-critical problems, on what is “late biblical Hebrew,” on parallelism and noun groups in biblical poetry, and the communicative meaning of some linguistic choices.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volume 7 (2007) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volume 6 (2006) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volume 5 (2004-2005) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

This volume incorporates all the articles and reviews published in Volumes 1-4 (1996-2003) of the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.