Download Free Samuel And The Shaping Of Tradition Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Samuel And The Shaping Of Tradition and write the review.

Samuel stands out in many important biblical texts as the figure who facilitated ancient Israel's transition from a tribal league to a monarchic state. On the surface of the text, this transition appears clear and linear, as does Samuel's role in bringing Israel together as a nation and selecting its first kings. Beneath this surface, however, is a far more complicated network of memories, sources and agendas, each presenting a very different picture of Samuel and his social, religious and ideological function. In some sources, Samuel serves as a symbol of Israel's developing priesthood and its system of social ethics, demonstrating the tensions within the priestly ranks. In others, Samuel's prophetic status is utilized to periodize Israel's history into distinct categories, positioning prophets over monarchs as national authorities. Elsewhere, Samuel is recruited to qualify - and disqualify - different forms of political organization in pre-monarchic Israel and systems of social hierarchy. Finally, the Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions return to the figure of Samuel and mine the texts in which he appears to re-structure Israel's national identity and the later communities that claimed descent from it. Mark Leuchter explores how the Samuel of these sources differs from the Samuel of the final form of the text, how the different writers used him to shape their ideas and transmit their messages, and how Samuel functions as a vehicle for the creation of a more elaborate literary superstructure drawn from discreet sources.
Leuchter explores the biblical texts revolving around the figure of Samuel, and considers how the authors utilize him as a symbol to address the cultural memories and contemporary politics of their audiences. Samuel's role as a priest, a prophet, a judge, a warrior, a lawgiver and a kingmaker are examined in light of the origins of ancient Israel.
Power comprises one of the key topics of the book of Samuel. This theme encompasses tribal contentions, power differentials between religious authorities and kings, fathers and sons, men and women. The articles assembled here explore Israel's search for political identity and Samuel's critique of monarchy, the book's constructions of power and powerlessness, and the editors' and early audiences' postmonarchic reflections. Historical and social-scientific approaches to the book of Samuel find ancient Near Eastern parallels for the political organization of Israel and describe the social conditions under authoritarian regimes. Redactional approaches examine the diachronic development of Samuel's varying perceptions of monarchy, from that institution's inception through its entrenchment in Israelite and Judahite society, until it underwent a sudden, cataclysmic failure. And literary and theological approaches advocate for contemporary reconsideration and application of the book's more noble principles.
At a glance, the Hebrew Bible presents the Levites as a group of ritual assistants and subordinates in Israel's cult. A closer look, however, reveals a far more complicated history behind the emergence of this group in Ancient Israel. A careful reconsideration of the sources provides new insights into the origins of the Levites, their social function and location, and the development of traditions that grew around them. The social location and self-perception of the Levites evolved alongside the network of clans and tribes that grew into a monarchic society, and alongside the struggle to define religious and social identity in the face of foreign cultures. This book proposes new ways to see not only how these changes affected Levite self-perception but also the manner in which this perception affected larger trends as Israelite religion evolved into nascent Judaism. By consulting the textual record, archaeological evidence, the study of cultural memory and social-scientific models, Mark Leuchter demonstrates that the Levites emerge as boundary markers and boundary makers in the definition of what it meant to be part of "Israel."
The contemporary study of Jewish apocalypticism today recognizes the wealth and diversity of ancient traditions concerned with the “unveiling” of heavenly matters‒‒understood to involve revealed wisdom, the revealed resolution of time, and revealed cosmology‒‒in marked contrast to an earlier focus on eschatology as such. The shift in focus has had a more direct impact on the study of ancient “pseudepigraphic” literature, however, than in New Testament studies, where the narrower focus on eschatological expectation remains dominant. In this Companion, an international team of scholars draws out the implications of the newest scholarship for the variety of New Testament writings. Each entry presses the boundaries of current discussion regarding the nature of apocalypticism in application to a particular New Testament author. The cumulative effect is to reveal, as never before, early Christianity, its Christology, cosmology, and eschatology, as expressions of tendencies in Second Temple Judaism.
A Jewish family navigates faith, loss, and the chaos of modern life in this “remarkable debut . . . with a profound sense of empathy” (Simon Van Booy, author of Everything Beautiful Began After). In the half-Hasidic, half-hipster Montreal neighborhood of Mile End, eleven-year-old Lev Meyer is discovering that there may be a place for Judaism in his life. As he learns about science in his day school, Lev begins his own extracurricular study of the Bible’s Tree of Knowledge with neighbor Mr. Katz, who is building his own Tree out of trash. Meanwhile his sister Samara is secretly studying for her Bat Mitzvah with next-door neighbor and Holocaust survivor, Mr. Glassman. All the while his father, David, a professor of Jewish mysticism, is a non-believer. When, years later, David has a heart attack, he begins to believe God is speaking to him. While having an affair with one of his students, he delves into the complexities of Kabbalah. Months later Samara, too, grows obsessed with the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life—hiding her interest from those who love her most–and is overcome with reaching the Tree’s highest heights. The neighbors of Mile End have been there all along, but only one of them can catch her when she falls.
Like other constructs in biblical studies, the Deuteronomistic History has come under scrutiny in the 21st century. The books beginning with Joshua and concluding with 2 Kings were thought to be, at their core, a unified explication of Israel's demise in Deuteronomistic terms of sin and its consequences. Current scholarship views these books as more disparate and influenced by a number of different texts, not limited to Deuteronomy. God and Gods in Deuteronomistic History exemplifies the latest research on these Hebrew Scriptures. Each study focuses on the question of how God is disclosed in Israel's history. Contributors look at the topic in a single book to bring forth the richness and variety of the Deity's descriptions. The results show an array of understandings about the divine figure Yhwh, whose titles also include El, El the Living, and Yhwh God in heaven, to name but a few. A strength of this volume is the meticulous analysis of Mesopotamian and West Semitic sources, expressed both textually and in material culture. The biblical writers adopted and adapted these ancient Near Eastern sources to create various pictures of God in the Deuteronomistic History, at times mirroring the deities of the so-called idolatrous religions. This book brings forth portrayals of Israel's God as well as other regional deities in their contguity and complexity, across the Deuteronomistic History.
This commentary on Samuel focuses especially on the qualities of leadership displayed by the major characters of the book. In addition, it provides an analysis of the synchronic, literary structure of the book of Samuel as well as a new theory concerning the composition of the book.
This collection of essays by noted philosopher Samuel Scheffler combines discussion of abstract questions in moral and political theory with attention to the normative dimension of current social and political controversies. In addition to chapters on more abstract issues such as the nature of human valuing, the role of partiality in ethics, and the significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, the volume also includes essays on immigration, terrorism, toleration, political equality, and the normative significance of tradition. Uniting the essays is a shared preoccupation with questions about human value and values. The volume opens with an essay that considers the general question of what it is to value something - as opposed, say, to wanting it, wanting to want it, or thinking that it is valuable. Other essays explore particular values, such as equality, whose meaning and content are contested. Still others consider the tensions that arise, both within and among individuals, in consequence of the diversity of human values. One of the overarching aims of the book is to illuminate the different ways in which liberal political theory attempts to resolve conflicts of both of these kinds.
Although the relationship of the Hebrew Bible and violence has been of interest to scholars in recent years, ritual violence in its various manifestations has been underexplored, as have been the theoretical dimensions of ritual violence. This volume is intended to bring into relief the full range of violent rites represented in the Hebrew Bible, many rarely, if ever, considered before. The book seeks to explore what acts of ritual violence might have accomplished socio-politically in their particular settings and the ways in which engagement with theory from a variety of disciplines can contribute to our understanding of ritual violence as a phenomenon. It consists of an introduction and eight essays. Topics include cognitive perspectives on iconoclasm, the instrumental dimensions of ritual violence against corpses, the ritual of killing cities ("urbicide"), royal rites of military loyalty, the ends accomplished by the violence against Rechab and Baanah in 2 Samuel 4, material dimensions of the herem and Rwanda genocide compared, the exchange of women among men and its violent dimensions, and Josiah's ritual assault on Bethel. Authors include Debra Scoggins Ballentine, T. M. Lemos, Mark Leuchter, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Susan Niditch, Saul M. Olyan, Rüdiger Schmitt, and Jacob L. Wright.