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After Paul: The Apostle's Legacy in Early Christianity focuses on the many ways Pauline thought and tradition were reinterpreted, reused, reframed, and reconstructed in the first centuries of Christianity. James W. Aageson contends that it is insufficient simply to focus on Paul or on his legacy in the Greco-Roman world; what is needed is a bifocal look at Paul with the reference points being both how Paul transformed his own thinking and later how Paul and his thought were transformed by others in the church. To speak of Paul's legacy implies more than the reception of his texts, his ideas, or his theology. It also implies more than the interpretive techniques or the references to Paul by early post-Paul writers. It refers to the apostle's wider impact, influence, and sway in the first centuries of the church as well. The questions he addressed, his impulse toward theological reflection and argumentation, and his approach to pastoral and ethical concerns undoubtedly influenced the future course of the Christ movement. Aageson's investigation takes up the issues of memory and metamorphosis, conflict and opposition, authority and control, legacy and empire, the church and the Jews, women and marriage, Paul in place, and church unity to pinpoint interrelationships and interactions among important strands in Paul's thought, persona, and authority as together they interfaced with the changing culture and social life of early Christianity. After Paul is not intended to be a history of the first centuries of Pauline Christianity nor an exhaustive account of everything that pertains to the early development of Paul's legacy. Rather, Aageson endeavors to plot connections, identify patterns, and develop a theoretical context for understanding Paul's legacy in early Christianity. The picture that emerges is one of continuity and discontinuity between Paul and Pauline tradition as the historical Paul became a figure of memory and remembrance, framed and reframed. This specific investigation offers a fresh entry point to understanding the larger question of how the Christian tradition came into its own as a social body and religious movement that could endure even after Paul. -- Provided by publisher.

• Method and material
• The God of the last days (Acts 2:1-41)
• The God of glory and heaven : Stephen's speech and vision (Acts 6:8-7:60)
• "Who are you, Lord?" (Acts 9:1-19; 22:1-21; 26:1-23)
• God's impartiality (Acts 10:1-11:18; 15:1-21)
• The faithful God : Paul's proclamation in Pisidian Antioch (13:13-52)
• God as savior at sea (27:1-44)
• The God of power and wonder
• The portrayal of God in Acts

"The Acts of the Apostles reveals a God at work. However, what do God's actions reveal about God's character? This question drives the present study, whose ultimate goal is to discover what portrayal Acts constructs of God through God's actions. Aarflot demonstrates how Jesus's ascension and the development of the gentile mission prove key to Acts' distinctive portrayal of God. The study explores what happens to the characterization of God when Jesus's character comes to resemble God through the ascension, noting in particular the effect of ambiguous language that might refer to either God or Jesus on the portrayal of God. It also considers how Acts depicts God through actions in Israel's past in relation to the narrative present. This is done by looking at how God is characterized at decisive moments of Acts' plot. The resulting observations are ultimately synthesized in a final chapter presenting the portrayal of God in Acts. The results of the study have implications for the discussion of the impact of Christology on theology, and furthers the discussion of 'God' in the New Testament by delineating a constant, yet developing image of God, and solidifies previous research's observations on the centrality of God's actions to Acts' narrative." --From publisher's description

• [1] Sefer Be-reshit
• [3] Sefer Ṿa-Yiḳra.

• COVER; COPYRIGHT; CONTENTS; INTRODUCTION; 1 GENESIS: THE PRIMEVAL HISTORY; 2 GENESIS: NARRATIVES ABOUT THE PATRIARCHS; 3 EXODUS; 4 LEVITICUS; 5 NUMBERS; 6 DEUTERONOMY; 7 IMPORTANT THEMES IN THE PENTATEUCH; NOTES.

The first five books of the Hebrew Bible spark discussions that last for centuries. From the creation stories in Genesis through the delineation of the law in Deuteronomy, these five books-- the Pentateuch-- contain deep troves of historical and spiritual treasures. In The Bible's Foundation: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, Charles Aaron Jr. looks at each book through several perspectives: ancient near-Eastern background, literary analysis, structure, important theological concepts, and compositional history. The Bible's Foundation: An Introduction to the Pentateuch accounts the academic significance of each book and the issues of faith that have marked these books as important, sacred texts. Each chapter summarizes the content of an individual book, provides careful analysis for selected representative passages, and discusses in a critical way the faith issues raised from the text.

• Table of Contents; Preface;
• 1. Introduction: Ambiguity and Figurative Speech;
• 2. Distinguishing Metaphors from Non-Metaphors;
• 3. A Non-Binary Conceptualization of Meaning;
• 4. Toward a Model for Gradient Judgments;
• 5. Typicality Conditions and Relevance;
• 6. Metaphor as a Gradient Judgment;
• 7. Idolatry: The Most Challenging Metaphor;
• 8. Aniconism as a Narrowing of the Conditions-of-Relevance;
• 9. Conclusion; Bibliography of Works Cited; Index of Names and Subjects; Index of Scriptural References.

Biblical Ambiguities poses as its central question: When we read a passage in the Hebrew Bible, how do we know whether the passage was meant literally or metaphorically? This study argues that our assumptions as to how language works influences the way we interpret biblical texts. Drawing upon contemporary linguistic theory, Aaron seeks to place before the reader a strategy for deciphering biblical idioms within a theory of semantics, using divine imagery in the Hebrew Bible as the primary focal point. This book presents a gradient model of meaning based on Relevance Theory and the writings of Ray Jackendoff. While numerous biblical passages are considered in detail, the main test case for Aaron's approach to meaning and metaphor is the Israelite attitude toward idols. Although biblical ideology is usually portrayed as contrasting a literalist idolatry with a more sophisticated Israelite theology, Aaron argues that policies regarding icons had less to do with theology than the politics of governance and language. Part of that critique regards common scholarly assumptions about the literal or metaphorical character of divine imagery and idols. The metaphorization or the literalization of biblical images has served as a reading strategy since ancient times, and often persists in scholarly discourse today. Perhaps as important as Aaron's suggestion of an alternative approach to the problem of distinguishing metaphorical from literal language, is that his argument raises our consciousness of how we go about interpretive acts when writing the history of Israelite theology.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Biblical Ambiguities poses as its central question: When we read a passage in the Hebrew Bible, how do we know whether the passage was meant literally or metaphorically? This study argues that our assumptions as to how language works influences the way we interpret biblical texts. Drawing upon contemporary linguistic theory, Aaron seeks to place before the reader a strategy for deciphering biblical idioms within a theory of semantics, using divine imagery in the Hebrew Bible as the primary focal point. This book presents a gradient model of meaning based on Relevance Theory and the writings of Ray Jackendoff. While numerous biblical passages are considered in detail, the main test case for Aaron's approach to meaning and metaphor is the Israelite attitude toward idols. Although biblical ideology is usually portrayed as contrasting a literalist idolatry with a more sophisticated Israelite theology, Aaron argues that policies regarding icons had less to do with theology than the politics of governance and language. Part of that critique regards common scholarly assumptions about the literal or metaphorical character of divine imagery and idols. The metaphorization or the literalization of biblical images has served as a reading strategy since ancient times, and often persists in scholarly discourse today. Perhaps as important as Aaron's suggestion of an alternative approach to the problem of distinguishing metaphorical from literal language, is that his argument raises our consciousness of how we go about interpretive acts when writing the history of Israelite theology.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Setting the Stage
• 2. A Brief Survey of Authorship Theories
• 3. The Torah's Purpose: Ready for the Decalogue's Inclusion
• 4. Non-Pentateuchal Historiographic Retrospectives
• 5. A Silence Too Loud
• 6. Joshua, An Alternative Covenant Scene
• 7. The Decalogue
• 8. Rethinking the History of Biblical Composition.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The document known as The Ten Commandments, more formally referred to as The Decalogue, remains among the most controversial and complicated passages in the Hebrew Bible. Even today, the twentieth chapter of Exodus continues to serve as a major religious and ethical icon within popular culture and religious communities, despite its many unexplained elements. Lawsuits over the display of Decalogue Tablets have occupied courtrooms in more than half the states of this country. And yet, few people understand that there is not one, but three versions of what are usually called The Ten Commandments. Moreover, when their ideological underpinnings are examined closely, these versions prove to be quite antithetical to one another. Even fewer are aware of the probability that these documents were written very late in the history of biblical literature - indeed, so late as to constitute a literary afterthought in the development of Israelite ethnic self-definition. In "Etched in Stone: The Emergence of the Decalogue Tradition", Aaron examines the question of when the Decalogue versions were written and why. The main focus of this book is the literary phenomenon known as 'the tablets' and how it functioned within the broader narrative. Aaron argues not only that the inclusion of the Decalogue texts was quite late in the development of the Pentateuch's canon, but that their integration preserves vestiges of highly charged ideological conflicts that were inadvertently neutralized by the rather bland and generic ethical precepts coined among its verses. "Etched in Stone" provides a paradigm for merging a variety of critical methods (source criticism, tradition criticism, ideological criticism, redaction criticism) and literary approaches that have heretofore been under-explored. In this sense, "Etched in Stone" will be read by scholars for its far-reaching conclusions and used by students (undergraduates, seminary, graduate) for learning approaches to the sequencing of biblical materials.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Annotation Debates rage over Paul's understanding of election in Romans 9-11. But is election really what Paul had in mind? Aaron Sherwood argues that this debate is foreign to Paul's purpose here. Paul primarily intended these passages to be a defense of God's covenantal faithfulness.In The Word of God Has Not Failed, Sherwood examines the first major passage of this section, Romans 9:6-20, giving special attention to the Old Testament Scriptures Paul used. It is vital to understand Paul's interpretation of these texts in order to understand the thrust of Paul's message. Sherwood shows how Paul viewed the rejection of the gospel by unbelieving Jews as idolatry, and the inclusion of believing Gentiles as a fulfillment of God's promises to Israel.

• [1] 121 derushim ... mi-Bereshit ʻad Piḳude
• [2] 101 derushim ... mi-Ṿa-yiḳra ʻad ha-Berakhah

Homilies on the Pentateuch

"Avant de monter sur le trône à Jérusalem, la vie de David est marquée par de nombreuses péripéties : l'affrontement avec Goliath, le roi Saül cherchant à faire mourir son jeune rival, son amitié avec Jonathan, ses amours avec Mikal (la fille de Saül) ou bien Abigaïl (la sage épouse de Nabal), ses errances en pays philistin, son acceptation d'être le vassal des Philistins... En analysant ces textes, l'auteur fait découvrir comment Israël a construit une image "royale idéale" de David destinée à unifier les différentes tribus autour de lui et de Jérusalem, à construire sa propre identité. Une belle relecture qui nous interroge sur la réécriture de l'histoire, sur le pouvoir et les prises de pouvoir, la place des femmes dans cette longue marche vers la royauté."--P. [4] of cover.

• Front Cover; Contents; Preface;
• Chapter 1: Introduction to the gospel texts and the synoptic problem;
• Chapter 2: The triple-link model;
• Chapter 3: Matthew's and Luke's use of Mark: a logistic regression approach;
• Chapter 4: Hidden Markov models for binary time series;
• Chapter 5: Matthew's and Luke's use of Mark: hidden Markov models;
• Chapter 6: Mark's and Luke's use of Matthew;
• Chapter 7: Examples of synoptic parallels;
• Chapter 8: Final conclusions; Appendix A: R code for hidden Markov models; Bibliography; Back Cover.

See How to Use Statistics for New Testament InterpretationThe Synoptic Problem and Statistics lays the foundations for a new area of interdisciplinary research that uses statistical techniques to investigate the synoptic problem in New Testament studies, which concerns the relationships between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There are potential applications of the techniques to study other sets of similar documents. Explore Hidden Markov Models for Textual Data The book provides an introductory account of the synoptic problem and relevant theories, literature, and research at a level.

• 1. Introduction to the gospel texts and the synoptic problem
• 2. The triple-link model
• 3. Matthew's and Luke's use of Mark : a logistic regression approach
• 4. Hidden Markov for binary time series
• 5. Matthew's and Luke's use of Mark : hidden Markov models
• 6. Mark's and Luke's use of Matthew
• 7. Examples of synoptic parallels
• 8. Final conclusions.

See How to Use Statistics for New Testament InterpretationThe Synoptic Problem and Statistics lays the foundations for a new area of interdisciplinary research that uses statistical techniques to investigate the synoptic problem in New Testament studies, which concerns the relationships between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There are potential applications of the techniques to study other sets of similar documents. Explore Hidden Markov Models for Textual Data The book provides an introductory account of the synoptic problem and relevant theories, literature, and research at a level.