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Many conceive of the shape of the book of Judges as a downward spiral with each leader getting worse, culminating in the horrific events of Judg 19–21. Proponents of this reading suggest that the judges can be evaluated by how closely they imitate their predecessors and the so-called judges cycle in Judg 2:11–19. In this article, I provide a historical survey to show that this interpretation originates during the literary turn in biblical studies and argues for a coherent literary reading in contrast to the source-critical approaches of the twentieth century. Since then, however, the downward spiral has become a cliché. Using eight tests, I argue that this reading is not substantiated through close textual analysis, and therefore Judges is better understood as a creatively curated anthology of stories set in a particular moral-literary world. The book demonstrates an ideological cohesion between the narratives but resists descriptions of linear progression along a particular theme (e.g., moral deterioration). Each of the main narratives (3:7–21:28) can be read on its own terms without the meaning being overdetermined by position or structure. Instead, Judges finds its narrative and ideological coherence through its anthology because each story is set within the same moral universe/narrative world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxford's Bible is the most-tangible evidence that Edward de Vere is Shakespeare. In his personal Geneva Bible, the earl has marked with his own hand more than a thousand verses [...]

'The war of Kings' (Genesis 14) is an episode that appears to be a part of biblical chronology. However, underneath the seemingly factual text appears a wondrous and strange story that retains an elusive quality. The paper presents the story as a unique example of biblical fantasy, reminiscent of some modern fantasy works and aligned with some models proposed in fantasy theory, such as Farah Mendlesohn's 'intrusion fantasy.' In the second part, the paper shows how the Israeli fantasy writer Shimon Adaf handles this story. Adaf differs from other Israeli fantasy writers in the sense that his approach to tradition is not hostile, ironic or sarcastic. He proposes a fantasy that might be regarded as attentive and connected to the past. He also aspires to create a very 'local' fantasy, one that would use the unique language of fantasy literature to enable a bridge between modernity and the Jewish past. He adopts the Genesis 14 story due to its ambiguity, mystery, and references to a mythical, ancient past. In this sense Adaf, as a modern fantasy writer, identifies fantastic layers in the biblical story itself and uses these to create a literary dialog: a dialog between fantasies., Chapter 14 of genesis presents a wondrous and strange story. Biblical scholars have attempted to decipher it and explain its historical context, but the story nevertheless retains an elusive quality [...]

It is commonly accepted that the spelling of the pre-exilic books of the Bible was generally defective like that of contemporary epigraphy, and that the matres leclionis were inserted into the original texts by scribes during the first half of the Second Temple period. This article argues that the orthography of the ancient books of the Bible was from its beginning similar to that of the MT. The difference between the current biblical spelling and the defective spelling of the inscriptions should instead be understood as a matter of different registers., THE PRESENT STATE OF RESEARCH AND THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY The classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century works on biblical grammar had a common denominator in that they all addressed the [...]

Abstract Juxtaposing the shared emphasis on the basic human need for companionship in the Eden Narrative and the Epic of Gilgamesh provides new insight, both into how the texts respectively [...]

Despite being one of the earliest Middle-earth texts and a central component of the legendarium, J.R.R. Tolkien's Fall of Gondolin has received far less attention than the tale deserves. Building upon the works of David Greenman, Bruce Alexander, and Austin Freeman and their studies comparing The Fall of Gondolin to Virgil's Aeneid as well as Tom Shippey's monograph, The Road to Middle-earth, this article seeks to expand current scholarship surrounding The Fall of Gondolin by the examination of Exodus, as both a Medieval and religious text, as a potential source for the narrative structure, characters, and themes found in Tolkien's Fall of Gondolin. Additional Keywords Tolkien; Fall of Gondolin; Gondolin; Exodus; Pride; Sin; Christianity; Catholicism; Aeneid; Virgil; Tuor; Turgon; Moses; Bible. Exodus; Exodus (Medieval poem); Moses (Biblical character); Pride; Tolkien, J.R.R.-Characters-Tuor; Tolkien, J.R.R.-Characters-Turgon; Tolkien, J.R.R.-Settings-Gondolin; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fall of Gondolin; Vergil. Aeneid, In November of 1916 when J.R.R. Tolkien returned to England from the war in France, he began work on a new project. Haunted by images of death and destruction manufactured [...]

This article is an experiment with irresolution as methodology in historical re-presentation. The focus is identity irresolution in Timnah, an Iron Age site in the Shephelah of the southern Levant. In biblical narrative, Timnah is brought to life in the stories of an unnamed woman in Judg 14-15. In archaeology, the site has been identified with Tel Batash (Tell el-Batashi in Arabic). The purpose of this article is twofold: to write a counterhistory of the unnamed woman that emphasizes the mystery of her identity and to articulate how irresolution can expand the scope of the historical practice in biblical studies. After an introduction and a discussion of irresolution as methodology, I offer a deep reading and re-presentation of the textual evidence, followed by an examination of the archaeological interpretations at Tel Batash. I conclude by considering the ethics of history writing in biblical studies., In her 2008 essay 'Venus in Two Acts,' Saidiya Hartman delves into spaces of tension and irresolution as she seeks to reclaim the lives of those silenced in the far-flung [...]

In her essay 'Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,' Rosemarie Garland-Thomson advocates for a theoretical framework that combines insights from both disability and feminist studies. She maintains that a 'feminist disability' [...]

Disability has often been conflated with adjacent and overlapping topoi in the reception and scholarship of the Hebrew Bible in ways that have compounded ableist tendencies in some texts and manufactured them outright in others. The point is demonstrated here through various meanings of the couplet 'they have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear,' which in context can convey several reasons why seeing and hearing do not happen: unwillingness to accept a message (Jer 5:21, Ezek 12:2) and inanimacy (Pss 115:5b-6a, 135:16b-17a) in addition to the disabilities of blindness and deafness (Isa 43:8). Disability plays no conceptual or rhetorical role in the first four passages, as Hebrew biblical texts generally avoid the pitfall of equating disability with rebelliousness or lifelessness. Isaiah 43:8 uses blindness and deafness as metaphors for the condition of the exiled Judeans, but a careful reading in the context of Second Isaiah reveals that they serve as metaphors for captivity, not obduracy or immorality. Appreciating these distinctions produces more historically plausible readings of the five passages and opens the way to less ableist interpretations of other disability texts in the Hebrew Bible., The increasing prominence of disability criticism in recent decades has elucidated biblical discourses of ideal and deviant bodies and exposed ableist attitudes in text and interpretation. (1) Occasionally, however, experimental [...]

Karaim is a severely endangered language belonging to the Turkic language family and its only surviving dialect is Northwest Karaim with speakers in Lithuania and Poland. In the past few years numerous Karaim translations of the Bible have been discovered. Some of these are among the oldest texts written in this language. The authors present some of the oldest Karaim texts known today as well as recently discovered Karaim translations of the entire Tanakh. It is shown how these recent research results have broadened our knowledge regarding the Karaim written heritage. Furthermore, some preliminary conclusions are drawn on the relationships among the manuscripts and the biographies of the copyists and translators involved in their creation. Textual similarities between sources created separately in communities located far from one another in the regions of Crimea, Lithuania, Volhynia, and Galicia suggest that a common Karaim tradition of Bible translation must once have existed. Moreover, the textual complexity and the use of sophisticated translation techniques in the oldest known texts support the claim that they were based on older texts or on a well-established oral tradition of translation., INTRODUCTION The East European Karaims of today, residing mostly in Poland and Lithuania, are the representatives of Karaite Judaism. Their native tongue is Karaim, a vernacular that belongs to the [...]