New: More Titles from SBL Publications

More new releases from the SBL:


The Early Monarchy in Israel: The Tenth Century B.C.E.

Walter Dietrich and Joachim Vette

The Hebrew narrative art achieves its highest level in the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon. But beyond that, the description of these all-too-human characters and the dramatic events of the birth of the Israelite state depicts a change of eras that became determinative for half a millennium of Israelite history. In this volume Dietrich introduces readers to the stories of the early Israelite state from a variety of perspectives: literary-critical, historical, and theological. After tracing how biblical and extrabiblical texts describe the period, Dietrich skillfully untangles the knotty questions related to the history of the period and perceptively examines the development of this literary corpus as well as the other biblical material that came to be associated with it. In a concluding chapter Dietrich revisits the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon to explore what they teach about theological issues of enduring significance, what they teach about God, humanity, the state, the use of force, and the relationship between women and men.

Paper $47.95 — ISBN 9781589832633— 380 pages, 2007 — Biblical Encyclopedia — Hardback edition www.brill.nl


Philostorgius: Church History

Philip R. Amidon, translator

Philostorgius (born 368 B.C.E.) was a member of the Eunomian sect of Christianity, a nonconformist faction deeply opposed to the form of Christianity adopted by the Roman government as the official religion of its empire. He wrote his twelve-book Church History, the critical edition of the surviving remnants of which is presented here in English translation, at the beginning of the fifth century as a revisionist history of the church and the empire in the fourth and early-fifth centuries. Sometimes contradicting and often supplementing what is found in other histories of the period, Christian or otherwise, it offers a rare dissenting picture of the Christian world of the time.

Paper $34.95 — ISBN 9781589832152 — 312 pages — Writings from the Greco-Roman World 23 — Hardback edition www.brill.nl


John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views

Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher, editors

Over the last two centuries, many scholars have considered the Gospel of John off-limits for all quests for the historical Jesus. That stance, however, creates a new set of problems that need to be addressed thoughtfully. The essays in this book, reflecting the ongoing deliberations of an international group of Johannine and Jesus scholars, critically assess two primary assumptions of the prevalent view: the dehistoricization of John and the de-Johannification of Jesus. The approaches taken here are diverse, including cognitive-critical developments of Johannine memory, distinctive characteristics of the Johannine witness, new historicism, Johannine-Synoptic relations, and fresh analyses of Johannine traditional development. In addition to offering state-of-the-art reviews of Johannine studies and Jesus studies, this volume draws together an emerging consensus that sees the Gospel of John as an autonomous tradition with its own perspective, in dialogue with other traditions. Through this challenging of critical and traditional assumptions alike, new approaches to John’s age-old riddles emerge, and the ground is cleared for new and creative ways forward.

Paper $37.95 — ISBN 9781589832930— 356 pages — Symposium Series 44 — Hardback edition www.brill.nl


The Lord's Supper in the New Testament

Albert Eichhorn with an introductory essay by Hugo Gressmann
Translated by Jeffrey F. Cayzer

This work, the inaugural volume in a new SBL series devoted to preserving and promoting seminal biblical scholarship from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offers the first English translation of Albert Eichhorn’s influential Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament. Eichhorn’s penetrating analysis of the Lord’s Supper traditions in this work exemplifies the qualities for which he was so highly esteemed: the sure ability to distinguish layers of tradition within the text, the full appreciation of the role of early Christian worship in shaping the reports about Jesus’ life, the forthright acknowledgement of the difficulty of ascertaining the original historical events, and the unflinching recognition of the influence of Near Eastern and Hellenistic religions upon Christian tradition, even in its earliest stages. To set Eichhorn himself in his historical and intellectual context, this volume also offers the first English translation of Hugo Gressmann’s biographical essay: “Albert Eichhorn and the History of Religion School.”

Paper $14.95 — ISBN 9781589832749 — 112 pages — History of Biblical Studies 1 — Hardback edition www.brill.nl


Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets: A Dialogic Theology of the Book of Lamentations

Carleen R. Mandolfo

Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets offers a new theological reading of the book of Lamentations by putting the female voice of chapters 1–2 into dialogue with the divine voice of prophetic texts in which God represents the people Israel as his wife and indicts them/her for being unfaithful to him. In Lam 1–2 we hear the “wife” talk back, and from her words we get an entirely different picture of the conflict showcased through this marriage metaphor. Mandolfo thus presents a feminist challenge to biblical hegemony and patriarchy and reconstrues biblical authority to contribute to the theological concerns of a postcolonial world.

Paper $24.95 — ISBN 9781589832473 — 160 pages — Semeia Studies — Hardback edition www.brill.nl