Bible films--History and criticism and Silent films--Religious aspects

Between the advent of motion pictures in the 1890s and the close of the'silent'era at the end of the 1920s, many of the longest, most expensive and most watched films on both sides of the Atlantic drew upon biblical traditions. David J. Shepherd traces the evolution of the biblical film through the silent era, asking why the Bible attracted early film makers, how biblical films were indebted to other interpretive traditions, and how these films were received. Drawing upon rarely seen archival footage and early landmark films of directors such as Louis Feuillade, D. W. Griffith, Michael Curtis and Cecil B. DeMille, this history treats well-known biblical subjects including Joseph, Moses, David and Jesus, along with lesser-known biblical stars such as Jael, Judith and Jephthah's daughter. This book will be of great interest to students of Biblical studies, Jewish studies and film studies.

Bible and politics--United States--History, Political culture--United States--History, and Nationalism--United States--History

The Bible has always been an integral part of American political culture. Yet in the years before the Civil War, it was the Old Testament, not the New Testament, that pervaded political rhetoric. From Revolutionary times through about 1830, numerous American politicians, commentators, ministers, and laymen depicted their young nation as a new, God-chosen Israel and relied on the Old Testament for political guidance.In this original book, historian Eran Shalev closely examines how this powerful predilection for Old Testament narratives and rhetoric in early America shaped a wide range of debates and cultural discussions—from republican ideology, constitutional interpretation, southern slavery, and more generally the meaning of American nationalism to speculations on the origins of American Indians and to the emergence of Mormonism. Shalev argues that the effort to shape the United States as a biblical nation reflected conflicting attitudes within the culture—proudly boastful on the one hand but uncertain about its abilities and ultimate destiny on the other. With great nuance, American Zion explores for the first time the meaning and lasting effects of the idea of the United States as a new Israel and sheds new light on our understanding of the nation's origins and culture during the founding and antebellum decades.

Exodus, The, Bible stories, English--O.T. Exodus, and Bible and geology

For more than four decades, biblical experts have tried to place the story of Exodus into historical context--without success. What could explain the Nile turning to blood, insects swarming the land, and the sky falling to darkness? Integrating biblical accounts with substantive archaeological evidence, The Parting of the Sea looks at how natural phenomena shaped the stories of Exodus, the Sojourn in the Wilderness, and the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Barbara Sivertsen demonstrates that the Exodus was in fact two separate exoduses both triggered by volcanic eruptions--and provides scientific explanations for the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. Over time, Israelite oral tradition combined these events into the Exodus narrative known today. Skillfully unifying textual and archaeological records with details of ancient geological events, Sivertsen shows how the first exodus followed a 1628 B.C.E Minoan eruption that produced all but one of the first nine plagues. The second exodus followed an eruption of a volcano off the Aegean island of Yali almost two centuries later, creating the tenth plague of darkness and a series of tsunamis that'parted the sea'and drowned the pursuing Egyptian army. Sivertsen's brilliant account explains inconsistencies in the biblical story, fits chronologically with the conquest of Jericho, and confirms that the Israelites were in Canaan before the end of the sixteenth century B.C.E. In examining oral traditions and how these practices absorb and process geological details through storytelling, The Parting of the Sea reveals how powerful historical narratives are transformed into myth.

Ethiopia in the Bible and African Americans--Religion

English poetry--19th century--History and criticism, Religion and poetry, Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century, and Bible and literature

Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible charts the impact of post-Enlightenment biblical criticism on English literary culture. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a widespread reevaluation of biblical inspiration, in which the Bible's poetic nature came to be seen as an integral part of its religious significance. Understandably, then, many poets who followed this interpretative revolution—including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning—came to reconceive their highest vocational ambitions: if the Bible is essentially poetry, then modern poetry might perform a cultural role akin to that of scripture. This context equally illuminates the aims and achievements of famous Victorian unbelievers such as Arthur Hugh Clough and George Eliot, who also responded enthusiastically to the poetic ideal of an inspired text.Building upon a recent and ongoing reevaluation of religion as a vital aspect of Victorian culture, Charles LaPorte shows the enduring relevance of religion in a period usually associated with its decline. In doing so, he helps to delineate the midcentury shape of a literary dynamic that is generally better understood in Romantic poetry of the earlier part of the century. The poets he examines all wrestled with modern findings about the Bible's fortuitous historical composition, yet they owed much of their extraordinary literary success to their ability to capitalize upon the progress of avant-garde biblical interpretation.This book's revisionary and provocative thesis speaks not only to the course of English poetics but also to the logic of nineteenth-century literary hierarchies and to the continuing evolution of religion in the modern era.Victorian Literature and Culture Series

American literature--History and criticism and Bible and literature

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven into Moby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sun Also Rises, Seize the Day, Gilead, and The Road, Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.

Irony in the Bible

Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts that allows character, narration, and authorial voice to dev.

Apocryphal Gospels

This Very Short Introduction offers a clear, accessible, and concise account of the apocryphal gospels - exploring their origins, their discovery, and discussing how the various texts have been interpreted both by the Church and beyond. Looking at texts from the Gospels from Nag Hammadi to the Dialogues with the Risen Saviour, Paul Foster shows how the apocryphal gospels reflect the diversity that existed within early Christianity, and examines the extent to which they can be used to reconstruct an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus. Including discussions of controversies and case-studies such as the alleged hoax surrounding the discovery of Secret Mark, Foster concludes that the non-canonical texts, considered in the correct context, offer us an important window on the vibrant and multi-faceted face of early Christianity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Bible as literature

The words, phrases, and stories of the New Testament permeate the English language. Indeed, this relatively small group of twenty-seven works, written during the height of the Roman Empire, not only helped create and sustain a vast world religion, but also have been integral to the larger cultural dynamics of the West, above and beyond particular religious expressions. Looking at the New Testament through the lens of literary study, Kyle Keefer offers an engrossing exploration of this revered religious text as a work of literature, but also keeps in focus its theological ramifications. Unique among books that examine the Bible as literature, this brilliantly compact introduction offers an intriguing double-edged look at this universal text--a religiously informed literary analysis. The book first explores the major sections of the New Testament--the gospels, Paul's letters, and Revelation--as individual literary documents. Keefer shows how, in such familiar stories as the parable of the Good Samaritan, a literary analysis can uncover an unexpected complexity to what seems a simple, straightforward tale. At the conclusion of the book, Keefer steps back and asks questions about the New Testament as a whole. He reveals that whether read as a single document or as a collection of works, the New Testament presents readers with a wide variety of forms and viewpoints, and a literary exploration helps bring this richness to light. A fascinating investigation of the New Testament as a classic literary work, this Very Short Introduction uses a literary framework--plot, character, narrative arc, genre--to illuminate the language, structure, and the crafting of this venerable text. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Men (Christian theology), Men in the Bible, and Masculinity--Religious aspects--Christianity--History of doctrines--Early church, ca. 30-600

In this book, Colleen Conway looks at the construction of masculinity in New Testament depictions of Jesus. She argues that the New Testament writers necessarily engaged the predominant gender ideology of the Roman Empire, whether consciously or unconsciously. Although the notion of what constituted ideal masculinity in Greek and Roman cultures certainly pre-dated the Roman Empire, the emergence of the Principate concentrated this gender ideology on the figure of the emperor. Indeed, critical to the success of the empire was the portrayal of the emperor as the ideal man and the Roman citizen as one who aspired to be the same. Any person who was held up alongside the emperor as another source of authority would be assessed in terms of the cultural values represented in this Roman image of the'manly man.'Conway examines a variety of ancient ideas of masculinity, as found in philosophical discourses, medical treaties, imperial documents, and ancient inscriptions. Manliness, in these accounts, was achieved through self-control over passions such as lust, anger, and greed. It was also gained through manly displays of courage, the endurance of pain, and death on behalf of others. With these texts as a starting point, Conway shows how the New Testament writings approach Jesus'gender identity. From Paul's early letters to the Gospels and Acts, to the book of Revelation, Christian writings in the Bible confront the potentially emasculating scandal of the cross and affirm Jesus as ideally masculine. Conway's study touches on such themes as the relationship between divinity and masculinity; the role of the body in relation to gender identity; and belief in Jesus as a means of achieving a more ideal form of masculinity. This impeccably researched and highly readable book reveals the importance of ancient gender ideology for the interpretation of Christian texts.

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism, Religion and literature--United States--History--19th century, Bible and literature, and Religion and culture

Many writers in antebellum America sought to reinvent the Bible, but no one, Ilana Pardes argues, was as insistent as Melville on redefining biblical exegesis while doing so. In Moby-Dick he not only ventured to fashion a grand new inverted Bible in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume center stage, but also aspired to comment on every imaginable mode of biblical interpretation, calling for a radical reconsideration of the politics of biblical reception. In Melville's Bibles, Pardes traces Melville's response to a whole array of nineteenth-century exegetical writings—literary scriptures, biblical scholarship, Holy Land travel narratives, political sermons, and women's bibles. She shows how Melville raised with unparalleled verve the question of what counts as Bible and what counts as interpretation.

In 1958, Bible scholar Morton Smith announced the discovery of a sensational manuscript–a second-century letter written by St. Clement of Alexandria, who quotes an unknown, longer version of the Gospel of Mark. When Smith published the letter in 1973, he set off a firestorm of controversy that has raged ever since. Is the text authentic, or a hoax? Is Smith's interpretation correct? Did Jesus really practice magic, or homosexuality? And if the letter is a forgery... why?Through close examination of the “discovered” manuscript's text, Peter Jeffery unravels the answers to the mystery and tells the tragic tale of an estranged Episcopalian priest who forged an ancient gospel and fooled many of the best biblical scholars of his time. Jeffery shows convincingly that Smith's Secret Gospel is steeped in anachronisms and that its construction was influenced by Oscar Wilde's Salomé, twentieth-century misunderstandings of early Christian liturgy, and Smith's personal struggles with Christian sexual morality.

`Judas'is synonymous with `traitor'. But a newly-discovered ancient text of the Gospel of Judas offers a picture of Judas Iscariot radically different from the Church's traditional understanding of him, and maintains that far from being the infamous betrayer, Judas was actually Jesus'trusted friend and the recipient of secret revelation. Simon Gathercole's new book includes a translation of the ancient Egyptian text of the Gospel of Judas and a running commentary, and offers new translations of all the ancient evidence about Judas Iscariot and the Gospel attributed to him. It gets behind the hype which the Gospel of Judas has attracted, and looks at why the group which produced the work were in such bitter conflict with the mainstream Christian church, and shows how the document provides us with a window into the turbulent world of Christianity and Gnosticism in the century after Jesus.

Judaism--Relations--Christianity, Christianity and antisemitism, Christianity and other religions--Judaism, Antisemitism--History, Blood--Religious aspects--Christianity, Blood--Religious aspects--Judaism, Blood accusation--History, and Blood in the Bible

Blood contains extraordinary symbolic power in both Judaism and Christianity—as the blood of sacrifice, of Jesus, of the Jewish martyrs, of menstruation, and more. Yet, though they share the same literary, cultural, and religious origins, on the question of blood the two religions have followed quite different trajectories. For instance, while Judaism rejects the eating or drinking of blood, Christianity mandates its symbolic consumption as a central sacrament. How did these two traditions, both originating in the Hebrew Bible's cult of blood sacrifices, veer off in such different directions? With his characteristic wit and erudition, David Biale traces the continuing, changing, and often clashing roles of blood as both symbol and substance through the entire sweep of Jewish and Christian history from Biblical times to the present.

Sex in the Bible, Gardens in the Bible, Sex--Religious aspects--Christianity, and Gardens--Religious aspects--Christianity

Death--Biblical teaching, Exorcism in the Bible, and Healing in the Bible

Peter Bolt explores the impact of Mark's Gospel on its early readers in the first-century Graeco-Roman world. His book focuses upon the thirteen characters in Mark who come to Jesus for healing or exorcism and, using analytical tools of narrative and reader-response criticism, explores their crucial role in the communication of the Gospel. Bolt suggests that early readers of Mark would be persuaded that Jesus'dealings with the suppliants show him casting back the shadow of death and that this in itself is preparatory for Jesus'final defeat of death in resurrection. Enlisting a variety of ancient literary and non-literary sources in an attempt to illuminate this first-century world, this book gives special attention to illness, magic and the Roman imperial system. This is a different approach to Mark, which attempts to break the impasse between narrative and historical studies and will appeal to scholars and students alike.

Teenage girls--Fiction and Women in the Bible--Fiction

Not long after the world was created, Lilith, the first woman, was expelled from the Garden of Eden. She built an ark, a magic box, in which future biblical women could hide their most prized possessions. And so, Lilith's Ark became a place for women to share their own experiences of adolescence with future generations of girls...

Jewish law and Narration in the Bible

The origin of law in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Until recently, the historico-critical methodologies of the academy have yielded unsatisfactory conclusions concerning the source of these laws which are woven through biblical narratives. In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael—a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric—suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings.Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus—addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves—Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation's history and identity.

Theater audiences--England--History--To 1500, Christian drama, English (Middle)--History and criticism, Mysteries and miracle-plays, English--History and criticism, Christian saints in literature, Bible plays, English--History and criticism, and English drama--To 1500--History and criticism

The study of saints in medieval biblical drama has often been neglected in favour of the study of sinners – the villains and the rogues. In Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama, Chester N. Scoville takes a different tack, examining the language and rhetoric of saintly characters in Middle English biblical plays. Scoville contends that the plays focus attention on the interaction between the divine realm and the human realm, that the saintly characters are key to seeing this interaction, and that the overall function of the plays is to instill in the audience a shared point of view defined both by doctrine and by experience.By placing the rhetoric of the plays at the centre of his study, Scoville incorporates performative practices and historical contexts into the argument. Language, text, and persuasion are central in the rhetorical experience, as are non-verbal elements such as costume, movement, gesture, and scenery. Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama fully and assiduously explains how biblical drama functioned in the society that experienced it.