Product Description: Covering a rich landscape of literary, theological and cultural creativity, the authors explore the astonishing variety of interpretations inspired by Lamentations, one of the shortest books in the Bible. Features a wealth of reactions – covering two and a half millennia – to this ancient text's influential and unflinching account of the devastation wreaked by war Explores a kaleidoscope of examples ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls; Yehudah Halevy; John Calvin; and composer, Thomas Tallis; through to the startling interpretations of Marc Chagall; contemporary novelist, Cynthia Ozick; and Zimbabwean junk sculpture Deploys "reception exegesis", a new genre of commentary that creatively blends reception history and biblical exegesis Offers sensitive treatment of challenging theological and psychological responses to one of the most disturbing books of the Hebrew Bible Widely relevant, with nuanced reflections – both religious and secular – on human suffering and the disasters of war...read more

This book reexamines the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative in Genesis 18 19, an ethically charged text that has significantly influenced views about homosexuality, stereotyping the other, the rewards and risks of hospitality, and the justice owed to outsiders. Its twelve essays, reflecting their authors considerable geographical, religious, methodological, and academic diversity, explore this troubling text through the lens of universalism and particularism. Biblical Sodom is read as the site of multiple borders fluid, porous, and bi-directional between similar and different, men and angels, men and women, fathers and daughters, insiders and outsiders, hosts and guests, residents and aliens, chosen and nonchosen, and people and God. Readers of these exegetically and theologically attentive essays published in memory of Ron Pirson will experience a rare sense of an ancient text being read in and for the modern world. The contributors are Calum Carmichael, Diana Lipton, William John Lyons, Nathan MacDonald, Amira Meir, Yitzhak (Itzik) Peleg, T. A. Perry, Ron Pirson, Jonathan D. Safren, Megan Warner, Harlan J. Wechsler, and Ellen J. van Wolde.

Product Description: Readers of all persuasions have a tendency to privilege simple interpretations over complex, unsettling, readings. The more fraught the issue, the more often we find in the history of interpretation that a simple reading has been generated that masks its complexity...read more

Christianity and Judaism have produced reflective theology of thousands of years--until recently, relatively little of it was by women. This volume brings together the best essays in the field to give some idea of the riches of feminist writings in theology, now a global phenomenon and one that touches all the standard subdisciplines of theology, including scriptural studies, philosophy of religion and ethics, and historical theology. Topics include text and interpretation, the human person, the person of Jesus, embodiment, spirituality and sexuality, ecofeminism, and motherhood.