In Reconstructing the Talmud: An Introduction to the Academic Study of Rabbinic Literature (Hadar Press, 2014), Joshua Kulp and Jason Rogoff introduce the modern Talmud student to the techniques developed over the last century for uncovering how this literature developed. This work introduces the reader to the world of academic Talmudic research and opens new venues of exploration and understanding of one of the world's great literary treasures.Joshua Kulp earned a PhD in Talmud from Bar Ilan University and is a co-founder of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem where he has taught Talmud and Jewish law for the last two and a half decades.Jason Rogoff earned a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and is a faculty member at Hadar.Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Matthew J Hart and Daniel J Hill's book Does God Intend that Sin Occur? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) argues, from a detailed consideration of the Christian Scriptures, that God intends that sin occur. It swims against the tide of current thinking in philosophy of religion, arguing for an unfashionable conclusion. The book begins by considering the history of views on the question, paying particular attention to the Reformed or Calvinistic tradition. The heart of the book is a detailed examination of key passages from the Christian Scriptures that, it is argued, show that God does intend that sin occur. It also discusses in detail two alternative views that could be used to reinterpret these texts, one view that God intends only that the substratum of the sinful action occur, not the sin itself, and the other that God acts because a sin will occur but not intending that that sin occur. The book argues that these interpretative strategies, even when combined together, do not produce a plausible interpretation of the texts adduced.This book is available open access. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Professor Matthew Thomas returns to explain how we can place the Gospels in time and context using both internal clues (literary evidence) and the external ones (anthropological evidence). These are the first steps on a path of the many centuries of transmission toward the Bible we have today; Matthew Thomas tells why they are so important and where they have led us.The papyrus (P66) of the Gospel of John in the Bodmer Library, Switzerland, can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

What does the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have to say about nomads and nomadism in the ancient Near East? This episode explores nomadism in the Judaic religious tradition through the eyes of the authors of the Old Testament.Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Matthew Thomas, theologian and biblical scholar, explains how the Bible got to be the Bible, how confident we can be in its historicity, and on what authority we can trust such judgments. We talk about the languages of the Scripture and their transmission over time, and how we see the emergence of the documents that would later become the Bible already in first-century Christian communities.Professor Thomas teaches Biblical languages and the history of the Bible, Patristics, and Early Christian interpretation of the Scriptures, especially Pauline Theology, at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at UC Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

In her latest book, Life in Citiations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture (Routledge, 2019), Ruth Tsoffar studies several key biblical narratives that figure prominently in Israeli culture. Life in Citations provides a close reading of these narratives, along with works by contemporary Hebrew Israeli artists that respond to them. Together they read as a modern commentary on life with text, or even life under the rule of its verses, to answer questions like: How can we explain the fascination and intense identification of Israelis with the Bible? What does it mean to live in such close proximity with the Bible, and What kind of story can such a life tell? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

The Need for Creeds Today: Confessional Faith in a Faithless Age (Baker Academic, 2020) is an accessible invitation to the historic creeds and confessions makes a biblical and historical case for their necessity and shows why they are essential for Christian faith and practice today.J. V. Fesko, a leading Reformed theologian with a broad readership in the academy and the church, demonstrates that creeds are not just any human documents but biblically commended resources for the well-being of the church, as long as they remain subordinate to biblical authority. Fesko also explains how the current skepticism and even hostility toward creeds and confessions came about.For those interested, listen to an earlier conversation with J.V. Fesko on his book The Spirit of the Age (2017), which discusses 19th century debates about the Westminster Confession in the American Presbyterian church.Dr. J. V. Fesko has taught at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) Atlanta since 2000 while he served as a pastor in Northwest Atlanta and now as Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at RTS Jackson. He has been an ordained minister since 1998 in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church serving as a church planter, pastor, and now teacher. Dr. Fesko’s interests include early modern Reformation and post-Reformation theology, the integration of biblical and systematic theology, as well as soteriology, especially the doctrine of justification. Dr. Fesko has authored or edited more than twenty books and written fifty published essays for various journals and books. More of his writing can be found at his personal website.Justin McGeary is Director of Christian Studies at John Witherspoon College and a graduate student at Union School of Theology, Wales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

In Writing With Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark (T&T Clark, 2022), Nathanael Vette proposes that the Gospel of Mark, like other narrative works in the Second Temple period, uses the Jewish scriptures as a model to compose episodes and tell a new story. Vette compares Mark's use of scripture with roughly contemporary works like Pseudo-Philo, the Genesis Apocryphon, 1 Maccabees, Judith, and the Testament of Abraham; diverse texts which, combined, support the existence of shared compositional techniques.This volume identifies five scripturalized narratives in the Gospel: Jesus' forty-day sojourn in the wilderness and call of the disciples; the feeding of the multitudes; the execution of John the Baptist; and the Crucifixion of Jesus. This fresh understanding of how the Jewish scriptures were used to compose new narratives across diverse genres in the Second Temple period holds important lessons for how scholars read the Gospel of Mark. Instead of treating scriptural allusions and echoes as keys which unlock the hidden meaning of the Gospel, Vette argues that Mark often uses the Jewish scriptures simply for their ability to tell a story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

In a podcast about books that have changed the world, I bring you the book that I think changed the world the most: The Hebrew Bible. Specifically, the first book of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis. The Book of Genesis is an account of the origins of the world, human beings, and the Jewish people. It is a foundational text for three world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For thousands of years, Genesis has given its readers a foundation, a story that helps give an account of why the world exists, who we are, and how we should act. In a chaotic and unpredictable world, Genesis, this ancient set of stories, offers grounding, continuity, and deep meaning. Ronald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Book of Genesis: A Biography See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Utilizing insights from trauma studies, James Yansen's book Daughter Zion's Trauma: A Trauma Informed Reading of Lamentations (Gorgias Press, 2019) advances the view that awareness of trauma's potential effects sheds light on many of the book of Lamentations' complex literary features, and suggests new interpretive possibilities. Three characteristic features of traumatic experiences make this concept useful for a critical reading of Lamentations: 1) survivors' testimonies often convey a history that is not straightforwardly referential; 2) trauma causes rupture in memory; and 3) the trauma process includes rhetorical dimensions; individuals and communities work through and construct trauma in different ways in order to reconstitute themselves and ensure their survival in the aftermath of extreme catastrophe. Furthermore, social, political, cultural, historical, and theological/religious contexts are crucial for understanding how individuals and collectivities construe, respond to, witness to, work through, and create trauma.Attending to Lamentations' likely traumatic matrix, the concept of non-referential history functions as a heuristic lens through which to view the historical significance of the Book's content, particularly its ubiquitous uses of stereotypical and metaphorical language. In addition, trauma-informed structural analysis demonstrates and mirrors the debilitating realities of caesura in life often associated with experiences of trauma. Drawing on insights from cultural trauma, specifically the rhetorical dimensions of the trauma process, Daughter Zion's Trauma asserts that Lamentations ensures the survival of those whose pain and anguish it voices by strategically adapting some of ancient Israel's religious traditions. The literary figure of Daughter Zion embodies and witnesses to the trauma of the survivor-communities she represents. The sheer enormity of Daughter Zion's trauma overshadows and undermines assertions and acknowledgements of her culpability. Further, protest, ambiguity, and ambivalent hope form the foundation for resilience and survival in Lamentations. Ultimately, trauma-informed readings of biblical literature that utilize an historically-informed, synchronic approach enable biblical scholars to pursue the interpretive possibilities of trauma studies without bracketing historical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies