In this unique collection of essays, some of today's smartest Jewish thinkers explore a broad range of fundamental questions in an effort to balance ancient tradition and modern sexuality. In the last few decades a number of factors - post-modernism, feminism, queer liberation, and more - have brought discussion of sexuality to the fore, and with it a whole new set of questions that challenge time-honored traditions and ways of thinking. For Jews of all backgrounds, this has often led to an unhappy standoff between tradition and sexual empowerment. Yet as "The Passionate Torah" illustrates, it is of critical importance to see beyond this apparent conflict if Jews are to embrace both their religious beliefs and their sexuality. With incisive essays from contemporary rabbis, scholars, thinkers, and writers, this collection not only surveys the challenges that sexuality poses to Jewish belief, but also offers fresh new perspectives and insights on the changing place of sexuality within Jewish theology - and Jewish lives. Covering topics such as monogamy, inter-faith relationships, reproductive technology, homosexuality, and a host of other hot-button issues, these writings consider how contemporary Jews can engage themselves, their loved ones, and their tradition in a way that's both sexy and sanctified. Seeking to deepen the Jewish conversation about sexuality, "The Passionate Torah" brings together brilliant thinkers in an attempt to bridge the gap between the sacred and the sexual. The contributors are: Rebecca Alpert, Wendy Love Anderson, Judith R. Baskin, Aryeh Cohen, Elliot Dorff, Esther Fuchs, Bonna Haberman, Elliot Kukla, Gail Labovitz, Malka Landau, Sarra Lev, Laura Levitt, Sara Meirowitz, Jay Michaelson, Haviva Ner-David, Danya Ruttenberg, Naomi Seideman, and Arthur Waskow.

"Halakhah in the Making" offers the first comprehensive study of the legal material found in the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and its significance in the greater history of Jewish religious law (halakhah). Aharon Shemesh's pioneering study revives an issue long dormant in religious scholarship: namely, the relationship between rabbinic law, as written more than one hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple, and Jewish practice during the Second Temple. The monumental discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" in Qumran led to the revelation of this missing material and the closing of a two-hundred-year gap in knowledge, allowing work to begin comparing specific laws of the Qumran sect with rabbinic laws. With the publication of scroll "4QMMT" - a polemical letter by Dead Sea sectarians concerning points of Jewish law - an effective comparison was finally possible. This is the first book-length treatment of the material to appear since the publication of "4QMMT" and the first attempt to apply its discoveries to the work of nineteenth-century scholars. It is also the first work on this important topic written in plain language and accessible to nonspecialists in the history of Jewish law.

Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. By any standard, this was a family with problems. Jacob's oldest son Reuben is said to have slept with his father's concubine Bilhah. The next two sons, Simeon and Levi, tricked the men of a nearby city into undergoing circumcision, and then murdered all of them as revenge for the rape of their sister. Judah, the fourth son, had sexual relations with his own daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, jealous of their younger sibling Joseph, the brothers conspired to kill him; they later relented and merely sold him into slavery. These stories presented a particular challenge for ancient biblical interpreters. After all, Jacob's sons were the founders of the nation of Israel and ought to have been models of virtue.
In The Ladder of Jacob, renowned biblical scholar James Kugel retraces the steps of ancient biblical interpreters as they struggled with such problems. Kugel reveals how they often fixed on a little detail in the Bible's wording to "deduce" something not openly stated in the narrative. They concluded that Simeon and Levi were justified in killing all the men in a town to avenge the rape of their sister, and that Judah, who slept with his daughter-in-law, was the unfortunate victim of alcoholism.
These are among the earliest examples of ancient biblical interpretation (midrash). They are found in retellings of biblical stories that appeared in the closing centuries BCE--in the Book of Jubilees, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and other noncanonical works. Through careful analysis of these retellings, Kugel is able to reconstruct how ancient interpreters worked. The Ladder of Jacob is an artful, compelling account of the very beginnings of biblical interpretation.

The Deuteronomistic History includes a host of workers who harvest and glean, fetch water and cook, spin and weave, heal the sick and much more. The mostly anonymous women who performed this work for others are sometimes mentioned only in a single verse. Consequently, they often are as unrecognized in modern scholarship as they seem in the biblical text. To help readers appreciate the place that these workers played in their ancient socio-economic and literary contexts, this work examines the key texts in the Deuteronomistic History that mention women in service occupations: slaves and dependents, cooks, wet nurses, childcare givers, prostitutes, and scribes. In the process, readers will discover, perhaps surprisingly, that these women were honored not in relation to matters such as sexual purity or marital faithfulness but on account of the valuable service that they provided.

This work compiles writings and discussions regarding the roles and statuses of ordinary women in the ancient Near East.

《希伯来圣经的文本历史与思想世界》将运用多层次的圣经评断学方法，如历史评断学、文学评断学、形式评断学、社会学评断学、编修评断学等，尤其倚重传统史方法和正典评断学，以以色列思想史为基本维度，分析希伯来圣经中蕴含着的文本与群体、群体与群体、文本与文本之间的丰富而复杂的关系，展现其中的文学、史学与神学世界。

This classic work on literary criticism by Professor Adele Berlin introduces the reader to the colorful world of poetics (literary conventions) used in the construction of biblical narratives. Her book is divided into 6 parts: Poetics and Interpretation, Character and Characterization, Point of View, Poetics in the Book of Ruth, Poetic Interpretation and Historical-Critical Methods, and The Art of Biblical Narrative.

《圣经叙事的艺术》旨在引导读者更好地理解圣经的叙事艺术。在前两章里，作者从两个方面来着手解释，一是这种引导的必要性，二是其概念原理。《圣经叙事的艺术》的既定目标乃在阐明圣经叙事的一些独特的艺术原则。书中列举了许多实例，不论长短，都配有评析，并始终是为了举例说明基本原则，而不是为了全面地或就个别段落进行评论。这里所讲的圣经仅指希伯来圣经。

希伯来《圣经》的叙事极具艺术品质，但西人的研究于此颇为淡漠。这
本由巴埃弗拉特所著，李锋译的《圣经的叙事艺术》的关注，恰在于《圣经
》叙事的形式与结构。作者首论叙事人与叙事模式，再谈人物塑造、情节构
成、时间空间和文体细节，最后加以统括。《圣经的叙事艺术》视《圣经》
为文学，意在为其叙事提供指南，展现一番全新的阅读方式，其中所涉文学
特征以众多实例旁证之，遍及全经，惟《创世记》与《撒母耳记》为重。出
版以来，本书被誉为“圣经文学领域中划时代的创举”。

Lewis writes here about the difficulties he has met or the joys he has gained in reading the Psalms. He points out that the Psalms are poems, intended to be sung, not doctrinal treatises or sermons. Proceeding with his characteristic grace, he guides readers through both the form and the meaning of these beloved passages in the Bible.

How should Israel's waiting for their land shape our reading of the Pentateuch, and how should this shape the hope of the church today? Treating the Pentateuch as a coherent and progressive story, Waiting for the Land is the first book-length exploration of these questions. Following an introduction to the Pentateuch, Leder examines each book, showing that the promise of the land was not realized. He then shows how the contemporary church should wait for its land.

There is currently much interest in the history of interpretation, reader-response and the sociology of sacred texts - in what the text does as much as what it means. Isaiah, 'more evangelist than prophet' according to Jerome and others, provides an ideal case study, because of his profound influence on the language and imagery of Christianity. With illustrations from art, music, literature and the media as well as commentaries, sermons and official church pronouncements, Professor Sawyer shows how Isaiah has been used in all kinds of context, from the cult of the Virgin Mary, mediaeval passion iconography and antisemitic propaganda to Christian feminism and liberation theology. This first attempt at a comprehensive critical study of an essential part of biblical interpretation will provide a model for further research, and ensure that commentaries will never be the same again.

While honoring the historical context and literary diversity of the Old Testament, Telling the Old Testament Story is a thematic reading that construes the OT as a complex but coherent narrative. Unlike standard, introductory textbooks that only cover basic background and interpretive issues for each Old Testament book, this introduction combines a thematic approach with careful exegetical attention to representative biblical texts, ultimately telling the macro-level story, while drawing out the multiple nuances present within different texts and traditions.
The book works from the Protestant canonical arrangement of the Old Testament, which understands the story of the Old Testament as the story of God and God’s relationship with all creation in love and redemption—a story that joins the New Testament to the Old. Within this broader story, the Old Testament presents the specific story of God and God’s relationship with Israel as the people called, created, and formed to be God’s covenant partner and instrument within creation.
The Old Testament begins by introducing God’s mission in Genesis. The story opens with the portrait of God’s good, intended creation of right-relationships (Gen 1—2) and the subsequent distortion of that good creation as a result of humanity’s rebellion (Gen 3—11). Genesis 12 and following introduce God’s commitment to restore creation back to the right-relationships and divine intentions with which it began. Coming out of God’s new covenant engagement with creation in Gen 9, this divine purpose begins with the calling of a people (who turn out to be the manifold descendants of Abraham and Sarah) to be God’s instrument of blessing for all creation and thus to reverse the curse brought on by sin. The diverse traditions that comprise the remainder of the Pentateuch then combine to portray the creation and formation of Israel as a people prepared to be God’s instrument of restoration and blessing. As the subsequent Old Testament books portray Israel’s life in the land and journey into and out of exile, the reader encounters complex perspectives on Israel’s attempts to understand who God is, who they are as God’s people, and how, therefore, they ought to live out their identity as God’s people within God’s mission in the world. The final prophetic books that conclude the Protestant Old Testament ultimately give the story of God’s mission and people an open-ended quality, suggesting that God’s mission for God’s people continues and leading Christian readers to consider the New Testament’s story of the Church as an extension and expansion of the broader story of God introduced in the Old Testament.
The main methodological perspective that informs the book includes work on the phenomenological function of narrative (especially story’s function to shape the identity and practice of the reader), as well as more recent so-called “missional” approaches to reading Christian scripture. Canonical criticism provides the primary means for relating the distinctive voices within the Old Testament texts that still honor the particularity and diversity of the discrete compositions.
Accessibly written, this book invites readers to enter imaginatively into the biblical story and find the Old Testament's lively and enduring implications.

Schocken's classic collection (here in its original hardcover format) of short midrashim includes material from various aggadic sources and presents the general reader with a varied and engaging introduction to rabbinic theology. In addition to the midrashic material, the book includes an explanatory preface and 15 pages of notes and sources.

Rabbi Sasso explores how Midrash originated, how it is still used today, and offers new translations and interpretations of more than twent essential Midrash texts.