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Isaiah 8:1–2 is an elusive text, in regard to both its interpretation and its import. In these verses, YHWH commands Isaiah to write למהר שלל חש בז on a large גליון with a חרט אנוש. The writing surface, writing tool, and message are obscure and contested. However, I argue that the puzzle of Isaiah's writing materials has not yet been persuasively solved, as scholarship has failed to consider Judah's Egyptian scribal heritage. With this context, the prophet's writing surface (גליון) can be correctly understood as a section of papyrus, and his tool (חרט אנוש) can be read as a red rush pen. These proposed identifications of Isaiah's tools harmonize with comparative, etymological, epigraphic, and art-historical evidence for scribalism in the Levant and Egypt. Moreover, they illuminate the purpose and genre of YHWH's message. It appears that Isaiah was borrowing the format and tropes of royal decrees, which were transcribed on large pieces of papyrus in front of witnesses. The use of red ink also hints at the text's significance. The scene described in Isa 8:1–2 thus indicates that prophecy had taken on the garb of written record. The word of God was becoming not just an oral message but an authoritative document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the redactional intentions of MT Jeremiah concerning the Oracles against the Nations (OANs) by comparing the OANs in MT Jeremiah with those in LXX Jeremiah. Since the OANs are the most conspicuous difference between the MT and LXX versions of Jeremiah, this study will contribute to the understanding of the formation and messages of the book of Jeremiah. In light of space limitations, this paper focuses on three major differences: (1) different placement of the OAN block, (2) different ordering of the nations within the OAN block, and (3) the redactions closely related to the OANs in MT Jer 25 (LXX 25:1-13, 32:1-24) and 45 (LXX 51:31-35). The three areas of comparison show that the redactor of MT Jeremiah repositioned, rearranged, and redacted the OANs and relevant chapters in order to promote a more positive outcome at the end of the book and to create the tripartite structure of judgment against Jerusalem (chs. 26-44), then the nations (chs. 45-49), and then Babylon (chs. 50-51). The move toward an emphasis on the judgment of the nations and finally of Babylon, the destroyer of Jerusalem, at the end of the book leads to a hopeful expectation of Judah's restoration. In the positive immediate literary context, the release of King Jehoiachin at the end of the book functions as a more explicit sign of future restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an introduction to and a transcription as well as English translation of a previously unknown Armenian fragment of the Gospel of Mark (15:4b-7a, 11b-14a), which is currently kept in a private collection in the Middle East. The fragment was extracted from the binding of a sixteenthor seventeenth-century Garšūnī codex that probably came from Diyarbakir in Turkey. The Armenian text is inscribed in the erkat'agir uncial ("iron-forged letters") that can approximately be assigned on paleographical grounds to the late tenth or eleventh century CE. The paper compares the textual variants of the newly identified fragment against the old Armenian text of the Gospel of Mark published by Johannes Zohrap in 1805. Although the text usually agrees with the Zohrap edition, at least one notable difference occurs in Mark 15:5. Finally, the attempt to reconstruct the fragment codicologically raises some questions concerning the format of the manuscript to which it originally belonged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have appeared concerning the meaning, provenance, and transmission of the famous saying "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt 11:30). This paper argues that the standard English translation of chrestos as "easy" is inaccurate. In order to open new interpretative avenues with other translation options, this argument illuminates a methodological aporia and well-known truism of reading. Scholarly understandings of the metaphor of the yoke are dependent not on the words in the passage but on interpretative decisions made by or for the reader concerning the nature of the text in which the metaphor stands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food laws of Lev 11:3-23 and Deut 14:3-20 are among the great enigmas of biblical law. This paper views the food laws as a series of "narrative paradigms" aimed at a high-context society in which information is shared and internalized. This shared social knowledge raises the question of how the common environment of ancient Israel would make the categories intuitively clear. The narrative paradigms make sense because they reflect day-to-day engagement with the environment. The paradigm cases identify certain characteristics of a taxonomic group, which are then negated. The effect is to convey a complex body of knowledge about what can and cannot be eaten in an economical, unambiguous, and practical manner. The laws build on one another, enabling the audience to accumulate knowledge as they progress through the different categories. In this way, the very construction of the categories clean and unclean—and hence the structure and presentation of the laws themselves—is shaped by practical wisdom. This is consistent with self-executing narrative rules elsewhere in biblical law. This reanalysis helps us to understand both the compositional strategy of the food laws and their social function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chronology and development of Qumran in Period I have been the subject of much debate. One of the most influential hypotheses to emerge is Jodi Magness's revision of Roland de Vaux's chronology. In this paper, we revisit a key point of Magness's chronology, namely, her suggestion that Qumran was destroyed and abandoned around 9/8 BCE and reinhabited ca. 4/1 BCE. Our analysis of the published evidence indicates that this conclusion can no longer be supported. Instead, we propose collapsing Periods I and II into one long phase of occupation with various architectural subphases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable recent debate has surrounded the interpretation of the relationship between David and Jonathan as portrayed in the books of Samuel. Building on the now-classic article by William Moran in which he argues that the term love (...) has a specialized political connotation in biblical and ancient Near Eastern treaty relationships, this paper demonstrates that the Hebrew terms ... ("delight") and ... ("lovely") in 1 Sam 19:1 and 2 Sam 1:23, 26 should be understood primarily with a political nuance. In particular, ... can denote individual favor or preference within an existing political relationship while ... can indicate divine favor or the beneficence of a royal figure. Supporting evidence for understanding ... and ... with a political nuance is drawn from the Hebrew Bible as well as from Old Aramaic, Phoenician, Assyrian, and Ugaritic texts. Taken together, the terms ... ,... , and ... underscore the political aspects of the relationship between David and Jonathan as depicted literarily in the books of Samuel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reading engages two important and related dimensions of Mark's scene of Legion entering the pigs. First, is the name Legion to be understood as signifying numbers (Gundry), or as a largely nonintegrated or secondary military detail (Marcus, Collins), or, as will be argued here, a military reference that is, along with other military terms and motifs, central to the scene? Second, how might we understand the demon's unusual request to enter the pigs? Seeking to integrate a military meaning for the name "Legion" with an explanation for the demon's request to enter the pigs, and employing imperial-critical, masculinity, and sociopolitical-narrative approaches, this paper highlights the scene's polyvalent gendered and military-imperial language that has often been neglected since Derrett's brief but undeveloped 1979 reference to it. My argument is that the scene inscribes Jesus's hegemonic masculinity even while it mocks Roman power as an out-of-control, demonic, militaristic, and (self-)destructive masculinity, and fantasizes Rome's defeat as womanly weakness at Jesus's superior, commanding, masculine hands. Attention to the scene's cross-gendering, which draws from imperial-critical and gendered perspectives, has been ignored in previous work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 1 John 2:2 the eighth corrected printing of Nestle-Aland27 (1994) lists three variants of μόνον in place of μονῶν. Since then more manuscripts have been added to the list. The 2003 Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior (ECM and NA28) provides nineteen variants, plus lacunae, for μόνον. Moreover, the presence of δέ and καί occurs in some manuscripts but not in others. The difference between these variants has the potential to affect their theological interpretation: it questions the authorship or editorship of the text; it alters the syntax and/or grammar of (v. 2c) οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δá½²μόνον (v. 2d) á¼€λλá½° καὶ περὶ á½…λου τοῦ κόσμου. The variants suggest a plurality of grammatical and theological interpretations of 1 John 2:2. Applying the criteria in the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) in the ECM, this paper evaluates the different readings of v. 2c in the textual tradition to see whether μόνον or μονῶν (with or without δέ-καί) is likely to be the initial text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new interpretation of Job 5:7 (traditionally translated "For man is born to trouble, as sparks fly upward"), one that would eliminate the fatalistic aphorism viewed by many scholars as problematic in light of Eliphaz's otherwise consistent defense of "practical" (as opposed to "speculative") biblical wisdom traditions. The proposal offered here is that the infinitive in the second colon traditionally viewed as a reference to "flight" (cwp I in the standard lexicons) could instead be interpreted as a reference to "gloom" (cwp II). The verse would then serve not as a simile but rather as Eliphaz's response to Job's words in 3:3-10, in which he "curses" the day of his birth by invoking a variety of "darkening" agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hebrew expression המד דינ("with an uplifted hand") is used in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls to convey defiance and arrogance. It is also used to qualify intent with respect to sin. This essay examines how data from the Qumran library significantly enhance our knowledge about how the expression was used in ancient Judaism. Special emphasis is placed on how a rare meaning found in the book of Numbers was used to shape religious law in many of the sectarian texts found at Qumran. Essene writers would not have made distinctions between what modern scholars label as Priestly and Holiness source materials in pentateuchal books, but modern literary analysis of the Pentateuch can shed light on how and why certain texts had the particular influences that they did in history. This paper suggests that the legal/literary innovations of the postexilic Holiness School ultimately played a role in the later development of Essene/sectarian constructions of Jewish identity. Literary and linguistic analyses can provide a partial genealogy of sin between the Holiness School and the Essenes. The Holiness School's extension of the concept of holiness from the collective to the individual made it possible for the Essenes to develop a unique notion of Jewish identity that tied the Torah faithfulness of various types of individuals to their community status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I suggest a new interpretation for the background of Ezek 13:17-23. Until recently, most interpreters have viewed the women in this pericope as witches and therefore evil; more recently a number of interpreters have stressed that it is only Ezekiel who regards these women as bad and that they should really be understood as female prophets who competed with Ezekiel. In contrast, I point out that the history of growth of the pericope has to be taken into account. As the text stands, the women are accused of being false prophets, like their male counterparts in vv. 1-16. But in an earlier layer of the text we find the women connected with some form of communication with the dead; this, in turn, fits with the munabbiātu found in the Emar texts. Because of the biblical prophets, they had been interpreted as female prophets as well, but the use of the verb nubbû in the context of caring/communicating with the dead suggests that they are religious specialists either communicating with or caring for the dead. This and the openness with which they are addressed in the Emar texts suggest that they were highly skilled specialists held in considerable regard. It is likely that the Hebrew תואבנתמ originally had a similar function and therefore high social status. The textual history of the book of Ezekiel turns them into female prophets at odds with Ezekiel; reception history turned these women into witches. In their own lifetimes they were probably well-respected religious specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]