The apocalypse literary genre creates a reader expectation of the apocalyptic worldview. The Book of Jubilees uses the apocalypse genre to express a worldview that diverges significantly from the cluster of views typically conveyed by the apocalypse genre. This paper focuses on one aspect of the genre and the worldview. The Book of Jubilees uses…[Read more]

The comparison of Qoheleth and Gilgamesh begins with the so-called carpe diem advice of Siduri and Eccl 9:7-9. Additionally, the rhetoric of kingship evoked through Gilgamesh’s narû (“stele”) at the beginning of the epic parallels the royal voice of Qoheleth beginning in Eccl 1:12. Yet these similarities raise several historical issues. First,…[Read more]

This paper offers an alternative approach to Luke 2:1-7, assuming for argument’s sake that Luke’s presumed chronology agreed with modern reconstructions in placing Quirinius’ census some years after Herod’s death. It is proposed that, on this basis, a coherent reading of the text is feasible in which the reference to Quirinius marks 2:1-5 as a…[Read more]

The aim of this contribution is to review some of the major areas of current research on the Arabic Bible, along with the factors and trends contributing to them. Also we present some of the tools that are currently under development in the Biblia Arabica team, Munich.

We provide here a very condensed survey of the transmission of traditions,…[Read more]

This is a book review (pre-print) of the 2013 CIPL edited volume on scriptoria.

This is a book review (pre-print) of the 2014 book by Lifshitz.

This is a book review (published version) of the 2015 book on Carolingian monasteries edited by Becker, Licht and Weinfurter.

This chapter examines a particular miscellany manuscript’s strategies for arranging its texts for ease of use, legibility and coherence. It argues that such manuscripts were purposefully compiled and that their texts were enhanced by others produced in the same codicological context, showing that early medieval book-making was an innovative and…[Read more]

This essay explores the different ways parts of the Hebrew Bible have been described as historiography. It’s an old essay whose usefulness is limited to giving the reader a snapshot of the state of the question in biblical historiography at the height of the maximalist-minimalist debate.

This essay looks at how the Persian authorization to rebuild of Jewish temple at Elephantine reflects imperial policy and sheds light on post-exilic Judaism.

In this essay I sketch an outline of how the book of Isaiah presents its politics, working from the assumption—based on the research of Peter Ackroyd and others—that the presentation of Isaiah, the prophet, in the book’s opening chapters is key. I end up arguing that the book advocates for Davidic politics, as others have claimed, but that its d…[Read more]

Applies theory of literature as simulation speech to argue that knowledge of the Lord is not reflected in texts of the Hebrew Bible but created by them.

A review of Sören Petershans’s revised dissertation entitled Offenbarung des Namens und versöhntes Leben: Eine Untersuchung zur Gotteslehre bei Kornelis Heiko Miskotte, Arbeiten zur Systematischen Theologie 11 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016).

The subject of this paper is a fragment of a liturgical book that is a part of the manuscript fragment collection in the holdings of the Utrecht University Library Special Collections. The fragment was brought to light in the 1960s, after it was rebound into a manuscript belonging to the St. Paul’s Abbey, Utrecht, where it was inserted during t…[Read more]

Manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6298 contains an as yet unexamined fragment of the second batch of the gospel glosses (EvII) from the biblical commentaries of the Canterbury School inserted as an addition in 3r of the manuscript. In this article, I describe this fragment, and I attempt to contextualize its insertion into the…[Read more]

‘If God Meant to Interfere’: Evolution and Theodicy in Blood Meridian

Taking the late ninth-century Breton Gesta Sactorum Rotonensium as a starting point, this article aims to demonstrate that there is more to the biblical quotations and allusions employed by early medieval hagiographers than initially meets the eye. By juxtaposing the stories these quotations are in with their ‘original’ biblical context, as wellas…[Read more]

Besides glosses and other textual annotations, early medieval Latin manuscript commonly feature technical signs, annotation symbols and sigla that reflect readership or provide a framework for interpretation and use. The early medieval Insular book users were particularly keen on using such devices. This article maps the usage of technical signs…[Read more]

The extensive chains of excerpts from the Scriptures and other sources in two of the narratives prominent in the Virtutes apostolorum, the Acts of Peter (BHL 6663) and the Acts of Paul (BHL 6575) are studied in order to come to a clearer understanding of the origin of these Latin texts. The Virtutes apostolorum is an amalgam of textual material…[Read more]

A response to Erin Runions’ monograph, The Babylon Complex: Theopolitical Fantasies of War, Sex, and Sovereignty (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014)