Full Description
This volume presents a collection of essays aimed at further integration of literary analysis in the study of the Hebrew Bible. In three sections, Bodner studies a range of texts in order to illustrate that literary analysis has value for exploring numerous issues in the discipline, including text-critical problems, the Deuteronomistic History, and Chronicles.
Beginning with a discussion of how literary analysis is a vital, yet neglected, component of textual criticism, Bodner then offers a sustained engagement with one particular section of the Hebrew Bible, the so-called "ark narrative" of 1 Samuel 4-6. Other areas of the Hebrew Bible are subsequently explored, including a sample of the historiographic material in the Deuteronomistic History and a lengthy text from the book of Proverbs. Part four turns to the often neglected books of 1 & 2 Chronicles, illustrating how the Chronicler's work is a congenial site for literary study. The assembled essays petition for a heightened awareness of the artistic achievement of the Hebrew Bible and illustrate that literary thinking is a necessary component for biblical interpretation.
Contents
Introduction
Part One: Textual Problems and Literary Analysis
1.Crime Scene Investigation: A Text-Critical Mystery and the Strange Death of Ishbosheth
2.The Locutions of 1 Kings 22:28: A New Proposal
3.The "Embarrassing Syntax" of Psalm 47:10: A (Pro)vocative Option
Part Two: Readers of the Lost Ark
4. Ark-eology: Shifting Emphases in "Ark Narrative" Scholarship
5. Mouse Trap: A Text-Critical Problem with Rodents in the Ark Narrative
Part Three: Further Soundings
6. A Bad News Bearer: The Dramatic Fulfillment of a Prophetic Word about the Dissolution of a Priestly Line/7. Highway to Sheol: Seductive Speech and Promiscuous Places in Proverbs 7
Part Four: The World of Chronicles
8.The Royal Skull in a Temple of Doom: An Interpretation of 1 Chronicles 10:10
9.Abijah's Elevated Rhetoric and the Civil War of 2 Chronicles 13
10. Capital Punishment: The Configuration of Ahaziah's Last Hours in 2 Chronicles 22
Conclusion
