This volume contains the five papers read at a Symposium held in Leiden on 10 December 1991, on the occasion of the centenary of Abraham Kuenen's death, together with four other articles. The introductory article gives a short biography of Kuenen, one article deals with his method, two concern his approach to the religion of ancient Israel, and the other six discuss the reception of his work on the Pentateuch and later developments in various countries. Together these articles highlight the significance of this great Old Testament scholar, and at the same time identify issues which continue to confront Old Testament research. Though the wide variety of new approaches to the Old Testament has contributed greatly to our understanding of it, it is clear that historical research has not been rendered obsolete or superfluous by it.

The French Catholic priest and biblical scholar Alfred Loisy (1857-1940) was at the heart of the Roman Catholic Modernist crisis in the early part of the twentieth century. He saw much of his work as an attempt to bring John Henry Newman’s notion of development of doctrine into the realm of Catholic biblical studies, and thereby transform Catholic theology. This volume situates Loisy’s better known works on the New Testament and theology in the context of his lesser known work in Assyriology and Old Testament studies. His early training in Assyriology taught Loisy a comparative historical approach to studying ancient texts, in addition to providing him the requisite training in ancient Near Eastern languages and literature. Loisy built upon this Assyriological foundation with his historical critical work in biblical studies, first in the Old Testament. In his biblical scholarship, Loisy combined the then current trends of historical biblical criticism with his more comparative approach. Prior to his excommunication in 1908, Loisy attempted in his more popular writings to defend the inclusion of historical biblical criticism in the repertoire of Catholic biblical interpretation. He saw this as an important step in reforming Catholic theology. The Modernist crisis set the stage for the major debates that would occur in the Catholic theological world for more than a century. The controversy over Modernism became one important conflict that helped pave the way for the Second Vatican Council. The issues raised during Loisy’s time, remain contested today. Examining how Loisy approached biblical studies helps readers better understand his overall work, and the place it played in the pivotal intellectual turmoil of his day.

In modern literary studies intertextuality is at the centre of interest. Although the relationship between texts has always been an important aspect of Old Testament studies, especially in literary criticism, the scale of comparison has broadened, including for example the interrelationships between the First, Second and Third Isaiah, or the whole Book of the Twelve. These relatively new approaches raise a number of methodical questions which were addressed at the Tenth Joint Meeting of the British Society for Old Testament Study and the Dutch 'Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap', held at Oxford, 22nd to 25th July 1997. Did the ancient authors have a well-defined concept of a book? How did they relate to the literary work of their predecessors and contemporaries? Can we trace the theological motifs behind their use of other literary compositions? What does an ancient version reveal about the way it interpreted its source text? One of the problems confronting biblical scholars in this kind of research is the lack of controllable models. Therefore it is useful to study the work of the Ugaritic chief priest Ilimilku whose three major literary compositions provide us with a unique possibility to monitor intertextual relationships in the work of one and the same ancient author. Ugaritic and other ancient Near Eastern parallels help us to understand how the Priestly writer re-interpreted the Yahwistic account of the creation of mankind. Apparently intertextuality in Israel is a phenomenon which cannot properly be understood without taking other literature from the ancient world into account.

The Bible is likely the most-edited book in history, yet the task of editing the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the Bible is fraught with difficulties. The dearth of Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Scriptures and the substantial differences among those witnesses creates difficulties in determining which text ought to be printed as the text of the Jewish Scriptures. For the New Testament, it is not the dearth of manuscripts but the overwhelming number of manuscripts—almost six thousand Greek manuscripts and many more in other languages—that presents challenges for sorting and analyzing such a large, multivariant data set. This volume, representing experts in the editing of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, discusses both current achievements and future challenges in creating modern editions of the biblical texts in their original languages. The contributors are Kristin De Troyer, Michael W. Holmes, John S. Kloppenborg, Sarianna Metso, Judith H. Newman, Holger Strutwolf, Eibert Tigchelaar, David Trobisch, Eugene Ulrich, John Van Seters, Klaus Wachtel, and Ryan Wettlaufer.

This book forms a contribution to the vexing question of the origin and growth of the Targum to the Prophets. It provides an in-depth analysis of the Targum of Judges on the basis of new materials (unpublished manuscripts), a new tool (bilingual concordance) and a new method (analysis of consistency). A critical review of previous research concerning the Targum's origin and growth is followed by an analysis and collations of many Western manuscripts, a systematic comparison of the Targum with the ancient translations, a study of its exegetical traditions and a thorough examination of its consistency. On this basis it is suggested that the Targum assumed its basic form in the second century CE, due to the emergency of the rabbinic tradition, but outside the context of the synagogue.

Exegesis starts with the delimitation of the pericope to be interpreted. Yet the principles for selecting passages which form the part of departure for the exegete are seldom made explicit and if one compares various commentaries and Bible translations, it soon becomes apparent that this lack of methodical transparency gives rise to a lot of confusion and dissent. In this work the authors make use of text divisions found in ancient Hebrew, Greek and Syriac manuscripts of Isaiah 40-55 (Deutero-Isaiah). For the first time the poetic structure of the text is based on controllable evidence which is roughly 500-1000 years older than the medieval Masoretic manuscripts on which all modern editions are based. The results are astonishing and raise the question why this type of evidence has been largely neglected thus far.

The Israelite prophets as historical persons, as literary characters and as anonymous artists. Whereas modern methods of literary analysis have brought the artistic qualities of the books of the Prophets increasingly into focus during the past century, various modes of deconstruction have made the historical prophets themselves an ever more elusive phenomenon. Passages in the Old Testament describing their work and experiences are not read as biography anymore, but as literary fiction intended to picture the prophets as heroes of faith. The real ‘prophets’ were the anonymous artists who were responsible for the final editing of the legacy of the historical prophets and who often used the authority of their predecessors to promulgate their own theological views. This volume brings together studies about this theme by members of the British and Dutch societies for Old Testament study. Attempts to recover some of the biographical data and authentic experiences of the prophets alternate with penetrating analyses of the theological depth and stylistic virtuosity of the prophetic books.The volume will be particularly useful to all those interested in the interpretation of the prophetic books of the Old Testament.

The Isaiah ‘Apocalypse’, Isaiah 24-27, is an enigmatic text. Linguistic structure and literary composition can not be discerned easily. The contributions to this volume, the result of studies and discussions which have taken place in the Dutch Isaiah Workshop, treat various aspects of this problem. The overall structure of the ‘Apocalypse’ is investigated from three rather new points of view, that of text syntax, verse structure and traditional, e.g. Massoretic, segmentation. Other studies of this volume deal with difficult passages and interesting themes. Attention is also given to the most persistent interpretative problem: what is the cohesion of the text as far as time, place and action or actants are concerned? An annotated translation and a select bibliography complete this stimulating volume.