This volume examines numerous Hebrew wordplays not identified and discussed in previous research, and the technique of the Septuagint translators, by offering another criterion of evaluation – essentially, their concern about the style of translating Hebrew into Greek. Elizabeth Backfish's study analyzes seventy-four wordplays employed by the Hebrew poets of Psalms 90-106, and how the Septuagint renders Hebrew wordplay in Greek. Backfish estimates that the Septuagint translators were able to render 31% of the Hebrew semantic and phonetic wordplays (twenty-four total), most of which required some sort of transformation, or change, to the text in order to function in Greek. After providing a thorough summary of research methods on wordplay, definitions and research methodology, Backfish summarizes all examples of wordplay within the Fourth Psalter, and concludes with examples of the wordplay's replication, similar rendition or textual variation in the Septuagint. Emphasising the creativity and ingenuity of the Septuagint translators' work in passages that commentators often too quickly identify as the results of scribal error or a variant Vorlage from the Masoretic text, Backfish shows how the aptitude and flexibility displayed in the translation technique also contributes to conversations in modern translation studies.

This book, the first of a series, describes the course of modern interpretation of the book of Proverbs. The topics covered include origins, background and dating, literary aspects and theological ideas. More than 350 books and articles are discussed.

Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible.

Musica Poetica provides an unprecedented examination of the development of Baroque musical thought. The initial chapters, which serve as an introduction to the concept and teachings of musical-rhetorical figures, explore Martin Luther’s theology of music, the development of the Baroque concept of musica poetica, the idea of the affections in German Baroque music, and that music’s use of the principles and devices of rhetoric. Dietrich Bartel then turns to more detailed considerations of the musical-rhetorical figures that were developed in Baroque treatises and publications. After brief biographical sketches of the major theorists, Bartel examines those theorists’ interpretation and classification of the figures. The book concludes with a detailed presentation of the musical-rhetorical figures, in which each theorist’s definitions are presented in the original language and in parallel English translations. Bartel’s clear, detailed analysis of German Baroque musical-rhetorical figures, combined with his careful translations of interpretations of those figures from a wide range of sources, make this book an indispensable introduction and resource for all students of Baroque music.

“Kalimi, one of the esteemed specialists of the Chronicler’s work... has provided us an intriguing historical and theological study about the Chronicler’s work that will surely provoke further discussion.” — Stefan Beyerle, In: Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 37 (2006). “Among Biblical scholars of Jewish background, Kalimi shows an outstanding ability to see and draw relationships between original passages and sources as well as ancient and modern commentaries.... Kalimi accomplished what he promised in the title of the book: to demonstrate that the Chronicler is “an ancient Israelite historian.'" - Chen Yiyi, In: Journal of Ancient Civilizations 24 (2009). “The book is another important contribution to the study of Chronicles by an eminent expert on that field, and as such is indispensable on every scholar’s desk, not only in the field of Chronicles but also for everyone with an interest in biblical historiography in general.” – M. Marciak, In: The Polish Journal of Biblical Research 8 (2009). “Professor Kalimi is to be congratulated for these two works, which are perhaps the finest analysis of Chronicles in the recent decades. Tons of ink has been spent on discussions that have gone above basic questions that the author has analyzed point by point, and no doubt studies in the future have come in the work of Kalimi a base and inescapable benchmark for discussions.” – J.M. Tebes, In: Antiguo Oriente 8 (2010).

The first study to focus exclusively on the use in the Hebrew Bible of soundplay to allude to and interpret earlier literary traditions This book focuses on the way the biblical writers used allusive soundplay to construct theological discourse, that is, in service of their efforts to describe the nature of God and God's relationship to humanity. By showing that a variety of biblical books contain examples of allusive soundplay employed for this purpose, Kline demonstrates that this literary device played an important role in the growth of the biblical text as a whole and in the development of ancient Israelite and early Jewish theological traditions. Features: Demonstrates that allusive soundplay was a productive compositional technique in ancient Israel Identifies examples of innerbiblical allusion that have not been identified before A robust methodology for identifying soundplay in innerbiblical allusions

Understanding Arabic is an exciting new collection of studies by authors who investigate and outline the practical corollaries of Badawi's theory of Arabic.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.