The essays in the present volume celebrate the work of Margaret M. Mitchell (University of Chicago) by engaging, extending, and challenging her ground-breaking research in three areas: (1) the letters of Paul the Apostle, both authentic and pseudepigraphic; (2) the emergence and rapid development of early Christian literary culture over the first few centuries of the cult’s existence; and (3) Late Antique interpretive practices and perspectives, particularly among patristic readers of the scriptures.

This volume celebrates Prof. Margaret M. Mitchell of the University of Chicago with incisive studies on the Apostle Paul, early Christian literary culture, and ancient interpretive practices and perspectives written by a prestigious group of scholars

Travel and pilgrimage have become central research topics in recent years. Some archaeologists and historians have applied globalization theories to ancient intercultural connections. Classicists have rediscovered travel as a literary topic in Greek and Roman writing. Scholars of early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been rethinking long-familiar pilgrimage practices in new interdisciplinary contexts. This volume contributes to this flourishing field of study in two ways. First, the focus of its contributions is on experiences of travel. Our main question is: How did travelers in the ancient world experience and make sense of their journeys, real or imaginary, and of the places they visited? Second, by treating Jewish, Christian, and Islamic experiences together, this volume develops a longue durée perspective on the ways in which travel experiences across these three traditions resembled each other. By focusing on "experiences of travel," we hope to foster interaction between the study of ancient travel in the humanities and that of broader human experience in the social sciences.

For over one hundred years the International Critical Commentary has had a special place amongst works on the Bible. This new volume on Galatians brings together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary and theological - to enable the scholar to have a complete knowledge and understanding of this New Testament book. Tuckett incorporates new evidence available in the field and applies new methods of studies. No uniform theological or critical approach to the text is taken.

Situates Pauline analysis within the context of early Christian institutions. Examines the hermeneutics of reception-historical studies.

The Bible shaped nearly every aspect of Jewish life in the ancient world, from activities as obvious as attending synagogue to those which have lost their scriptural resonance in modernity, such as drinking water and uttering one's last words. And within a scriptural universe, no work exerted more force than the Psalter, the most cherished text among all the books of the Hebrew Bible. A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity clarifies the world of late ancient Judaism through the versatile and powerful lens of the Psalter. It asks a simple set of questions: Where did late ancient Jews encounter the Psalms? How did they engage with the work? And what meanings did they produce? A. J. Berkovitz answers these queries by reconstructing and contextualizing a diverse set of religious practices performed with and on the Psalter, such as handling a physical copy, reading from it, interpreting it exegetically, singing it as liturgy, invoking it as magic and reciting it as an act of piety. His book draws from and contributes to the fields of ancient Judaism, biblical reception, book history and the history of reading.

Voice, Text, Hypertext illustrates brilliantly why interest in textual studies has grown so dramatically in recent years. For the distinguished authors of these essays, a “text” is more than a document or material object. It is a cultural event, a matrix of decisions, an intricate cultural practice that may focus on religious traditions, modern “underground” literary movements, poetic invention, or the irreducible complexity of cultural politics. Drawing from classical Roman and Indian to modern European traditions, the volume makes clear that to study a text is to study a culture. It also demonstrates the essential importance of heightened textual awareness for contemporary cultural studies and critical theory—and, indeed, for any discipline that studies human culture.

This work explores the function and significance of Genesis 13 as well as the early reception of the separation of Abram and Lot.

By close engagement with both traditional and contemporary approaches to ancient Christian literature, this volume delineates a historiographical problem, at the same time rendering patristics as part of the subject-matter of a new literary history. The essays consider how one should account for the abiding formativeness of Latin Christian writing of the fourth and fifth centuries CE, and what demands such writing lay on a modern history of literature.

"A tightly argued and comprehensive treatment of an important area of New Testament studies." -- The Christian Century "By distinguishing oral from written modes of transmission, Kelber skillfully unlocks new doors for biblical interpretation." -- Theology Today What happens when speech turns into text? Spoken words, operating from mouth to ear, process knowledge differently from writing which links the eye to the visible, but silent letters on the page. Based on this premise, Werner Kelber discusses orality and writing, and the interaction between the two, at strategic points in the early Christian traditions. In digressing from conventional literary criticism, the book offers new, and often startling insights into the origins of Christianity.