Ecclesiastes, also known as Qohelet, is a fascinating text filled with intriguing contradictions, such as wisdom’s beneficial consequences, God’s justice, and wisdom’s superiority over pleasure. Under the paradigm of modernism, the contradictions in the book have been regarded as problems to be harmonized or explained away. In Reanimating Qohelet’s Contradictory Voices, Jimyung Kim, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s insights, offers an alternative reading that embraces the contradictions as they stand. For Kim, Qohelet’s or the protagonist’s contradictory consciousness is dialogically constructed by his contact with a complex web of discourses. Instead of harmonizing them or explaining them away, Kim identifies various dialogic voices available to Qohelet and demonstrates how those voices constitute Qohelet’s contradictory utterances and construct his unfinalizable identity.

The T&T Clark Handbook of Suffering and the Problem of Evil provides an extensive exploration of the theology of theodicy, asking questions such as should all instances of suffering necessarily be understood as evil? Why would an omnipotent and benevolent God allow or perpetrate evil? Is God unable or unwilling to reduce human and non-human suffering on Earth? Does humanity have the capacity to exercise a moral evaluation of God's motives and intentions? Conventional disciplinary boundaries have tended to separate theological approaches to these questions from philosophical ones. This volume aims to overcome these boundaries by including biblical (Part I), historical (Part II), doctrinal (Part III), philosophical (Part IV), and pastoral, interreligious perspectives and alternative intersections (Part V) on theodicy. Authors include thinkers from analytic and continental traditions, multiple Christian denominations and other religions, and both established and younger scholars, providing a full variety of approaches. What unites the essays is an attempt to answer these questions from the perspective of biblical testimony, historical scholarship, modern theological and philosophical thinking about the concept of God, non-Christian religions, science and the arts. The result is a combination of in-depth analysis and breadth of scope, making this a benchmark work for further studies in the theology of suffering and evil.

The series Studies and Texts in Scepticism contains monographs, translations, and collected essays exploring scepticism in its dual manifestation as a purely philosophical tradition and as a set of sceptical strategies, concepts, and attitudes in the cultural field - especially in religions, perhaps most notably in Judaism. In such cultural contexts scepticism manifests as a critical attitude towards different dimensions and systems of secular or revealed knowledge and towards religious and political authorities. It is not merely an intellectual or theoretical worldview, but a critical form of life that expresses itself in such diverse phenomena as religion, literature, and society. Further book series of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies are Jewish Thought, Philosophy, and Religion and the Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advances Studies.

Ecclesiastes is the most surprising book in the Scriptures. It challenges its readers to reconsider what they think life is about and how far it is possible to understand God’s involvement in the world. This commentary seeks to help people enter the world of Ecclesiastes and see how it can increase their understanding of God and of themselves.

Offers an interdisciplinary interpretation of Ecclesiastes based on psychological research and a wide-ranging context of ancient literature.

In Dialogue on Monarchy in the Gideon-Abimelech Narrative, Albert Sui Hung Lee applies Bakhtin’s dialogism to uncover pro- and anti-monarchical voices in the Gideon–Abimelech narrative and the redactor’s intention of engaging exilic or post-exilic communities in an “unfinalized” dialogue of polity forms.

Wisdom literature is an unfamiliar genre to modern readers and presents many interpretive challenges. In this major new work, respected wisdom scholar Timothy Sandoval argues that the book of Proverbs, though difficult to access for some, provides a coherent moral vision for human flourishing. The approach Sandoval argues for in The Moral Vision of Proverbs is that of virtue ethics, or character ethics, particularly that which emerges from the classical tradition of Aristotle (as opposed to reading the book, intentionally or unintentionally, through the lenses of modern ethical systems). Sandoval engages with specialists in this ethical tradition as well as biblical scholars to make his case that Proverbs is an ancient, virtue-oriented moral discourse. This comprehensive critical study of Proverbs analyzes the book's major topics and strives to discern the moral and philosophical presuppositions and logic of its rhetoric, all the while engaging past and present interpretive approaches. Although authored by a Christian scholar, this text will be of great interest to a broadly ecumenical audience, whether students of the Old Testament/Tanakh/Hebrew Bible, biblical scholars, or Christian ethicists and moral theologians.

Like the first two books in this series (WealthWatch and WealthWarn), this volume attempts to do two things: (a) examine the primary socioeconomic motifs in the Bible from a comparative intertextual perspective, and (b) trace the trajectory formed by these motifs through Tanak into early Jewish and Nazarene texts. Where WealthWatch focuses on Torah and WealthWarn focuses on the Prophets, WealthWise focuses on wisdom literature. The texts examined here include the Instructions of Shuruppak, Codex Hammurabi, the Poem of the Pious Sufferer (Ludlul bel nemeqi), the Babylonian Theodicy, the Shamash Hymn, the Dialogue of Pessimism, various Hittite texts, the Proverbs of Ahiqar, 4QInstruction, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” and the Epistle of James.

In The Dynamics of Human Life in the Bible: Receptivity and Power, Martin J. Buss describes the dynamics of human life that are encouraged in the Bible and how biblical guidance compares with other religious traditions. The dynamics include both receptivity (“from” another) and power (“for” or “over” another), often in combination (“with” another). For example, love joins receptive cognition of worth with energetic support. Receptivity, the only way to deal with fundamental values, seeks material and religious benefits and is the human side of revelation and salvation. Public acknowledgement strengthens divine influence. Furthermore, receptivity accepts challenges. These include individual and social growth and semi-identification with others, which has societal rather than concrete individual consequences. Power is crucial in legal remedies and penalties. Life with others is important in practical “wisdom” and in Christian “mutual love.” Buss finds that biblical directives parallel those of non-Christian religious traditions. This situation is in line with biblical views of general revelation and developments in history.

In Contested Creations in the Book of Job: the-world-as-it-ought- and -ought-not-to-be Abigail Pelham examines the perspectives on creation presented by Job’s characters and explores the challenges to their certainties about creative agency and power raised by its epilogue.