Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.

This book on the Yahwist comes at the end of a long career of research on the Pentateuch in general and the Yahwist in particular. Van Seters’s interest in the Yahwist was stimulated by the 1964 presidential address of the Society of Biblical Literature, given by Professor Fredrick Winnett, “Rethinking the Foundations,” which focused on the Yahwist in Genesis. This interest followed a path of work on issues surrounding the Yahwist that culminated in three volumes, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (1992), The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers (1994), and A Law Book for the Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (2003). Over the last few years, it has become clear to Van Seters that readers of the three volumes on the Yahwist, which total more than 1,000 pages, easily lose sight of the Yahwist’s work as a whole and the way in which it provides a historical prologue and framework for D and the DtrH. In this book, Van Seters seeks to provide a summary sketch of the J history and to make clear how the Priestly corpus has been composed as a supplement to the Yahwist with a radically different form and point of view that has obscured the Yahwist’s historical narrative and theological perspective. Part one lays out in simple terms the basic form, structure, and theological perspective of the Yahwist’s history, where it has been interrupted by the inclusions of P, and how it is integrated into DtrH. The essays in part two are intended to bring the scholarly discussion of Van Seters’s earlier books on the Yahwist more up to date, and their order corresponds roughly to the order of the narrative in the first part of the book. Some of these articles have been published previously, but others are new and quite recent, including “The Yahwist as Historian.

This volume makes available both the most recent European scholarship on the Pentateuch and its critical discussion, providing a helpful resource and fostering further dialogue between North American and European interpreters. The contributors are Erhard Blum, David M. Carr, Thomas B. Dozeman, Jan Christian Gertz, Christoph Levin, Albert de Pury, Thomas Christian Roemer, Konrad Schmid, and John Van Seters.

This is a book about an ancient writer, the J writer--the Yahwist--who produced a work of political imagination. This work is embedded mainly in the first four books of the Bible, best known for some of the most popular and influential biblical stories in Genesis and Exodus. The purpose of the book is to represent the whole of the original story with attention to its own meaning, without the influence of the other literary strands with which it was later supplemented. Therefore the work includes a fresh, complete translation of the text of the J writer, who produced the Bible's first history. The translation itself helps to establish more clearly than ever the integrity of the J writer. The concern here is WHEN and WHY this history was written, especially in light of the concerns for justice and prosperity. Throughout it is demonstrated HOW and WHY this history comes from the court of David; it is a royal history of David's subjects as though they were descended from pastoral nomads such as Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. It is argued that the intended audience of the history was probably those bedouin who regularly visited the court of David in Hebron and Jerusalem. Here is a bold and brilliant representation of the J writer's composition, perhaps as it was originally intended to be read or heard. This ancient tour de force takes on new life in the hands of these skilled interpreters.

In this book Theodore Hiebert re-examines these assumptions, and offers a new understanding of the role of nature in biblical thought.

This groundbreaking volume of the Five Books of Moses shows and explains how the source texts were compiled: “A fundamental resource” (Peter Machinist, Harvard University). For centuries, biblical scholars have worked on discovering how the Bible came to be. The consensus among a broad range of experts is known as The Documentary Hypothesis: the idea that ancient writers produced documents of poetry, prose, and law over many centuries, which editors then used as sources to fashion the books of the Bible that people have read for the last two thousand years. In The Bible with Sources Revealed, eminent scholar Richard Elliott Friedman offers a new, visual presentation of the Five Books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—unlocking the complex and fascinating tapestry of their origins. Different colors and type styles allow readers to easily identify each of the distinct sources, showcasing Friedman's highly acclaimed and dynamic translation. This unique Bible provides a new means to explore the riches of scripture by: •Making it possible to read the source texts individually, to see their artistry, their views of God, Israel, and humankind, and their connection to their moment in history •Presenting the largest collection of evidence ever assembled for establishing and explaining the Documentary Hypothesis •Showing visually how the Bible was formed out of these sources •Helping readers appreciate that the Bible is a rich, complex, beautiful work as a result of the extraordinary way in which it was created.

The Pentateuch lies at the heart of the Western humanities. Yet despite nearly two centuries of scholarship, its historical origins and its literary history are still a subject of intense discussion. Critical scholarship has isolated multiple layers of tradition, inconsistent laws, and narratives that could only have originated from separate communities within ancient Israel, and were joined together at a relatively late stage by a process of splicing and editing. In effect, a number of independent scholarly discourses have emerged. Each centers on the Pentateuch, each operates with its own set of working assumptions, and each is confident of its own claims. This volume seeks to stimulate international discussion about the Pentateuch in order to help the discipline move toward a set of shared assumptions and a common discourse. Contributors: Reinhard Achenbach, Rainer Albertz, Yairah Amit, Joel S. Baden, Richard J. Bautch, Erhard Blum, Mark J. Boda, David M. Carr, Sidnie White Crawford, Thomas B. Dozeman, Cynthia Edenburg, Angela Roskop Erisman, Israel Finkelstein, Karin Finsterbusch, Georg Fischer, Tova Ganzel, Jan Christian Gertz, Shimon Gesundheit, David Ben-Gad HaCohen, Sara Japhet, Jan Joosten, John Kessler, Itamar Kislev, Ariel Kopilovitz, Reinhard G. Kratz, Armin Lange, Christoph Levin, Bernard M. Levinson, Risa Levitt Kohn, Michael A. Lyons, Noam Mizrahi, Christophe Nihan, Frank H. Polak, Christopher Rollston, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Thomas Romer, Konrad Schmid, William Schniedewind, Baruch J. Schwartz, Jean Louis Ska, Benjamin Sommer, Jean-Pierre Sonnet, Jeffrey Stackert, Marvin A. Sweeney, James W. Watts, Markus Witte, Jakob Wohrle, David P. Wright, Molly M. Zah

In this meticulously researched study, Konrad Schmid offers a historical clarification of the concept of “theology.” He then examines the theologies of the three constituent parts of the Hebrew Bible—the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings— before tracing how these theological concepts developed throughout the history of ancient Israel and early Judaism. Schmid not only explores the theology of the biblical books in isolation, but he also offers unifying principles and links between the distinct units that make up the Hebrew Bible. By focusing on both the theology of the whole Hebrew Bible as well as its individual pieces, A Historical Theology of the Hebrew Bible provides a comprehensive discussion of theological work within the Hebrew Bible.