This volume illustrates the ways in which the discovery of the scrolls has altered our paradigms of biblical interpretation, investigating connections within and between Jewish and Christian interpretive texts.

2007 marked the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls. The 11th International Orion Symposium (January, 2007), “New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity,” provided a measure of the ways in which the discovery of the scrolls has altered the paradigms for textual and historical studies in the intervening six decades. The papers in this volume address such issues as the connections and distinctions between Jewish interpretation within the Land of Israel and outside of it; between Jewish and Christian exegesis in earlier and later periods; between biblical interpretation in literature and in art; between interpretation and the formation of the biblical canon.

This volume assembles several important studies that examine the role of language in meaning and interpretation. The various contributions investigate interpretation in the versions, in intertestamental traditions, in the New Testament, and in the rabbis and the targumim. The authors, who include well-known veterans as well as younger scholars, explore the differing ways in which the language of Scripture stimulates the understanding of the sacred text in late antiquity and gives rise to important theological themes. This book is a significant resource for any scholar interested in the interpretation of Scripture in and just after the biblical period.

This book explores the way that the Torah was appreciated and interpreted as a text and symbol in Christian and Jewish sources from the Second Temple period through the Middle Ages. It tracks the development and complex interactions of three images of Torah— “God-like,” “Angelic,” and “Messianic”— which are found in late-antique Jewish and Christian materials as well as in medieval kabbalistic and Jewish philosophic sources. It provides a unique template for tracing the development of theological ideas related to the images of Torah and offers a sophisticated and innovative analysis of the relationship between mystical experience, theology, and phenomenology.

The nature and origin of Jewish mysticism is a controversial subject. This volume explores the subject by examining both the Hebrew and Aramaic tradition (Dead Sea Scrolls, 1 Enoch) and the Greek philosophical tradition (Philo) and also examines the Christian transformation of Jewish mysticism in Paul and Revelation. It provides for a nuanced treatment that differentiates different strands of thought that may be considered mystical. The Hebrew tradition is mythical in nature and concerned with various ways of being in the presence of God. The Greek tradition allows for a greater degree of unification and participation in the divine. The New Testament texts are generally closer to the Greek tradition, although Greek philosophy would have a huge effect on later Christian mysticism. The book is intended for scholars and advanced students of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.

In this volume Joshua Paul Smith challenges the long-held assumption that Luke and Acts were written by a gentile, arguing instead that the author of these texts was educated and enculturated within a Second-Temple Jewish context. Advancing from a consciously interdisciplinary perspective, Smith considers the question of Lukan authorship from multiple fronts, including reception history and social memory theory, literary criticism, and the emerging discipline of cognitive sociolinguistics. The result is an alternative portrait of Luke the Evangelist, one who sees the mission to the gentiles not as a supersession of Jewish law and tradition, but rather as a fulfillment and expansion of Israel’s own salvation history.

The Jewish culture of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods established a basis for all monotheistic religions, but its main sources have been preserved to a great degree through Christian transmission. This Guide is devoted to problems of preservation, reception, and transformation of Jewish texts and traditions of the Second Temple period in the many Christian milieus from the ancient world to the late medieval era. It approaches this corpus not as an artificial collection of reconstructed texts--a body of hypothetical originals--but rather from the perspective of the preserved materials, examined in their religious, social, and political contexts. It also considers the other, non-Christian, channels of the survival of early Jewish materials, including Rabbinic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic. This unique project brings together scholars from many different fields in order to map the trajectories of early Jewish texts and traditions among diverse later cultures. It also provides a comprehensive and comparative introduction to this new field of study while bridging the gap between scholars of early Judaism and of medieval Christianity.