In this new edition of a successful book (over 120,000 copies sold), now updated throughout, a leading expert on the social world of the Bible offers students a reliable guide to the manners and customs of the ancient world. From what people wore, ate, and built to how they exercised justice, mourned, and viewed family and legal customs, this illustrated introduction helps readers gain valuable cultural background on the biblical world. The attractive, full-color, user-friendly design will appeal to students, while numerous pedagogical features--including fifty photos, sidebars, callouts, maps, charts, a glossary of key terms, chapter outlines, and discussion questions--increase classroom utility. Previously published as Manners and Customs in the Bible.

Based on an international colloquium held at the University of Sheffield, this collection represents the first book-length encounter between biblical studies and the proliferating and controversial field of cultural studies. A multidisciplinary team of contributors engage in a multifaceted examination of the Bible's place in culture, ancient and modern, 'high' and 'low'. Contributors include Alice Bach, Fiona Black, Athalya Brenner, Robert Carroll, David Clines, Margaret Davies, Philip Davies, Philip Esler, Cheryl Exum, Yael Feldman, Jennifer Glancy, Jan Willem van Henten, David Jasper, Francis Landy, Barry Matlock, Stephen Moore, Hugh Pyper, John Rogerson, Regina Schwartz, William Scott, and Erich Zenger.

Beginning with Jesus' birth, Ken Bailey leads you on a kaleidoscopic study of Jesus throughout the four Gospels, examining the life and ministry of Jesus with attention to the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, Jesus' relationship to women, and especially Jesus' parables. The work dispels the obscurity of Western interpretations with a stark vision of Jesus in his original context.

This book examines the conjunction between migration and biblical texts with a focus on Latinx histories and experiences. Essays reflect upon Latinxs, the Bible, and migration in different ways: some consider how the Bible is used in the midst of, or in response to, Latinx experiences and histories of migration; some use Latinx histories and experiences of migration to examine Biblical texts in both First and Second Testaments; some consider the “Bible” as a phenomenological set of texts that respond to and/or compel migration. Cultural, literary, and postcolonial theories inform the analysis, as does the exploration of how migrant groups themselves scripturalize their biblical and cultural texts.

This topical volume deals with the adoption of biblical language and narrative and the presentation of 'biblical' images and themes in popular literature, art and mass media. The chapters, all written by experts in cultural studies of the Bible, explore how ideologies are produced, in various ways, when biblical texts are brought into play with each other, with other texts, and with the inevitable and continual demands for cultural and historical "translation"-or "recycling"-of the scriptures. The volume contains some theoretical reflections, but focuses on specific examples of cultural translation, and is directed primarily at advanced (graduate) students and scholars in biblical studies, popular studies, media studies, literature, and the arts, although some articles will also be of value and interest to introductory students and the general public. The contributors to this volume are Fiona Black, Susan Lochrie Graham, Chris Heard, Helen Leneman, Phyllis Silverman Kramer, Tina Pippin, Caroline Vader Stichele, Lori Rowlett, Erin Runions, Jan William Tarlin and Richard Walsh.

In this groundbreaking study of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, Kenneth Bailey examines the canonical letter through Paul's Jewish socio-cultural and rhetorical background and through the Mediterranean context of its Corinthian recipients.

"Key contributions to scholarship in biblical studies that engages or is influenced by cultural studies are presented in this volume of critical readings. The volume focuses on harder to locate foundational pieces and presents them in line with more recent studies to situate and trace the revolution in biblical studies that led rise to the wealth of work in reception history and the study of cultural engagements with the bible. As a result the volume provides a grounding in key theoretical perspectives, and history of scholarship as well as an orientation to the discipline as it is now. As with other volumes in the Critical Readings series the volume features a general introduction, as well as introductions each section of the book: theoretical underpinnings, characters and passages in popular culture, motifs and methods, film and television. These introductions situate and frame the readings for readers and researchers. At the end of each section is an annotated bibliography of further readings, which will prompt further research and discussion."--