The Bible in the English language is among the great achievements of all time, not only as a masterpiece of inspired writing but as a witness to the place of the Scriptures in the life of the English-speaking peoples, and Bruce's work, recognised for 30 years as the best on its subject, documents its history and shows the impact of some of the translations on the use and development of the English language. Formerly The English Bible, this comprehensive study of the various English translationsof the Bible is again available in paperback. The author traces the story from the earliest partial translations in Saxon times, through Wycliffe, Tyndale and The King James Version, to the publication of such contemporary versions as The New English Bible, The New American Standard Version, The Living Bible, and The Good News Bible. Authoritative and highly readable, this remains one of the standard works on its subject.

This study provides a general overview and a succinct analysis of the primary ways in which the Old Testament has been received, interpreted and conveyed within Eastern Orthodox tradition, filling a vacuum in scholarly literature on the history of biblical interpretation. The book is divided into two parts: Reception and Interpretation. Under Reception issues such as unity and diversity of the Christian Bible, text, canon, and Tradition are considered. The second part, Interpretation, focuses on Eastern Orthodox modes of interpretation: discursive and intuitive. Among the discursive modes, the patristic exegesis is chosen as a case study. The intuitive modes representing the so-called "liturgical exegesis" are subdivided into aural (hymns, psalmody, lectionaries) and visual (portable icons, frescoes, mosaics). A special emphasis is placed on the hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox reception and interpretation of the Old Testament, including: the centrality of Scripture within Tradition, a blend of flexibility and strictness at all levels of the faith community, integrative function and holistic use of the sacred text, a tensed unity of discursive and intuitive modes of interpretation, and a dynamic synergy between formative and informative goals in the use of Scripture.

Covers the emergence of hermeneutical questions in the patristic period.

In Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1-4 Dan Nässelqvist investigates the oral delivery of New Testament writings in early Christian communities of the first two centuries C.E. He examines the role of lectors and public reading in the Greek and Roman world as well as in early Christianity. Nässelqvist introduces a method of sound analysis, which utilizes the correspondence between composition and delivery in ancient literary writings to retrieve information about oral delivery from the sound structures of the text being read aloud. Finally he applies the method of sound analysis to John 1–4 and presents the implications for our understanding of public reading and the Gospel of John.

This volume engages with antisemitic stereotypes as religious symbols that express and transmit a belief system of Jew-hatred. These religious symbols are stored in Christian, Muslim and even today’s secular cultural and religious memories. This volume explores how antisemitic religious symbol systems can play a key role in the construction of group identities.

Lee Martin McDonald provides a magisterial overview of the development of the biblical canon --- the emergence of the list of individual texts that constitutes the Christian bible. In these two volumes -- in sum more than double the length of his previous works -- McDonald presents his most in-depth overview to date. McDonald shows students and researchers how the list of texts that constitute 'the bible' was once far more fluid than it is today and guides readers through the minefield of different texts, different versions, and the different lists of texts considered 'canonical' that abounded in antiquity. Questions of the origin and transmission of texts are introduced as well as consideration of innovations in the presentation of texts, collections of documents, archaeological finds and Church councils. In the first volume McDonald reexamines issues of canon formation once considered settled, and sets the range of texts that make up the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) in their broader context. Each indidvidual text is discussed, as are the cultural, political and historical situations surrounding them. This second volume considers the New Testament, and the range of so-called 'apocryphal' gospels that were written in early centuries, and used by many Christian groups before the canon was closed. Also included are comprehensive appendices which show various canon lists for both Old and New Testaments and for the bible as a whole.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism Shortlisted for the Christian Gauss Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society A history of the chapter from its origins in antiquity to today Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing how an ancient editorial technique became a universally recognized component of narrative art and a means to register the sensation of time. Dames begins with the textual compilations of the Roman world, where chapters evolved as a tool to organize information. He goes on to discuss the earliest divisional systems of the Gospels and the segmentation of medieval romances, describing how the chapter took on new purpose when applied to narrative texts and how narrative segmentation gave rise to a host of aesthetic techniques. Dames shares engaging and in-depth readings of influential figures, from Sterne, Goethe, Tolstoy, and Dickens to George Eliot, Machado de Assis, B. S. Johnson, Agnès Varda, Uwe Johnson, Jennifer Egan, and László Krasznahorkai. He illuminates the sometimes tacit, sometimes dramatic ways in which the chapter became a kind of reckoning with time and a quiet but persistent feature of modernity. Ranging from ancient tablets and scrolls to contemporary fiction and film, The Chapter provides a compelling, elegantly written history of a familiar compositional mode that readers often take for granted and offers a new theory of how this versatile means of dividing narrative sculpts our experience of time.