Job and Habakkuk represent the Bible’s most focused interlocutors on the concepts of justice and theodicy. Both works center upon men chosen by God who see and suffer evil (Job 1:8, cf. Hab 1:1). Both books record the cries of these men as they wrestled to make sense of the world in which they lived (Job 3, cf. Hab 1:2–4). While they have a passing similarity, what if there is something more fundamental to their connection? What if these books are not merely two unconnected discourses on suffering, but linked in a significant way? By examining the texts themselves, this study explores the possibility that a textual relationship exists between portions of Habakkuk and Job and how the underlying transformation of Job’s theodicy shapes Habakkuk’s dialogue with God.

Publisher description: Blenkinsopp investigates three forms of biblical Israel's religious leadership, and examines the development and character of these roles and how they functioned in their particular time and place. Based on sociological insights regarding role theory and audience expectations, the book demonstrates how Israel's prophets, priests, and sages represented their own traditions while responding to the political and professional pressures of their unique situations.

In this second volume of his long-anticipated five-volume collection of parashat hashavua commentaries, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks explores these intersections as they relate to universal concerns of freedom, love, responsibility, identity, and destiny. Chief Rabbi Sacks fuses Jewish tradition, Western philosophy, and literature to present a highly developed understanding of the human condition under Gods sovereignty. Erudite and eloquent, Covenant Conversation allows us to experience Chief Rabbi Sacks sophisticated approach to life lived in an ongoing dialogue with the Torah.

A proper assessment of the manifold relationships that obtain between “wisdom” and “Torah” in the Second Temple Period has fascinated generations of interpreters. The essays of the present collection seek to understand this key relationship by focusing attention on specific instances of the reception of “Torah” in Wisdom literature and the shaping of Torah by wisdom. Taking the concepts of wisdom and torah in the various literary strata of the book of Deuteronomy as a point of departure, the remainder of the book examines the relationship between wisdom and Torah in Wisdom literature of the Second Temple period, including Proverbs, Qohelet, Ps 19 and 119, Baruch, Ben Sira, Wisdom, sapiential and rewritten scriptural texts from Qumran, and the Wisdom of Solomon.

The Old Testament is an ancient collection of theological reflections of life with God that the church has claimed as authoritative Scripture. Whereas most introductory books march from Genesis to Malachi, this book engages four important leadership roles across the breadth of the Old Testament canon: king, prophet, priest, and sage. Despite the obvious differences between the societies of ancient Israel and modern America, lessons can be learned from our ancestors in the faith. This engaging volume is intended for people who want to know more about the Old Testament, whether in personal study, church groups, college classrooms, or seminary courses. The book may be used profitably in concert with Theological Themes of the Old Testament: Creation, Covenant, Cultus, and Character (Cascade Books, 2010).

Aaron Chalmers gives students a unique introduction to the religious and social world of ancient Israel. The first part explores the major religious offices mentioned in the Old Testament, including prophets, priests, sages and kings. As well as considering what these key people said and did, the author traces the process through which one became recognized as a prophet, priest or sage, and where each of these offices were located in ancient Israel. The second part of the book focuses on the beliefs and practices of the common people--the group that made up the majority of ancient Israel s population.

This is the first major study devoted to the early Arabic reception and adaption of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Egyptian sage to whom were ascribed numerous works on astrology, alchemy, talismans, medicine, and philosophy. Before the more famous Renaissance European reception of the ancient Greek Hermetica, the Arabic tradition about Hermes and the works under his name had been developing and flourishing for seven hundred years. The legendary Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus was renowned in Roman antiquity as an ancient sage whose teachings were represented in books of philosophy and occult science. The works in his name, written in Greek by Egyptians living under Roman rule, subsequently circulated in many languages and regions of the Roman and Sasanian Persian empires. After the rise of Arabic as a prestigious language of scholarship in the eighth century, accounts of Hermes identity and Hermetic texts were translated into Arabic along with the hundreds of other works translated from Greek, Middle Persian, and other literary languages of antiquity. Hermetica were in fact among the earliest translations into Arabic, appearing already in the eighth century. This book explains the origins of the Arabic myth of Hermes Trismegistus, its sources, the reasons for its peculiar character, and its varied significance for the traditions of Hermetica in Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe. It shows who pre-modern Arabic scholars thought Hermes was and how they came to that view.