Appealing to Monster Theory and the ancient Near Eastern motif of "Chaoskampf," Safwat Marzouk argues that the paradoxical character of the category of the monster is what prompts the portrayal of Egypt as a monster in the book of Ezekiel. While on the surface the monster seems to embody utter difference, underlying its otherness there is a disturbing sameness. Though the monster may be defeated and its body dismembered, it is never completely annihilated. Egypt is portrayed as a monster in the book of Ezekiel because Egypt represents the threat of religious assimilation. Although initially the monstrosity of Egypt is constructed because of the shared elements of identity between Egypt and Israel, the prophet flips this imagery of monster in order to embody Egypt as a monstrous Other. In a combat myth, YHWH defeats the monster and dismembers its body. Despite its near annihilation, Egypt, in Ezekiel's rhetoric, is not entirely obliterated. Rather, it is kept at bay, hovering at the periphery, questioning Israel's identity.

The Gog Oracles' (Ezek 38-39) reuse of antecedent scripture is crucial to their purpose and meaning. The pattern of continuous allusion in the Gog Oracles reflects something more than a writer saturated with scriptural idiom. It is a practice of disciplined and deliberate reference to select texts on select themes. William A. Tooman shows that recognizing the volume and density of scriptural reuse within the Gog Oracles is indispensable for understanding these chapters' role within the book, its composition, and its place within Second Temple literature. A close examination of the methods, effects, and motives of scriptural reuse that are evident within the Gog oracles reveals that these chapters are a unified composition that was crafted as a supplement to a book of Ezekiel, in order to fill gaps in the book's message and to harmonize the book with other traditions of prophetic revelation.

Five Pentateuchal texts (Lev 24:10-23; Num 9:6-14; Num 15:32-36; Num 27:1-11; Num 36:1-12) offer unique visions of the elaboration of law in Israel's formative past. In response to individual legal cases, Yahweh enacts impersonal and general statutes reminiscent of biblical and ancient Near Eastern law collections. From the perspective of comparative law, Dylan R. Johnson proposes a new understanding of these texts as biblical rescripts: a legislative technique that enabled sovereigns to enact general laws on the basis of particular legal cases. Typological parallels drawn from cuneiform and Roman law illustrate the complex ideology informing the content and the form of these five cases. The author explores how latent conceptions of law, justice, and legislative sovereignty shaped these texts, and how the Priestly vision of law interacted with and transformed earlier legal traditions.

Ezekiel 16 conveys a well-known portrayal of Israel's checkered history. Its borrowed metaphors, textual reuse, and developing content defy a transparent explanation of its origins. In this monograph, Tracy J. McKenzie explores the methods and motivations for textual expansions. After surveying how secondary literature has addressed the interpretive nature of additions, traditions, redactions, andFortschreibungen in prophetic texts, he provides a new translation and text-critical judgment of Ezekiel 16. He then analyzes how linguistic elements diachronically achieve a composite unity in the passage. This composite unity sets up the analysis that explores the ways in which the expansions have built on pre-existing texts, rewritten them, and developed their content. The author's conclusion focuses on how the interpretive moves in the expansions disclose possible motives and social settings in Yehud.

Judit M. Blair challenges the common view that azazel, lilith, deber, qeteb and reshef are names of 'demons' in the Hebrew Bible, claiming that major works on the subject proceed from the assumption that these terms were demons in the ancient Near East and /or later, or that they were deities who became 'demonised' by the authors of the Hebrew Bible. Without questioning the validity of traditional methods she supplements the existing works by making an exegesis based on a close reading of all the relevant texts of the Hebrew Bible in which these five terms occur. Close attention is paid to the linguistic, semantic, and structural levels of the texts. The emphasis is on a close examination of the immediate context in order to determine the function of each term. The author notes different signals within the texts, especially the use of the various poetical/rhetorical devices: personification, parallelism, similes, irony, and mythological elements.

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D)--University of Cambridge, 2002.

Jaeyoung Jeon examines and assesses recently suggested models for the formation of the Pentateuch through a redactional-critical analysis of the Call of Moses (Exod. 3-4) and the Exodus story (Exod. 5-13). He observes that Exod. 3-4 was formed through a series of stages of Deuteronomistic composition and redaction, to which some post-Priestly additions were made. Comparative analysis suggests that the elements of Deuteronomistic formation precede P and that the direction of influence is from the non-P narrative (Exod. 3-4) to the P call narrative (Exod. 6). Jeon also shows that although some of the literary layers in Exod. 3-4 extend through the Exodus story (Exod. 5-13), the present form of the latter has been shaped by a post-Deuteronomistic but pre-Priestly composition based on an earlier proto-Exodus story. He therefore concludes that the Pentateuch or Hexateuch might be the product of a more complicated process of development than the current models describe.