"Was there a difference in the portrayal of King Zedekiah in the Hebrew and Greek versions of Jeremiah? Shelley L. Birdsong analyses the two different depictions, highlights their unique characterizations and argues that the cruel and manipulative king in the Greek is edited into a more compassionate king in the Hebrew." -- back cover

The book of Chronicles, the last book of the Hebrew Bible and a central historical book of the Christian Old Testament, has in recent decades gone from being “the Cinderella of biblical studies” to being one of the most researched books of the Bible. The anonymous author, often simply called “the Chronicler” by modern scholars, looks back at the old Israelite monarchy, before the Babylonian exile, from his vantage point in the post-exilic early Second Temple Period, and attempts to “update” the older historiographies of Samuel and Kings in order to elucidate their meaning to the people of his own time. In The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, Yigal Levin does the same for the modern reader. He offers a brand-new translation and commentary on 2 Chronicles chapters 10-36, tracing the “sacred history” of the monarchy from the division of Solomon's kingdom to the final exile and return. Each chapter is translated from the original Hebrew into an English that is both faithful to the original and easy for the modern reader to follow. Extensive footnotes provide full explanations of the translator's choices and of linguistic and literary issues, taking note of alternative versions offered by a wide array of ancient and modern versions and translations. The comprehensive commentary on each section provides historical background and explains the text both on a literary and a historical level, making full use of the most up-to-date research on the text, literature, history, geography and on the archaeological background of the biblical world. The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is to be followed by The Chronicles of David and Solomon on 1 Chronicles 10 – 2 Chronicles 9, and then by The Chronicles of All Israel on the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1-9 and including comprehensive essays on the book of Chronicles, its time, purposes, methods and meanings.

Rawlinson chronicles the history surrounding each king, giving account of the politics, warfare, religion, and culture of the reign. With close reference to the Bible throughout, Rawlinson's study has become an essential part of Old Testament studies and is important tool to aid with the examination of The Books of Kings and Chronicles in particular. In addition to this, Rawlinson provides a close look at the lives of the various kings of Israel and Judah: the events of their reigns; the battles fought; and the effect on the kingdoms of the decisions made by the monarchs.

The author shows how King Josiah's reform program to unify Israel and Judah around the Jerusalem temple, laid the foundation for the exilic thinkers who rescued Judaism from the obscurity of Babylonian defeat and exile.

Volume two of one of the greatest literary biographies of our time Joseph Frank’s award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the Russian novelist in any language and one of the greatest literary biographies ever written. In this monumental work, Frank blends biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism to illuminate Dostoevsky’s works and set them in their personal, historical, and ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work. This volume opens with the detention of the bookish young writer for membership in the radical Petrashevsky Circle and closes with his return to the capital ten years later as an ex-convict and former soldier who now proclaims himself an ardent supporter of the czar and the Russian imperial dynasty.

This pioneering study wrestles with the perpetual problem of chronology in the Books of Kings. Starting from the conservative assumptions that the courts of Israel and Judah maintained regnal records, and that these for the most part accurately reflect regnal length, the author arrives at a new and persuasive dating for the reigns and their synchronisms. In addition, his chronological scheme includes all points of contact between Israel and Judah and external powers, especially Assyria. The result is one of the most responsible and yet most critical chronologies proposed to date, and will be the standard chronological reference for the next decade, if not longer.