A Brief Bibliography on Scripture
Thanks to Gabe
Eisenstein, philosopher of religion and
existentialism, for his suggestions and reviews of the Old Testament
studies in this bibliography.
By author:
Albertz, Rainer
A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period
Vols. 1 & 2
Westminster/John Knox 1994
Uses state-of-the-art scholarship to reconstruct the religion as it
existed century by century and on the different levels of family and
clan, state propaganda and counterculture, local shrines and Temple,
etc. Gives significant weight to the non-conquest models.
Akenson, Donald Harman
Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds
Harcourt Brace 1998
Begins with analysis of Torah formation under Darius, considers the
heterogeneous and multi-canonical literature of the Hellenistic
period, and sees Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism as responses to
the same set of historical forces.
Alter, Robert
The World of Biblical Literature
Basic Books 1992
Alter is one of the best at showing the complexity and greatness of
the Hebrew poetic and narrative forms in the Bible.
Barnstone, Willis
The Other Bible
Harper, 1984
A valuable and fascinating anthology of apocryphal writings (Jewish, Christian, Manichean, and other...), mostly of the intertestamental period.
Berquist, Jon
Judaism in Persia's Shadow
Fortress Press 1995
Reliable knowledge of the monarchic period is ultimately very slim.
Most of what we know about Judaism is a result of events in the
Persian period. The Torah was formed by a committee appointed by the
emperor Darius. The vast majority of the Bible was written or edited
during this period, by an elite class of Babylonian immigrants who
were hostile to the non-exiled Judeans, and defined the new religion
of Judaism according to their special interests as colonial
surrogates for the emperor.
Blenkinsopp, Joseph
Sage, Priest, Prophet: Religious and Intellectual Leadership in
Ancient Israel
Westminster/John Knox 1994
The Bible includes texts from three highly disparate groups,
sometimes allied but usually at odds: 1) the prophets; 2) the
priests; and 3) the sages/scribes.
(By the way, we could divide all Israelite history into three or
four periods corresponding to the dominance of one of the three
groups: prophets before the monarchy; priests and prophets
counterbalanced during the monarchy; priests dominant during the
Second Temple; and sages/scribes finally winning out in Rabbinism.)
Brueggemann, Walter
A Social Reading of the Old Testament
Fortress Press 1994
The early Israelite religion was quite a radical political movement,
and the succeeding history and historiography continued to focus on
the issues of economic oppression and militarism it originally
addressed.
Buber, Martin
The Prophetic Faith
Harper & Row 1949
Buber, Martin
Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant
Humanities Press International 1988
Many other Buber books could be mentioned here, but the two above
are strongly on-topic. He discusses, among other things, the origin
of the Name of God from YA-HUWA, the prominence of the Kenites, and
other topics from 1940's scholarship.
Campbell, Anthony & O'Brien, Mark
Sources of the Pentateuch
Fortress Press 1993
Lays out J,E,P, [other] texts individually, according to Noth; heavy
footnotes with modern questions and criticisms of the analysis; also
shows synergy of combined texts.
Campbell, Joseph
Occidental Mythology
Penguin, 1976
Indispensible. A brilliant, inspired account of religious and mythic currents in
the Middle East and Europe, from remote antiquity to recent times.
This series of four books, The Masks of God (Primitive, Oriental, Occidental, and Creative Mythology), though somewhat dated in some respects, still constitutes one of the greatest classics ever written on myth and the philosophy of religion.
Coggins, R.J.
Samaritans and Jews: The Origins of Samaritanism Reconsidered
John Knox 1975
Early work debunking misconceptions about Samaritans, showing that
the schism didn't really finalize until 2nd century. (Samaritan
Pentateuch by itself shows that they didn't exist as such until 3rd
century before that Samarians were just Yahwists like the
non-Babylonian Judeans.)
Corbin, Henry
The Voyage and the Messenger
Translated from the French by Joseph Rowe
North Atlantic Books, 1998
A scholarly, profound study of Islamic mysticism and philosophy,
mainly Iranian. The author's concept of the imaginal realm is one of
the most original contributions to modern thinking about religion.
Crossan, John Dominic
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
Harper 1989
Excellent historical research, but the author seems to subscribe to
the populist notion of Jesus as an uneducated peasant who spoke only
Aramaic. There is no serious evidence for this. On the contrary, it
is likely that a rabbi of Jesus's erudition and universality spoke
and even preached in Greek and in Latin as well as in Aramaic. In
multi-cultural, polyglot 1st-century Galilee, many people spoke or
understood Greek, at least, and often Latin.
Davies, Philip
Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures
Westminster John Knox 1998
Starts from what is known of scribal practices in the ancient world.
Considers how textual accretions really took place, and the
ideological backgrounds of scribal classes. Eventually makes some
provocative assertions regarding late composition of Deuteronomy,
fictitious character of Ezra, influence of the prophetic canon on
what "prophecy" meant.
Eliade, Mircea
The Encylopedia of Religion
MacMillan, 1986
Costs a fortune, but worth every penny if you can afford it. The greatest single reference work on world religions, with articles by many scholars from many traditions and cultures.
Fishbane, Michael
Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel
Oxford U. 1985
The ultimately detailed answer to anyone who maintains the Torah is
self-consistent. Shows how later texts (e.g. Deuteronomy with
respect to Exodus) shifted the political-legal-economic-etc.
meanings of their earlier counterparts, according to changing
conditions and social positions of the editors.
Friedman, Richard Elliot
Who Wrote the Bible?
Harper & Row 1987
This popular book gives an introductory survey and then wraps things
up into neat solutions of the author (e.g. P had to be written
before the exile because it refers to the existing Tabernacle, which
was inside the Temple; E and Deuteronomists [Jeremiah] were priests
from Shiloh). Some of its assumptions are now considered shaky.
Halpern, Bruce
The First Historians
Harper & Row 1988
Wonderfully detailed and convincing analysis of Hebrew
historiography. Shows not so much that the text is true, but that it
was constructed with a maximal sense for plausibility and historical
context.
Josephus (Joseph ben Matthias)
Complete Works
Kregel Publishing 1981
Among many other things, this contains the only non-Christian
historical narrative of inter-testamental times which mentions Jesus
of Nazareth. However, even this narrative is now thought to have been redacted by Christian scribes.
Josipovici, Gabriel
The Book of God: A Response to the Bible
Yale 1988
The author can make even the most boring parts of the Bible exhibit
an aesthetic affinity that adds to the strength of the whole.
Kasser, Rudolf
L'Evangile selon Thomas. Rétroversion et théologie
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1961
A scholarly attempt to reconstruct the original Greek Gospel of Thomas in its entirety. Seulement en version française, et malheureusement inédite.
Leloup, Jean-Yves
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Translated from the French by Joseph Rowe
Preface by Jacob Needleman
Introduction by David Tresemer and Laura-Lea Cannon
Inner Traditions, 2002
The author, a French Orthodox priest, has translated this early
Christian text from the Coptic. His commentary is by far the best
ever written on this remarkable gospel, with a harmonious balance
between historical sophistication and religious insight.
The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus
Translated from the French by Joseph Rowe
Preface by Jacob Needleman
Inner Traditions, 2002
A translation "both free and rigorous" of this gospel, with a commentary which emphasizes its kinship with non-doctrinaire gnosticism and the Perennial Philosophy.
Mack, Burton
Who Wrote the New Testament?
HarperCollins 1995
Lucid and convincing in its sociology of how the New Testament was
produced, but the author shows little sensitivity to deeper
scriptural meanings.
Maimonides, Moses
The Guide of the Perplexed
Vols.1&2
U.of Chicago Press 1963 (end 12th c.)
The great study of "literal meaning" and poetics in the Bible,
written as a covert violation of the rabbinical precepts against
explaining, philosophizing or historicizing it.Leo Strauss's
introduction is one of the core pieces of his
philosophy.
Pagels, Elaine
The Gnostic Gospels
Harper, 1976
A bestseller by an expert on the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts. Like
Leloup, Pagels exhibits a harmony (rarer in Christianity and in
Islam than in Judaism) between historical objectivity regarding
scriptures, and a deep exegesis of their religious meaning.
Beyond Belief
Harper, 2004
This short book (really an expanded article) explores an extremely important fact about early Christianity: the deep theological and Christological rift that developed between the Johannine and Thomasine schools (which of course does not necessarily imply any conflict between the disciples John and Thomas ...). A major point is that the famous figure of the "doubting Thomas" was almost certainly a deliberate fabrication of the later Johannine school.
Patai, Raphael
The Hebrew Goddess
Wayne St.U.Press 1990
Evidence and speculation on Asherah, Astarte, etc., how they may
originally have related to Yahweh, and further developments through
Talmud, Midrash, Zohar,etc.
Quispel, Giles
Jewish and Gnostic Man
Spring Publications, 1986
A fascinating study of gnostic currents in relation to Judaism, by one of the renowned experts on the subject, who was also a major discoverer of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, the so-called "Jung Codex".
Robinson, James
The Nag Hammadi Library
Harper, revised edition, 1990
The classic collection of English translations of the supressed texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, which revolutionized the study of the beginnings of Christianity. Robinson was one of the main scholars originally involved in the project, and was the first to make these translations available to the general public, courageously flouting opposition from narrow-minded scholars and ecclesiatical authorities.
Sternberg, Meir
The Poetics of Biblical Narrative
Indiana U. 1985
This book got me (Gabe Eisenstein) more interested in the Bible than
anything had before (it's one of the first books I read on this
list). It spends a lot of time showing that some texts analyzed into
separate components by source-critics derive their world-class
literary power precisely through tensions or repetitions between the
parts. (This still doesn't mean the parts weren't originally
separate, so that the literary genius simply might have belonged to
the "editor". But it is an essential dimension to be aware of, even
if one's interests are "purely historical".)
[© 2000, Joseph Rowe] |
