Jewish Studies

This handbook brings together both classic and cutting-edge methods for interpreting the New Testament. Chapters on historical-critical, literary, and reader-response approaches showcase the wide methodological range through which the text's original setting and its contemporary significance can be explored.

This volume presents a selection of studies by Jan N. Bremmer on the interplay between Judaism, Christianity, and paganism in the Roman Empire. The author covers a wide range of subjects, including pogroms, ghosts, sacrifice, miracles, mysteries, the decline of traditional ancient religion, Constantine's conversion, and the survival of paganism.

Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) is colonial America's first commentary on the whole Bible. Perhaps best remembered for his writings on Salem witchcraft, the hugely prolific Mather was undeniably one of New England's leading Enlightenment thinkers.

How controversial is the Book of Ruth? Is marriage to a foreign woman presumed to be unproblematic or discussed? Deborah Storek sees a subtle controversy in the narrative depiction of marriage as the fulfilment of two legal customs (levirate and redemption) as well as in discursive intertextual allusions to other biblical texts.