The Bible and Its Reception

These publications are unique because they cover:

• the significant impact of the Bible on culture
• the many periods in the long history of biblical reception
• the interdisciplinary, intercultural and global developments in the field

They offer general to in-depth analyses of the impact of the Bible on culture. Their focus is interdisciplinary, intercultural and global.

The internationally acclaimed Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is a reference work which provides a comprehensive overview of an extensive range of biblical and religious topics as well as their reception.

It is accompanied by a range of additional publications. In addition, De Gruyter publishes leading international and inter-confessional periodicals in the fields of Old Testament, Early Judaism, New Testament and Early Patristics:

• Rhonda Burnette Bletsch (Area Editor for Film)
• Lieke Wijnia & Arron Rosen (Area Editors for Visual Arts)
• Nils Holger Petersen (Area Editors for Music)
• Rachel Fulton Brown (Area Editor for Medieval Christianity)

Here is some of what biblioblogger Jim West recommends for you to read in the current volume of EBR:

Over the past several years, the arrival of new volumes of Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception has provided me with an occasion to mention several of the essays and offer potential readers a chance to ‘look inside’ the volume.

Volume 17 begins with an entry on ‘Lotus’ and ends with one on ‘Masrekah.’

Contributors include:

Jim West (Petros, Tenn., USA) Market, Marketplace II. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (but I will leave that one aside, exceptional though it is, lest I be viewed as self-serving or self-promoting).

Contributions I will provide a brief summary and critique of are:

Thomas Römer (Paris, France) Love I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Ancient Near East

This entry on ‘love’ in the Hebrew Bible/ Ancient Near East begins “Contrary to many modern languages, biblical Hebrew does not make a distinction in vocabulary between ‘love’ and ‘friendship.’ The same root ʾāhab is used for both terms (Wallis).” Römer then leads readers on a journey through the literature related to love and marriage, homosexual love, dangerous love, divine love and human love, YHWH’s love for Israel, other depictions of YHWH’s love, and finally love and loyalty. This entry is one of the best that I’ve read in the volume.

Sandie Gravett (Boone, N.C., USA) Love XI. Film

Gravett opens her treatment of the topic of ‘love’ in film thusly: “Many films are built around conceptions of love, sometimes with direct reference to the Bible and other times via allusion.” From this launching pad she treats the intersection of films and their treatment of love in intersection with the bible. Her discussion is quite eye opening (in the sense that she is able to tease out the biblical theme of love from films where it does not appear on the surface).

Anthony Swindell (Llanidloes, United Kingdom) Lust IV. Literature

Swindell’s efforts center on the appearance of the concept of Lust in literature. So, he observes:

“The biblical warnings and prohibitions against lust (Deut 5:2; Matt 5:28; 1 John 2:15–17), together with such admonitory tales as those of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, David and Bathsheba, Judith, and Susanna make clear the destructive effects of lust for those who succumb to its promptings.

Amongst early literary treatments of Judith, the Old English poem Judith (ca. 1000) goes to some lengths to create a binary opposition between the culpability of Holofernes in his lust and the moral purity of Judith in a version in which she attends a banquet at which Holofernes has already got himself drunk before he meets Judith and which excises the biblical passage in which the heroine adorns herself with jewelry in order to entice the warrior.”

And thus he illustrates lust in literature by use of numerous other examples.

Johann Anselm Steiger (Hamburg, Germany) and Heinrich Assel (Greifswald, Germany) Luther’s Hermeneutics

Steiger’s and Assel’s work focuses on the key interpretive tool utilizedby Luther: Sola Scriptura. He also describes the implications and applications of this hermeneutic, both for Luther and since Luther.

Yael Wilfand (Ra’anana, Israel) Manna III. Judaism B. Rabbinic Judaism

When ‘manna’ appears in Rabbinic Literature, according to Wilfand, it “…is only mentioned once in the Mishnah and three times in the Jerusalem Talmud, it appears more often in the Tosefta (ca. eight passages) and its qualities are discussed extensively in tannaitic midrashim, various later midrashic collections, and the Babylonian Talmud. The sages consider manna as a real food that indicates God’s benefaction toward Israel and as a supernatural substance.” She also observes, quite interestingly that “Manna is also viewed as an educational instrument for Israel in the wilderness.” It’s quite an interesting piece.

Paul Middleton (Chester, United Kingdom) Martyr, Martyrdom II. New Testament

After a cogent and helpful foray into the New Testament’s various mentions of martyrdom, Middleton concludes “The NT portrays, and perhaps also reflects, situations of persecution and danger for the followers of Jesus. They are enjoined to embrace suffering and death as a means of imitating Christ. However, while many would indeed follow this path to death, we find in the NT the potentiality for martyrdom more than its actuality.” The whole (albeit brief, occupying but one full column) is an interesting piece.

Paul-Gerhard Klumbies (Kassel, Germany) Marxsen, Willi

After a cogent and helpful foray into the New Testament’s various mentions of martyrdom, Middleton concludes “The NT portrays, and perhaps also reflects, situations of persecution and danger for the followers of Jesus. They are enjoined to embrace suffering and death as a means of imitating Christ. However, while many would indeed follow this path to death, we find in the NT the potentiality for martyrdom more than its actuality.” The whole (albeit brief, occupying but one full column) is an interesting piece.

Frauke Uhlenbruch (Redwood City, Calif., USA), Metatron V. Film

Obscure characters like Metatron also make an appearance in EBR, and the fact that he has even appeared on television in the United States is mentioned. “In the US television series Supernatural (creator Eric Kripke, 2005–), Metatron (Curtis Armstrong) appears in several episodes. In Metatron’s first appearance in the series (in the episode ‘The Great Escapist’), he resides in a hotel room filled with books, and collects stories, having retired from any involvement in angelic intervention on earth. He refers to himself as the source of the word and the scribe of God (‘I worked in the secretarial pool before God chose me to take down the word’), reminiscent of bHag 15a.” These are the kinds of details in EBR that are useful to researchers and student of Biblical literature.