This dissertation consists of a rhetorical examination of four divine council scenes from the Second Temple period: Zechariah 3, Job 1–2, Daniel 7, and I Enoch 90. The divine council scene consists of an episode that takes place before the heavenly throne in which judgment is ma…
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Numerous scholars have attempted to establish what sexual mores and attitudes were normative in ancient Israel. These studies have contributed to certain aspects of our understanding of Israelite sexuality, but they tend to privilege certain genres and perspectives over others, …
It has long been established that the text of the Hebrew Bible developed gradually over time. I contend that the very concept of Scripture as an authoritative text emerged through a protracted process, along with connected concepts of authorship, readership, and interpretation. …
To fully understand any text, it is necessary to understand the genre of that text. The genre of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, however, is very unclear, even at the most basic level. Most interpreters assume that prophecy is a type of rhetoric, but they also speak of …
New Testament discussion over the meaning of the kingdom of God has been dominated by the scholarship of Norman Perrin. Perrin, adopting insights about symbols and myths from the works of Philip Wheelwright and Paul Ricoeur, categorized the kingdom of God as a symbol that evoked…
Historians of ancient Israel and Judah, like all other historians, come to their work with certain presuppositions and goals in mind. This study will elucidate and examine assumptions about history writing that current historians of ancient Israel and Judah employ. It is underta…
The dissertation sought to demonstrate that the canonical form of the book of Habakkuk exhibits a literary design communicating a unified message through the interplay of genre and the use of dominant motifs in conjunction with transformations found in the linear movement of the…
This dissertation views the usage of prostration in the Qur’an to understand the genesis of this phenomenon within the Islamic discursive formation. Through a literary, semiotic, and ritual analysis of the usage of the term for prostration in the Qur’an (sajada) and its derived …
This study is a historical-critical analysis of the Book of Zephaniah. The first chapter examines methodological issues, such as the role and importance of the historical-critical method in biblical studies, methodological guidelines for the analysis, and special issues in the B…
This thesis has two primary goals: (1) to analyze the countours and extent of the generic category of deity in the Hebrew Bible, and (2) propose a semantic base for the term. It begins with a description of the fields associated with cognitive theory, and particularly cognitive …
The goal of my project is two-fold. On one level I seek to examine what sort of unit Manasseh was in the past, to the extent this can be ascertained, and on another level I aim to explore how and why it is constructed as it is by later biblical writers. My thesis is tripartite. …
This dissertation probes one of the central religious ideas in the Hebrew Bible – the concept of sin – through the most pervasive metaphors used to express the notion in Biblical Hebrew. The approach adopted in this study emerged out of a consideration of perspectives coming out…
This dissertation considers the strategies through which Second Temple Jews connected their unredeemed present with a glorious national past. The two works that serve as case studies, the Wisdom of Ben Sira and the book of Jubilees, located the origins of Jewish history in the d…
In the subsistence agricultural social context of the Hebrew Bible, children were necessary for communal survival. In such an economy, children's labor contributes to the family's livelihood from a young age, rather than simply preparing the child for future adult work. Ethnogra…
Apologetic is the rhetoric of self-defense. The motives of most public figures come under scrutiny at some point, and when allegations of malfeasance impugn their character, apologetic discourse serves to justify their behavior and restore their reputation. In the ancient Near E…
This dissertation investigates the use of biblical interpretation in the Book of Daniel. It demonstrates the spectrum in which Daniel uses older scriptural texts such as Genesis and Ezekiel in order to accomplish the theological concord with the earlier scriptural traditions of …
The purpose of this dissertation is to consider Israel's biblical wisdom traditions comments on collective accountability in a systematic way. In order to accomplish this, each of five biblical wisdom books—Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, and Wisdom of Solomon—will be examine…
The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the semantics of honor and shame in the Hebrew Bible and to demonstrate how these social values intersect with Israel's fundamental social organizing principle, covenant. Though many scholars have claimed that honor and shame are p…
It is often left unquestioned that women in the Hebrew Bible desired children. Though this is highly probable, many scholars make the assumption that all women necessarily wanted children. Universalizing the desire for children reduces complex characters to stand-ins for a suppo…