Ancient Bible Interpretation and its Legacies Politics, Literature, and Heresy

Contents

Foreword by John A. Hall

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART I: Jewish origins: from the ancient Near East to the Roman empire

1. After Eden: midrashic antecedents in the Hebrew Bible

2. Talmudic midrash and the Graeco-Roman empire: from Herod to Judah Hanasi

3. Ancient Bible interpretation and politics: leaders and national disaster

4. Early Christian anti-Judaism and midrashic polemics

5. Midrash and Jewish education in the early Roman empire

6. Major themes in Bible interpretation

7. Economic factors in ancient midrash

8. The Bible, exile and Kabbalah

9. Nationalism and midrashic visions of Zion

PART II: Secular societies and homiletic traditions

10. Monarchic crisis and poet-priests: aspects of the English homiletic tradition

11. English dissenters and the Bible: Bunyan, Defoe, and Blake

12. Bible interpretation, Wordsworth and the 'holy poor'

13. Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish nationalism

14. Midrash, the Hebrew revival, and anti-Semitism, 1881-1948

15. Midrash and early 20th century culture

16. The Bible for atheists: Orwell, Steinbeck, Carlo Levi

17. The Bible in literature of developing countries

18. Midrash and environmental moral dilemmas

Bibliography

Index