Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Contributors
Table of Abbreviations
Explanation of Talmudic Abbreviations
List of Journal Abbreviations
Editor Biographies
How to Use this Book
Media Studies and Biblical Studies: An Introduction
Important Factors in Understanding Ancient Media
The Social Contexts of Ancient Media
The Study of the Bible as/in Ancient Media
Bibliography
A
Abecedaries An abecedary is a text that consists of, or contains, the letters of an alphabet (cf. English ‘A-B-Cs’) written in a conventional order. An alphabetic writing system is one in which the written characters are understood to represent sounds, so
Actual Past The term actual past is used in discussions of collective/social memory to differentiate ‘what happened’ from its subsequent recollection and commemoration. The actual past consists of events, situations, individuals, and places that existed i
Alexandria, Library of The great Library of Alexandria was founded in the early third century BCE by scholar and autocrat Demetrios of Phaleron under the patronage of Ptolemy I Soter. Celebrated as the world’s first attempt at a global collection of human
Amarna Letters Since 1887, approximately 400 cuneiform tablets from an ancient archive have been found in the city of Amarna. Tell el-Amarna was the newly founded capital of Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (fourteenth century CE) and his
Answerability Answerability (sometimes translated ‘responsibility’) is an element of Russian literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin’s theoretical model that builds on the same dialogic sense of reality that permeates all of his thought and writing. Most succinct
Apocalypses, early Christian Early Christian apocalypses are those documents written in the apocalyptic genre by Christian authors in the first four centuries CE. Understood as a literary genre, apocalypse – broadly speaking – refers to works containing a
Apocalypses, Early Jewish An apocalypse, from the Greek apocalypsis, ‘unveiling’, is a revelation or uncovering of secrets. As a literary genre, apocalyptic texts purport to reveal or disclose divine secrets, including information regarding forces of natu
Archives and Libraries Broadly speaking, in the ancient world libraries and archives were places where people collected written texts. In general, a library housed literary texts, while an archive preserved records, technical, documentary, legal, or other
Assmann, Jan Jan Assmann (b. 1938) is professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg and an honorary professor at the University of Konstanz. Primarily an Egyptologist, Assmann’s publications have broadly addressed the cultures of the an
Audience Address Audience address is a central dynamic of storytelling performance in which both the storyteller and the audience enter into the roles of characters in the story. For example, in oral performances of episodes or speeches from the Gospels,
Authorship See Publication (in Antiquity).
B
Bakhtin, Mikhail (M. M.) Mikhail Mihailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) was a Russian Orthodox thinker, philosopher, anthropologist, historian of Hellenistic literature, literary theorist, and specialist in the works of Rabelais and Dostoevsky. Though his histor
Banquet/Meals A banquet is a formal gathering centred around a festive, communal meal. Modern banquets typically involve special invitations, appetizers, and cocktails prior to the main course, and in some cases assigned seating – features that distinguis
Baptism (Christian) Baptism was the ceremony of admission into the early Christian community. In the first four centuries it was normally administered by immersion in water (Mt. 3.6, 16; Acts 8.38-39) and accompanied by a confession of faith.
Bauman, Richard Richard Bauman has had a long, distinguished, and varied academic career at the interstices between folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics, semiotics, and speech communication, contributing to the development of both theory and metho
Bible in Ancient and Modern Media Research Unit (Society of Biblical Literature) The Bible in Ancient and Modern Media Section (BAMM) is a collaborative research unit founded in the Society of Biblical Literature in 1983 to promote media-critical study of
Blessings and Curses Blessings and curses are pronouncements of boon and doom enforced by divine or supernatural power. The content of blessings and curses is strongly related to the social function and settings in which they are pronounced. In the biblic
Biosphere (oral) In media criticism, the term biosphere refers to the total physical, human, and social context in which an oral utterance (of any length) is delivered and received. The biosphere model highlights the impact of the physical presence of the
Bultmann, Rudolf Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) was a German NT scholar who ranks among the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. His historical-critical biblical work has profoundly shaped NT scholarship. In addition to his impact on bibl
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Canon/Scripture The word canon (Greek κανών) originally meant a device that kept other things straight, a measuring stick, or a norm or rule (Gal. 6.16), but it could also denote a normative list or a catalogue. When the early church applied the term to t
Catechism See Early Christian Catechism.
Chirograph A chirograph is a handwritten document. Like its Latin equivalent manuscript (manus/‘hand’ + scriptus/‘writing’), chirograph is loanword to English from the Greek adjective cheirographos (cheir/‘hand’ + graphos/‘writing’). Broadly speaking, chi
Chronotope The term chronotope was borrowed from Einsteinian physics by Russian literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin to call attention to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships artistically expressed in literature. In Bakhtin’s theor
Circumcision Male circumcision (from the Latin circumcidere, ‘to cut around’) refers to the removal of the foreskin, or prepuce, from the penis, as instructed in the biblical priestly sources (Gen. 17.1-21; Exod. 12.44, 48; Lev. 12.3) for newborn males ag
Codeswitching Codeswitching is generally defined as the intentional alternate use of language codes (two or more languages, dialects, or varieties) in the same utterance or conversation (Lee 2012: 335–41; cf. Bullock and Toribio 2009: 2–5). Codeswitching
Codex The codex (Latin cōdex; also caudex, ĭcis, m.) as a form of literate media derived from tablets that Romans used to record official documents such as contracts, edicts, and legal proceedings or formal (yet relatively impermanent) household accounts
Cognitive/Personal Memory The term cognitive or personal memory refers to the capacity of individuals to recall and describe events, individuals, and experiences from the past, either the personal past or the collective past of a larger group, the latter
Coins Coins were one of the most prolific tools of mass communication, ideology, and propaganda in the ancient Mediterranean world, and as such represent an important primary source for studying the historical background and sociocultural dynamics of bibl
Cold Memory/Hot Memory The terms cold memory and hot memory were developed by Werner Kelber to identify the two complementary functions of recollections of the past in a group’s collective memory. Social memory theorists argue that memory works both ‘to r
Collective Memory/Social Memory Collective memory is a broad rubric under which are often gathered a number of aspects of memory considered as a social and cultural phenomenon (see cultural memory). Properly understood and defined, these aspects cast ligh
Colon A colon (kōlon; plural, cola) is the basic unit of Greek prose, measured by the length of a breath (Demetrius Elocution 1). A colon is incomplete; the Greek word connotes a member, a component of a larger whole (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.9.7; Demetrius,
Commemorative Narrative See Master Commemorative Narrative.
Communicative Economy The term communicative economy was coined by John Miles Foley both to denote a metaphorical economy of communication and also to describe the economical communication of oral performance and oral-traditional works. In the first sense
Communicative Memory The expression communicative memory was introduced by the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann and initially denoted a subcategory of Maurice Halbwachs’ collective memory. It refers to the recent past and delineates a vivid, communicated,
Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis is the study of talk-in-interaction in naturally occurring situations and, as such, resists using data collected from experiments. Conversation analysis has its beginnings in the work of sociologist Harvey Sacks
Countermemory Countermemory is best understood in opposition to, or as a form of and/or subset within, a group’s collective memory. Whereas collective memory denotes the social frameworks within which an individual locates and interprets his or her memori
Culley, Robert Charles Robert Charles Culley (1932–2013) was professor of Hebrew Bible/OT at McGill University and Presbyterian College from 1967 to 1997. He is the author of several monographs on oral-formulaic language and patterns in biblical literatu
Cultural Memory The term cultural memory was introduced by the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann as a subcategory of Maurice Halbwachs’ collective memory. The term refers broadly to a community’s canonized memory of the remote past, as such memory normativ
Cylinder Seals Cylinder seals represent an ancient technology of mark-making whereby a spool-shaped object is rolled across a pliable surface, usually clay, in order to leave an impression (or sealing). As visual media, cylinder seals and sealings communi
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Dance Dance appears in the Hebrew Bible and NT as one of many embodied expressions of emotion, including particularly praise and worship to God. Throughout Scripture, dance is admonished as a form of praise (e.g. Pss 149; 150; Eccl. 3), and the Bible and
Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Judean Desert Texts The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) comprise a collection of approximately 900 manuscripts discovered in caves near the Wadi Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea beginning in 1947. The documents are composed
Dialogism Dialogism is widely recognized as the signature concept in the theoretical work of Russian literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin. Though Bakhtin himself did not use the term, his late writings allude briefly and impressionistically to ‘dialogical rela
Dibelius, Martin Martin Dibelius (1863–1947) was a German NT scholar whose pioneering work on Jesus tradition, the Gospels, and the historical Jesus was foundational to the development of Form Criticism. Dibelius also significantly contributed to the stud
Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis (sometimes referred to as textlinguistics) refers to any of various means of examining discourse using a range of linguistic tools. Such analysis usually involves study of language elements at or above the level of th
Drama (Greco-Roman) Drama is an event, not a genre: it is a mode of presenting a story in a performance format. The word drama is derived from the Greek verb draō (‘to do’ or ‘to act’) and entails the enactment of a plot through gestures and/or speech and
Dundes, Alan Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was an internationally acclaimed American folklorist and anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley whose vast array of studies was informed to a large degree by the application of Freudian psychology t
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Early Christian Catechism A catechism is a manual used for teaching or learning Christian faith, and the word is derived from the Greek katechein, meaning ‘to teach’ or ‘to instruct’. While no manual could have existed in the first generation or two of th
Early Christian Literature Early Christian texts offer many insights into the intersection between written documents and other means of communication in the early Christian movement(s). This entry concentrates on texts traditionally considered Christian l
Early Christian Preaching Preaching, or public proclamation and teaching, was one of the most common ways that early Christians would have encountered the Scriptures and scriptural interpretation. While the formal structure of sermons was not developed un
Early Jewish Literature The term early Jewish literature typically refers to writings that can be approximately dated to the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE and the first or second century CE, that is, before
Early Jewish Preaching Early Jewish preaching served as the forerunner of Christian and Islamic preaching and provided the gateway to a tradition that survived, with some interruptions, through the Medieval period and on into the present day in sermons gi
Education, Hellenistic Education in schools throughout the Greco-Roman world was a luxury that only a small percentage of families could afford. Of those receiving formal education, most completed only primary school, and only a few progressed to intermed
Education in Ancient Israel Throughout history, education has always begun in the home, where children learn from elders and siblings basic language skills and culture in the course of daily tasks, especially during meals and the process of food preparati
Elephantine Papyri Opposite the city of Syene (modern Aswan), on the east bank of the Nile, lies the island of Elephantine. In the fifth century BCE, when Egypt was under Persian rule (Dynasty 27), an Aramaeo-Jewish Diaspora community lived on the island.
Enchiridion Enchiridion is an Anglicized Latin term (derived in turn from the Greek enkheiridion, ‘that which is held in the hand’) that refers to a personal manual or handbook. As a genre of ancient literature, handbooks functioned as central locations f
1 Enoch/Enochic Traditions 1 Enoch is a Jewish text written from the early third century BCE to the first century CE that contains a variety of revelations attributed to Enoch, the antediluvian patriarch briefly mentioned in Gen. 5.24. While the text is o
Epigraphy The corpus of epigraphic texts (written inscriptions on physical objects, ranging from small household items to large public buildings) from the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds is vast, dwarfing many times over the amount of materi
Equiprimordiality Equiprimordiality refers to the equality of originals that is characteristic of oral culture, as opposed to the concept of a singular original archetype characteristic of print culture. The principle of equiprimordiality indicates that e
Ethnography of Speaking The ethnography of speaking is a hybridizing approach to the study of human speaking that draws together and employs an unrestricted range of theories and methods from folklore, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology.
Ethnopoetics Ethnopoetics is a collective term for a variety of perspectives on, and approaches to, the study of relationships between non-Western oral verbal performances and their renderings in written texts. It is especially aimed at capturing or resto
Eucharist The Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, is a symbolic community consumption of food and drink (normally bread and wine) that has served as a ‘ritual of remembrance’ in Christianity since its beginnings. The memorial aspect of the ritual is already evid
Exorcism The Greek term exorkismos (‘binding by oath’) derives from the verb exorkoō (‘cause to swear, adjure’). These words can designate 1) the act of driving out, or deterring, demonic beings from persons and places believed to be possessed by them; or
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Fasting Fasting is an ascetic ritual practice that entails the voluntary abstention from food and drink for a finite period of time. Since the physical body requires nourishment to survive, fasting is a form of self-denial that negates one’s bodily needs
Finnegan, Ruth Ruth Finnegan is a social anthropologist with an interest in many aspects of human communication. Her original fieldwork was among the Limba people of Sierra Leone, and she has continued to write on African oral literature throughout her ca
Flashbulb Memory The term flashbulb memory was coined by Roger Brown and James Kulik to describe ‘memories for the circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event’ (1977: 73). The metaphor de
Foley, John Miles John Miles Foley (1947–2012) was the W. H. Byler Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Missouri, where he held appointments in the Departments of English, Classical Studies, Anthropology, and Germanic and Slavic studies. H
Folklore/Folkloristics Folkloristics is the study of folklore. Folklore, however, like many categories of communication and human behaviour, is difficult to define precisely – Funk and Wagnalls’ classic Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Lege
Form Criticism Form criticism is an English rendering of the German Formgeschichte, an influential twentieth-century interpretive model for analysing both Hebrew Bible and NT texts that are grounded in oral tradition. The term form translates the two word
Formulas The term formula is a technical definition given for certain linguistic repetitions found in early Greek epic poetry by Homeric scholar Milman Parry in the late 1920s. The term was soon linked to the study of oral elements in various literary tex
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Genealogies Genealogies are a specific form of cultural recall, characterized by the core structure of ancestor trees and using a highly formalized language. Genealogies fulfil various sociopolitical functions, among them the construction of identity/alte
Genre Genre, the forms that speech and writing might take, is a crucial aspect of communication. Members of a culture typically possess a shared repertoire of genres and a knowledge of how these different forms convey meaning. Over the past century of res
Gerhardsson, Birger Birger Gerhardsson (1926–2013) was a Swedish NT scholar whose publications focused on oral tradition and transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Gerhardsson explicitly postured his work as an alternative to German Form
Gist Memory
Glossolalia/‘Speaking in Tongues’ Glossolalia (from the Greek glossa ‘tongue’ and lalein ‘speak’) is the term given to the charismatic gift or practice of speaking in tongues, namely in a linguistic form that is foreign or alien to the speaker. If such to
Goody, Jack John (Jack) Rangine Goody (1919–2015) was a British anthropologist and historian who taught for most of his career at Cambridge. Although his primary fieldwork was conducted in Africa, his writings display wide comparative interests. An import
Graffiti Thousands of graffiti, or ‘wall writings’, from the ancient world have been discovered, often comprising little more than crude drawings and a word or two. Some date to the First Temple period, thousands more date to the Second Temple period and
Great Tradition/Little Tradition The term great tradition refers to the total set of values that operate within a complex society’s collective memory to rationalize and maintain the homogeneous outlook necessary for that society, and its individual member
Great Divide Media criticism is the ‘analysis of the function and dynamics of various media of communication (speech, writing, ritual, etc.), and especially of the significance of shifts from one medium to another (e.g. from oral to written expression)’ (
Gunkel, Hermann Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932) was a German OT scholar significant for his influence on biblical interpretation in the twentieth century. The founder of form criticism, Gunkel’s work heavily influenced subsequent generations of biblical schola
Guslar The term guslar (pl. guslari) is used to describe the oral poets of the former Yugoslavia (now Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, and Kosovo) whose performances of traditional epic material significantly informed
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Halbwachs, Maurice Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945) was a French sociologist who is widely regarded as the founder of the field of collective memory: the study of how groups remember and how their memories condense and transcend those of their members. Viewe
Hallel The term Hallel refers to the liturgical recitation of Psalms 113–118 on each day of the festivals of Hanukkah and Sukkot, the first day of Passover and on Shavuot (t. Suk 3.2). The Hallel is also recited during the Passover seder. An abridged vers
Havelock, Eric Alfred Eric Alfred Havelock (1903–88) was a British-trained classicist whose career was mostly in North America, including appointments at Toronto, Harvard, and Yale. Influenced by Milman Parry’s oral-formulaic thesis, Havelock explained th
Hexapla The Hexapla, a synopsis of texts of the OT in different languages laid out in six parallel columns, was produced by Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254) in the third century CE. Columns one and two included the Hebrew consonantal text in Hebrew lett
Historiography, Ancient The field of historiography has within its purview the study of techniques and methods used to write about the past. Historiographers attend to both overarching developments within the discipline of history itself and to investigat
The Homeric Question The Homeric Question denotes the scholarly debate regarding the origin, composition, and authorship of the Homeric poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. There is ongoing uncertainty and debate surrounding those works over authorial identi
Household Items (media aspects of) Household items are those utilitarian objects necessary for survival in nearly every agrarian household of the Iron Age (ca. 1200–586 BCE) and later. Many items (e.g. ceramic objects, stone tools and vessels, metal imple
Hymes, Dell Folklorist, linguist, and anthropologist Dell Hymes (1927–2009) was a major contributor to the aesthetical movement called ethnopoetics, especially in extended and often lively exchanges with the parallel work of anthropologist Dennis Tedlock
Hymns Hymn is a transliteration of the Greek hymnos, a broad term referring, in the Hellenistic world, to a song of praise to the divine. Used interchangeably with psalm and ode, hymnos also translated various Hebrew generic terms for song, like shir, miz
I
Iconography in the Hebrew Bible Research into the iconography of the Hebrew Bible has received less attention in the study of biblical themes and motifs than might be expected, given the plethora of supporting materials from surrounding cultures excavated
Identity Identity refers to the distinctive characteristics belonging to an individual or shared by all members of a particular category/group. From an individual perspective, the core of identity is the categorization of the self into a particular role.
Initiation Rituals Initiation rituals, which mark or enact an individual’s entrance or acceptance into a group, have played an important role in societies both ancient and modern. While virtually every culture has practices that could fit the definition,
Inscriptions See Epigraphy.
Intersemeiotics See Translation.
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Jamnia See Yavneh.
Jesus Tradition The term Jesus tradition describes one of the most foundational concepts in Gospels and historical Jesus research. Broadly stated, ‘Jesus tradition’ refers to the stories about, and the teachings attributed to, Jesus in early Christianity
Jesus Tradition and Memory Form criticism conceived memory as individual reminiscence (see personal/cognitive memory). Understood as such, memory hardly fit the generic profile of the synoptic tradition. Form criticism therefore made a sharp distinction b
Jousse, Marcel Marcel Jousse (1886–1961) was a French scholar who, along with Milman Parry, ranks among the pioneers in the study of oral style and orally based cultures. A thinker of global ambitions, he aspired to achieve a grand synthesis of anthropolo
Jubilees Jubilees is a second-century BCE Jewish text that serves as a prime example of rewritten scripture. The narrative follows closely the contents of Genesis and Exodus 1–19, sometimes apparently quoting these biblical texts verbatim but more often p
K
Kelber, Werner Werner Kelber is an NT scholar whose interests have ranged from narrativity in the Gospels to the implications of ancient media studies, through a consideration of oral tradition, scribality, and collective memory theory. He has been a pio
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Lector The term lector (Latin lector; Greek anagnōstēs) refers to a trained reader, usually of servile status, who performed public reading from a manuscript. ‘Public reading’ denotes a reading event in which a text is read aloud directly from a manuscrip
Letters The twenty-one letters included in the NT make up a significant proportion of the earliest literary evidence of emerging Christianity. These letters relate to different groups and locations, the diversity of their cultures, their identities and co
Libraries See Archives.
Literacy In general terms, literacy refers to the skills of reading and writing. Although largely taken for granted in modern industrialized societies, these skills were rare in antiquity. Ancient cultures lacked anything like a widespread, publicly funde
Long-Term/Short-Term Memory The categories short- and long-term memory are used to differentiate the temporary holding of information in personal awareness (short-term memory) from its storage for later recall (long-term memory). Knowing the processes, ca
Lord, Albert Albert Bates Lord (1912–91) was an American scholar whose work in folklore and comparative literature was central to the development of the methodological approach now commonly known as oral-formulaic theory. He initially worked alongside hi
M
Manuscript A manuscript is a handwritten copy of an ancient literary or documentary text. Whereas the term text may refer to a recognizable tradition that occurs in multiple copies (e.g. the Gospel of John), the term manuscript refers to an individual cop
Masoretic Text The Tiberian Masoretic tradition (MT) is the source of the medieval manuscripts that form the base of today’s editions of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. BHS). Though there are thousands of medieval Masoretic manuscripts, the principal witnesses to
Master Commemorative Narrative A master commemorative narrative is a metanarrative that operates as an organizing principle for recollections of the past within a group’s collective memory. Metanarrative stresses that master commemorative narratives do no
McLuhan, Marshall Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was a pioneer researcher on the pervasive impact of communication technology in the formation of culture and author of the proverbial summary of media research, ‘The medium is the message’. McLuhan grew up in
Memory, Greco-Roman Theories of In media criticism of the Bible, research into ancient theories of memory has focused primarily on the Greco-Roman context, where personal memory was viewed as an essential element in the composition and performance of phil
Memory, Persistence and Decay of Impressions of events, things, and people persist in human memory for variable periods of time (see Cognitive Memory). Some persist (remain memorable) for a very long time, while others decay (fade from memory) almost imme
Memory Theatre A memory theatre is a mnemonic device used in place system techniques for the recall of information in live performance. Ancient (and modern) place systems facilitated the recall of both individual pieces of information and the interrelatio
Metonymy Metonymy is the term applied by John Miles Foley to the basic aesthetic of oral-traditional composition. In Foley’s definition, metonymy is a figure of speech by which ‘a part stands for the whole’ (Foley 1991: 7). For example, popular English re
Mishnah The Mishnah is the first document of rabbinic Oral Law, assumed to have been edited around 200 CE. It constitutes the basis of the later Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, which are commentaries on the Mishnah and follow its structure into orders
Monuments Many civilizations, though not all, create monuments. Certainly the major empires that span the biblical writings – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia (Syria and Egypt), and Rome – engaged in monumentalizing, constructing palaces, temple
Mouvance Mouvance is a term that originally described the instability and flexibility of oral poetry, but was then applied to the manuscript culture of oral traditions and literature with roots in oral traditions, originally medieval poetry.
Multiformity The term multiformity describes the thematic variation, narrative fluidity, and semantic polyvalence of oral traditions. As Ruth Finnegan observes, ‘by its very nature oral literature is changeable’ (1988: 69). Oral traditions therefore ‘exis
Music The Bible and its related ancient literature witness to a concept of music in which organized sound was not an independent medium, but was always allied with what modern Western culture regards as non-musical elements. Those elements might be functi
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Naḥal Ḥever Naḥal Ḥever is a stream in the Judean Desert that runs towards the Dead Sea, about 3 km (approximately 2 mi) south of En Gedi. The stream became famous because of important manuscript finds in two caves at the head of the stream. During an ini
Narrative Gospels Historical Jesus and Gospels scholarship has typically differentiated the origin and transmission of reputed sayings of Jesus from stories about him. This differentiation closely mirrors the generic distinction between Sayings and Narrat
Narrativity Narrativity is the quality of coherent structure and story-like articulability that individuals and social groups bestow upon personal memories, the actual past, traditions, history, and discourses. Narrative serves as a memorial tool that aid
Niditch, Susan Susan Niditch (b. 1950) is an American religious scholar, Biblicist, and folklorist whose research has surveyed a variety of aspects of ancient and early Judaism. Her work centres
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