Reading the Bible in the Pre-Modern World

This collection of essays explores the divergent, as well as complementary trends, in reading the Hebrew Bible in the pre-modern world.  It does so by focusing on a variety of Jewish and Christian exegetical, literary and visual texts.  The first part of this volume focuses on aspects of interpretation, performance and image in Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible, as evident in translations of the Bible, sermons, plays, treatises and paintings.  The second part focuses on the Jewish understanding of Scripture in the Middle Ages, as evident in the running commentary on the books of the Pentateuch as well as in illuminated manuscripts and mystical texts. Together, they provide a forum of interdisciplinary scholarship that demonstrates the Bible’s multivalent presence.

Contributors:  Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debb Tovi Bibring, Piero Capelli, Oren Cohen Roman, Lori Anne Ferrell, Noam Flinker, Naomi Graetz, Hannibal Hamlin, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Eric Lawee, Sara Offenberg, Oded Yisraeli.

Chanita Goodblatt is professor emerita in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is a co-editor of the journal Lyre: Studies in Poetry and Lyric, published by Bar-Ilan University Press. She has published extensively in the field of biblical culture in early modern Europe, particularly in the field of Christian Hebraism. Her latest publication is Jewish and Christian Voices in English Reformation Biblical Drama: Enacting Family and Monarchy.