Words, Ideas, Worlds: Biblical Essays in Honour of Yairah Amit

Publisher Marketing: This volume brings together fourteen essays by Israeli, European and American scholars honouring the distinct contribution of Yairah Amit to the literary study of the Hebrew Bible and to her public role, fostering especially the place of the Hebrew Bible in Israeli education. In biblical studies she has made significant contributions to the study of redactional and editorial activity, which she has always viewed from a rhetorical and literary point of view. These aspects were uniquely developed in her work on the books of Judges and Chronicles, in which literary considerations always lead to the recognition of the ideology behind the redactor's work. Another key theme of hers has been overt and hidden polemics expressed or suggested by the narrative text. The studies assembled in the present volume deal with the many aspects of Amit's work, from the biblical and post-biblical down to the mediaeval and the modern period. Central fields are the art of the redactor and inner-biblical polemics (Diana Edelman, Cynthia Edenburg, Nadav Na'aman, Meira Polliack, Dalit Rom-Shiloni), literary scrutiny (Ed Greenstein, Lillian Klein Abensohn, Frank Polak), ideology in social and religious contexts (Ehud Ben Zvi, Israel Knohl), and feminist and cultural studies in a wider sense (Athalya Brenner, Cheryl Exum, Yael Feldman, Shulamit Valler). Contributor Bio:  Brenner, Athalya Athalya Brenner is professor emerita of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and professor in biblical studies at the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She holds an honorary PhD from the University of Bonn, Germany. She is general editor of the Feminist Companion to the Bible, co-editor of Genesis and Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Texts @ Contexts series (Fortress Press, 2008 and 2012), and author of I Am: Biblical Women Tell Their Own Stories (Fortress Press, 2004).