The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

The EBR is also available online.

Blogger's Choice - Articles recommended by biblioblogger Jim West

(https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com:)

As I have done for a number of years, I’ve randomly selected some of the entries in the latest volume of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) to look over and review. The following are the selections made from volume 24.

Rotem Avneri Meir (Helsinki, Finland), Politics and the Bible III.A. Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism. Politics and the Bible is meticulously treated in this excellent entry, and Meir’s focus on the topic in Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism is a gem as a stand-alone. He commences "In Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish literature, the Bible and politics are tightly interwoven." Indeed, as politics and the Bible are interwoven in the present day in many countries, among them, of course, the United States. What is so intriguing here is that the shadows of the past are so long that they also appear in the present. What happened then seems to be happening now. As re aders of the Bible know, "there is nothing new under the sun," or in the dark dank of political manipulation of biblical texts. What’s old is new, and vice versa, and Meir’s article illustrates this point brilliantly.

Laura Dyason (Sydney, NSW, Australia), Plymouth Brethren. I can readily confess to the fact that I know virtually nothing about the Plymouth Brethren, which is why I chose this entry. Beginning as a movement in the 1820’s, "Believing that only gatherings free from denominational affiliations and clerical hierarchies could be considered as gatherings unto Christ rather than to a denomination or individual, they convened for informal Bible study, meetings, and communion modelled after the pattern found in the NT." And more. This is an excellent piece indeed!

Jörg Frey (Zurich, Switzerland), Peter, Second Epistle of I. New Testament. Frey is an internationally renowned scholar, with impeccable credentials and an extensive bibliography. He knows what he is talking about when he writes about the 2 Peter. He, and his work, hardly requires my commendation. He writes, "Second Peter is a polemical and apologetic epistle designed as a literary testament that claims to be written by Simon Peter (2 Pet 1:1), but actually originates from the mid 2nd century, decades after Peter’s death. It is the latest writing of the NT, at the margins of the canon." And then what follows can best be described as an "Introduction" to the letter such as one would find in the better, more academically oriented, commentaries. Definitely worth the read for all NT scholars.

Michael Ghattas (Cairo, Egypt), Peter of Alexandria. Once again, I chose this entry because it is a topic about whichI know no thing. This is a distinct benefit of the EBR. As an encyclopedia, it lends itself well to the joy of discovery. You can peruse as you wish. In this article, Ghattas begins "Peter, the seventeenth patriarch of Alexandria from 300 to 311 CE, was a revered bishop known for his piety and deep understanding of the Bible." From the start, the author awakens interest in this genuinely intriguing figure. As is the case of all the entries in the EBR, an ample, up to date bibliography is available for further reading.

Jürgen Zangenberg (Leiden, The Netherlands), II. Philadelphia (in Lydia). This very brief overview of the history of a city mentioned in the book of Revelation is concise, but precise. It is very much worth the few minutes it will take readers to read it. "Philadelphia, located ca. 50 km south of Sardeis in Lydia, was founded by Pergamene king Attalus III (r. 159–38 BCE) i n commemoration of the brotherly love he showed to his brother Eumenes II (197–59 BCE)." An article full of fun facts.

Misgav Har-Peled (Chiapas, Mexico), Pig, Pigs V. Judaism C. Medieval Judaism. Of the several essays I have looked through in this volume (and it is just a drop in the sea), this is the one I enjoyed the most. Here, Har-Peled describes the way pigs were viewed in Medieval Judaism, and how the unclean little beasts were utilized as something of a boundary marker for Judaism and Christianity. To offer an extensive citation, "During the Middle Ages, particularly in Europe, eating – or not eating – pork marked a clear border between Jews (pork-haters) and Christians (pork-eaters). Hence, while only a minor offense from the perspective of Jewish law (that is, halakhically speaking, it ‘merely’ carried a punishment of lashes: see Judah ha-Levi, Kuzari 3.49), eating pork,from a symbo lic point, was of great significance. For Christians, consuming pork marked their ‘passage’ from the OT to the NT, from the yoke of the law, materiality, or animality, to salvation by Christ (Boyarin). Correspondingly, for Jews, respecting the avoidance of pork was not just a sign of rejecting the Christian view of Jesus as the Messiah, but also signified their own waiting for the ‘true’ messianic event at the end of time. Thus, the very lynchpin of messianic hope, and its implication for the status of the law, was at the heart of the debate about the avoidance of pork, and thus became a recurrent topic of Jewish-Christian debate literature. Christians argued that, after the coming of Christ, the law forbidding the consumption of pork must be understood allegorically: that by commanding us not to eat pork, God commands us not to behave as pigs (i.e., not to follow our low desires). In contrast, arguing that the avoidance of pork will remain even in the messianic era, Jews insisted that God will timelessly pun ish the eaters of this meat (Resnick)." The whole entry is simply fascinating.

Siobhán Jolley (Manchester, United Kingdom), Pontius Pilate V. Visual Arts. The focus in this part of the entry is Pontius Pilate in the Visual Arts. Jolley writes, "Despite his brief biblical appearances in the NT, Pilate has maintained an enduring presence in the visual arts. His creative appeal perhaps lies in his moral conundrum, acknowledging Jesus’s innocence yet ordering his execution." Indeed. Always an intriguing character, Pilate has featured in art since the beginning of Christianity and is still a subject of interest today. Further reading on Pilate should not fail to take in hand Helen Bond’s Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (Cambridge 1998).

Sung Uk Lim (Seoul, South Korea), Philemon, Epistle to II. Christianity D. Africa, America and Asia. This essay examines the reception of Philemon in Africa, America and Asia or in Lim’s own words, "This essay explores the multifaceted reception of the Letter to Philemon within World Christianity, focusing specifically on its interpretations in American, African, Asian, and Hispanic contexts." Reception history is fascinating precisely because it opens to us perspectives beyond our own, ones which would probably never occur to us, thereby enriching us immensely.

Irene Montori (Rome, Italy), Phoenix (Bird) VIII. Literature. The bird that lent its name to the city I spent the bulk of my childhood and young adulthood in is here discussed from the point of view of the literature in which it has appeared. Evidently, it was something of a Christian symbol early on. "First Clement (1st–2nd cent. CE) paves the way to the Christian allegory."But it serves no longer as a widely recognized symbol in Christian thinking. Indeed, "In recent decades, popular culture and children’s literature (E. Ormondroyd, David and the Phoenix, 1957; J. Bertin, Dragon and Phoenix, 1999; H. Moss, The Phoenix Code, 2014; A. Carter, The Curse of the Phoenix, 2021) have renewed the figure and its symbolism, though it is rarely associated with the same religious meaning that it assumed in Christian interpretations."

Archie Wright (Virginia Beach, VA, USA), Polytheism III. Judaism A. Second Temple Judaism. Archie discusses the subject of Polytheism in Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism. As he rightly notes in the opening lines of his contribution, "The HB/OT acknowledges that throughout the history of Israel, there were beliefs that other gods existed (see, e.g., Exod 15:11; 20:3). However, as the nation emerged from the Babylonian exile and the worldviewof the Jude an religion began to move toward a monotheistic theology (although not completely), sources reflect a growing presence of heavenly beings called angels/messengers of God, and for the most part Jews no longer honored other gods – only YHWH." In essence, monotheism is, relatively speaking, a fairly new phenomenon.