Biblical Prose Prayer: As a Window to the Popular Religion of Ancient Israel (Volume 1) (Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies) - Softcover

Greenberg, Moshe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520050126 ISBN 13: 9780520050129

Publisher: University of California Press, 1983

Synopsis

The Psalms are the best known and most widely used prayer texts of the Bible. But the prayers of the Israelite took another form: the prose prayers that we find embedded in biblical narrative. Prose prayer was spoken by persons of all ranks. Male and female, Israelite and foreigner, all enjoyed equal access to God. The pervasiveness and spontaneity of this prayer, independent as it was of the structure and taboos of formal worship, turned it into a criterion for sincerity both in relations with God and in those among human beings.

Greenberg finds in this rich life of private prayer a setting for the high religious ideas--and the scathing critique of worship--that characterized the "genius" of the prophets of the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. His compact and masterful study, originally the 1981-1982 Taubman Lectures at Berkeley, suggests an explanation for the unprecedented democratization of worship in post-biblical Judaism.

About this title

About the Author

Moshe Greenberg is Emeritus Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Prior to teaching at the Hebrew University, he taught courses in Bible and Judaica at the Univerity of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1983
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520050126
• ISBN 13: 9780520050129
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 78