Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: A Literary and Cultural Study - Hardcover

Lynch, Matthew J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1108494358 ISBN 13: 9781108494359

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020

Synopsis

Most studies on violence in the Hebrew Bible focus on the question of how modern readers should approach the problem. But they fail to ask how the Hebrew Bible thinks about that problem in the first place. In this work, Matthew J. Lynch examines four key ways that writers of the Hebrew Bible conceptualize and critique acts of violence: violence as an ecological problem; violence as a moral problem; violence as a judicial problem; violence as a purity problem. These four 'grammars of violence' help us interpret crucial biblical texts where violence plays a lead role, like Genesis 4-9. Lynch's volume also offers readers ways to examine cultural continuity and the distinctiveness of biblical conceptions of violence.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew J. Lynch is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, and until 2020, was Academic Dean at Westminster Theological Centre, UK. He is the author of Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles: Temple, Priesthood, and Kingship in Post-Exilic Perspective (2014). He is a founding co-host of the OnScript podcast.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108494358
• ISBN 13: 9781108494359
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300