Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible

by Jeremy Schipper

Overview

Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible examines the intimate relationship between parables and conflict in the Hebrew Bible. Challenging the scholarly consensus, Jeremy Schipper argues that parables do not function as appeals to change their audience’s behavior. Nor do they serve to diffuse tensions in regards to the various conflicts in which their audiences are involved. Rather, the parables function to help create, intensify, and justify judgments and hostile actions against their audiences. In order to examine how the parables accomplish these functions, this book pays particular attention to issues of genre and recent developments in genre theory, shifting the central issues in the interpretation of Hebrew Bible parables.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521764629
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/13/2009
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jeremy Schipper is Assistant Professor of Religion (Hebrew Bible) at Temple University. He is the author of Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible (2006) and co-editor of This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies (2007). Schipper has published articles in a number of scholarly journals, including Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Vetus Testamentum, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Biblical Interpretation.

Table of Contents

1. Breaking down parables: introductory issues; 2. Devouring parables: Jotham's parabolic curse in Judges 9; 3. Over-allegorizing and other Davidic misinterpretations in 2 Samuel 11–12; 4. Changing face and saving face: parabolic petitions in 2 Samuel 14; 5. Grasping the conflict: Ahab's negotiation of conflicts and parables in 1 Kings 20; 6. Intellectual weapons: the parable's function in 2 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 25; 7. Conclusions and implications for the study of Hebrew Bible parables.