 | Must a Jew Believe Anything? (The Littleman Library of Jewish Civilization) (The Littleman Library of Jewish Civilization) by Menachem Marc Kellner
Buy new: £10.31 / Used from: £4.68 DOGMA: Kellner questions how central dogma has been to Jewish belief throughout the ages; he proposes that its importance should be minimised in today's multi-denominational Jewish world.
|
 | The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised by Marc B. Shapiro
Buy new: £15.55 / Used from: £15.49 DOGMA: Shapiro lists everyone who has ever disagreed with Maimonides' principles of faith.
|
 | A History of Ancient Israel and Judah by J.Maxwell Miller
Buy new: £13.20 / Used from: £6.00 ANCIENT HISTORY: A solid introduction to thinking about the Tanakh critically and evaluating the historicity of the various narratives.
|
 | The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel by Israel Finkelstein
Buy new: £3.89 / Used from: £3.00 ANCIENT ARCHAEOLOGY: Explains where & why historians today question the Tanakh's historicity. However, it represents the left-wing school of archaeology; others believe there was a united monarchy.
|
 | The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring the Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation: College Edition (Bible Hebrew)
Buy new: £13.99 / Used from: £12.68 BIBLE STUDY: There is nothing else like this EXCELLENT study bible. New JPS trans.; the commentary balances traditional and modern scholarship, maps and diagrams explain, essays flesh out: UNIQUE
|
 | The Bible with Sources Revealed by Richard Elliott Friedman
Buy new: £10.31 / Used from: £12.49 BIBLE STUDY: A Chumash that is colour-coded by sources. The introduction summarises the source characteristics and proofs for the hypothesis.
|
 | Biblia Hebraica Paperback by BIBLE SOCIETY
Buy new: £14.65 / Used from: £12.00 BIBLE STUDY: The Masoretic (trad. Heb.) text of the Tanakh with an academic apparatus that lists all of the variants in other versions and manuscripts. Technical tool.
|
 | Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman
Buy new: £3.83 / Used from: £5.10 SOURCE CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE: A must read: he explains the hypothesis in a "detective novel" style but also works to explain why the Chumash is greater than the sum of its parts.
|
 | The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter
Buy new: £9.99 / Used from: £9.36 SOURCE CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE: The other side of the coin: Alter shows how source criticism can lead us to ignore the broader literary continuities in the narratives.
|
 | Glimpses of a Strange Land: Studies in Old Testament Ethics (Old Testament Studies) by Cyril S. Rodd
Buy new: £38.09 / Used from: £7.56 BIBLICAL ETHICS: An academic treatment of different forms of what WE call "ethics" in Tanakh; BH has no such word! Thorough investigation of problems such as kedoshim, women, war. Are we strangers?
|
 | The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series) by Mark S. Smith
Buy used from: £17.18 EMERGENT MONOTHEISM: Smith demonstrates that monotheism took a long time to develop in ancient Israel and that the hallmarks of earlier beliefs can still be found in the Tanakh today.
|
 | Death Of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought: 0 by Neil Gillman
Buy used from: £9.99 EMERGENT MONOTHEISM: Gillman shows how ideas about death & the afterlife developed from the Bible right up until the present day; from a Hades-like underworld, "Sheol", to the resurrection & the WTC.
|
 | Sacred Fragments by Neil Gillman
Buy new: £7.42 / Used from: £6.21 REVELATION & THEOLOGY: A worthwhile summary of older positions and Gillman's own. If your traditional theology was "shattered", Gillman tries to help pick up the pieces and put them back in the ark.
|
 | Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Brandeis Series on Jewish Women): Orthodoxy and Feminism (Brandeis Series on Jewish Women) by Tamar Ross
Buy new: £14.18 / Used from: £17.30 REVELATION & THEOLOGY: Probably most important book for Orthodoxy this decade. Feminism undermines revelation - it alleges Chumash is patriarchal. Ross argues for "cumulative revelation".
|
 | Beyond Reasonable Doubt by Louis Jacobs
Buy new: £14.20 / Used from: £14.19 REVELATION & THEOLOGY: Jacobs lays out his arguments with Orthodoxy in an entertaining way and proposes a model of "progressive revelation".
|
 | Living Covenant: Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism: 0 by David Hartman
Buy used from: £4.99 REVELATION & THEOLOGY: Hartman proposes a pluralist Orthodox theology that fully appreciates the significance of the Jewish State and the diversity of Judaism today.
|
 | Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh by Lester L. Grabbe
Buy new: £66.50 / Used from: £50.00 EARLY (i.e. 2nd Temple) JUDAISM: An accessible introduction. We often see the events of the 2nd Temple period through the lens of the Rabbis; we need to see the whole picture.
|
 | An Introduction to Early Judaism by James C. VanderKam
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £6.00 EARLY (i.e. 2nd Temple) JUDAISM: An accessible introduction. We often see the events of the 2nd Temple period through the lens of the Rabbis; we need to see the whole picture.
|
| Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah by E P Sanders
Buy used from: £70.77 EARLY (i.e. 2nd Temple) JUDAISM: (Scholarly) Did the Pharisees have "Oral Law" as we conceive of it today? Were the Pharisees a lot more "pluralist" than the later Rabbinic movement?
|
 | The Bible as It Was (Belknap) by JL Kugel
Buy used from: £13.73 EARLY BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: An excellent book; it gives an idea of the diversity of interpretation and how that interpretation often says more about the interpreter than the text.
|
 | Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash by Hermann L. Strack
Buy used from: £21.94 RABBINIC LITERATURE: The standard textbook, mainly for reference.
|
 | Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (A Touchstone book) by Barry W. Holtz
Buy new: £5.27 / Used from: £2.95 RABBINIC LITERATURE: A good introduction, but basic.
|
 | Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking by Michael Fishbane
Buy new: £87.37 / Used from: £36.65 MIDRASH: (Scholarly) So many books, but I have to recommend Fishbane's excellent magnum opus. "An innovative and important contribution to myth, hemeneutics, theology and cultural history".
|
 | A Tree of Life: Diversity, Flexibility and Creativity in Jewish Law (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Series).): Diversity, Flexibility and Creativity ... Law (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization) by Louis Jacobs
Buy new: £16.10 / Used from: £22.22 HALAKHA: Jacobs presents an excellent overview of the history of Halakha, its changes and developments. Jacobs shows clearly why he rejects the fundamentalism of Orthodoxy today.
|
 | An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law (Publication / The Institute of Jewish Law, Boston University)
Buy new: £31.00 / Used from: £28.32 HALAKHA: Only textbook that covers the 2nd Temple period without being anachronistic and Rabbinocentric, recognising that there were many varieties of Jewish law at that time. An excellent resource.
|
Listmania!
