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Archive for the ‘Book of Psalms’ Category


The Gospel of the Son of God

In Bloomsbury, Book of Psalms, Christology, Gospel of Mark, Intertextuality, Kendall A. Davis on August 20, 2024 at 8:44 pm

2024.08.05 | James M. Neumann. The Gospel of the Son of God: Psalm 2 and Mark’s Narrative Christology. LNTS 688. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2024. 

Review by Kendall A. Davis, University of Edinburgh.

In this published version of his dissertation completed at Princeton Theological Seminary under the supervision of Dale Allison, James Neumann argues not only that the title “son of God” is a central part of the Christology of Mark’s Gospel, but that Psalm 2 is as well. As Neumann writes, “I contend that Mark portrays Jesus’s earthly life from baptism to crucifixion as the actualization of Psalm 2…. To say so is not merely to say that Psalm 2 is the primary background behind Mark’s Son of God, but rather that, for Mark, to call Jesus the ‘Son of God’ is to locate the entire progression of the psalm unfolding in the person and work of Jesus” (p. 20; emphasis original). Neumann’s study is therefore particularly interested in the intertextual and narrative dynamics of Mark’s Gospel and its presentation of Jesus.

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Hebrew Wordplay and LXX Translation

In Adam W. Jones, Bloomsbury, Book of Psalms, Elizabeth H. P. Backfish, Septuagint, Translation on February 13, 2020 at 8:00 am

9780567687104

2020.02.04 | Elizabeth H. P. Backfish. Hebrew Wordplay and Septuagint Translation Technique in the Fourth Book of the Psalter. LHBOTS 682. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019.

Reviewed by Adam W. Jones, London School of Theology.

In Hebrew Wordplay and Septuagint Translation Technique in the Fourth Book of the Psalter, Elizabeth H. P. Backfish analyzes the nature of wordplay in the Fourth Book of the Hebrew Psalter and its translation in the LXX. This volume, a revised version of her PhD dissertation, fills a gap in scholarship on wordplay both in the Hebrew Psalter and in the LXX. Through this book, Backfish provides a significant contribution to multiple disciplines and creates room for the discussion to be carried forward in the future. Read the rest of this entry »


The Jewish Literary Imagination in Antiquity

In Book of Psalms, Eva MROCZEK, Hebrew Bible, Jeremiah Coogan, Oxford University Press, review, Scribal culture, Second Temple, Uncategorized on November 9, 2017 at 8:04 am

Mrocz mare

2017.11.23 | Eva Mroczek, The Jewish Literary Imagination in Antiquity. New York, NY/Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780190279837

Reviewed by Jeremiah Coogan, University of Notre Dame.

Before the categories of “book” and “Bible” dominated the literary imagination, Mroczek asks, “What did this literary world seem like to Second Temple writers?” (4). How did the creators and users of literary artifacts organize and conceptualize writing? We note that this literary world of Second Temple Judaism is explicitly textual; Mroczek avoids the temptation to see orality as the only alternative to our familiar models of textuality: she explores literary modes that are “deeply, self-consciously textual, but shaped differently from our own” (5). Read the rest of this entry »