Before the Bible reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origins of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological "tel" of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work. But the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our
understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origins and closure of the Bible but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period.
Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that the key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding this revelatory phenomenon. The book considers the entwinement
of prayer and scriptural formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been
largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive tradition in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
- ISBN10 0190212217
- ISBN13 9780190212216
- Publish Date 18 October 2018 (first published 18 August 2018)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English