Institute of Jewish Studies

This article discusses the polysemy of the word עין in the Isaac narratives (Gen 17–35). The word's given ambivalent nature is exploited on every level. It fits the major themes in the Isaac story as well as the small nuances in individual sentences. As such it illustrates the potential power of polysemy and its multiple, so to say polysemous, role in biblical narrative.

Previous research on Gen 3:15b, known as part of God’s curse to the snake, has highlighted the interpretation difficulties with regard to the verb שוף. However, the ambiguity involves more words as well as the grammar of the verse. This article revisits the curse proposing an ambiguous reading as the Hebrew text offers it. First, the lexical ambiguity of the words שוף, ראש, and עקב enters multiple ideas of hurting, guarding, threatening and blowing; head and poison; heel and crafty trickster. Secondly, the grammatical structure of the verse adds to the indefinite nature. The words ראש and עקב can function as relative accusatives as in the traditional rendering or as vocatives or appositions to subject or object. Thirdly, the deliberate confusion allows connecting small and larger narratological units. It reveals a play between two characters, the snake and God, trying to outclass each other in terms of craftiness. Thus, the ambiguous language in Gen 3:15b is not a problem; it is the key to interpretation.

Changing times have produced different depictions of biblical characters in the arts. Changing art forms and media have as well. This article
addresses the reception of the biblical character Jael (Judges 4–5) in the changed times of the 21st century and in the changed medium of the
podcast. Who is Jael, according to these shows? Where do we see the influence of the time, and where the impact of the medium? And is there an effect from biblical story to listener? The article first introduces podcasts, and Bible podcasts more specifically, as a yet to be defined and described art form. For the further analysis, I turn to concepts of Text World Theory, a cognitive stylistic framework, that offers tools to study any type of human discourse by means of notions such as, discourse worlds and text-worlds and their interaction. Consequently, the depiction of Jael is examined in two different podcasts, Two Feminists Annotate the Bible and Sean and Eliot Read the Bible. The analysis demonstrates how both shows create their Jael as a result of stylistic
choices as well as of discourse world influences, all of which color the interpretation of the text-world of the Jael and Sisera account. Compared to the earlier reception of the story and female character Jael, the podcasts foreground the issue of violence. In addition, the shows display features of mixed genre. Finally, the split discourse world of the original author(s) of the Bible text and the podcast hosts plays an important, and even artful, role in the outlook of the shows.

Biblical scholars have done a great deal to advance our appreciation of the literary sophistication of biblical texts. Biblical commentaries and a host of other publications now regularly draw our attention to a multitude of textual devices that operate on micro-and macro-levels such as punning, allusion, inclusio, chiasm, repetition, and ring structure, to name just a few. While such research has at times emphasized literary similarities at the expense of cultural diffferences, it nonetheless has removed the study of the Hebrew Bible from its relative literary isolation. The combined influence of these factors has allowed scholars to speak about biblical texts on par with Homer, Beowulf, Shakespeare, and other great works of literature. In this essay, I shall argue that while such literary and comparative approaches have helped us to appreciate more fully the repertoire of technical devices employed by the Israelite writers, in the main, they have not helped us to understand their functions. In particular, I shall argue that a comparative examination of the social context for textual production in the ancient Near East suggests that we should think of biblical literary devices not as stylistic embellishments, but as performative devices of perceived power.

This article seeks to understand the relation between form and content of biblical passages, focusing especially on the word ‭םימאות‬, ‘twins’. First, the six attestations of the word occur in pairs in the books of Genesis, Exodus and the Song of Songs. Second, they are highlighted through linguistic devices that in themselves have affinity with duality: geminates, alliteration and (numerical) paronomasia. Moreover, the number ‘two’ occurs in all texts and is evoked through the use of its homophone ‭ינש‬, ‘scarlet’, and through duplication of words. Thus, it is suggested that the language of biblical passages including the ‘twin’ word exteriorizes and emphasizes the twin concept by means of devices that mimic the twinning formally.

Previous research on Gen 3:15b, known as part of God’s curse to the snake, has highlighted the interpretation difficulties with regard to the verb שוף. However, the ambiguity involves more words as well as the grammar of the verse. This article revisits the curse proposing an ambiguous reading as the Hebrew text offers it. First, the lexical ambiguity of the words שוף, ראש, and עקב enters multiple ideas of hurting, guarding, threatening and blowing; head and poison; heel and crafty trickster. Secondly, the grammatical structure of the verse adds to the indefinite nature. The words ראש and עקב can function as relative accusatives as in the traditional rendering or as vocatives or appositions to subject or object. Thirdly, the deliberate confusion allows connecting small and larger narratological units. It reveals a play between two characters, the snake and God, trying to outclass each other in terms of craftiness. Thus, the ambiguous language in Gen 3:15b is not a problem; it is the...

Research on cities in the Hebrew Bible shows that urban spaces are often personified. This article argues that in the case of Nahum's Nineveh this personification is part of a conceptual metaphor, in which the city is depicted as a body. The same metaphor underlies other comparative devices in the text, which similarly share a corporeal focus. Together, these devices tell the story of a weakening city body, in a way that is both cognitively accessible as well as narratologically and communicatively efficient.

Abstract: The Even Bohan of Qalonymos ben Qalonymos has long been acknowledged as a masterpiece of Hebrew satire and an important source for Jewish life in medieval Aragon, provence, and Italy. The date of its composition, however, has been the subject of persistent confusion. For over four centuries its completion was dated decades before the birth of its author, even though the correct date had been discovered by Joseph Scaliger and (independently) by Leopold Zunz. After an overview of Qalonymos's world and works, this essay uncovers this history by tracing the fate of one word through textual transmission from manuscript to print. Studying past attempts to date Qalonymos's text, this essay tells chapters in the histories of the Hebrew book and the perception of medieval Jewish history by both Renaissance christian hebraists and nineteenth-century scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. It also provides the correct date of the completion of the Even Bohan.

Een nieuwe catalogus van de kostbare handschriftenverzameling van het Museum Plantin-Moretus, waarin het onderzoek van een kleine eeuw zal worden verwerkt, is een desideratum. Als personages van Pirandello zijn aan de Vrijdagmarkt meer dan vijfhonderd manuscripten op zoek naar een inventarisator-paleograaf. Vooralsnog blijft men aangewezen op het baanbrekende werk dat Jan Denucé, de Antwerpse stadsarchivaris en oud-conservator van het museum, in opdracht van zijn voorganger Max Rooses vervaardigde. 1 De vingers van vier generaties bezoekers hebben met de jaren het inmiddels zeer broze doorschoten exemplaar in de leeszaal (bl a 11) versleten. Van heinde en verre heeft men het juist om zijn talrijke met de hand geschreven kanttekeningen, toevoegingen en verbeteringen, in het boek zelf aangebracht of op losse ingevoegde blaadjes, leren raadplegen met de zorg en de liefde die alleen onvolmaaktheid kan oproepen. Het is zelf een museumstuk geworden.

Kunt u zich voorstellen dat de minister-president of de koningin persoonlijk in zou grijpen wanneer een vooraanstaand wetenschapper van de Leidse universiteit wegens vergaande bezuinigingen alhier en betere arbeidsomstandigheden elders naar het buitenland zou willen vertrekken?