The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World

In this volume a number of scholars from Israel, the USA, and England have joined forces with the well-known Utrecht University Research Unit "The Cultural Milieu of Early Christianity" to investigate in an unprecendently interdisciplinary fashion how sacred books functioned in pagan, Jewish, and Christian circles. The 16 essays cover a wide range of topics including a discussion of emergence of canonical scriptures in late antiquity, an investigation of parallels between exegesis of Homer by the Greeks and that of the Bible by the Jews, a study of the rise of Virgil's Aeneid to the status of "canonical" book; a discussion of the use of sacred books as instant oracles; an investigation of the role of the Bible in polemics between Jews and Christians; an analysis of the wide variety of quotation formula's used by New Testament authors, a discussion of the role of biblical interpretation in the thought world of Jesus' brother, James; an investigation of the function of Scripture in the midrash Aggadat Bereshit, and other topics.