Browse

Since 1980, epigraphic discoveries and researches have thrown new light on the Levant during the Achaemenid period (533-332 BCE). As an epigrapher who published many new Phoenician, Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions André Lemaire shows how these inscriptions illuminate the history and daily life of the Persian period Phoenicians, Israelites and Idumeans. Thanks to them, it is now possible to know more precisely the history of the four Phoenician kingdoms (Aradus, Byblos, Sidon and Tyre) and of the Cisjordan provinces (Samaria, Judaea and Idumaea) as well as the way of life of Judean groups in the Diaspora (Babylonia, Egypt, Cyprus); they also provide new light on several aspects of the Biblical literary tradition. Profusely illustrated, the book shows how important these various inscriptions are for Biblical Studies and historical researches on the Levant during a period still too often qualified as ‘obscure’ but more and more illuminated now by contemporary documents

This book examines the production and use of Bibles in late medieval and early modern England. The analysis of hundreds of biblical manuscripts and prints reveals how scribes, printers, readers, and patrons have reacted to religious and political turmoil. Looking at the modification of biblical manuscripts, or the changes introduced into subsequent printed editions, reveals the ways in which commerce and devotions joined to shape biblical access. The book explores the period from c.1200 to 1553, which saw the advent of moveable-type print as well as the Reformation. The book’s long-view places both technological and religious transformation in a new perspective. The book progresses chronologically, starting with the mass-produced innovative Late Medieval Bible, which has often been linked to the emerging universities and book-trade of the thirteenth century. The second chapter explores Wycliffite Bibles, arguing against their common affiliation with groups outside Church orthodoxy. Rather, it demonstrates how surviving manuscripts are linked to licit worship, performed in smaller monastic houses, by nuns and devout lay women and men. The third chapter explores the creation and use of the first Bible printed in England as evidence for the uncertain course of reform at the end of Henry VIII’s reign. Henry VIII’s Great Bible is studied in the following chapter. Rather than a monument to reform, a careful analysis of its materiality and use reveals it to have been a mostly useless book. The final chapter presents the short reign of Edward VI as a period of rapid transformation in Bible and worship, when some of the innovations introduced more than three hundred years earlier began, for the first time, to make sense.