{"title":"Bob Becking","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"micah-book-bob-becking-9780300159950","title":"Micah","description":"A new translation and commentary on the biblical book of Micah that proposes a convincing new theory of its composition history     While the biblical book of Micah is most famous for its images of peace—swords forged into to plowshares, spears turned into pruning hooks—and its passages of prophetic hope, the book is largely composed of prophecies of ruin. The historical Micah, who likely lived in the late eighth century BCE, is the first recorded prophet to predict the fateful fall of Jerusalem, and he also foretells the destruction of the regions of Samaria and Judah, in addition to the more well-known promises of Judah’s eventual restoration.     Bob Becking translates the Hebrew text anew and illuminates the book’s most important elements, including its literary features, political context, and composition history. Drawing on ancient Near Eastern comparative evidence, archaeological notes, and inscriptions, Becking surveys the debates surrounding the book’s interpretation and argues that it be regarded as three separate source texts: the early first chapter; a large middle section containing a proto-apocalyptic, alternating prophetic futurology collected and molded by a later redactor; and an added section advocating for legal reform under Josiah.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49749826830609,"sku":"NGR9780300159950","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300159951.jpg?v=1751196217"},{"product_id":"nahum-book-bob-becking-9781914490453","title":"Nahum","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055762866449,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055766012177,"sku":"NIN9781914490453","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52608141033745,"sku":"CIN1914490452G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52665426116881,"sku":"NLS9781914490453","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1914490452.jpg?v=1751314607"},{"product_id":"nahum-book-bob-becking-9781914490460","title":"Nahum","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055787245841,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055789736209,"sku":"NIN9781914490460","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52678550880529,"sku":"NLS9781914490460","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1914490460.jpg?v=1751282523"},{"product_id":"obadiah-book-bob-becking-9781910928097","title":"Obadiah","description":"Although Obadiah is the smallest book in the Hebrew Bible, its readers are confronted with a variety of challenges-linguistic, historical and hermeneutical. In the present volume the Book of Obadiah is approached from a variety of angles and reading strategies. These approaches sometimes concur, but often contradict one another. Bob Becking discusses various grammatical and linguistic problems of the Hebrew text in translating the book for a post-secular audience. Historical questions are the province of Nadav Na'aman. What were the 'events' with which the text seems to cope? Literary-historical issues concern Marvin Sweeney, who sees the book as the end-result of a complex redaction history in which the text was read in connection with and confrontation to the other Minor Prophets. Reading from particular positions is the theme of Gerrie Snyman, approaching the book in a South-African context, and asking, Who is vulnerable and who is not? Julia O'Brien takes a gender-specific approach asking, What does it mean that Edom is a brother who breaks the family code? Eric Ottenheijm traces the ways in which the Rabbis understood Obadiah. With insights from newly developing fields, Nicholas Werse discusses the violent character of judgment in the book in the light of semiotics, and Bradford Anderson brings to the fore the spatial rhetoric in the book. The authors of this volume offer their readings of the text in a non-exclusive way. No one claims to have found the one and only way to appreciate the message of the prophetic book. It is up to the readers of this volume-and of the Book of Obadiah-to decide how they will read the book in the changing circumstances of life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055994994961,"sku":"NIN9781910928097","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51157198471441,"sku":"NGR9781910928097","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52483486679313,"sku":"NLS9781910928097","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1910928097.jpg?v=1751314835"},{"product_id":"out-of-paradise-book-bob-becking-9781907534003","title":"Out of Paradise","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51057924735249,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51057926963473,"sku":"NIN9781907534003","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52474229063953,"sku":"NLS9781907534003","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1907534008.jpg?v=1750770070"},{"product_id":"transverse-dreamer-book-bob-becking-9783111207834","title":"A Transverse Dreamer","description":"The final text of the Book of Micah provokes a series of questions: - Can the Book be read as a coherent composition or is it the result of a complex redaction history? - Was Micah a prophet of doom whose literary heritage was later softened by the inclusion of oracles of salvation? The essays in this book center around these questions. Some of them are of a more general character, while others analyze specific passages. Some articles discuss the Book of Micah by looking at specific themes (prophecy; religious polemics; metaphors). The others are concerned with the proclamation of a peaceful future (Micah 4:1-5); the famous moral incentive in Micah 6:8 and the question of prophetic and divine gender in Micah 7:8-13. They have two features in common: - A thorough reading of the Hebrew text informed by grammar and syntax. - A comparative approach: the Book of Micah is seen as part of the ancient Near Eastern culture. All in all, the author defends the view that the Book of Micah contains three independent literary elements: Micah 1: a prophecy of doom; Micah 2-5 a two-sided futurology, and 6-8 a later appropriation of Micah’s message.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51063453483281,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51063456727313,"sku":"NIN9783111207834","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52676725571857,"sku":"NLS9783111207834","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3111207838.jpg?v=1750805909"},{"product_id":"israel-s-past-book-bob-becking-9783110717143","title":"Israel's Past","description":"How should one write a history of Ancient Israel? In the last few decades, a lively discussion has taken place on the historiography of ancient Israel. Minimalists such as Philip Davies, Thomas Thompson, and Niels Peter Lemche challenged the usefulness of the Hebrew Bible as a source for constructing Israel's past. Maximalists like Baruch Halpern and William Dever argued instead that the data from the Hebrew Bible should be trusted until otherwise proven. Others - among whom we can name Hans Barstad, Rainer Albertz, and Lester Grabbe - took a third road. The essays in this volume follow that third road by applying insights from the field of philosophy of history. A dozen case studies from David to the earliest Samaritans demonstrate how difficult it is to write a history of ancient Israel without falling in the abyss of an ideology in one direction or another. The matrix designed by Manfred Weippert to look at the past through five windows (landscape, climate, archaeology, epigraphy and only at the end the Hebrew Bible) turned out to be more helpful. 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But recent archaeological findings of texts and images from the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their neighbourhood offer a quite different impression. Two issues in particular raised by these are the existence of a female consort, Asherah, and the implication for monotheism; and the proliferation of pictorial representations that may contradict the biblical ban on images. Was the religion of ancient Israel really as the Bible would have us believe? 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Bob Becking discusses various grammatical and linguistic problems of the Hebrew text in translating the book for a post-secular audience. Historical questions are the province of Nadav Na'aman. What were the 'events' with which the text seems to cope? Literary-historical issues concern Marvin Sweeney, who sees the book as the end-result of a complex redaction history in which the text was read in connection with and confrontation to the other Minor Prophets. Reading from particular positions is the theme of Gerrie Snyman, approaching the book in a South-African context, and asking, Who is vulnerable and who is not? Julia O'Brien takes a gender-specific approach asking, What does it mean that Edom is a brother who breaks the family code? Eric Ottenheijm traces the ways in which the Rabbis understood Obadiah. 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