Recommended by Ronald Hendel, Professor of Near Eastern Studies.
“A fusion of realism and allegory in the history of life in a modern Egyptian alley – via Genesis, the New Testament, and the Qur’an. As with others who reimagine Scripture in new ways, Mahfouz was declared a heretic and attacked by fundamentalists. This places Mahfouz in a distinguished lineage, traced in my book, from the Gnostic heretics to Luther, Rabelais, Galileo, Spinoza, Darwin, and Dickinson.”
“While Douglas doesn’t address Genesis, her pathbreaking study of the relationship between literary and conceptual styles in Leviticus (contrasted with Deuteronomy) is a continual inspiration to me. Her correlation of social contexts with distinctive thought-styles provides, in my view, a way of developing Auerbach’s historical genealogy of representational styles. This is part of the project of my book.”
“Another book by a Berkeley faculty brilliantly traces how the modern concept of the Bible as a source of Western culture was constructed by theologians and scholars as a means of reconstituting its authority on non-theological grounds. By doing so, they responded to – and exacerbated – the religious crisis of authority in which the Bible is still situated. Several of my chapters draw on the intellectual capital of Sheehan’s book.”
“Brown’s classic book shows how body practices and biblical interpretation interfuse in Late Antiquity. My discussion of the Desert Fathers and Genesis was shamelessly derived from Brown’s elegant analysis.”
“An elegant explication of the world and hermeneutical strategies of one of the most consequential interpreters of Genesis. In Paul’s letters we see the fusion of apocalyptic and Platonic modes of interpretation, which remain in dialogue until their dissolution in the Enlightenment. This is another subplot in my book.”
"A fine overview of the scrolls in their historical and religious context by one of their preeminent modern interpreters. The scrolls are a key point in the transition from biblical composition to biblical interpretation. They also provide an entry into the birth of apocalypticism, to which I devote a chapter in my book."
“Kugel is a master of detailing how the gaps and incongruities in the Hebrew Bible created the need for interpretations and retellings in early Judaism and Christianity. He carefully unpacks the hermeneutical assumptions of early interpreters, which I pursue in their afterlife in medieval and modern times.”
“One of Alter’s many key contributions to the study of the Hebrew Bible and literature. The Bible’s literary power and traditional authority are transmuted in various ways by modern writers, who adapt, subvert, and sublate the biblical canon. The chapter on Kafka is amazing – I borrowed abundantly from it in my book.”
"One of the great works of modern literary scholarship. A sweeping and philosophically acute genealogy of literary representation in the West. The first chapter, 'Odysseus’ Scar,' generated the modern study of biblical literature. The rise and fall of 'figural' representations of reality (from Paul to the Renaissance) forms part of Auerbach’s theme, which I adopt and develop in my book. Auerbach’s work on Genesis is also a topic in my last chapter."
