Recommended Database Search Engines
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowMLA International Bibliography offers a detailed bibliography of journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association, the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to the 1920s and contains over 2.2 million citations from more than 4,400 journals & series and 1,000 book publishers. The indexed materials coverage is international and includes almost 60 titles from J-STOR’s language and literature collection as well as links to full text.
- Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new windowFind up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on nearly 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world.
Journals
- Journal of Biblical Literature Articles written by members of the Society of Biblical Literature(SBL) are published on a quarterly basis. The members are scholars of biblical studies in specific disciplines such as literature and history.
- Prooftexts "Forum for the field of Jewish literary studies. Attempts to bring together the study of modern Jewish literatures (in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages) with the literary study of the Jewish classical tradition as a whole."
- The Jewish Bible Quarterly "Devoted entirely to the TANAKH. Provides studies on biblical themes & is a source of information for anyone studying the Bible."
- Biblical Interpretation "Provides articles on various aspects of current biblical criticism. Provides a practical demonstration of how a particular literary approach may be instructively applied to a biblical text. Includes feminist and post-structuralist readings among others."
- New Testament Studies "New Testament Studies is an international peer-reviewed periodical whose contributors include the leading New Testament scholars writing in the world today. The journal publishes original articles and short studies in English, French and German on a wide range of issues pertaining to the origins, history, context and theology of the New Testament and early Christianity. All contributions represent research at the cutting edge of the discipline, which has developed a wide range of methods. The journal welcomes submissions employing any such methods in recent years. The periodical embraces exegetical, historical, literary-critical, sociological, theological and other approaches to the New Testament, including studies in its history of interpretation and effects."
- Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus "Provides a forum for academic discussion of Jesus within the context of first-century Palestine; accessible to the very wide non-scholarly readership interested in the way this topic is, & has been, investigated & presented."
- Currents in Biblical Research "Summarizes the spectrum of recent research on particular topics or biblical books."
Relevant Books
- WorldCat Local This link opens in a new windowWorldCat Local provides Web access to WorldCat.org and GLOCAT as well as other databases including ArticleFirst, GPO, Medline, ERIC, GeoRef, and MLA.
The Hebrew Bible As Literature: a Very Short Introduction by
The Hebrew Bible, or Christian Old Testament, contains some of the finest literature that we have. This biblical literature has a place not only in the synagogue or the church but also among the classics of world literature. The stories of Jacob and David, for instance, present the earliest surviving examples of literary characters whose development the reader follows over the length of a lifetime. Elsewhere, as in the books of Esther or Ruth, readers find a snapshot of a particular, fraught moment that will define the character. The Hebrew Bible also provides quite a few high points of lyric poetry, from the praise and lament of the Psalms to the double entendres in the love of poetry of the Song of Songs. In short, the Bible can be celebrated not only as religious literature but, quite simply, as literature. This book offers a thorough and lively introduction to the Bible's two primary literary modes, narrative and poetry, foregrounding the nuances of plot, character, metaphor, structure and design, and intertextual allusions. Tod Linafelt thus gives readers the tools to fully experience and appreciate the Old Testament's literary achievement. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
ISBN: 0195300076Publication Date: 2016-05-10
Reading Hebrew Bible Narratives by
Reading Hebrew Bible Narratives introduces readers to narrative traditions of the Old Testament and to methods of interpreting them. Part of the Essentials of Biblical Studies series, this volume presents readers with an overview of exegesis by mainly focusing on a self-contained narrative to be read alongside the text. Through sustained interaction with the book of Ruth, readers have opportunities to engage a biblical book from multiple perspectives, while taking note of the wider implications of such perspectives for other biblical narratives. Other select texts from Hebrew Bible narratives, related by theme or content to matters in Ruth, are also examined, not only to assist in illustrating this method of approach, but also to offer reinforcement of reading skills and connections among different narrative traditions. Considering literary analysis, words and texts in context, and reception history, this brief introduction gives students an overview of how exegesis illuminates stories in the Bible.
ISBN: 0190246529Publication Date: 2018-10-18
The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative by
Comprised of contributions from scholars across the globe, The Oxford Handbook to Biblical Narrative is a state-of-the-art anthology, offering critical treatments of both the Bible's narratives and topics related to the Bible's narrative constructions. The Handbook covers the Bible's narrativeliterature, from Genesis to Revelation, providing concise overviews of literary-critical scholarship as well as innovative readings of individual narratives informed by a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks.The volume as a whole combines literary sensitivities with the traditional historical and sociological questions of biblical criticism and puts biblical studies into intentional conversation with other disciplines in the humanities. It reframes biblical literature in a way that highlights itsaesthetic characteristics, its ethical and religious appeal, its organic qualities as communal literature, its witness to various forms of social and political negotiation, and its uncanny power to affect readers and hearers across disparate time-frames and global communities.
ISBN: 9780199967728Publication Date: 2016-06-29
The Literary Qur'an by
The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary literary criticism. Showing how the Qurʾan itself invites and enacts critical reading, Hoda El Shakry's Qurʾanic model of narratology enriches our understanding of literary sensibilities and practices in the Maghreb across Arabophone and Francophone traditions. The Literary Qurʾan mobilizes the Qurʾan's formal, narrative, and rhetorical qualities, alongside embodied and hermeneutical forms of Qurʾanic pedagogy, to theorize modern Maghrebi literature. Challenging the canonization of secular modes of reading that occlude religious epistemes, practices, and intertexts, it attends to literature as a site where the process of entextualization obscures ethical imperatives. Engaging with the Arab-Islamic tradition of adab--a concept demarcating the genre of belles lettres, as well as social and moral comportment--El Shakry demonstrates how the critical pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from the spiritual cultivation of the self. Foregrounding form and praxis alike, The Literary Qurʾan stages a series of pairings that invite paratactic readings across texts, languages, and literary canons. The book places twentieth-century novels by canonical Francophone writers (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Assia Djebar, Driss Chraïbi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī, al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār, Muḥammad Barrāda). Theorizing the Qurʾan as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.
ISBN: 0823286355Publication Date: 2019-12-03
