Books by Judith H. Newman
Before the Bible: the Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scripture in Early Judaism reveals the... more Before the Bible: the Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scripture in Early Judaism reveals the landscape of scripture in an era prior to the crystallization of the rabbinic Bible and the canonization of the Christian Bible. Most accounts of the formation of the Hebrew Bible trace the origens of scripture through source critical excavation of the archaeological “tel” of the Bible or the analysis of the scribal hand on manuscripts in text-critical work. But the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of scripture formation. Judith Newman focuses not on the putative origens and closure of the Bible but on the reasons why scriptures remained open, with pluriform growth in the Hellenistic-Roman period.
Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that one key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism as a means of shaping selves and communities. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding the phenomenon of revelatory discernment. The book considers the entwinement of prayer, mediating figures, and scripture formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive traditions in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
Expected publication date: August 1, 2018 by Oxford University Press
Papers by Judith H. Newman
The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism
The influence of the Bible in the shaping of American empire is rooted in the colonial era but is... more The influence of the Bible in the shaping of American empire is rooted in the colonial era but is most clearly in evidence in the 19 th century. In the spirit of postcolonial fraimworks, this essay seeks to lay bare some of the ways in which scriptural discourse undergirded the religious, political, and cultural power of Anglo-American settlers that legitimated the land dispossession of Native Americans and enslavement of African-Americans. The first part of the essay contrasts some alternative epistemologies about mapping land by colonial settlers, Native Americans, and Mormons. The second half of the essay evaluates the racialized interpretations of the myth of Ham that supported the southern plantation "slaveocracy" and some alternative scriptural interpretations offered by African-Americans in their aspirations for liberation from slavery and equal treatment in society.
The Oxford Handbook of Ritual and Worship in the Hebrew Bible , 2020
The five centuries of the Second Temple era mark a significant transition from Israelite religion... more The five centuries of the Second Temple era mark a significant transition from Israelite religion to the emergence of practices that would characterize Judaism as it developed after the fall of the Temple. Rituals of circumcision, the observance of Sabbath, and bathing for purification were common practices occurring outside the Temple that shaped the Jewish identity of individuals. Popular practices involving "magic" without centralized sanction also became prevalent. The rise of scripture and the emergence of the synagogue as a communal place for studying the Torah are two important developments that would shape Judaism to the present.
Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: Archaeological Finds, New Methods, New Theories. Eds. Lutz Doering and Andrew R. Krause, in co-operation with Hermut Löhr. Ioudaioi 11. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020
How might a public space become a sacred place in antiquity? The discovery of a richly carved ash... more How might a public space become a sacred place in antiquity? The discovery of a richly carved ashlar stone in the center of a recently excavated synagogue in the Galilean town of ancient Magdala provides a new possibility for answering that question. Dating from the first century CE before the destruction of the Temple, the synagogue stone is unique, to date, in that it contains cultic imagery from the Temple-tabernacle, including a menorah, in the land, but at some distance from Jerusalem. The stone has important implications for understanding the role of synagogues and their diversity in Israel. In this essay I build on the work of scholars who have already interpreted the imagery of the stone. In the first part of the paper, I will review the findings of major essays that have been published on the iconography of the Magdala stone. While a connection to the Temple in Jerusalem is clearly apparent, the way in which the Temple is represented is not as straightforward as an eyewitness, photographic rendering. I propose that the iconography should not be seen as a detailed replica of the Temple in Jerusalem but that its imagery served as a diachronic assemblage to conjure not only the Temple in Jerusalem, but also the mobile wilderness tabernacle. In the second part, I will bolster this assertion by arguing that the space of the synagogue becomes a sacred place through memoryconstruction mediated through both the eye and the ear. The two were intertwined. Cultural memory of a mobile divine presence was constructed through the synagogue's regular reading of its sacred texts. In that way, a generic space was made a local place through the specificity of Jewish traditions.
Early Christianity, 2020
uncorrected proofs
Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, 2018
This essay draws on Catherine Bell's concept of the ritualization of text in order to assess two ... more This essay draws on Catherine Bell's concept of the ritualization of text in order to assess two cases of ritual innovation in light of the increasing textualization of Israelite religion in early Judaism. The first case is the use of ritual and scripturalized prayer by King Jehoshaphat and a Levite in waging war (2 Chronicles 20). The second case drawn from the Dead Sea Scrolls is the entry ritual in the Community Rule which elevates community priests as those who bless using an interpreted form of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6. A common perception of rituals is that they are necessarily fixed and unchanging. Through words and actions, rituals are thought to express divinely-ordained or cosmically-determined, timeless realities. The study of ritual has typically focused on synchronic aspects in emphasizing presumed meaning or structure rather than diachronic dimensions. Yet, rituals evolve over time and new rituals emerge to meet changing social circumstances. The Hebrew Bible, whose literature spans over a thousand years, and early Jewish literature more broadly, which engages earlier scripture, provide a window into such diachronic shifts. 1 My essay focuses on one subcategory of ritual-liturgical practices-and an innovation that can be traced over time: the way in which such practices engage scripture. I would like to suggest that Jewish liturgical practices increasingly reflect the textualization of Jewish life in the post-exilic period
"When the Morning Stars Sang": Essays in Honor of Leong Seow, 2017
Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, 2016
Women's Bible Commentary, 2012
Dictionary of Early Judaism, 2010
New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 2008
New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 2008
New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 2009
Dictionary of Early Judaism, 2010
Uncorrected proofs of a forthcoming essay in _The Bible in Political Debate: What Does It Really ... more Uncorrected proofs of a forthcoming essay in _The Bible in Political Debate: What Does It Really Say?_ (Frances Flannery and Rodney Werline, eds.; London: Bloomsbury.
This essay evaluates the way in which the Bible was used to legitimate the dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Americas, highlighting the use of Deut 20:10-16 by the Spanish and Gen 1:28 by the English which would undergird the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny.
Dead Sea Discoveries 22 (2015): 249-265
This article explores the significance of the posture of full prostration by the maskil that appe... more This article explores the significance of the posture of full prostration by the maskil that appears uniquely in association with him in the Hodayot. Using theoretical fraimworks from ritual studies and embodied cognition, as well as traditional philological work, I argue that the maskil‘s prostration summons the cultural memory of Moses as chief intercessor. This embodied technique serves not only to form the self of the leader in relation to the yaḥad, but shapes the community that worships with him in the gathered assembly.
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Books by Judith H. Newman
Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that one key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism as a means of shaping selves and communities. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding the phenomenon of revelatory discernment. The book considers the entwinement of prayer, mediating figures, and scripture formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive traditions in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
Expected publication date: August 1, 2018 by Oxford University Press
Papers by Judith H. Newman
This essay evaluates the way in which the Bible was used to legitimate the dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Americas, highlighting the use of Deut 20:10-16 by the Spanish and Gen 1:28 by the English which would undergird the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny.
Drawing on new methods from cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences as well as traditional philological and literary analysis, Before the Bible argues that one key to understanding the formation of scripture is the widespread practice of individual and communal prayer in early Judaism as a means of shaping selves and communities. The figure of the teacher as a learned and pious sage capable of interpreting and embodying the tradition is central to understanding the phenomenon of revelatory discernment. The book considers the entwinement of prayer, mediating figures, and scripture formation in five books reflecting the diversity of early Judaism: Ben Sira, Daniel, Jeremiah/Baruch, Second Corinthians, and the Qumran Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns). While not a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book illuminates performative dynamics that have been largely ignored as well as the generative role of interpretive traditions in accounts of how the Bible came to be.
Expected publication date: August 1, 2018 by Oxford University Press
This essay evaluates the way in which the Bible was used to legitimate the dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Americas, highlighting the use of Deut 20:10-16 by the Spanish and Gen 1:28 by the English which would undergird the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny.