The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible's interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

The EBR is also available online.

Blogger's Choice - Articles recommended by biblioblogger Jim West

(https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com:)

As I have done for a number of years, I've randomly selected some of the entries in the latest volume of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) to look over and review. The following are the selections made from volume 24.

Rotem Avneri Meir (Helsinki, Finland), Politics and the Bible III.A. Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism. Politics and the Bible is meticulously treated in this excellent entry, and Meir's focus on the topic in Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism is a gem as a stand-alone. He commences "In Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish literature, the Bible and politics are tightly interwoven." Indeed, as politics and the Bible are interwoven in the present day in many countries, among them, of course, the United States. What is so intriguing here is that the shadows of the past are so long that they also appear in the present. What happened then seems to be happening now. As re aders of the Bible know, "there is nothing new under the sun," or in the dark dank of political manipulation of biblical texts. What's old is new, and vice versa, and Meir's article illustrates this point brilliantly.

Laura Dyason (Sydney, NSW, Australia), Plymouth Brethren. I can readily confess to the fact that I know virtually nothing about the Plymouth Brethren, which is why I chose this entry. Beginning as a movement in the 1820's, "Believing that only gatherings free from denominational affiliations and clerical hierarchies could be considered as gatherings unto Christ rather than to a denomination or individual, they convened for informal Bible study, meetings, and communion modelled after the pattern found in the NT." And more. This is an excellent piece indeed!

Jörg Frey (Zurich, Switzerland), Peter, Second Epistle of I. New Testament. Frey is an internationally renowned scholar, with impeccable credentials and an extensive bibliography. He knows what he is talking about when he writes about the 2 Peter. He, and his work, hardly requires my commendation. He writes, "Second Peter is a polemical and apologetic epistle designed as a literary testament that claims to be written by Simon Peter (2 Pet 1:1), but actually originates from the mid 2nd century, decades after Peter's death. It is the latest writing of the NT, at the margins of the canon." And then what follows can best be described as an "Introduction" to the letter such as one would find in the better, more academically oriented, commentaries. Definitely worth the read for all NT scholars.

Michael Ghattas (Cairo, Egypt), Peter of Alexa