Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing.

Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies

Politics & Social Sciences

Ricœur, Paul

LaCocque, André

Philosophy

University of Chicago Press

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing.

While in Genesis 2-11 the Yahwist confronts the issue of evil through a sequence of stories on the progressive deterioration of the divine-human relationship, in Genesis 4 he describes the initial slaughter of one human being by another as fratricidal. This book provides a close reading of J's story by using literary criticism and psychological criticism, and shows that the biblical author has more than an "archaeological" design. His characters - including God, Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, plus minor character - are paradigmatic, as they allow J to proceed with a fine analytical feel for the nature of evil as performed by "homo" as "homini lupus." No imaginative "mimesis" of evil has ever been recounted with such an economy of means and such depth of psychological insight. Table of Contents Abbreviations; Introduction; The Object of This Book; The Yahwist as Author; Date of Composition; Authorial Omniscience; A Matter of Temporality; The Anthropological Dimension Cain Is an Agriculturist and Abel Is a Shepherd; The Brothers' Sacrifices from a Phenomenological Viewpoint; The Introduction of Sin into the World; A Crux Interpretum--Verse 7; The First Crime; A Woman's Glory and Her Sons' Competition; The Oedipal Cain; In the Field; Alienation; The Theological Dimension Kinship Relations Belong to the Sacred; Soul Murder; God's Favoritism?; Sacrifice Revisited; The Divine and Human in Reciprocity; God's Power--To Be Interpreted; The Psychological Dimension; Violence and the Sign upon Cain; Two in One; No Rehabilitation of Cain; Cain--A Tragic Figure?; The Psychology of Abel, the Kin of Cain; Paranoia; Cain Builds the First City; Genealogy and Culture; Cain's Genealogy in Genesis 4 (and 5); The Yahwist and the Origin of Culture and Civilization; The Song of Lamech; Hope Has the Last Word; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index of Ancient Sources; Author Index.

Onslaught against Innocence: Cain, Abel and the Yahwist

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

James Clarke & Co.

Book of Daniel

SPCK Publishing

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. The feminine unconventional: four subversive figures in Israel's tradition, paperback, xvi, 144 p. ; 22 cm. Some minor wear to cover and spine, but otherwise in very good+ condition. Text clean and unmarked.

The Feminine Unconventional: Four Subversive Figures in Israel's Tradition (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

Judaism

Fortress Press

This volume provides a readable introduction to the narrative book of Ruth appropriate for the student, pastor, and scholar. LaCocque combines historical, literary, feminist, and liberationist approaches in an engaging synthesis. He argues that the book was written in the post-exilic period and that the author was a woman. Countering the fears and xenophobia of many in Jerusalem, the biblical author employed the notion of h.esed (kindness, loyalty, steadfast love), which transcends any national boundaries. LaCocque focuses on redemption and levirate marriage as the two legal issues that recur throughout the text of Ruth. Ruth comes from the despised people of Moab but becomes a model for Israel. Boaz, converted to the model of steadfast love, becomes both redeemer and levir for Ruth and thus fulfills the Torah. In the conclusion to his study, the author sketches some parallels with Jesus' hermeneutics of the Law as well as postmodern problems and solutions. "Lacocque's brilliance can sometimes take your breath away. His insight into the way the narrator sensitively plays off the moab/moabite motif, for example, reveals not only a mature understanding of the power of metaphor but also a sensitive understanding of Transjordanian history...This commentary illuminates several literary, historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological aspects of Ruth hitherto unnoticed by mainstream scholarship on the Book of Ruth."(Michael S. Moore).

Ruth: Continental Commentaries

Hanson, K.C.

The Book of Daniel occupies a unique position in the scriptural canon because of its complex form and the symbolism of its subject matter. The contemporary resurgence of interest in apocalyptic literature created the need for a new commentary which takes into account the most recent developments in the study of Daniel. Professor Lacocque's book, which combines knowledge of current critical writing about Daniel with original exegesis of the text, is essential reading for students of the Book and of apocalyptic in general. The actual commentary on the Hebrew and Aramaic text is introduced by a discussion of the major problems confronting the reader: the name of Daniel, the apocalyptic genre, the chronology of the Book and its literary composition, the milieu in which apocalyptic was formed, the place of Daniel in the scriptural canon, the use of both Hebrew and Aramaic, the complex plan of the Book, and a chronological table of the events against which the drama of Daniel was supposedly played out, The commentary on the Book of Daniel is printed with André Lacocque's English translation of the biblical text and a verse-by-verse exegesis of the Hebrew and Aramaic originals. Daniel's innovative understanding of the Son of Man and the resurrection of the righteous is vitally important both for the Synagogue and the Church. The final section reflecting of this study reflects on the significance of the Book of Daniel for the modern age.

The Book of Daniel

John Knox Press

BUT AS FOR ME: THE QUESTION OF ELECTION FOR GOD'S PEOPLE TODAY gives a deeper meaning to the question: What does it mean to be called by God?

But as for me: The question of election in the life of God's people today

Esther Regina: A Bakhtinian Reading (Rethinking Theory)

Readers and scholars often question the inclusion of the Book of Esther in the canon. Where, they wonder, do the book’s flagrant displays of hatred, deceit, violence, and the antidotal grotesqueries of Purim figure in the biblical tradition? Such confusion, this book tells us, arises from a wrong appraisal of Esther’s literary genre. Distinguished scriptural scholar André LaCocque draws on the lessons of Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin to reveal the true comedic nature of the story of Esther and Mordecai. In particular, LaCocque finds in the book’s grotesque elements--from royal banquets that last a half-year to an improbable succession of coincidences and reversals of fortunes neutralizing a planned genocide--a natural fit with Bakhtin’s description of the “carnivalesque.”            Bakhtin’s rediscovery of the carnivalesque employs such key notions and categories as the dialogic, the novelistic, the chronotopic, the polyphonic, and authoring-as-creating. Using these and other Bakhtinian tools, LaCocque rereads Esther to show how the book’s comedic mood is paradoxically proportional to the catastrophic predicament of the Jews. Here, as biblical theocentrism shifts to Judeocentrism, we see how the carnivalesque becomes subversive of the Establishment and liberating.  In Esther, the underlying conviction is that Jewish survival is providential—and that anti-Semitism is anti-God. This is, as LaCocque tells us with a nod to Aristotle, a worthy lesson disguised as a "low genre."

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Northwestern University Press

In Esther Regina: A Bakhtinian Reading, distinguished scriptural scholar André LaCocque deploys the analytical frameworks of Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin to analyze the book of Esther. Readers and scholars often question the inclusion of the book of Esther in the canon. The book’s flagrant displays of hatred, deceit, violence, and the anecdotal grotesqueries of Purim seem at odds with many biblical traditions. Such confusion, LaCocque reveals, arises from a wrong appraisal of Esther’s literary genre. LaCocque finds in the book’s grotesque elements—from royal banquets that last a half-year to an improbable succession of coincidences and reversals of fortunes neutralizing a planned genocide—a natural fit with Bakhtin’s description of the “carnivalesque.” Using key Bakhtinian tools such as the dialogic, the novelistic, the chronotopic, the polyphonic, and authoring-as-creating, LaCocque rereads Esther to show how the book’s comedic mood is paradoxically proportional to the catastrophic predicament of the Jews. Here, as biblical theocentrism shifts to Judeocentrism, we see how the carnivalesque becomes subversive of the Establishment and liberating. In Esther, the underlying conviction is that Jewish survival is providential—and that antisemitism is anti-God. This is, as LaCocque tells us with a nod to Aristotle, a worthy lesson disguised as a "low genre."

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LaCocque, André. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by LaCocque, André

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by LaCocque, André. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies

Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies

Onslaught against Innocence: Cain, Abel and the Yahwist

Book of Daniel

The Feminine Unconventional: Four Subversive Figures in Israel's Tradition (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

Ruth: Continental Commentaries

The Book of Daniel

But as for me: The question of election in the life of God's people today

Esther Regina: A Bakhtinian Reading (Rethinking Theory)

Esther Regina: A Bakhtinian Reading (Rethinking Theory)