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Summarizes the arguments made in the book for the influence of the literary inheritance of Isaiah of Jerusalem on the work of Deutero‐Isaiah in continuing the role of prophesying a time of judgement and salvation and for his editorial work in combining the earlier prophecies with his own in order to present a unified vision of the dealings of God with Israel. Acknowledges the influence of other texts such as the Psalms, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel on Deutero‐Isaiah's expression of his message and concludes by noting the continuing challenges posed to scholars by the probability of multiple authorship and the various proposals for the exilic and post‐exilic redaction of the book.

It is often argued that the book of Ezekiel presents hierocracy as the ideal constitutional model for the restored post‐exilic Jewish community. However, the pictures of the restored community, in Chs. 34, 37, and 40–8, all envisage a reinstated monarchic figure. It is true that in the Temple vision, in Chs. 40–8, the status of the monarchic figure is downplayed by comparison with pre‐exilic times, but he nevertheless appears as a recognizable authority figure. By contrast, there is no mention of a high priest anywhere in the book. Ezekiel therefore appears to be advocating a modified version of the previous monarchic order, rather than hierocracy.

The early sixth century BCE was a time of almost unparalleled crisis for the Jewish people, as successive Babylonian invasions left Judah devastated and Jerusalem in ruins. The book of Ezekiel forms a commentary on these events, and explains in lurid detail how the fall of Jerusalem and subsequent exile are the result of moral failure. The present work demonstrates that many of the book's most distinctive ethical ideas can best be explained as a response to the experience of exile. Ezekiel has always been a controversial figure: his book has provoked strong reactions from its readers, and this is nowhere clearer than in questions of morality. Some commentators have been straightforwardly critical of Ezekiel's ethics, while others have taken a more positive view. This study takes a broad view of the book's moral concerns and priorities by looking at a range of different texts and issues.

This chapter reconsiders the biblical prophets’ attitude toward sacrifice, rejecting the radical contrast between priest and prophet as articulated by Max Weber, Wellhausen, and Kaufmann. It reviews various prophetic texts, including especially Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. It suggests that the prophets’ symbolic actions are analogous to rituals, and argues that the prophets’ ostensible rejection of sacrifice is based in part on their belief that many sacrifices were being offered by those whose property was unduly earned, being proceeds from the exploitation of the poor.

Drawing for explanation flourished in the medieval West in biblical exegesis. Some Christian and Jewish scholars, holding that the literal meaning of the holy scriptures had to be established before the allegorical and typological meanings could be reached, made good use of visual exegesis. Of the few Christian scholars who attempted a literal interpretation of the notoriously difficult Old Testament book of the prophet Ezekiel, one was Richard of St Victor (In visionem Ezechielis, before 1173) and another was Nicholas of Lyra (Postilla literalis super totam Bibliam,1323–32), who had read Richard's work and also, like him, seen the Jewish scholar Rashi's illustrations for Ezekiel. Both Richard and Nicholas supported their arguments with the plans of Ezekiel's visionary temple and the map that places the temple in its regional context discussed in this essay. Also discussed is the subsequent adaptation of these medieval diagrammatic maps for a quite different readership.

Manuscripts and early printed copies of Nicholas of Lyra's influential biblical commentary, the Postilla litteralis et moralis in totam bibliam, were made to include a series of around forty illustrations, mostly in the biblical books of Exodus and Ezekiel, to accompany the sections on the Tabernacle of Moses, Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel's re-visioning of the Temple. Although they are not present in all copies of the work, it is known that they were planned by Nicholas himself, since he refers to them in the text. This chapter considers possible sources for Nicholas's drawings and diagrams, including Richard of St Victor, and the Jewish commentators, Rashi (whom Nicholas uses as a direct comparison with Christian scholars) and Maimonides. It argues that, far from being mere decoration, the illustrations are meant as an integral part of Nicholas's literal exegesis of the scriptural text.

Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into early Christian monasticism. Though it could take various forms, ‘imagining/remembering Jerusalem’ was often practised as a devotional exercise throughout the European Middle Ages. Drawings of such an imagined character are significant to late medieval exegesis of these and related scriptural materials, particularly those associated with the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra and the collection of visual meditations known as the Speculum theologie. This chapter queries a late medieval illuminated manuscript (Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156) that, in the fifteenth century, formed part of the library of St John's Hospital in Exeter, to suggest that its materials were acquired and used for scriptural study and sermon composition by scholars of the hospital and its associated school.

Polk's grandfather Ezekiel, his father, Sam, and the president himself had all established slave plantations on the westward-moving frontier; and the expansion of plantation slavery into Texas held deep personal meaning for the president. Polk had always felt a need to prove himself, and the early humiliations he had experienced in governing his slaves may have contributed to the belligerence of the diplomatic and military policies through which he demonstrated his determination to show the Mexicans who was in control. By whipping a war resolution through the House of Representatives against the wishes of 35 percent of its members, President Polk planted the seeds of a towering political conflict over the aims of the war with Mexico: was slavery to be legalized in the territory west of Texas that Polk wished to seize?

The term “eschatechnology” condenses “technology” with the Greek to eschaton, an adjectival noun meaning “the last,” or “ultimate,” meaning here the last stages of a particular race, culture, or social system, where the existing conditions are swept away by miraculous intervention and a new community of freedom, justice, and dignity is established in their place. A common term for this new creation is “millennium,” from a passage in Revelation 20 that describes the binding of Satan and a reign of Christ for one thousand years. This introductory chapter defines millennial thinking as a particular strategy for revitalization movements worldwide, traces the background of the millennial literatures brought by Europeans to the Americas as technologies of conquest and control, and notes the role “hard” technology has played in visions of the end of the world at least since the wheel of Ezekiel. Since the end of the world has always been a fiction, literature plays a key role in its promulgation. Some of the key texts to be analyzed in the study are ranged on a continuum, from those that seek to induce belief, such as Revelation, to those that use millennial themes to encourage skepticism and reflective dissonance, such as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.

While Methodism grew vigorously in New York, its growth was slower in New England, in part because Methodists refused to seek government support. Asbury frequently had strep throat, which can damage the heart valves and lead to congestive heart failure. At the New England conference in 1793 Asbury managed to replace Jesse Lee as presiding elder with Ezekiel Cooper, despite stubborn resistance from Lee. Asbury escaped yellow fever in Philadelphia, but arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in December desperately ill nonetheless. Since he could not travel, he delegated authority to presiding elders, including John Kobler and Francis Poythress in Kentucky and Tennessee. As he traveled less, Asbury returned to more basic pastoral duties. Such responsibilities often exhausted young preachers, who frequently left the ministry for marriage, as was nearly the case with Ezekiel Cooper.

Asbury fell seriously ill again in 1797 but continued to travel anyway, riding from Charleston to New York City over the spring and summer. Asbury's experience with prolonged illnesses was not unusual for the period. A case in point is the preacher William Ormond, who suffered a number of illnesses and tried a range of cures 1791-1801. In June 1798 Asbury learned that his father had died. Asbury never says much about his father, who evidently had some failing that made him vaguely embarrassing. As his health remained fragile, Asbury continued to depend on Methodist women for support. When John Dickins died of yellow fever in 1798, Asbury replaced him as head of the church's book concern with Ezekiel Cooper. Cooper didn't want the job because of the concern's debts, but he proved a successful manager and editor. Given his poor health, Asbury made plans during 1799 to resign from the episcopacy.

Proceeds to examine further examples (from Chs. 1–39) of the influence of the literary inheritance of Isaiah of Jerusalem on the rest of the Isaianic text in order to set out the consensus view of the development of the Book of Isaiah as a whole. It considers various themes and linguistic elements and compares their usage in Isaiah and other Old Testament texts such as Jeremiah, Psalms, and Ezekiel. It concludes that merely belonging to a single school of tradition is not in itself sufficient explanation of the influence of Proto‐Isaiah on Deutero‐Isaiah.

This chapter provides an extensive and detailed account of Maimonides' exegesis of Ezekiel's vision, the deepest secret of the Torah. Maimonides uses hints to indicate that he interprets the vision as a parable of the cosmos. He calls attention to features of different aspects of the vision in order to draw the reader's attention to similarities between the way in which they are described and the way in which aspects of the world work. The chapter shows how some of the hints point toward other sections of the Guide in which Maimonides explains the meaning clearly. Others hint toward ideas that are not explained in the Guide but require wider reading. In order to understand the parable, a reader must connect diverse chapters of the Guide, be familiar with science and philosophy, and be capable of independent understanding.

This chapter starts with a brief historical overview of the Hasmonean monarchy. Next comes a discussion of separate texts that are most likely to be dated to this period (e.g. 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith) in an attempt to form an initial profile of the sorts of texts being produced then. With this profile established, the balance of the chapter argues that the contours of the Torah-Prophets Hebrew biblical canon were initially fixed in this period as well. In particular, we can see the traces of what may be the “final redaction” of the (proto-Masoretic) Hebrew Bible in several documented late revisions distinctive of the proto-MT (particularly found in Deuteronomy, the former prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Ezra-Nehemiah), revisions likely made during the Hasmonean period.

After an overview building on trauma studies and use of diaspora/forced migration anthropology to illuminate the otherwise opaque exile, this chapter surveys several texts most clearly datable to that period, including Lamentations, Ezekiel, Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55, 60-2), and texts associated with the deposed monarchy (e.g. Psalm 89 and the conclusion to Kings in 2 Kgs 25:27-30). Also dated to the exile are elements related to inter-generational sin in Kings (2 Kgs 21:11-16; 23:26-27; 24:3), the speech in Deut 30:1-11, the tower of Babel story (Gen 11:1-9, in its present form), the oracle against Babylon in Isaiah 14 (again reshaped to focus on Babylon), and other probable exilic elements in various other prophetic collections (e.g. Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah).

This study of ethics in Ezekiel began by outlining an approach to the study of ethics in ancient Israel, concentrating on the historical and sociological task of describing the ideals and practice of the ancient communities which formed the Hebrew Bible. The social circumstances of any human group are highly significant in determining the range of moral possibilities that are open to its members. Moral agents do not act independently of the world in which they live, and the ways in which they choose to act will be influenced and constrained by their different economic resources and levels of political influence, different cultures and world-views. We should therefore pay attention to these social factors if we are to draw a more complete picture of the moral life of ancient Israel. This study also shows that many of the book's most distinctive ethical ideas can be explained as a response to the experience of deportation.