Oxford Biblical Studies Online Guide

This comprehensive five-volume work analyzes the archaeological and linguistic data that pertain to the broad cultural milieu of the ancient Near East, the crossroads of three of the world's most influential religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Featuring 450 articles by an international community of scholars, it is the definitive account of what we know about the Dead Sea Scrolls--their history, relevance, meaning, and the controversies that surround them.

Contains almost 120 in-depth entries, ranging in length from 500 to 10,000 words, on each of the canonical books of the Bible, major apocryphal books of the New and Old Testaments, important noncanonical texts, and thematic essays on topics such as canonicity, textual criticism, and translation.

Provides a single source for authoritative reference overviews of scholarship on some of the most important topics of study in the field of biblical studies.

Offers the most complete picture available of ancient Egyptian civilization, from the predynastic era to its eclipse in the seventh century CE. Here is the Egyptian world in illuminating, accessible detail: art, architecture, religion, language, literature, trade, politics, everyday social life and the culture of the court.

Extending the work of nineteenth and twentieth century feminist scholarship and more recent queer studies, the Encyclopedia seeks to advance the scholarly conversation by systematically exploring the ways in which gender is constructed in the diverse texts, cultures, and readers that constitute "the world of the Bible."

Explores the intersection between biblical sources and ethical issues, both historical and modern, through extensive analytical and constructive treatments of a wide range of topics by leading biblical scholars and ethicists.

In comprehensive overviews, scholars at the forefront of biblical studies and law address three foci: biblical law itself - its nature, collections, and genres; the ancient contexts of biblical law, throughout the ancient Mediterranean (ancient Near Eastern, Greco-Roman, and Early Jewish); and the afterlife and influence of biblical law in antiquity and in modern jurisprudence around the world.

Provides extensive overviews of key topics, offering analyses of the trajectory and reception history of theological issues as well as critical assessment of Near Eastern and Greco-Roman antecedents for Old and New Testament perspectives.

An in-depth, comprehensive reference work that covers the cultural history of biblical texts, themes, characters, images, and the Bible itself in the literary, visual, and musical arts.

Provides an authoritative one-volume reference to the people, places, events, books, institutions, religious belief, and secular influence of the Bible.

Helps readers of the Bible understand the contexts in which its stories are set and to appreciate the world from which it emerged and which formed its background.

Tells how and why a collection of writings in Semitic languages and Greek that we now call the Books of the Bible came to be written over a period of about 800 years; and how even before the Bible existed as one volume its constituent parts were interpreted and subjected to a scrutiny that no other writing has had to endure.

Represents a new way of conceiving of the relationship between archaeology and biblical studies that allows the results of a wide cross-section of excavations and regional studies to contribute to the interpretation of the biblical text through an elucidation of the lifeways of the ancient world.