Although comparative studies of Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah and Jubilees are relatively few, the fact is that all three texts consciously interact with earlier, authoritative writings or contemporaneous writings that came to be known as authoritative, especially in the legal realm. Written near the midpoint of the Second Temple period, these three texts express a level of halakhic concern as they regularly invoke legal precedent, and at times they put forward instruction that appears sui generis. That is, the instruction expressed appears nowhere in any contemporaneous code of Israelite law or custom. Such rewriting of authoritative traditions often prompts an analysis of the text along political lines, although there are other factors that deserve consideration. One goal of this study is to adduce additional frameworks within which to consider inventive legal writing as one de-centers the political reading of these texts and focuses on other literary features. A related goal is to align examples of authorizing discourse that are common to Chronicles, Esra-Nehemiah and Jubilees and subject them to comparative analysis without rushing to judgment on questions of literary dependence. A third goal is to begin to delineate a hermeneutics of rewriting in the Second Temple period informed by groupings of texts that are aligned in terms of their legal language and contextually as well; in Neh 8 and Jub. 15–16 the accounts of Sukkot provide an intriguing comparison between experiences of human joy that authorise the respective narratives.

Comedy has a tendency to open up, rather than narrow down. It rejects a narrow either /or viewpoint in favour of a more complex both/and one. This exploration of comedy in Job is organised around three such complexities: both object and subject, both laughter and pain, both one body and all humankind. The second section considers three purposes or functions of comedy in the book of Job: survival, subversion, and instruction/correction that inspires change. A final section considers comedy, pedagogy, and Job.

Franz Delitzsch is well-known as a profound specialist in and a defender of Judaism in late 19th-century Germany. However, the conservative Lutheran theologian, who interpreted biblical texts always also with regard to Jewish philology, was convinced of the mission to Jews and oscillated between contradictory notions of Judaism. His mainly christological biases, far more complex than evidently antisemitic prejudices of other theologians of his time, are a challenge for research. The paper shortly points out the main steps of Delitzschs view of Judaism along with his biography as reconstructed by recent research. With regard to selected current evaluations of his heritage, it identifies hermeneutical issues important for the general debate about antisemitism in Protestant exegesis.

I

There are biblical texts in which it seems possible to detect the use of humour, and these include the books traditionally characterised as wisdom literature. Attitudes and debates around the question, however, have sometimes unhelpfully associated such humour with a lack of seriousness, and have confused tone with purpose: just as a solemn tone can be used for comic effect, so comedy can express or address the tragic. Going beyond the use of such devices in aphorisms or insults, the characterisation of figures like Jonah, Tobit and Job may incorporate aspects of the comic or ridiculous, shaping the way we react to them without implying that any is simply a figure of fun. Something similar seems to be at work in the presentation of Qohelet, who is not set up to be mocked for his idiosyncratic attitudes and ideas, but who is also surely not offered as a model for emulation. We should not presume that the original writers and audiences shared all our assumptions and tastes, but if we impute to them the sort of reverence with which the texts were later received as scripture, or at least an uncommonly serious and literal turn of mind, then we risk wholly missing the points that some of our literature is trying to make.

This paper will consider how discussions of the »new Exodus« motif in Isaiah scholarship reflect the lasting effects of typological and supersessionist interpretations of the book of Isaiah. Firstly, this essay addresses that the majority of scholars who suggested that there is a »new Exodus« in Second Isaiah (40–55) construct a typological and supersessionist relationship between the »new« and the »old« Exodus. Looking at Isa 40 and 43, I compare approaches that argue for a typological relationship with the Exodus traditions and compare them with approaches that do not overemphasize the Exodus traditions in Second Isaiah. I suggest that alternative approaches to Isaiahs poetics which allow the texts literary tensions to remain unresolved are inherently opposed to the way in which Isaiah has been interpreted from »new Exodus« approaches. Therefore, these alternative approaches to Isaiahs poetics present not only more careful readings of Isaiah, but also function heuristically as a corrective against the legacy of supersessionist readings of Isaiah.

is a researcher at the Institute for Old Testament Studies, the Faculty of Theology, of the University of Leipzig, Germany.