Project Number One – 1992

Religious Studies Publications Journal

Project Number One – 1992

ISSN 1188-5734

An all electronic, network distributed serial for Religious Studies

Purpose

To disseminate via the global computer networks;

1. The table of contents, standard bibliographic information, abstracts and reviews of new and recent publications in Religious Studies
2. Software reviews of computer programs relevant to Religious Studies research
3. Prepublication papers, dissertation abstracts, solicitations for manuscripts, and provide a central source of information on all networked documents of interest to Religious Studies and related fields.

Goal

To provide a comprehensive network distributed source of information on Religious Studies publications and software tools.

Overview

The RELIGIOUS STUDIES PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL, subtitled the CONTENTS project is a networked electronic journal that brings together academic publishers and online scholars in Religious Studies and related fields. This journal provides an information service to academic publishers and the more than one thousand scholars in Religious Studies and related fields who are online with BITNET, Internet, and other international computer networks. CONTENTS’ primary function is the posting of table of contents, standard bibliographic, pricing and ordering information, abstracts and reviews of new books and journal issues of relevance to academics in the broad field of Religious Studies. The project also publishes software reviews of programs essential to computer assisted research. CONTENTS extends the scope of electronic publication by combining reviews and abstracts with table of contents and ordering information of new books and journals in print. Publishers are encouraged to provide an electronic mail contact address so as to enable CONTENTS’ subscribers to order texts via the network. This electronic journal is designed in anticipation of the developing commercialization of the academic networks and anticipates the growing trend within publishing houses of accommodating individual chapter and single article purchases.

The CONTENTS project operates by obtaining permission from participating publishers to scan the table of contents from new and recent books and journals and disseminates this information in electronic text to its subscribers. To the table of contents is added information on the publisher, number of pages, price, abstracts and, if available, online ordering contact. Publishers also are encourage to submit abstracts, book notes and reviews for electronic republication. See below for a sample posting of a recent publication to CONTENTS.

A supplement to CONTENTS, Lists in Review, provides an overview of many of the Listserv lists (online academic conferences) of relevance to Religious Studies. A team of editors surveys individual lists and records lists of subject keywords that will serve to indicate what has been discussed on any given online conference. These list summaries are compiled by the supplement editor and posted as a short file to CONTENTS and archived on a fileserver. This collection will allow networked researchers to quickly survey what has been discussed on dozens of lists and then retrieve past conversations from a list’s logbook.

CONTENTS will also post information on works in progress, conference announcements, solicitations for manuscripts, dissertations, networked documents and audio-visual resources of relevance to Religious Studies. All publication records posted by the CONTENTS project are archived via LISTSERV at Listserv@Uottawa or Listserv@Acadvm1.Uottawa.Ca and may be searched or downloaded by the network community. Eventually, all CONTENTSrecords will be fully searchable as an online public access database via TELNET.

At present, the RELIGIOUS STUDIES PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL has over four hundred subscribers in more than seventeen countries, including Colombia, Norway, Netherlands, Israel, Hong Kong, South Africa, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Austria, United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Brazil, Italy, Finland, Saudi-Arabia, Taiwan, and of course, Canada and United States. There are nine publishers who have joined the project thus far: Blackwell Publishers, Oxford (UK), Sheffield Academic Press (UK), Catholic University of America Press (US), University of Scranton Press (US), Penn State Press (US), State University of New York Press (US), Jewish Bible Association (Israel), and two Canadian publishers; Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and Columban Enterprises (McGill). At this point, both Wilfrid Laurier University Press and Penn State Press are sending new volumes to the project for review.

The RELIGIOUS STUDIES PUBLICATIONS JOURNAL consists of

CONTENTS Team

Board of Advisors

Subscription Information

To subscribe to the Religious Studies Publication Journal – CONTENTS, send the following e-mail message to Listserv@Uottawa.bitnet or Listserv@Acadvm1.Uottawa.CA

   SUBSCRIBE CONTENTS your name

To determine the status of your subscription to CONTENTS, send the following e-mail message to the above address:

   QUERY CONTENTS

Contact the project director at 441495@Uottawa.bitnet or 441495@Acadvm1.Uottawa.CA if you experience difficulty subscribing to CONTENTS.

The list will not be conversational. Frequency of postings will depend on the number of cooperating publishers.

Sample CONTENTS Posting
(not including a review)

The following is a sample of how publication records will look when posted to CONTENTS.

{BOOK IN SERIES}
[TITLE] Second Temple Studies: 1. Persian Period
[PUB LOCATION] Sheffield, England
[PUBLISHER] JSOT Press
[DATE] 1991
[ISBN] 1-85075-315-6
[SERIES TITLE] Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
117 [EDITORS] Davies, Philip R.
[TABLE OF CON]

   Abbreviations
   List of Contributors

   Sociology and the Second Temple
   - Philip R. Davies................................................... 11

           ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY AND SOCIETY

   Temple and Society in Achaemenid Judah
   - Joseph Blenkinsopp................................................. 22

   The Achaemenid Context
   - Kenneth Hoglund.................................................... 54

   The Politics of Ezra:
   Sociological Indicators of Postexilic Judaean Society
   - Daniel L. Smith.................................................... 73

   Reconstructing History from the Book of Ezra
   Lester L. Grabbe..................................................... 98

           LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

   Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period - 
   Robert P. Carroll................................................... 108 

   The Temple in Persian Period Prophetic Texts
   - David L. Petersen................................................. 125

           CRITIQUE

   Nehemiah 5: By way of a Response to Hoglund and Smith
   - John H. Halligan.................................................. 146

   On Models and Texts: A Response to Blenkinsopp and Petersen - 
   Peter Ross Bedford.................................................. 154

   Empire, Temple and Community - But no Bourgeoisie!
   A Response to Blenkinsopp and Petersen
   - Richard A. Horsley................................................ 163

   Texts and the World - An Unbridgeable Gap?
   A Response to Carroll, Hoglund and Smith
   - David Jobling..................................................... 175

   Index of References
   Index of Authors

[DESCRIPTION] This volume is a collection of essays that grew out of the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Sociology of the Second Temple Consultation”. Joseph Blenkinsopp’s essay, “Temple and Society in Achaemenid Judah” offers a critique of Joel Weinberg’s `civic-temple community’ theory and concludes that the Babylonian immigrants that constituted Achaemenid Judah imported and successfully imposed the social settings from their Persian diaspora.

Kenneth Hoglund’s essay, “The Achaemenid Context” investigates the impact of Achaemenid imperial rule on the social constitution of the Judaean postexilic community. The author suggests that the postexilic community’s ideology of ethnic separation resulted from an imperial mechanism of ethnic collectivization that was promoted by imperial officials.

Daniel Smith’s essay, “The Politics of Ezra: Sociological Indicators of Postexilic Judaean Society” applies sociological and anthropological analysis to textual and archaeological evidence from exilic and postexilic sources. The postexilic community found itself involved in a class based conflict that cannot be reduced to religion alone. Social boundaries were a survival mechanism of an `exilic consciousness’.

Lester Grabbe’s essay, “Reconstructing History from the Book of Ezra” challenges the validity of a basic consensus on the authenticity of certain sections of Ezra and Nehemiah. Grabbe calls for a re-evaluation of the `Persian documents’ of Ezra 1-7 and of the general reliability of Ezra for a reconstruction of the history of Judah.

Robert Carroll’s essay, “Textual Strategies and Ideology in the Second Temple Period” demonstrates the social and ideological background of certain Temple texts. His analysis uncovers, among other things, female subversiveness’ as a fundamental characteristic of biblical women. David Petersen’s essay, “The Temple in Persian Period Prophetic Texts” looks at the significance of the temple within Persian period texts and investigates the supposed incorporation of prophecy into the cult at this time.