Jacob : unexpected patriarch / Yair Zakovitch ; translated from the Hebrew by Valerie Zakovitch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zakovitch, Yair.

Contributor:

Zakovitch, Valerie.

Series:

Jewish lives (New Haven, Conn.)

Jewish lives

Standardized Title:

Vạ-yavo Yaʻakọv Shalem. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jacob (Biblical patriarch).

Jacob.

Bible. Genesis XXXIII, 18-20--Criticism, interpretation, etc., Jewish.

Bible.

Physical Description:

ix, 202 p.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A powerful hero of the Bible, Jacob is also one of its most complex figures. Bible stories recounting his life often expose his deception, lies, and greed-then, puzzlingly, attempt to justify them. In this book, eminent biblical scholar Yair Zakovitch presents a complete view of the patriarch, first examining Jacob and his life story as presented in the Bible, then also reconstructing the stories that the Bible writers suppressed-tales that were well-known, perhaps, but incompatible with the image of Jacob they wanted to promote. Through a work of extraordinary "literary archaeology," Zakovitch explores the recesses of literary history, reaching back even to the stage of oral storytelling, to identify sources of Jacob's story that preceded the work of the Genesis writers.The biblical writers were skilled mosaic-makers, Zakovitch shows, and their achievement was to reshape diverse pre-biblical representations of Jacob in support of their emerging new religion and identity. As the author follows Jacob in his wanderings and revelations, his successes, disgraces, and disappointments, he also considers the religious and political environment in which the Bible was written, offering a powerful explication of early Judaism.

Contents:

Chap. 1. The children struggled in her womb: the fight for the birthright

Chapt. 2. He should cheat me twice? he took my birthright and now he has taken my blessing!: Jacob the deceiver

Chapt. 3. And behold, a stairway was set on the ground and its head reached to the sky: Jacobs dream at bethel

Chapt. 4. It is not the practice in our place: wives and sons, a mixed blessing

Chapt. 5. Let me go and i will go to my place and to my land: Jacobs odyssey from slavery to freedom

Chapt. 6. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed: Jacob's homebound encounters

Chapt. 7. Should our sister be treated like a whore? Jacob in Shechem

Chapt. 8. And Isaac breathed his last and died and was gathered to his kin in ripe old age: deaths in the family Chapt. 9. And israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, for he was the son of his old age: priority of the youngest

Chapt. 10. Gather together that I may tell you what is to befall you in the days to come: an end, a beginning.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781283742375

1283742373

9780300188974

0300188978

OCLC:

820011219