- Diana Lipton read English Literature at Oxford University and completed a PhD in Hebrew Bible at Cambridge University... moreDiana Lipton read English Literature at Oxford University and completed a PhD in Hebrew Bible at Cambridge University. From 1997 to 2006 she was a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. In 2007 she moved to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London, initially as Lecturer and subsequently Reader in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, and Deputy-Head of Department. In 2011 she moved to Israel, where she lectured for 5 years at Hebrew University's Rothberg International School, before becoming a Teaching Associate in the Department of Biblical Studies at Tel Aviv University. Diana's has recently co-written a book with Micha Price provisionally titled A Biblical Guide to the Climate Crisis. She blogs occasionally at Diana Lipton | The Blogs | The Times of Israel .edit
... Feminism and theology. Auteur(s) : SOSKICE Janet Martin, LIPTON Diana Date de parution: 12-2003 Langue : ANGLAIS 450p. 21.6x13.8 Paperback Etat : Disponible chez l'éditeur (délai de livraison : 12 jours) Commentaire. ...
Research Interests:
These essays by outstanding international scholars in honour of Robert P. Gordon cover topics ranging from accuracy and anachronism in the books of Samuel, through the theology of Psalms, ancient near eastern historiography, to ideology,... more
These essays by outstanding international scholars in honour of Robert P. Gordon cover topics ranging from accuracy and anachronism in the books of Samuel, through the theology of Psalms, ancient near eastern historiography, to ideology, philology, grammar and linguistics in the translations and versions.
Research Interests:
Contributors include: James K. Aitken Philip Alexander Hans M. Barstad William D. Barker Kevin J. Cathcart Ronald E. Clements David D.A. Clines Graham Davies Rodrigo de Sousa Katharine J. Dell Jennifer Dines Sue E. Gillingham Robert... more
Contributors include: James K. Aitken Philip Alexander Hans M. Barstad William D. Barker Kevin J. Cathcart Ronald E. Clements David D.A. Clines Graham Davies Rodrigo de Sousa Katharine J. Dell Jennifer Dines Sue E. Gillingham Robert Hayward John F. Healey Charlotte Hempel William Horbury Geoffrey Khan Diana Lipton V. Philips Long Nathan MacDonald Andrew A. Macintosh Martin McNamara Brian A. Mastin Alan Millard Stefan C. Reif Arie van der Kooij Peter J. Williams Hugh G.M. Williamson.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this paper I consider afresh the role of idolatry in the often paraphrased but seldom read story of Abraham and his father's idol shop. By examining possible biblical and post-biblical sources and influences, including several to my... more
In this paper I consider afresh the role of idolatry in the often paraphrased but seldom read story of Abraham and his father's idol shop. By examining possible biblical and post-biblical sources and influences, including several to my knowledge not previously identified, I hope to show that the idol shop story is not, as usually assumed, a story about iconoclasm proper. Its messages are at once less violent and more subtle. I have argued elsewhere (Lipton 2008 and 2009) that, with exceptions such as Molech-worship and child-sacrifice, the Bible is not hostile to idolatry practiced by non-Israelites, and that what look like polemics against idolatry are better understood as responses to 'unacceptable' Israelite practices. Idolatry is thus the 'wrong kind' of Israelite religion 'disguised' as the religion of the nations, and idolaters are the Jews whose practices are deemed unsuitable. In the Bible, idolatry has less to do with 'the other' and more to do with internal identity questions, such as the borders between co-existence and assimilation. In this paper I make similar claims about the story of Abraham and his father's idol shop.
The Tower of Babel stands at a hermeneutical fork in the road where two ways of thinking about Abraham and Israel diverge. Was Abraham the founding father of a nation with a land of its own, or was he the founding prophet of a religion?... more
The Tower of Babel stands at a hermeneutical fork in the road where two ways of thinking about Abraham and Israel diverge. Was Abraham the founding father of a nation with a land of its own, or was he the founding prophet of a religion? Would his descendants be issued with passports as evidence of national affiliation? Or would they need copies of their parents’ wedding contracts as proof of religious identity? In the Hebrew Bible itself, the abandoned tower merely casts a shadow over the spot in place and time where Abraham first entered what would become the Promised Land. It was for the history of interpretation to determine what this juxtaposition would signify for the roads taken and not taken.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
I identify a liturgical answer to this question, starting with a thrice-repeated promise in Numbers 30 that God will 'forgive', salah, the woman who cancels a vow to God because her father or husband disapproves.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
If you are an Israeli synagogue-goer whose rabbi recognizes the Jewish state (Satmar Hasidim and Netorai Karta can stop reading here), I urge you to speak urgently to your rabbi about our government's involvement in what is surely a... more
If you are an Israeli synagogue-goer whose rabbi recognizes the Jewish state (Satmar Hasidim and Netorai Karta can stop reading here), I urge you to speak urgently to your rabbi about our government's involvement in what is surely a massive violation of Torah law with its planned deportation of 37,000 African asylum seekers. In the world of international politics, the fate of these 37,000 souls, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, who entered Israel illegally before the completion of its highly effective security fence on the Egyptian border, hangs on their legal status. Are they seeking asylum from persecution, in which case they deserve refugee status and can stay, or are they economic migrants, in which case they must leave?
Research Interests:
While preparing From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey, my commentary on food in the Torah (Urim Publications: 2018), I reread Genesis 40 through the lens of food and drink. The dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker began to make a lot... more
While preparing From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey, my commentary on food in the Torah (Urim Publications: 2018), I reread Genesis 40 through the lens of food and drink. The dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker began to make a lot more sense. Read my paper here: https://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2018/01/lip428022.shtml
Research Interests:
On Ezekiel and the present-day evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem.
Research Interests:
To read a version of this essay with links and photographs, please go to http:// blogs.timesofisrael.com/eviction-part-4-of-6-homeless/
The biblical exegesis here is based on my 2006 article, 'Early Mourning'.
The biblical exegesis here is based on my 2006 article, 'Early Mourning'.
The three central cycles of shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana are followed in the machzor, prayer book, by a seeming unexceptional piyut, liturgical prayer, that has no apparent connection with the shofar. Here I uncover -- perhaps for the... more
The three central cycles of shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana are followed in the machzor, prayer book, by a seeming unexceptional piyut, liturgical prayer, that has no apparent connection with the shofar. Here I uncover -- perhaps for the first time? -- the extraordinary complex of biblical verses that lies beneath.
At a time when we desperately need strategists, we're trapped in a realm of dragon-slayers. Biblical views on the primacy of plans.
Research Interests:
The role of the knife in Genesis 22 and beyond. Draft paper delivered to Cambridge University's D Society, May 2017.
Research Interests:
A central prophetic task is intercession—the prophet as mediator or go-between, interceding ever more creatively in both directions to keep the relationship between God and Israel alive. But how can constructive intercession sit... more
A central prophetic task is intercession—the prophet as mediator or go-between, interceding ever more creatively in both directions to keep the relationship between God and Israel alive. But how can constructive intercession sit alongside the doom-laden prophecies of death and destruction characteristic of the book of Jeremiah? In this paper I argue—counter-intuitively, I admit—that it is precisely the harsh and graphic expression of God's fury that serves in the end as Jeremiah's mechanism of intercession. Published in Leshon Limmudim: Essays in the Language and Literature of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of A.A. Macintosh. ed. / David Baer; Robert P. Gordon. London : T & T Clark, 2013.
Although biblical scholars and modes of biblical exegesis have been critiqued in recent years for their orientalist perspectives (R.S. Sugirtharajah in Brett 2002), along with nineteenth century Zionists and others involved in the... more
Although biblical scholars and modes of biblical exegesis have been critiqued in recent years for their orientalist perspectives (R.S. Sugirtharajah in Brett 2002), along with nineteenth century Zionists and others involved in the creation of the modern state of Israel (Yaron Peleg 2005), little or no attention has been paid to orientalism in the Hebrew Bible itself. I show here how closely descriptions of Egypt in Genesis, Exodus and Ezekiel fit with Edward Said's account of Orientalism in his 1978 book of that name and Culture and Imperialism (1994).
In this paper I bring to bear Hebrew Bible texts from Amos and Genesis on the endlessly difficult question of what when we should intervene in the affairs of an external entity – household, institution, or nation (my focus here) –... more
In this paper I bring to bear Hebrew Bible texts from Amos and Genesis on the endlessly difficult question of what when we should intervene in the affairs of an external entity – household, institution, or nation (my focus here) – because some of its members are suffering, whether at the hands of hostile outsiders or other members? When would intervention bring a positive outcome, and what factors can help us to determine that?
An article commissioned by Athalya Brenner about what in my own life led me to write about Exodus as a document of resistance to assimilation.
Research Interests:
This paper proposes a transformation of Amalek, from external enemy in Exodus to symbol of Israelite social injustice in Deuteronomy.
Research Interests:
The ‘rape’ laws in Deuteronomy 22.23-29 contain the Hebrew Bible’s only example of a legal analogy. A man who lies by force with an engaged woman in the ‘field’ is subject to the death penalty, but nothing should be done to the woman he... more
The ‘rape’ laws in Deuteronomy 22.23-29 contain the Hebrew Bible’s only example of a legal analogy. A man who lies by force with an engaged woman in the ‘field’ is subject to the death penalty, but nothing should be done to the woman he raped, since this is like the case of a man who rises up against and murders another man (v. 26). In this paper I shall explore the significance of this analogy and its effect upon the law that underlies it. I will suggest that the analogy’s interest lies at the intersection of law and narrative; that its literary formulation recalls two cases of fratricide, Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen. 4.1-16) and the woman of Tekoa’s parable of her two sons (2 Sam. 14.1-20); that the analogy to murder does not clarify but complicates the interpretation and application of the rape law; and (most radical) that it sounds a note of caution about the implementation of the death penalty in relation to this law.
Research Interests:
Religious practitioners are notoriously preoccupied with the details of their own religion, and interested in the internal dynamics of other religions only when they help to define their own. An apparent Hebrew Bible exception is the... more
Religious practitioners are notoriously preoccupied with the details of their own religion, and interested in the internal dynamics of other religions only when they help to define their own. An apparent Hebrew Bible exception is the author of Isaiah 40–55, who seems to engage in considerable detail with Babylonian religion in his so-called anti-idol polemics and their textual surrounds. I hope to show that Deutero-Isaiah was not an exceptional religious practitioner in this respect; his primary target was not Babylonian idol-makers, but Israel’s priestly cult.
Research Interests:
What precisely did Moses see when he ascended Mt. Sinai to collect the second set of commandments? The notion that God allowed Moses to glimpse his back, but not to see his face, has taken a vice-like imaginative grip on the recent... more
What precisely did Moses see when he ascended Mt. Sinai to collect the second set of commandments? The notion that God allowed Moses to glimpse his back, but not to see his face, has taken a vice-like imaginative grip on the recent history of interpretation. In this paper, I shall suggest that God showed Moses neither his face nor his back on Mt. Sinai, but offered him a glimpse of the future. Reading God’s “back” as an idiomatic reference to the future, reflecting a biblical perception of time now lost to us, sheds new light on traditional Jewish and Christian commentaries on Exod 33:23. It helps explain why commentators more or less ignore God’s back until well into the middle ages. Far from being squeamish about anthropomorphic representations of God, they did not even contemplate a literal reading. It also helps explain thematic preoccupations of these commentaries, such as the relationship between (present) righteousness and
(future) reward. As well as illuminating explicit responses to the second Sinai ascent, my reading helps to identify new responses. The story in b. Menahot 29b of Moses encountering God on Mt. Sinai, sitting and tying crowns to the letters of the Sefer Torah, and Moses’ subsequent visit to Rabbi Aqiba’s Torah academy, is among the best known and most widely discussed of all rabbinic Sinai narratives. I hope to show
that it too is a response to Exod 33:12–23, thereby revealing a crucial textual dimension hitherto unrecognised, and, perhaps more importantly, indicating the need for yet another look at Jewish and Christian engagement over the use of Sinai as a focus for issues of succession, intercession, and transmission of authority.
(future) reward. As well as illuminating explicit responses to the second Sinai ascent, my reading helps to identify new responses. The story in b. Menahot 29b of Moses encountering God on Mt. Sinai, sitting and tying crowns to the letters of the Sefer Torah, and Moses’ subsequent visit to Rabbi Aqiba’s Torah academy, is among the best known and most widely discussed of all rabbinic Sinai narratives. I hope to show
that it too is a response to Exod 33:12–23, thereby revealing a crucial textual dimension hitherto unrecognised, and, perhaps more importantly, indicating the need for yet another look at Jewish and Christian engagement over the use of Sinai as a focus for issues of succession, intercession, and transmission of authority.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Food is at the heart of Jewish life and culture, the subject of many recent studies - popular and academic - and countless Jewish jokes. From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey: A Commentary on Food in the Torah spotlights food in the... more
Food is at the heart of Jewish life and culture, the subject of many recent studies - popular and academic - and countless Jewish jokes. From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey: A Commentary on Food in the Torah spotlights food in the Torah, where it’s used to explore such themes as love and compassion, commitment, character, justice, belonging and exclusion, deception, and life and death. Originally created as an online project to support the innovative food rescue charity, Leket Israel, From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey comprises short essays on food and eating in the parasha by 52 internationally acclaimed scholars and Jewish educators, and a commentary by Diana Lipton. Proceeds from sales of this book will go to Leket Israel, Israel’s national food bank.
Research Interests:
One of the shortest books in the Bible, Lamentations exercises a disproportionately powerful cultural influence. As an unflinching account of the devastation wreaked by war, it has been called upon again and again by Jews, Christians, and... more
One of the shortest books in the Bible, Lamentations exercises a disproportionately powerful cultural influence. As an unflinching account of the devastation wreaked by war, it has been called upon again and again by Jews, Christians, and others in their responses to catastrophes as varied as the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, the Great Fire of London, the Holocaust and 9/11. Covering two and a half millennia of liturgy and literature, theology and psychology, art, music and film, this volume explores an astonishing variety of cultural and religious responses to Lamentations, taking in the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Yehuda Halevy, John Calvin, and Thomas Tallis, as well as startling allusions in the work of Marc Chagall, Cynthia Ozick, Alice Miller, and Zimbabwean junk sculpture. Viewed through this kaleidoscope of sources, the ancient biblical text acquires a vital and resonant new life.
Research Interests:
Readers of all persuasions have a tendency to privilege simple interpretations over complex, unsettling, readings. The more fraught the issue, the more often we find in the history of interpretation that a simple reading has been... more
Readers of all persuasions have a tendency to privilege simple interpretations over complex, unsettling, readings. The more fraught the issue, the more often we find in the history of interpretation that a simple reading has been generated that masks its complexity. 'Longing for Egypt and Other Unexpected Biblical Tales' explores seven cases of textual complexity masked by simple readings. One chapter uncovers a counter-intuitive longing for Egypt alongside the Exodus account of liberation from persecution. Another shows how what appears to be a critical attitude in the Bible towards other gods may reflect inner-Israelite tensions rather than some principled antipathy toward others. Yet another confronts the praise of God as a perfect king with the use of the language of divine kingship as a vehicle for constructive criticism. All seven chapters share a focus on the formation of identity. Arguably the Bible's most sensitive subject, for its authors and for present-day readers, this topic has generated a host of simple readings that conceal immense complexity.
Research Interests:
A literary and ideological analysis of Genesis dream reports, including the Covenant of the Pieces but excluding the dreams of the Joseph story, with attention to ancient Near Eastern context. This volume began its life as a Cambridge... more
A literary and ideological analysis of Genesis dream reports, including the Covenant of the Pieces but excluding the dreams of the Joseph story, with attention to ancient Near Eastern context. This volume began its life as a Cambridge University PhD thesis written from 1993-1996 under the supervision of Professor Robert P Gordon.
Research Interests:
This volume of previously unpublished essays covers a wide range of topics from accuracy, anachronism and incongruity in the books of Samuel, though the theology of Psalms, ancient Near Eastern historiography, the ideology of the... more
This volume of previously unpublished essays covers a wide range of topics from accuracy, anachronism and incongruity in the books of Samuel, though the theology of Psalms, ancient Near Eastern historiography, the ideology of the Septuagint, and philology and grammar in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Targum, Josephus and medieval sources.
Research Interests:
This book re-examines the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative in Genesis 18-19, a source of views still pervasive in many societies about such ethically charged issues such as homosexuality, stereotyping the other, the rewards and risks of... more
This book re-examines the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative in Genesis 18-19, a source of views still pervasive in many societies about such ethically charged issues such as homosexuality, stereotyping the other, the rewards and risks of hospitality, and the justice owed to outsiders. Its twelve essays, reflecting their authors' considerable geographical, religious, methodological and academic diversity, explore this troubling text through the lens of universalism and particularism. Biblical Sodom is read as the site of multiple borders—fluid, porous, and bi-directional—between similar and different, men and angels, men and women, fathers and daughters, insiders and outsiders, hosts and guests, residents and aliens, chosen and non-chosen, and people and God. Readers of these exegetically and theologically attentive essays published in memory of Ron Pirson will experience a rare sense of an ancient text being read in and for the modern world.
The contributors are Calum Carmichael, Diana Lipton, William John Lyons, Nathan MacDonald, Amira Meir, Yitzhak (Itzik) Peleg, T. A. Perry, Ron Pirson, Jonathan D. Safren, Megan Warner, Harlan J. Wechsler, and Ellen J. van Wolde.
The contributors are Calum Carmichael, Diana Lipton, William John Lyons, Nathan MacDonald, Amira Meir, Yitzhak (Itzik) Peleg, T. A. Perry, Ron Pirson, Jonathan D. Safren, Megan Warner, Harlan J. Wechsler, and Ellen J. van Wolde.
Research Interests:
A selection of pre-published pieces from a wide range of sources, connecting popular feminist writings with scholarly treatments. The volume includes contributions from outstanding scholars and writers in the field drawing upon a wide... more
A selection of pre-published pieces from a wide range of sources, connecting popular feminist writings with scholarly treatments. The volume includes contributions from outstanding scholars and writers in the field drawing upon a wide range of perspectives: Jewish and Christian, historical and contemporary, personal and political. It takes a constructive look at the issues central to feminist theology including the interpretation of sacred texts, worship and liturgy, incarnation and embodiment, spirituality and sexuality, identity, ecofeminism and motherhood.
It spans diverse areas of theology including biblical interpretation, historical approaches, philosophy of religion and doctrine.
•Essays are arranged thematically, each with its own introduction enhanced by general remarks.
It spans diverse areas of theology including biblical interpretation, historical approaches, philosophy of religion and doctrine.
•Essays are arranged thematically, each with its own introduction enhanced by general remarks.
Research Interests:
BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND POSTMODERN, World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 2013. A response to papers by Steven Fraade, Adele Berlin and Ed Greenstein, and an attempt to answer a surprisingly tricky question.... more
BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND POSTMODERN, World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 2013. A response to papers by Steven Fraade, Adele Berlin and Ed Greenstein, and an attempt to answer a surprisingly tricky question. To hear it, start watching at 1 hour 23 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFLdVFiFxzA
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Cultural Studies and Law
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
It’s traditional to begin the Rosh HaShana evening meal with symbolic foods, each with its own siman, sign. The best-known of these, apples and honey, is based on qualities of the food – goodness and sweetness. The others are based on... more
It’s traditional to begin the Rosh HaShana evening meal with symbolic foods, each with its own siman, sign. The best-known of these, apples and honey, is based on qualities of the food – goodness and sweetness. The others are based on wordplays. This year, when Israelis are fighting for their democratic rights, I’ve taken some liberties with the Hebrew text and English translation, emphasizing the themes of the pro-democracy protests: a shared home; legal equality; human rights; reasonableness; checks and balances; ending oppression of minorities and attempts to divide through hatred; and, of course, democracy. I've included a medieval version for comparison.
It’s traditional to begin the Rosh HaShana evening meal by eating a set of symbolic foods, each with its own siman, sign. The first and best-known of these, apples and honey, is based on qualities of the food – goodness and sweetness.... more
It’s traditional to begin the Rosh HaShana evening meal by eating a set of symbolic foods, each with its own siman, sign. The first and best-known of these, apples and honey, is based on qualities of the food – goodness and sweetness. Most of the others are based on wordplays. The simanim that have been customary since medieval times focus on the harm we wish for our enemies and the good we want for ourselves. I’ve changed the Hebrew slightly to emphasize actions (and attitudes) over actors, and I’ve offered a free English rendering reflecting some of the crises we face today. As nations trample over nations, I’ve emphasized an end to warmongering. As the climate crisis escalates, I’ve emphasized the need for action. As broadly united peoples split into hostile tribes, I’ve emphasized the importance of thinking rationally and rejecting prejudice.
What connects the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana to the piyut, liturgical poem, that’s recited just after it?
Research Interests:
A meditation on the interplay of trauma and time in the biblical flood narrative and the rabbinic stories of Honi the Circle Drawer.
Research Interests:
The article considers the complex portrayals of David and Bathsheba in the three religions which, in different ways, see themselves as David’s heirs. Focusing on a story about succession and inheritance, it analyzes a representative... more
The article considers the complex portrayals of David and Bathsheba in the three religions which, in different ways, see themselves as David’s heirs. Focusing on a story about succession and inheritance, it analyzes a representative selection of textual and visual sources, mainly – though not uniquely – medieval, in an attempt to better understand Jewish, Christian and Islamic exegetical approaches – internal and in relation to each other – to dealing with complications in the Davidic lineage.