Liber Annuus

In the book of Chronicles, geography contributes to the definition of Israel’s identity. The crossing of Judah’s borders by its king, leader of the social group of Israel faithful to Yhwh, also takes on significance in relation to the message the author intends to deliver to its recipients. Leaving the kingdom to go to the territory of other nations is never voluntary and is a consequence of sins committed: thus, the stay abroad becomes an occasion for repentance or condemnation depending on the reaction of the ruler. The boundary between Judah and Israel, on the other hand, opens, closes or changes in connection with the care given to the temple, the center of gravity of national identity, and in relation to the king’s behavior toward the sanctuary and its worship. In both cases, the Chronicler’s call is to the allegiance owed to Yhwh by the Jewish people: in addition to the genetic Israel there is a religious Israel, composed of Yhwh’s worshippers belonging to the twelve tribes, to which the Chronicler’s addressees are called to belong through listening to God and caring for the temple.

As the Word of God and although being the prayer book of Israel, the Psalter cannot be confined in an exclusive geographical-socio-historical space. It is the prayer of the man of all times and all places. It is in this sense that it is appropriate to speak of Africa in the Psalter and of the Psalter in Africa. This article therefore aims to show that Africa is no stranger to the Psalter. It is mentioned there explicitly and implicitly. Egypt and Ethiopia are mentioned several times in the psalms. Moreover, by summoning peoples and nations into the procession of the worshipers of God, the Psalter also obviously speaks of peoples and nations of Africa. This implies a universal way of reading the psalms and understanding them within several contexts. Despite the temporal and spatial distance of these texts, their socio-religious proximity and their plural relevance in the existential context of African praying communities are quite evident.

This contribution presents a comparison between Ezekiel and Jeremiah on a thematic level. It does not delve into specific literary issues. After a clarification on the redaction of these two books, the study moves succinctly to deal with some common themes: priestly origin, vocation, relationship with the Word of God, sphere of emotions, preaching of judgment and salvation, metallurgical metaphors, personified sword and other scourges, conversion, theme of the remnant, new exodus, future covenant, false prophets, Babylon, relationship with Moses. The last paragraph studies the purpose that the two books set themselves. The two books present similarities in addressing some themes. However they are presented from different perspectives, despite both prophets being contemporaries and are interested in the end and future renewal of the nation. The differences can essentially be explained if we keep in mind that Ezekiel is strongly influenced by the Babylonian environment in which he lived, and by the adoption of priestly categories and language.

Previous scholarship on the Embassy to Gaius has focused heavily upon the emperor’s threat of installing a colossal statue in the Jerusalem Temple, leaving largely unexamined a less obvious, but not less important, conjoined motif: Philo’s prominent staging of the cult of the Salus Augusti. The purpose of the present study is to expose and explore this neglected motif. The analysis will proceed in two stages. After first examining (1) the Salus Augusti devotion as it existed at the time of Gaius Caesar, an investigation of (2) the Embassy’s handling of Gaius’ health will be pursued. The epigraphical and material record will be used in this way to confirm the verisimilitude of the Embassy and thicken its discourse about the emperor/empire’s health. Rhetorically, the Embassy represents a kind of prescription for the sōtēria of Rome. Philo’s Jewish translation of prayers made pro salute Augusti—and not Saluti Augusti—is in its apologetic context inevitably a somewhat opaque redirection. The logic is, nevertheless, clear. Respect for the Jewish religion and people—a sort of philosophical balance of humors—becomes a kind of thermometer measuring the health of the emperor and hence the whole Roman state.

The image of a treasure stored in heaven through almsgiving was frequently used in the Jewish literature of the second Temple period. Matthew used the metaphor more than any other author of the New Testament. The logion of Matt 6:19-21 presents signs of translation from a Semitic language. Most of them do not seem to be decisive but the atypical use of βρῶσις indicates that the text was probably translated from an Aramaic or Hebrew original. The logic of the logion certainly goes beyond a concept of social justice and can be accepted only through faith. In this aspect, Jesus has not changed the Jewish meaning of almsgiving or the value of trust in divine providence. He rather has taken these elements to the extreme so that the distribution of all goods to the poor becomes the safest and most profitable investment in this life.

Numerous studies have been dedicated to the analysis of time and space in the Fourth Gospel, both diachronically and synchronically, not least with respect to sociological spatiality. The passage about the Feast of Tabernacles in John 7 lends itself particularly well to this kind of in-depth study, as it narrates a pilgrimage feast where time and space play a decisive role. The categories of E. Soja’s trialectics of spatiality and M. Bakhtin’s chronotope shed new light on the glorified body of Jesus, showing how it transcends the boundaries of space and time to become a reality that can be experienced by believers of every latitude and every epoch. In the dimension of a lived and imagined space and time, new opportunities are always open to the believer to participate in the eschatological worship instituted by Jesus and to transform the defined contours of their own existence. As far as we know, this approach is new from a methodological standpoint in the field of Johannine research.

Studies on the letter to the Galatians in recent decades have seen a significant shift in focus from the epistolary perspective to the argumentative one. However, there are notable epistolary elements that suggest Paul’s purpose is not only to persuade the Galatians about the relationship between faith in Christ, justification, and the role of the Mosaic law, but also to restore his relationship with them through constant references to the beginnings of their faith. The aim of this research is to identify the presence and function of these elements within the letter.

This paper deals with the Apostle Paul and his epistolary corpus in Photius’ Bibliotheca. From Photius’ “summaries”, and consequently from the chapters of the Bibliotheca that mention Paul and his letters, it becomes evident that, in the view of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the 1st-century disciple of Christ — described as the “herald and fervent lover of love” — was a figure of profound significance and wisdom: a mystic. Paul of Tarsus is portrayed as the holy or divine Apostle, or simply the Apostle par excellence, who “initiated” all into the faith and divine mysteries, having a central influence in defining the principles of Christian doctrine.

The presentation wishes to present two new tools for biblical studies, both of them dealing with the Greek Bible: Analytical Lexicon of the Greek Bible and A Complete Concordance to the Greek Bible. The biblical text covered by these two tools is consisted of the Old Testament in Greek, including so called parallel texts and New Testament. All of them represent critical editions of the part of the Bible: Biblia Graeca. Septuaginta, id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes edidit Alfred Rahlfs, edition altera quam recognovit et emandavit Robert Hanhart; Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 28 revidierte Auflage, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2013. The first tool, the Lexicon, printed in three volumes and as an online PDF version in a single file. In order to facilitate the research, the tool is using colours for the sets of the biblical texts: green for Septuagint, red for parallel texts and blue for the New Testament. The distinguishing feature is the number of occurrences of every lexical form, still using the abovementioned colours. The second tool, the Concordance, is only in PDF edition because of its size. All words are arranged according to the Greek alphabet, and the alphabetical order covers both the searched word and its immediate and bilateral context. Although the previous concordances were also arranged alphabetically, the verses with a specific word were given according to the biblical canon. In this Concordance, both the words and the verses have been arranged alphabetically. Each word is listed in its preceding and following context, using the same colours of the part of the biblical texts as it is in the Lexicon. As a result, one can immediately find biblical quotations, paraphrases and other similar passages on the same topic. Since this is a textual concordance, all words are given in their textual forms.

Kowalczyk Bartłomiej, La «Vetus Syra» del vangelo di Marco. Commento e traduzione (AnBib 242), Gregorian & Biblical Press, Roma 2023, 494 pp. (Massimo Pazzini)

Pitta A., Paolo e l’evangelo della speranza, Edizioni San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2024, 240 pp. (Leonardo Giuliano)

Mazzillo Giovanni, Da Gesù alla Chiesa. Un approccio teologico al Gesù storico (Saggi di Teologia – L’abside), Edizioni San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2022, 368 pp. (Vincenzo Lopasso)

Scarpa Marcello - Benzi Guido (ed.), Raccontare la fede ai giovani: pastorale giovanile e linguaggi narrativi (Nuova biblioteca di scienze religiose 83), LAS, Roma 2023, 220 pp. (Alessandro Cavicchia)

Benzi Guido - Cavagnari Gustavo - Puykunnel Shaji Joseph (ed.), Partecipare la Bibbia: la lettura biblica in gruppo (Nuova biblioteca di scienze religiose 84), LAS, Roma 2023, 168 pp. (Alessandro Cavicchia)

Angel Joseph L., The Songs of the Sage: 4Q510, 4Q511 (Dead Sea Scrolls Editions 2), Brill, Leiden - Boston 2022, XV + 259 pp. (Gregor Geiger)

AlShabani Louay, Grammatica della lingua siriaca secondo le tradizioni siro orientali e occidentali, Urbaniana University Press, Roma 2023, 286 pp. (Massimo Pazzini)

Rinaldi Giancarlo (ed.), Christiana Clio. La storiografia dei cristiani nell’antichità e agli inizi dell’era moderna, Edizioni GBU, Chieti 2024, 496 pp. (Giovanni Boer)

Lori Germano - Voltaggio Francesco Giosuè - D’Amb rosi Mattia, Terra Santa. Bibbia – Archeologia – Catechesi, Chirico, Napoli 2021, Vol. I, 367 pp., Vol. II, 364 pp. (illustrati con mappe e fotografie a colori) (Gianantonio Urbani)

Hamarneh Basemah - Bianchi Davide (eds.), Architecture as Sacred Space. Shaping the Holy in Late Antiquity and Bizantium, Phoibos Verlag, Wien 2024, 164 pp. (G. Claudio Bottini)