Lisbeth S Fried

After the significant and ground-breaking commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah by Lisbeth Fried, she now turns her attention to a different genre of biblical literature and to the book of Ruth. Fried approaches Ruth as folktale, specifically, a fairy tale. This new reading of Ruth allows the book to be experienced in a new way, a way infrequently recognized, that provides novel but compelling insights into the author's intentions and goals.Fried uses Propp's Morphology of a Folktale to provide the guideposts for her strikingly refreshing approach. The story of Ruth is one of a stranger in a strange land. Ruth's author explores the meaning of identity, assimilation and acceptance. He asks whether identity can be changed, whether the Judean god and the Judean nationality can be taken on voluntarily, whether assimilation is possible, whether the stranger can or should be welcomed into the bosom of a family, and indeed, whether he or she can be trusted. These are questions we deal with today, but it was a vital issue after the return from Babylon and on into the Hellenistic period, when foreigners (first Persian and then Greek) were everywhere, and in control of everyday life, and when their foreign ways were rampant. Ruth's author recognizes that welcoming the stranger was and indeed is a scary proposition.Like her Commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah, the present volume includes a new translation of the book, plus text-critical notes on each verse which compares and contrasts the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Syriac versions as well as the Aramaic Targum. The Introduction and extensive chapter commentaries provide a discussion of the larger historical and literary issues. Fried's commentary promises to revolutionize how we read the book of Ruth.This is the fourth volume in the Critical Commentaries series.

Lisbeth Fried's commentary on Nehemiah is the second instalment of her two-volume commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah. The first instalment, Ezra, was published by Sheffield Phoenix in 2015. Like her commentary on Ezra, Nehemiah too takes full advantage of recent results in archaeology and numismatics, as well as in the mechanisms of Persian and Hellenistic rule, and in the influence of the Hellenistic and Maccabean Wars on Jewish writings. Like her Ezra, the present volume includes a new translation of the book of Nehemiah, plus text-critical notes on each verse which compare and contrast the Greek, Latin and Syriac versions. The Introduction and extensive chapter commentaries provide a discussion of the larger historical and literary issues. Although not finalized until the Maccabean period, the book of Nehemiah contains a temple foundation document from the time of Darius I, a story of rebuilding and dedicating a city wall around Jerusalem in the mid-fifth century, and a memoir from a fifth-century governor of Judah. Numerous additions and lists that date from the Hellenistic and Maccabean periods complete the book. Fried concludes controversially that the book of Nehemiah contains two separate first-person reports-one by Nehemiah, wine steward of Artaxerxes I and wall-builder of Jerusalem, and one by Yeho'ezer, a fifth-century governor of Judah, known from seals found at the governor's mansion at Ramat Raḥel. Nehemiah the wall-builder, whose full name was actually Nehemiah Attirsata ben Ḥacaliah, was never a governor of Yehud, but a Jewish Persian official in charge of the Jerusalem temple priesthood.

Lisbeth Fried's commentary on Ezra is the first instalment of a projected two-volume commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah. It is the first full-length scholarly commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah to be written since 1988 and takes advantage of recent results in archaeology, of recent historical studies on the Persian Empire, and of recent studies of the influence of Hellenistic textual and legal traditions on Judean thought. It also draws extensively on the author's own research into the mechanisms by which the Persian Empire dominated and controlled its subject populations.The present volume includes a new translation of the Book of Ezra, plus annotations on each verse that compare and contrast the Greek, Latin and Syriac variations, including the text of Greek Esdras A. It also provides an extensive Introduction and chapter commentaries that discuss larger historical and literary issues.Fried concludes that Ezra-Nehemiah was written as one book at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. Although written then, it was formed from earlier texts: an Ezra memoir, a letter to Ezra from Artaxerxes II, and a Nehemiah memoir. All of these have been heavily edited, however. Fried concludes that both Ezra and Nehemiah were Persian officials, Ezra a Persian episkopos, and Nehemiah a Persian governor, and that both acted with the goals of their Persian overlords in mind, not the goals of the subject Judean population. The Judean author, writing under Hellenic domination, transformed these men into Judean heroes in order to promote the novel idea of a long tradition of foreign imperial support for local institutions--cultic, legal and physical.Fried's commentary promises to revolutionize how one reads the book of Ezra.

The historical Ezra was sent to Jerusalem as an emissary of the Persian monarch. What was his task? According to the Bible, the Persian king sent Ezra to bring the Torah, the five books of the Laws of Moses, to the Jews. Modern scholars have claimed not only that Ezra brought the Torah to Jerusalem, but that he actually wrote it, and in so doing Ezra created Judaism. Without Ezra, they say, Judaism would not exist. In Ezra and the Law in History and Tradition, Lisbeth S. Fried separates historical fact from biblical legend. Drawing on inscriptions from the Achaemenid Empire, she presents the historical Ezra in the context of authentic Persian administrative practices and concludes that Ezra, the Persian official, neither wrote nor edited the Torah, nor would he even have known it. The origin of Judaism, so often associated with Ezra by modern scholars, must be sought elsewhere. After discussing the historical Ezra, Fried examines ancient, medieval, and modern views of him, explaining how each originated, and why. She relates the stories told about Ezra by medieval Christians to explain why their Greek Old Testament differs from the Hebrew Bible, as well as the explanations offered by medieval Samaritans concerning how their Samaritan Bible varies from the one the Jews use. Church Fathers as well as medieval Samaritan writers explained the differences by claiming that Ezra falsified the Bible when he rewrote it, so that in effect, it is not the book that Moses wrote but something else. Moslem scholars also maintain that Ezra falsified the Old Testament, since Mohammed, the last judgment, and Heaven and Hell are revealed in it. In contrast Jewish Talmudic writers viewed Ezra both as a second Moses and as the prophet Malachi. In the process of describing ancient, medieval, and modern views of Ezra, Fried brings out various understandings of God, God's law, and God's plan for our salvation.