This week the Daily Office readings take us through the Book of Ruth and today (Wednesday) we begin chapter two. The chapter opens with a bit of foreshadowing, letting us know that “Naomi had a kinsman on her husband’s side, a prominent rich man, of the family of Elimelech, whose […]
Boaz
13 posts
The Old Testament reading in the Daily Office this week (7 Epiphany, Year A) is the Book of Ruth. An appropriate text as we head into Lent, Naomi and Ruth experience the vicissitudes of life, from grief and widowhood, migration and isolation, to friendship, loyalty, and love. If you are […]
I have been spending some very enjoyable hours perusing the British Library's Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. They are graciously making the images freely available for use.
This was a paper originally presented at the Mid-Atlantic SBL in 2010 and was going to be part of an article on the character of Boaz. Now that the book on Tg. Ruth is complete, this will not be making it into an article and so I thought I would make it available here. You can find a companion “close […]
More from my commentary. This time it is all about personal articles of clothing. (Being in Germany as I write this I chuckle about the debate of shoe v. glove since the German word for glove is Handschuh.) Again, no footnotes have been carried over from the book. Tg Ruth 4:7 […]
Not trolling, genuinely rediscovered this during my research (see Tg. Ruth 4:6). Said Rab to R. Assi, “Don’t dwell in a town where horses don’t neigh and dogs don’t bark, don’t dwell in a town where the head of the community is a physician, and don’t marry two women, but if […]
I just finished this section and I thought it curious (bizarre, amusing) enough to share this snippet. This is from my commentary on Tg. Ruth. No footnotes are reproduced. The Targumist follows the beginning of verse 8 very closely until he reaches the point where Boaz “was startled and turned […]
The selection below was written “on background” one might say. I wanted to articulate what I thought was a close and “simple” reading of how the Book of Ruth presents the character of Boaz. I then went on to critique a few key modern interpreters, but that will have to wait […]
I had originally planned two articles on the character of Boaz and subsequently presented two separate papers. The first was on the figure of Boaz strictly within the biblical book of Ruth. The other was on how the Targumist had transformed the figure of Boaz in Targum Ruth. This progression […]
I am now working on moving two papers I have presented on Boaz into (likely) a single article for submission to a journal to be named later. In re-reading my paper “Boaz Centrally Marginalized” it occurred to me that men as a whole are very deliberately moved to the edges […]