For the last book giveaway of 2021, I offered a physical copy of the new English translation of Strack and Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud & Midrash, Volume 3 (Romans – Revelation; ed. Jacob N. Cerone, trans. Joseph Longarino; Lexham 2021). I restricted this to North America since the book is large and heavy. I had 29 comments, which might be a record for a book giveaway. I put the names in Excel and generated a random number, and the winner is:
Brian Small
I made his name as large as a could. Brian blogs at Polumeros kai Polutropos, a blog dedicated to the book of Hebrews. Everyone congratulate Brian, and go visit his blog. Maybe buy his book.
For those who missed the original post, this book was originally published between 1922 and 1928 as Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. Lexham Academic is publishing Strack and Billerbeck in English for the first time. The German set was over 4000 pages in four-volumes, volume 1 covered just the Gospel of Matthew (at over 1000 pages!) Volume 2 covered Mark through Acts and volume 3 covers Romans through Revelation. For a variety of reasons, Lexham is releasing the third volume first in both print and digital Logos Library format and there is no plan to publish volume 4.
Strack and Billerbeck is a running commentary pointing readers to (usually) relevant texts in the Rabbinic literature along with cross references to Old Testament texts, Josephus, Philo, as well as books from the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. For example, on Revelation 6:1 they cite 1 Enoch 47:2; 90:20, and 4 Ezra 6:20. On Revelation 6:12, they cite 2 Baruch 70 and the Sibylline Oracles 5.528. In each case, the English translation of these works is from Str-B’s German, so there are slight differences when compared to modern translations. For many, an English translation of Strack and Billerbeck opens up a new world of Rabbinic literature for the first time. Using Strack and Billerbeck can enhance one’s understanding of the Jewish background to Jesus, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament. Go read the rest of my review here.
In case you missed it, this is the fourth of four end-of-the-year giveaways. Here is the winner of Karen Jobes’s John commentary, Grant Osborne’s Hebrews commentary and Davidson and Turner, The Manifold Beauty of Genesis 1. I have a few books set aside for giveaways in the spring, so keep an eye out for them.
Thanks to Lexham for providing me an extra copy to give away on this blog.