The purpose of this work is to offer a study of the novels of Jewish-American author Henry Roth, situating those novels within several contexts, namely: early twentieth century life and ethnography in New York City, immigrant-specifically Jewish-experience, Judaism, with special reference to Eastern European orthodoxy, Roth's autobiographical style, and Hebrew literature. Of particular note is the issue of continuity that Roth himself incessantly sought.The first chapter provides a biographical sketch of Henry Roth, weaving together a brief story of his life that includes commentary upon his boyhood years, his family and relationships, his novels, and the sixty-year-long writer's block that intervened between publication of his first novel, Call It Sleep, and the 1990s volumes of the Mercy of a Rude Stream series; four novels of that series are currently in print. Chapter Two offers a brief outline of Jewish history that not only helps place Roth among the Eastern European Diaspora Jews of early twentieth century New York City but that also introduces the concepts of sin, atonement, and covenant that pervade Roth's writings.Chapter Three is devoted to an examination of Call It Sleep. This third chapter introduces and credits previous Roth scholarship while discussing the novel as an immigrant story, as Hebraic literature in its use of Midrashic elements and themes, and as ethnography. Additionally, this section suggests that Call It Sleep is somewhat polemic in its emphasis upon the Judaic convenant, despite Roth's assimilationist.stance during the years in which he composed the novel.Sequent to a fourth chapter describing the years between 1934 and the 1990s, years in which Roth found himself unable to write another novel and published but sporadically in periodicals, a fifth chapter discusses Roth's Mercy of a Rude Stream series. Those novels, again valuable documents that accurately depict turn-of-thecentury New York as well as the tale of the immigrant, exhibit continuity both among themselves and with Roth's first novel in their covenant thematic and Midrashic structure. Concepts discussed include intertextuality, teshuvah, and kedushah. The conclusion provides summary and is followed by a brief glossary. / Department of English

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This study investigates the procedural techniques, significance and the tangible effects of the laying on of hands in the New Testament. The introductory chapter reviews critically previous contributions to the subject of the laying on of hands in the New Testament and establishes the purpose and delimitations of this study and the methodology used. The next two chapters are devoted to a study of the background of the New Testament practice of the laying on of hands. The investigation is conducted in the Old Testament and contemporary Judaism (Chapter Two) and in the Graeco-Roman and Near-Eastern literature (Chapter Three). Chapters Four through Seven are exegetical, each discussing a particular use of the laying on of hands in the New Testament. Chapter Four examines the function of the gesture in healing. Special attention is given to the inner process of transfer of power through physical contact. A comparative study of Jesus' method of healing with similar practices of his contemporaries challenges the idea that the origin of the healing touch is Hellenistic. The custom of blessing with the laying on of hands, as practised by Jesus, is examined in Chapter Five in terms of origin, significance and the form of the gesture. The next chapter is devoted to the use of the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Spirit. In addition to the exegetical analysis of the relevant pericopes, an attempt is made to explain the circumstances which led to the birth of this distinctive Christian practice. Chapter Seven examines the use of the laying on of hands in ordination and commissioning. It discusses the significance of the gesture, argues for the Jewish origin of the Christian rite and opposes the view that in the post-Pauline period charismata are tied to an office and thus institutionalised. In the final section of the thesis, an attempt is made to gauge the possibility of any uniformity in the significance of the various New Testament uses of the laying on of hands.

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The significance of wine to the residents of ancient Palestine is demonstrated by the large number of archaeological sites where a wine making installation has been identified and the role wine plays in the Hebrew Bible, the major work of literature to survive from ancient Palestine. The role of wine in the Hebrew Bible has generated a large volume of material, although this has been partly driven by the ongoing temperance debate. Despite this there has been little or no thorough research as to which words and thus passages should be investigated to comprehensively examine wine in the Hebrew Bible. In addition those studies which do exist do not demonstrate any in-depth knowledge of wine production and its implications in translating and interpreting the Hebrew Bible. This work aims to address these two issues. The origin of wine demonstrates that wine was known in Palestine during the Biblical period. Agriculture and Diet provide information as to the value and context of wine production. Semantic tools detail the linguistic information for examination of the ancient Hebrew words related to wine. The styles and production methods of wine and other alcoholic beverages in the ancient world set limits for the identification of beverages. All other information must be considered in the light of these four areas. The core of this work is an examination of the key words related to wine: the likely members of the ancient Hebrew semantic field of wine the key words for grape, vine and vineyard and three words identified as installations used in wine production. It is only after such detailed examination that any in-depth study of wine in the Hebrew Bible should be considered.

It has long been noted that the book of Lamentations shares, at least in part, a theological outlook with the prophetic literature that the destruction of Jerusalem was the result of Yahweh’s decisive action against the sins of the nation. Too often, however, this relationship has simply been presupposed, or assumed to be a relationship of shared perspective. To date there has been no systematic exploration of how it is that Lamentations accepts and/or modifies the theological outlook of the prophetic literature. In addition, when the theology of the prophets has been discussed in relation to Lamentations, there has been a tendency to group all the prophetic books together as if they existed as a homogeneous whole, and shared amongst themselves a singular outlook. This tendency to simplify the theological complexity of the prophetic literature coincides with a similar tendency to reduce the theology of Lamentations to simple, monolithic assertions. Drawing on the literary insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, this study aims to explore in detail the nature of the relationship between Lamentations and the pre-exilic/exilic prophetic literature. Drawing on notions of dialogism, Polyphony and double voicing, the study argues that Lamentations enters i8nto a dialogic relationship with the prophetic literature, a relationship that both affirms and subverts that literature. Central to the acknowledgement of the dialogic interaction between Lamentations and the prophetic literature is the recognition of Lamentations as a multivalent, polyphonic text in which unmerged viewpoints exist in a tension filled relationship.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references.