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78 Religion/US Studies
Charity
The Place of the Poor in the
Biblical Tradition
Gary A. Anderson
It has long been acknowledged that
Jews and Christians distinguished
themselves through charity to the
poor. Though ancient Greeks and
Romans were also generous, they
funded theatres and baths rather
than poorhouses and orphanages.
How might we explain this difference?
In this significant reappraisal of charity in the biblical
tradition, Gary Anderson argues that the poor constituted the
privileged place where Jews and Christians met God. Though
concerns for social justice were not unknown to early Jews and
Christians, the poor achieved the importance they did
primarily because they were thought to be ‘living altars’, a
place to make a sacrifice, a loan to God that he, as the
ultimate guarantor, could be trusted to repay in turn.
Contrary to the assertions of Reformation and modern critiques,
belief in a heavenly treasury was not just about self-interest.
Sifting through biblical and postbiblical texts, Anderson shows
how charity affirms the goodness of the created order; the
world was created through charity and therefore rewards it.
Gary A. Anderson is Hesburgh Professor of Catholic
Theology, University of Notre Dame. His most recent book,
the critically acclaimed Sin: A History, won a Christianity
Today Book Award.
September 256 pp. 234x156mm. 4 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-18133-3 £20.00
The Great Rent Wars
New York, 1917–1929
Robert M. Fogelson
The Great Rent Wars tells the
fascinating but little-known story of
the battles between landlords and
tenants in America’s largest city
from 1917 through 1929. These
conflicts were triggered by the postwar
housing shortage, which
prompted landlords to raise rents,
drove tenants to go on rent strikes, and spurred the state
legislature, a conservative body dominated by upstate
Republicans, to impose rent control in New York, a radical and
unprecedented step that transformed landlord-tenant relations.
The Great Rent Wars traces the tumultuous history of rent
control in New York from its inception to its expiration as it
unfolded in New York, Albany and Washington, D.C. At the
heart of this story are such memorable figures as Al Smith,
Fiorello H. La Guardia and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as
a host of tenants, landlords, judges and politicians who have
long been forgotten. Fogelson also explores the heated debates
over landlord-tenant law, housing policy and other issues that
are as controversial today as they were a century ago.
Robert M. Fogelson is professor of urban studies and history
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of
several books, most recently Downtown: Its Rise and Fall,
1880–1930, and Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870 –1930,
both published by Yale.
November 504 pp. 241x165mm. 23 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-19172-1 £30.00*
Translation rights: Kneerim and Williams, Boston
Before the Door of God
An Anthology of Devotional Poetry
Edited by Jay Hopler
and Kimberly Johnson
Before the Door of God traces the
development of devotional Englishlanguage
poetry from its origins in
ancient hymnody to its current 21stcentury
incarnations. The poems in
this volume demonstrate not only that
devotional poetry – poetry that speaks to the divine – remains
in vigorous practice, but also that the tradition reaches back to
the very origins of poetry in English. There is a sense in these
pages that the tradition of lyric poetry that developed was
nearly inevitable, given the inherent concerns of the genre.
Featuring the work of poets over a three-thousand-year period,
Before the Door of God places the devotional lyric in its
cultural, historical and aesthetic contexts.
Jay Hopler is associate professor of English at the University
of South Florida. He received the prestigious Yale Series of
Younger Poets Award in 2005 for his first book of poems,
Green Squall. Kimberly Johnson is associate professor of
English at Brigham Young University. She is the author of two
collections of poetry and a translation of Virgil’s Georgics.
November 352 pp. 234x156mm. 2 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-17520-2 £25.00*
Judges 1–12
A New Translation
Introduction and Commentary by Jack M. Sasson
Informed by the literature and language of the ancient Near
East, this new commentary to Chapters 1 to 12 of the biblical
Book of Judges provides a literary and theological analysis of
some of Scripture’s most stirring narratives and verses.
Addressed are issues about the techniques that advance the text’s
objectives, the impulses behind its composition, the
motivations behind its preservation, the diversity of
interpretations during its transmission in several ancient
languages and the learned attention it has gathered over time in
faith traditions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. In its pages is a
fair sampling from ancient Near Eastern documents to illumine
specific biblical passages or to bolster the interpretation of
contexts. A comprehensive Introduction surveys issues and
approaches in the study of Judges. Introductory Remarks identify
issues of religious, social, cultural or historical significance
appropriate to each segment. As such, they provide a
background to the Notes and a frame for the exposition in the
concluding Comments.
Jack M. Sasson is Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish
Studies and Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University.
The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries
November 592 pp. 234x156mm.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-19033-5 £70.00