Amos In Song And Book Culture

This study argues that the gist and movement of the prophecy in the book of Amos can be attributed to Amos himself, who composed a coherent cycle of poetry. His dire predictions came after the Fall of Samaria but before the Fall of Jerusalem. Writing a century later, the author of the book preserved but updated Amos' text by fitting it into a developing literary, historical and prophetic tradition. Amos is used as a test case to show that prophecy originated in the performing arts but was later transformed into history and biography. The original prophecy is a song Amos recited at symposia or festivals. The book's interest focusses on the performer and his times.

The volume brings together eight new essays on Amos, which focus on a range of issues within the book. They represent a number of different approaches to the text from the text-critical to teh psychoanalytical, and from composition to reception. Arising out of a symposium to honour John Barton for his 60th birthday, the essays all respond, either directly or indirectly, to his Amos's Oracles Against the Nations, and to his lifelong concern with both ethics and method in biblical study.

New York Times bestselling author Hilary Mantel, two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize, is one of the world’s most accomplished and acclaimed fiction writers. Giving Up the Ghost, is her dazzling memoir of a career blighted by physical pain in which her singular imagination supplied compensation for the life her body was denied. Selected by the New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years “The story of my own childhood is a complicated sentence that I am always trying to finish, to finish and put behind me.” In postwar rural England, Hilary Mantel grew up convinced that the most extraordinary feats were within her grasp. But at nineteen, she became ill. Through years of misdiagnosis, she suffered patronizing psychiatric treatment and destructive surgery that left her without hope of children. Beset by pain and sadness, she decided to “write herself into being”—one novel after another. This wry and visceral memoir will certainly bring new converts to Mantel’s dark genius. “Mesmerizing.”—The New York Times

It's hard to think of a solo female recording artist who has been as revered or as reviled over the course of her career as Tori Amos. Amy Gentry argues that these violent aesthetic responses to Amos's performance, both positive and negative, are organized around disgust-the disgust that women are taught to feel, not only for their own bodies, but for their taste in music. Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange. Using a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory, Gentry argues that the aesthetics of disgust are useful for thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.

Written with acclaimed music journalist Ann Powers, Piece By Piece is a revelatory account of the most intimate details of Tori Amos's private and public lives. Tori reveals the specifics of her creative process and the way in which she balances her life as a writer and performer with the demands of family life. With photos taken especially for this book by award-winning photographer Loren Haynes, Piece By Piece is a rare treat for all Tori devotees.

In The Spirit of Praise, Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong bring together a multidisciplinary, scholarly exploration of music and worship in global pentecostal-charismatic Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Spirit of Praise contends that gaining a full understanding of this influential religious movement requires close listening to its songs and careful attention to its patterns of worship. The essays in this volume place ethnomusicological, theological, historical, and sociological perspectives into dialogue. By engaging with these disciplines and exploring themes of interconnection, interface, and identity within musical and ritual practices, the essays illuminate larger social processes such as globalization, sacralization, and secularization, as well as the role of religion in social and cultural change. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Peter Althouse, Will Boone, Mark Evans, Ryan R. Gladwin, Birgitta J. Johnson, Jean Ngoya Kidula, Miranda Klaver, Andrew Mall, Kimberly Jenkins Marshall, Andrew M. McCoy, Martijn Oosterbaan, Dave Perkins, Wen Reagan, Tanya Riches, Michael Webb, and Michael Wilkinson.

DIV Why are words so important to so many Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism’s most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, compose the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation. Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly female author of the Song of Songs through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals but rather on written words and an ongoing debate between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humor, Jews and Words offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the conversation. /div

Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos explores the many-layered relationships female fans build with feminist musicians in general and with Tori Amos, in particular. Using original interview research with more than forty fans of Tori Amos, multiple observer-participant experiences at Amos’s concerts, and critical content analysis of Amos’s lyrics and larger body of work, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek utilizes a combination of gender, emotions, music, and activism to unravel the typecasts plaguing female fans. Trier-Bieniek aggressively challenges the popular culture stereotypes that have painted all female fans as screaming, crying teenage girls who are unable to control themselves when a favorite (generally male) performer occupies the stage. In stunning contrast, admirers of Tori Amos comprise a more introspective category of fan. Sing Us a Son, Piano Woman examines the wide range of stories from these listeners, exploring how Amos’s female fans are unique because Amos places the experiences of women at the center of her music. Tori Amos’s fan base is considered devoted because of the deeply emotional, often healing, connection they have to her music, an aspect that has been overlooked, particularly in sociological and cultural research on gender, emotions and music. Tori Amos’s female fans as a social phenomenon are vital for understanding the multi-layered relationships women can have with female singer/songwriters. At a time when superficial women dominate public media presentations, from the Kardashians to the “Real Housewives,” the relationship between Tori Amos and her fans illustrates the continuous search by women for female performers who challenge patriarchal standards in popular culture. Trier-Bieniek’s research serves as a springboard for further study of women in pop culture whose purpose is empower and provoke their fans, as well as change society.

What, according to the Book of Amos, does it mean to be the people of God? In this book, Andrew M. King employs a Social Identity Approach (SIA), comprised of Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory, to explore the relationship between identity formation and the biblical text. Specifically, he examines the identity-forming strategies embedded in the Book of Amos. King begins by outlining the Social Identity Approach, especially its use in Hebrew Bible scholarship. Turning to the Book of Amos, he analyzes group dynamics and intergroup conflicts (national and interpersonal), as well as Amos's presentation of Israel's history and Israel's future. King provides extensive insight into the rhetorical strategies in Amos that shape the trans-temporal audience's sense of self. To live as the people of God, according to Amos, readers and hearers must adopt norms defined by a proper relationship to God that results in the proper treatment of others.

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.