Category:Spanish Scholarship

• This page was created and is edited by Carlos A. Segovia, University of Seville, Spain

The category: Spanish Scholarship, includes (in chronological order) works by Spanish Scholars, in the field of Second Temple Judaism and Christian Origins.

Overview

Spanish Scholarship in the 16th century

Similarly to what happened in other countries, the translation of Josephus' Bellum Iudaicum in Spanish by Juan Martín Cordero marks the official beginning of Spanish Scholarship on the period.

Spanish Scholarship in the 17th century

The translation in Spanish of Josephus' Contra Apionem by Joseph Semah Arias is the most remarkable achievement of Spanish scholarship in the 17th century.

Spanish Scholarship in the 18th century

18th-century Spanish scholarship produced historical chronologies by Josef Rigüál (1779), and Juan López Peñalver (1793).

Spanish Scholarship in the 19th century

Spanish Scholarship in the 1910s

The only Spanish book published in the 1910s was Julio Domingo Bazán’s liberal defense of the Hebrews. Like Joseph Semah Arias, who in 1687 had published a Spanish translation of Josephus' "Jewish War", Bazán was a military man who only very indirectly addressed in his book several topics inherent to the study of the Second Temple period.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1940s

Between 1945 and 1947, Giuseppe Ricciotti’s Storia d’Israele was twice translated into Spanish; one of these translations was made by the Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri, who studied in Freiburg and Berlin with Husserl and Heidegger in the 1920s and in Paris with Émile Benveniste in the 1930s. Ricciotti’s volume was also the first relevant scholarly study on the history of Israel published in Spanish language. Inasmuch as vol. 2 of Ricciotti’s work (which was simultaneously published in Buenos Aires and Barcelona in 1947) covered the Second Temple period together with the late 1st century CE and the first third of the 2nd century CE, it was also the first book on Second Temple Judaism published in the Spanish-speaking world. No other books related to this particular field of study appeared during this period.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1950s

Antonio González Lamadrid's 1956 volume on the discoveries in the Judean Desert must be regarded as the first contemporary scholarly work on Second Temple Judaism in Spanish language. This book, together with Charles Guignebert's 1935 essay on the Jewish world in the time of Jesus (which was translated into Spanish and published in Mexico in 1959) should be furthermore considered as symptomatic of the later development of our discipline in the Spanish speaking countries. First, these two volumes are representative of the two main topics of study addressed in the Spanish-speaking world between the early 1960s and the late 2000s. Secondly, they prefigure the dual tendency which is characteristic of such period: most books originally published in Spanish language deal with Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls whilst the majority of books translated into Spanish deal with the study of the historical Jesus, the Jesus movement and early Christianity. Finally, an alternative emphasis upon one of these two general topics is also illustrative of the thematic evolution during the period. In spite of temporary oscillations as to the specific subjects discussed in each decade, this implicit, threefold principle has prevailed throughout the past six decades and describes quite accurately its basic inner drive, though not its many nuances and additional developments, of course.

As to the Spanish edition of scholarly volumes originally published in other languages, the translation of two essays on Paul and his letters by Amédée Brunot ought to be mentioned as well.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1960s [This section is currently being updated]

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls on the one hand, and the Targum on the other, became the main focuses of interest in Spanish scholarship in the 1960s.

In 1960 Jesús Cantera Ortiz de Urbina published a Spanish translation of the Habakuk Pesher from Qumran with a brief critical study of its text, and in 1968 Alejandro Díez Macho began to edit and translate, together with Roger le Déaut, Martin McNamara and Michael Maher, the sole extant manuscript of Targum Neophyti 1, which he had discovered in 1956 in the Vatican Library; this very remarkable edition appeared in 6 vols. between 1968 and 1979, and should be regarded, together with Florentino García Martínez’s works on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the history of the Qumran community, as the most outstanding Spanish contribution to the study of the Second Temple period.

A book on Philo of Alexandria by Rafael Díaz de León and a study on Paul's theology by José María González Ruiz were also published in the 1960s. As to the the Spanish editions of foreing volumes, the translations of Rudolf Schnackenburg's 1954 Die sittliche Botschaft des Neuen Testaments, Jean Daniélou's 1958 essay on Philo, François Amiot's, Amédée Brunot's, Léon Cristiani's, Henri Daniel-Rops' and Jean Daniélou's 1962 essay on the sources of Jesus' biography, Oscar Cullmann's Der Staat im Neue Testament, Rudolf Schnackenburg's Gottesherrschaft und Reich and several volumes by Lucien Cerfaux and John A. T. Robinson on Paul, were published in this period.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1970s [This section is currently being updated]

In addition to the subjects prevalent in the 1960s, i.e., Qumran (on which Antonio González Lamadrid, José O'Callaghan Martínez and Manuel Jiménez F. Bonhomme wrote in 1971, 1974 and 1976, respectively) and the Targum (Alejandro Díez Macho continued publishing his edition of Targum Neophyti 1 between 1970 and 1979 and wrote an introduction to Targumic literature in 1972, whereas Domingo Muñoz León wrote in 1974 and 1977 two complementary studies on the Targumim to the Pentateuch), two new topics diversely related to the history of the Second Temple period attracted the attention of Spanish scholarship and editorship in the 1970s, namely the Greek Bible (to which Natalio Fernández Marcos devoted two important studies in 1972, with Ángel Sáenz-Badillos Pérez, and 1979) and apocalyptic literature (on which a collection of essays by Mathias Delcor was published in 1977). These two subjects were to grow in importance over the next decades with new studies by Fernández Marcos and María Victoria Spottorno Díaz-Caro amidst other scholars in the 1980s and the 2000s, and the publication of an extensive collection of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in Spanish version edited by Alejandro Díez Macho and Antonio Piñero Sáenz between 1984 and 2009, respectively.

A separate comment must be made regarding O'Callaghan's 1974 essay on the Greek papyri from Qumran Cave 7, where he tentatively identified several extant fragments with various verses of the Gospels (especially 7Q5 with Mark 6:52-53). O'Callaghan had advanced this groundbreaking hypothesis in an article published in 1972 ("¿Papiros neotestamentarios en la cueva 7 de Qumrán",Biblica 53 [1972] 91-100; translated by L. W. Holladay as "New Testament Papyri in Qumran Cave 7?," Journal of Biblical Literature 91/2 [1972] 1-14), yet his insights on this subject have been widely disputed by most scholars on both philological and statistic grounds (see, e.g., Die älteste Evangelien-handschrift?: Der Fund des Markus- Fragments von Qumran un die Anfange der schriftlichen Uberlieferung des Neuen Testaments (1986 Thiede), book; Christen und Christliches in Qumran? (1992 Mayer), edited volume). Nonetheless, O'Callaghan largely contributed with his insights to the comparative study of the literature from Qumran and the New Testament both in the Spanish-speaking world and beyond.

To end with mention must be made of Enric Cortès’ 1976 study on the "departing discourses" in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and their narrative framework, Xabier Pikaza's 1976 essay on the historical Jesus, Santos Sabugal's 1976 studies on Paul's conversion in Galatians, and Marcelino Legido López's 1978 volume on Pauline ecclesiology.

As to the Spanish edition of foreign works, the following volumes on ancient and Second Temple Judaism were translated into Spanish: George Ernest Wright’s Biblical Archaeology (1975), Sigmund Mowinckel’s Han som kommer (1975), André Paul's Intertestament (1978), and Frederick Fyvie Bruce's Israel and the Nations: From the Exodus to the Fall of the Second Temple (1979). In addition, the Spanish editions of several books on the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and early Christianity by Josef Blank, Günter Bornkamm, Raymond E. Brown, Rudolf Karl Bultmann, Oscar Cullmann, Charles Harol Dodd, Xavier Léon-Dufour, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, David Flusser, Martin Hengel, Joachim Jeremias, Ernst Käsemann, Heinrich Schlier, Gerd Theissen and Étienne Trocmé were also published in this period.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1980s [This section is currently being updated]

In the 1980s Spanish scholarship on Second Temple Judaism increased considerably if compared to the earlier decades. Twenty-seven new volumes were published, including editions of books written in other European languages; and an unprecedented assortment of themes were explored in them.

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls deserved a good deal of attention through the entire decade, though not as much as in the 1990s. Books by Luis Vegas Montaner on the Qumran Biblical scrolls and José María Casciaro Rodríguez on the Qumranic literature and the New Testament were published in 1980 and 1982, respectively. In 1982 Mathias Delcor’s and Florentino García Martínez’s introduction to the Essene literature from Qumran was also published. And in 1985 a new, updated edition of Antonio González Lamadrid's Los manuscritos del mar Muerto (first published in 1971) saw the light too. In addition, in 1987 and 1989, respectively, Geza Vermès’s The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective and Carsten Peter Thiede’s 1986 study on the hypothetical Markan fragments from Qumran Cave 7 identified by José O'Callaghan Martínez in 1972 were published as well.

Spanish scholarly production on the Targum was quite relevant too in the 1980s, with studies and translations by Miguel Pérez Fernández (1981), Domingo Muñoz León (1986, 1987), Josep Ribera Florit (1987, 1988), and Emiliano Martínez Borobio (1987, 1989). In his 1987 critically acclaimed book, Muñoz León (who had already written on Targumic literature in the late 1970s) also addressed several issues related to the interpretation of the Scriptures in the New Testament.

In the 1980s Natalio Fernández Marcos continued working on the Greek versions of the Bible and published in 1985 an edited volume on the Septuagint. In 1987, María Victoria Spottorno Díaz-Caro and José Ramón Busto Sáiz translated into Spanish Josephus' Autobiography and Contra Apionem. A year later, Josep Montserrat Torrents translated into Catalan Philo's De Opificio Mundi, whilst the influence of Philo in the Western culture was the subject of an essay by José Pablo Martín published in Buenos Aires in 1986. Jean Cazeaux’s 1983 study on Philo’s philosophy of language and mysticism was in turn translated into Spanish and published in 1984.

The time of Jesus, the historical Jesus, the Jewish roots of Christianity, the theology of Paul, and the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity were thoroughly explored in the 1980s by Rafael Aguirre Monasterio, Juan Huarte Osacar, José Ignacio González Faus, Hernando Guevara, Marcelino Legido López, Jesús Emilio Menéndez Menéndez, Emilio Mitre Fernández, Josep Montserrat Torrents, José Antonio Pagola, Xabier Pikaza, and Senén Vidal García. And many books dealing with these and other related subjects (including the New Testament corpus) by Joseph Auneau, Giuseppe Barbaglio, Gerhard Barth, Günter Bornkamm, Raymond E. Brown, Amédée Brunot, Lothar Coenen, Martin Dibelius, John Drane, Rinaldo Fabris, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Joachim Gnilka, Martin Hengel, Joachim Jeremias, Joseph Klausner, Helmut Köster, Xavier Léon-Dufour, Gerhard Lohfink, Wayne A. Meeks, Charles Perrot, Rudolf Schnackenburg, Wolfgang Schrage, Emil Schürer, Heinz Schürmann, Eduard Schweizer, Gerd Theissen, Albert Vanhoye, and Ulrich Wilckens, were also translated into Spanish.

Moreover, Hugues Cousin's Vies d'Adam et Eve, des patriarches et des prophètes, François Castel’s 1983 general history of Israel and Judah, Henry Cazelles’ 1982 historical overview of the early Second Temple period, Christiane Saulnier's 1982 monograph on the Maccabean crisis, and Claude Tassin’s 1986 history of Second Temple Judaism were also translated into Spanish and published between 1981 and 1988.

Yet perhaps the most relevant events were, on the one hand, Carlos de Valle Rodríguez's Spanish edition of the Mishnah, and, on the other hand, Alejandro Díez Macho’s and Antonio Piñero Sáenz’s edition of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in Spanish version, of which vols. 1-4 appeared in 1984 and vol. 5 in 1987; vol. 6 was published in 2009, and a 7th vol. is forthcoming. Contributors were recruited by the editors among Spanish scholars on Biblical and Targumic literature and Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic and Arabic studies. A volume on intertestamental literature published by Domingo Muñoz León in 1983 must also be mentioned here, as well as a noteworthy study on the historical method of Flavius Josephus published in English by Pere Villalba i Varneda in 1986.

Spanish Scholarship in the 1990s [This section is currently being updated]

The 1990s might be roughly defined as the “Qumran decade” in Spanish scholarship on Second Temple Judaism, in so far as ten volumes on the Dead Sea Scrolls were published in Spanish language between 1991 and 1996, including Florentino García Martínez’s 1992 Spanish edition of the significant manuscripts then available, which was translated into English, Dutch, Portuguese and Italian in 1994, 1994-95, 1995 and 1996, respectively. In 1991 Santiago Ausín Olmos published a philological study on the ethical language of the sectarian writings from Qumran. There followed César Vidal Manzanares’ three consecutive, introductory essays on the Qumran community and its literature (1993, 1995); Florentino García Martínez’s and Julio Trebolle Barrera’s study on the men from Qumran (1993), which was translated into English and Italian in 1995 and 1996, respectively; and two edited volumes by Antonio Piñero Sáenz and Dimas Fernández Galiano (1994) and Julio Trebolle Barrera (1999), who had earlier published with Luis Vegas Montaner the proceedings of the Madrid Qumran Congress (1992). In addition, the Spanish translation of Jean Pouilly’s 1990 introduction to the Scrolls and Stegemann’s 1993 study on the Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist and Jesus (which was translated into English in 1998), were published in 1991 and 1996, respectively.

Other themes studied were illness and health care in the ancient Near East and the rise of Christianity (by Héctor Avalos [1995, 1999]), the history of Messianic ideas in ancient Judaism and emerging Christianity (by José Luis Sicre Díaz [1995]), the development of intertestamental literature (by Gonzalo Aranda Pérez, Florentino García Martínez and Miguel Pérez Fernández [1996]), and Ben Sira (by Nuria Calduch-Benages [1997, 1998, 1999]). Several volumes on the study of the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and both the Jewish roots and the development of earliest Christianity, were also published in this decade by Rafael Aguirre Monasterio, María Ángeles Alonso Ávila, Juan José Bartolomé, Carmen Bernabé Urbieta, Aurelio de Santos Otero, Joaquín González Echegaray, Santigo Guijarro Oporto, Xabier Pikaza, Antonio Piñero Sáenz, Antonio Rodríguez Carmona, Ramón Trevijano Etcheverría, Jordi Sánchez Bosch, Juan Luis Segundo, Senén Vidal García, and César Vidal Manzanares.

A series of relevant translations of ancient texts into Spanish language also took place in the 1990s. Several Targumim were translated by Josep Ribera Florit (1992, 1997) and Emiliano Martínez Borobio (1998); Philo’s De somniis and De Josepho by Sofía Torallas Tovar (1997); Josephus’ Autobiography and Against Apion by Margarita Rodríguez de Sepúlveda; Josephus' Jewish War by Jesús María Nieto Ibáñez (1997, 1999); and the Latin version of 4 Ezra by Gabriel Marcelo Nápole (1998).

As earlier said, both Florentino García Martínez's Spanish edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Florentino García Martínez’s and Julio Trebolle Barrera's book on the Qumran community were translated into several European languages (including English) between 1994 and 1996. No other books dealing with the study of the Second Temple period originally published in Spanish had been translated into other languages prior to that date. Moreover, Florentino García Martínez published in 1992 a most remarkable study in English language on Qumran and apocalyptic; he also co-edited two collective volumes on the Bible and the Scrolls (together with Anthony Hilshort and Casper J. Labuschagne, Moshe J. Bernstein and John Kampen, and Ed Noort) in 1992, 1997 and 1998, respectively, and a volume on the Noah traditions (together with Gerard P. Luttikhuizen) in 1998; as well as a complete bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls covering the years 1970-1975 (together with Donald W. Parry) in 1997, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (together with Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar) between 1997 and 1998, and vol. XXIII of the Discoveries in the Judean Desert (DJD) series (with Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar and Adam S. van der Woude) in 1998. Meanwhile, Natalio Fernández Marcos published in 1994 an Engish volume on the Septuagint and Old Latin versions of the Books of Kings, and Adolfo Roitman a Hebrew introduction to the daily life of the Qumran sectarians in 1997. In addition, Gonzálo Aranda Perez's, Florentino García Martínez's and Miguel Pérez Fernández's study on intertestamental literature was translated into Italian in 1998. The aforementioned volumes by Héctor Avalos should also be taken into account at this point.

As to the Spanish edition of contemporary studies, one must mention Johann Maier’s Zwishen den Testamenten: Geschichte und Religion in der Zeit des zweiten Tempels, Walter Schmithals' Die Apokalyptik, and a rather large number of volumes dealing with the study of the historical Jesus and early Christianity which include several studies by Paul J. Achtemeier, Horst Balz, François Bovon, Raymond E. Brown, Matthieu Collin, Oscar Cullmann, Rinaldo Fabris, David Flusser, Joachim Gnilka, Dieter Hildebrandt, Pierre Lenhardt, Ulrich Luz, Margaret Y. MacDonald, Bruce J. Malina, John P. Meier, Annette Merz, Romano Penna, Heinrich Schlier, Jacques Schlosser, Gerhard Schneider, Eduard Schweizer, Graham Stanton, Peter Stuhlmacher, Gerd Theissen, Marie Vidal, Phillip Vielhauer, and Ulrich Wilckens.

Spanish Scholarship in the 2000s [This section is currently being updated]

Leaving aside Jaime Vázquez Allegue’s works on the Rule of the Community and the literature from Qumran (2000, 2004, 2006), as well as Francisco Jiménez Bedman’s study on the Copper Scroll (2002), Pedro Zamora García's essay on the Qoheleth in light of the Hebrew Bible, Sirach and Qumran (2002), Adolfo Roitman's introduction to the daily life of the Qumran sectarians (which was translated into Spanish in 2000), and the several volumes published in English by Roitman himself (2003 [with Shulamith Laderman], 2006) and by Florentino García Martínez (2000 [with Daniel K. Falk and Eileen M. Schuller], 2003, 2007, and 2008 [with Mladen Popović]), it must be acknowledged that Spanish scholarly production on the Dead Sea Scrolls decreased in the 2000s. The aforementioned works and the Spanish edition of both Hershel Shanks’ Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls (2005) and André Paul’s La Bible avant la Bible (2007) are the exception to this rule, which applies also to the other traditional key field of research in the Spanish-speaking world: the Targum; in fact, only two books, one by Josep Ribera Florit on the Targum of Ezekiel (2004) and the other one by Teresa Martínez Sáiz and Miguel Pérez Fernández on the Targumim to the Pentateuch (2004), were published on this subject in the 2000s.

Conversely, Spanish editorship on the historical Jesus, the New Testament and Christian origins grew to an unprecedented level. Amidst those scholars who devoted their works to these matters in the 2000s one should mention Rafael Aguirre Monasterio, María Ángeles Alonso Ávila, Manuel Aroztegui Esnaola, Juan José Ayán Calvo, Gonzalo Balderas Vega, Carmen Bernabé Urbieta, Nuria Calduch-Benages, Patricio de Navascués Benlloch, Elisa Estévez López, Francisco García Bazán, José Miguel García Pérez, Santiago Guijarro Oporto, Carlos Javier Gil Arbiol, Esther Miquel Pericás, Josep Montserrat Torrents, José Antonio Pagola, Xabier Pikaza, Antonio Piñero Sáenz, Josep Rius Camps, Luis Manuel Suárez Díaz, Pius-Ramon Tragan, Antonio Vargas-Machuca Gutierrez, and Senén Vidal García. Besides, several important volumes on the historical Jesus and early Christianity were translated from other languages, including different works by Reidar Aasgaard, David E. Aune, Giuseppe Barbaglio, François Bovon, Raymond E. Brown, Rudolf Karl Bultmann, John Dominic Crossan, Henri Daniel-Rops, Jean Daniélou, Cees J. Den Heyer, Adriana Destro, Joanna Dewey, James D. G. Dunn, Bart D. Ehrman, Rinaldo Fabris, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Seán Freyne, Paul Hoffmann, Larry W. Hurtado, Martin Karrer, John S. Kloppenborg, Israel Knohl, Ulrich Luz, Margaret Y. MacDonald, Bruce J. Malina, Joel Marcus, John P. Meier, Donald Michie, Jerome H. Neyrey, Carolyn Osiek, Mauro Pesce, Jonathan L. Reed, David Rhoads, James M. Robinson, Ed Parish Sanders, Heinz Schürmann, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, John E. Stambaugh, Rodney Stark, Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Wolfgang Stegemann, Justin Taylor, Gerd Theissen, Janet H. Tulloch, and Tatha Wiley.

Attention was also paid by Spanish scholars and editors to other various topics such as Jewish apocalypticism (on which Ignacio Gómez de Liaño and Antonio Piñero Sáenz wrote in 2000 and 2007, respectively), Ben Sira (on which Nuria Calduch-Benages published an essay in Italian in 2001 and offered with Joan Ferrer and Jan Liesen a Spanish and English translation of its Syriac version in 2003), Biblical and Parabiblical literature (on which Miren Junkal Guevara Llaguno published an essay in 2006), Jewish literature in Greek language during the late Second Temple period (on which Antonio Piñero Sáenz wrote in 2006), the House of Herod (on which Joaquín González Echegaray published an economic and socio-political study in 2007) and the intertwining of theology, economy and politics in the Ecclesiastes (on which Pedro Zamora García produced a new monograph in 2007). Natalio Fernández Marcos’ and María Victoria Spottorno Díaz-Caro’s 2008 Spanish edition of the LXX text of the Pentateuch (to which further volumes on the Septuagint will follow) and the first volume of José Pablo Martín’s new Spanish edition of Philo’s works (2009-) deserve being mentioned as well, together with vols. 3 and 6 of Alejandro Díez Macho’s and Antonio Piñero Sáenz’s collection of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in Spanish (2002, 2009), and Francisco García Bazán's study on the jewish roots of Gnosticism and on the contribution of the latter to the early Christian faith as well as to Christian philosophy (2009). Finally, it should also be noted that Florentino García Martínez co-edited three collective volumes in English on ancient cultural interaction in Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome (with Gerard P. Luttikhuizen), on the Septuagint and Ezekiel (with Marc Vervenne), and on Qumran and the New Testament, in 2003, 2005, and 2009, respectively; whereas Héctor Avalos coauthored in 2007 (with Sarah J. Melcher and Jeremy Schipper an English volume on medical Biblical studies. Besides, Natalio Fernández Marcos' Introducción a las versiones griegas de la Biblia [Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible] was translated into English in 2000, and Rafael Aguirre Monasterio's Del movimiento de Jesús a la iglesia cristiana into Italian in 2005.

Especial mention must be made, to end with, of a series of relevant studies on the history of the Second Temple translated into Spanish in the 2000s, beginning with Paolo Sacchi’s Storia del Secondo Tempio, the Spanish edition of which was published in 2004 (partly after its English edition). There followed the Spanish editions of both Morton Smith’s Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (2007) and Claude Tassin’s 2006 and 2008 consecutive studies on the mid- and late Second Temple period (2007, 2009).

Spanish Scholarship in the 2010s [This section is currently being updated]

Related categories

• Spanish / Spanish language / Spanish Fiction

• Latino / Latino Scholarship / Latino Fiction

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