Mensch Und Raum Von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart – Edited by A. Loprieno

Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 33 • NUMBER 3 • JULY 2007

228

history and theology. The central question here is not the“how” of stewardship, but the “why” of stewardship itself.Select contributions in this volume represent new trajecto-ries. For example, L. Sideris’s work on environmental ethicsand natural selection is a welcome addition to this conver-sation. Classics in the field of environmental stewardshipalso find a place (e.g., J. Sittler and D. J. Hall). This volumehas an unavoidably disconnected sense to it. Scientists, pub-lic policy experts, journalists, and scholars of religious studiesall offer musings on the theme of “stewardship.” Many of thearticles are nuanced, carefully crafted, and clearly advancespecific arguments in the field of environmental ethics.Other articles are cursory and beg complex questions thatgrip the field. The volume generally neglects critical insightsas to how sex, gender, race, class, etc. shape understandingsof “stewardship.” This text will appeal to undergraduatestudents in ecology and religion classes or to seminarianssearching for a general synopsis of this conversation.

Daniel McFeeMercyhurst College

Greece, Rome, Greco-Roman PeriodMENSCH UND RAUM VON DER ANTIKE BIS ZURGEGENWART. Edited by A. Loprieno. Colloquia Raurica,9. Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag, 2006. Pp. ix + 221; plates,maps. €64.00, ISBN 978-3-598-77380-8.

Many readers may be put off by the vast subject matterindicated by the title of this volume. This would be a pitybecause each of the ten contributions (one in English, ninein German, of which three deal with Egypt, one with the OT,two with the Greeks [including an intricate plotting of thetemporal and spatial coordinates of a Greek novel], one withthe medieval Alexander romance, one with Arabic travelliterature, and two, more generally with theatrical and sculp-tural space) offers a stimulating vignette, accessible to theinterested readers, of particular texts or artifacts that pointto the diverse conceptions of different societies concerningspace and humanity’s space within it. While the specificityof the discussions opens up theoretical considerations, itdoes not become bogged down with them. Even scholars inareas that are not dealt with here will be stimulated to recon-sider their own material within the spatial frameworks pre-sented here.

Jenny Strauss ClayUniversity of Virginia

Christian OriginsTHE DEAD SEA SCROLLS: WHAT HAVE WELEARNED? By Eileen M. Schuller. Louisville, KY: West-minster John Knox Press, 2006. Pp. xvii + 126. $17.95, ISBN0-66423-112-8.

A slightly expanded version of her 2002 John Albert HallLectures, the chapters in Schuller’s brief and accessiblework take up a series of questions about what we have

learned from the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. After a help-ful decade-by-decade survey of the nearly sixty years sincethe discovery of the scrolls, each of the next three chaptersis devoted to an area of inquiry wherein the scrolls haveplayed a major role and continue to hold great promise:textual criticism and composition history of scripture;prayer, worship, and other liturgical matters; and the placeand role of women, both at Qumran in particular and in earlyJudaism more generally. The book ends with a brief descrip-tion of future directions for Scrolls study, including the par-ticipation of more voices in an interdisciplinary discussion.Indeed, Schuller’s own work demonstrates well the contri-bution that social scientists, literary critics, and others canmake beyond the tremendous work already accomplished bytextual critics, philologists, and historians. While the latter’swork is by no means completed, the former can draw uponit and extend it toward even greater syntheses of what wehave learned.

Shane KirkpatrickAnderson University

COPTIC IN 20 LESSONS: INTRODUCTION TOSAHIDIC COPTIC WITH EXERCISES AND VOCAB-ULARIES. By Bentley Layton. Leuven: Leuven, 2006.Pp. viii + 204; illustrations. $34.00, ISBN 978-90-429-1810-8.

Having published what has become the standard refer-ence grammar of Sahidic Coptic (A Coptic Grammar, Harras-sowitz, 2000), Layton has now come out with an introductorygrammar based on that earlier work. In his analysis of Copticgrammar Layton has introduced a radically new terminol-ogy. For example, “second tenses” are gone, replaced by“focalizing conversion.” “Adjectives” are back, however,called “genderless common nouns” in the earlier work. Lay-ton’s book is now clearly the one to use in teaching Coptic.Students who can get through it will be prepared to take onCoptic texts. The only problem I see is that Layton is com-pletely silent about why he is replacing the older terminol-ogy standard in Coptic editions and scholarly literature withthe new one. I would counsel the teacher using this work tocomplement it with relevant sections from Thomas Lamb-din’s Introduction to Sahidic Coptic (Mercer, 1983).

Birger A. PearsonUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

THE MESSIAH IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTA-MENTS. Edited by Stanley E. Porter. Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 2007. Pp. xiv + 268. $29.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-0766-3.

Ten participants in a 2004 Colloquium at McMasterDivinity College in Hamilton, Ontario supply herein theirvaried perspectives on the Messiah in the Old and NewTestaments. L. Stuckenbruck finds no unified picture of theMessiah in the apocalyptic writings of early Judaism; as aresult, the question “why did not the Jews recognize Jesusas Messiah?” is misplaced. For T. Thatcher, JohannineChristology counters the contentions of the Antichrists by