Scholarship on the book of Daniel has undergone a significant shift since the publication of K. Koch's groundbreaking work, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, in 1972. Despite significant achievements in understanding the historical-critical issues of the book, scholarship viewed Daniel's apocalyptic visions as embarrassing. The renaissance in Daniel studies that began in the 1970s has since produced a robust conversation and newer theory-driven insights around well-established areas of interest. These include Daniel's textual traditions and compositional history, the function of its genres, the social settings of its writers, and Daniel's near eastern literary and cultural milieu. New areas of interest identified in the landmark study of J.J. Collins and P.W. Flint (2001; 2002), namely the history of reception and political theologizing, have also gained ground. Daniel's reversal of fortunes is due to new methodologies as well as a fundamental paradigm shift in interpretation; this change has seen Daniel scholarship move away from the search for Daniel's historical meaning, narrowly construed, and toward the quest to understand what Daniel does to and for its readers.

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other ancient Near Eastern literature, similar though it may be. Preaching can be informed by biblical criticism, yet still affirm that the Bible is "the Word of God" and a "guide to daily life," even if defining those phrases is difficult (and different from a pre-critical understanding). Fortress, Minneapolis, 2008. 285 pp. $21.00. ISBN 978-0-8006-6241-7. CHRISTL MAIER PRESENTS this work as a traditionhistorical study of Jerusalem's development as a political entity and a religious symbol in the HB.Maier focuses on the Zion language found in the poetic portions of the HB-the prophets, Lamentations, and Pss 46 and 48. Her argument is that as the "Zion tradition" develops from the preexilic to the exilic and finally postexilic period, the tradition of Mt. Zion and/or Jerusalem as sacred space comes to acquire the specialized metaphor of Zion as a gendered personification. The endpoint of this development emerges in the postexilic period in the image of Mother Zion, a symbol of peace and salvation (e.g., Isa 60 and Ps 87). As she studies the evolving portrayals of Zion as daughter, whore, queen, and finally, mother, Maier skillfully teases from the biblical texts Zion's characterization in terms of perceived space (actual space or topography), conceived space (ideological constructions of space), and lived space (experience of a place). She argues that the intertwining of sacred space and gender allowed the writers to respond to historical crises by providing equipment for re-thinking the Israelites' relationship to the divine, to each other, and to the land.

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