I propose a paper exploring the relationship between the scholarly approaches developed within academic biblical studies and the more subjective methods suggested by several preachers and homileticians, as exemplified by Anna Carter Florence’s book, Preaching as Testimony. Although scholars strive in evaluating texts for criteria that can be discussed with at least a measure of objectivity, preachers, even with strong academic credentials, write of evaluating texts with more intuitive, subjective approaches. In a lecture at SBL, Florence talks of allowing the text to kill the preacher and raise him/her back up. She suggests several methods for eliciting subjective reactions to a text. Can scholars reflect on this process of vulnerability to a text, this intuitive response? I propose to use John 12:1-8 as a test case. The narrative of the woman anointing Jesus' feet appears in the synoptic gospels as well as John, so the text lends itself well to redaction criticism and narrative criticism. I will compare the results of these academic approaches with the more subjective, intuitive approaches suggested by Florence and other preachers/homileticians.

When Constantine in A.D. 330 established Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman Empire, the nea Roma, this was a novel enterprise. Differently from the old Rome, Constantinople was from the outset planned as a Christian city: churches were made an integral part of the city centre; the clergy were to serve important functions in its everyday life; even time, the calendar, was organised in keeping with the needs of the new, and now state supported, faith. In this way, Constantinople emerged as a grand experiment: an attempt at the formation of a new identity for a collective, a city. Not only individuals and families, but also society as a whole should be shaped according to the new, Christian paideia. In A.D. 330 Constantinople (the former Byzantium) had about 30 000 inhabitants. A century later the population had multiplied by ten. And by the middle of the sixth century it had doubled again, with about 600 000 people living within its walls – an extreme increase. A large percentage, possibly almost half of the population, was likely to have been children under the age of twelve. In fundamental ways, they too took part in and were influenced by the radical transformation taking place. In this paper, I shall attempt to describe what life in early Constantinople may have looked like from a child's perspective, for a child about ten years of age. The time of focus will be A.D. 450, a time in which the city was still in its childhood, but in the process of becoming a "personality" with its own distinctive characteristics. What may growing up in Constantinople have entailed for a child? In what manners was this city likely to shape its worldview? In what ways can this urban social and religious experiment have influenced such a child’s life? A central intention with the paper is to reflect on what difference a look at this city from such a perspective may make, if any. The matter will be presented by means of a variety of sources related to mid-5th century Constantinople, such as inscriptions, archaeological remains, art, biblical manuscripts, and patristic texts. Ninian Smart's "dimensions of religion" will be used as a main methodological framework for the discussion.

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What is African Biblical Hermeneutics? For along time the question of a distinctive African biblical methodology has not been settled. Many African scholars and few Euro/American scholars have struggled to legitimate the distinctive African Biblical Hermeneutics, not only for African scholars but also for the world. Because we are permitted to have a separate unit at the SBL annual meeting, we should not take for granted that the question of a distinctive African methodology called African Biblical Hermeneutics has been legitimized and therefore settled. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to present a scholarly definition of what I called a distinctive African Biblical hermeneutics and the very purpose and form of this hermeneutic. For clarity I also intend to illustrate this methodology with a particular chosen passage. In my researches throughout the past years, I have called African Biblical Hermeneutics several names such as African Cultural Hermeneutics, African Biblical Studies and African Contextual studies and others. It is the methodology that makes “African social cultural context a subject of interpretation.” Analysis of the text is done from the perspective of African world view and culture. Gone are those days when the Western methodology is considered to be the only true and legitimate method for the world of biblical scholarship. Since it is a fact that a casual glance at the history of biblical hermeneutics has revealed that no interpretation that is one hundred percent without references to or dependent on a particular code, thought patterns or social location and no individual has been completely detached from everything in his or her environment or experience and culture so as to be able to render one hundred percent objectivity in everything done, African cultural hermeneutics are therefore legitimate and valid for a distinctive biblical interpretation.

The summary comments of John 20:30-31 stand at the center of the debate about the purpose of the fourth gospel. Previous focus on v. 31, though, has led many to overlook v. 30; this reference to “other signs” is often read as a moment of hyperbole, intended to impress upon the audience that the narrator could, if necessary, continue recounting Jesus’ great deeds. In this paper I suggest an alternative rhetorical reading, arguing that here the audience learns more about the function of what the evangelist does report than what he omits. I read this text in conversation with similar comments in Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales. Aristides contrasts the tales he presently narrates with his 300,000-word “parchment books,” an unreadable effort to record “with utmost precision what has befallen us” (48.8). While the parchment books reflect the task of “recording events,” the tales are Aristides’ “narrating the providence of the god.” Consistent reference to the parchment books reminds his audience that they are hearing Aristides’ construction of the events wherein he attempts to give his audience an experience of the god’s power, an experience that Aristides admits cannot be achieved by simply recording events. Aristides’ distinction is a helpful way to read John 20:30-31 and the gospel’s view of history. Like Aristides, John offers his selection and configuration of events, written not to record, but to narrate, to offer the audience the ineffable experience of the glory of Jesus Christ. After briefly discussing how this accords with the gospel’s argument about signs and belief, I demonstrate the implications of this distinction by focusing on audience construction and participation in two episodes, the report of the baptism (1:29-34) and the conversation between Jesus and Thomas (20:24-29).

The Song of Lament by Jerusalem and her consolation in 1 Baruch 4:5—5:9 is one of the most original parts of 1 Baruch and is strategically located at the conclusion of the narrative. Prior to this section, the wisdom poem (1 Baruch 3:9—4:4) reframed Job 28 and questioned where wisdom was found. It is at this point, however, that there is a radical shift in perspective. Not only is the theme of wisdom abandoned, but the hopeful perspective is refocused on the grieving Jerusalem. Here the author of Baruch adopts Greek Isianic language, not only to recount the sins of the Israelites, but also in his oracle of consolation (esp. Isa 49:14-26). In addition to providing the model for this section, Second and Third Isaiah also provide specific images and details that frame Jerusalem’s suffering and consolation in light of Isianic promises (e.g., Isa 52:1-12; 54:1-17; 60:1-22; 62:1-12). This paper seeks to tease out how 1 Baruch’s appropriation of Second Isaiah, both in this section and in the work as a whole. Ultimately Baruch makes use of Greek Isaiah to provide a theological understanding of the people’s place within God’s cosmos and ultimately concludes on a positive note, confident in final redemption.

Contrary to Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, one rabbinic tradition contends that the central locus of worship for the Tabernacle and First Temple was never lost following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. Rather, Josiah buried the Ark, along with its contents, in the precincts of the Temple (b. Yoma 52b, b. Horayot 12a, y. Shekalim 6:1). Was this part of Josiah’s religious reform, when he destroyed the high places, the idolatrous priests and their vessels? Anxious that it would become an object of idolatry, did the king bury the Ark just as Hezekiah had destroyed the bronze serpent (2 Kgs. 18:4)? Or did he fear its desecration in the hands of the enemy? The Ark expresses a reification of the Divine Presence in the Hebrew Bible – a magical force that arrested the Jordan River, and accompanied the Israelites into battle. Yet the Rabbis imply that force must be held in abeyance with its burial. Following the period of Return under Zerubbabel, the rabbinic tradition contends that prophecy was lost, miracles were no longer overt, and the Ark was absent from the Second Temple. Does the tradition that claims the Ark was hidden, perhaps buried below the Holy of Holies, signify the exile of the Divine Presence (hester panim)? Or her eternal, unconditional abiding in Jerusalem despite the exile? One reading does not preclude the other, but holy objects hidden from the eye, full of nascent power, gesture towards a mythic, symbolic meaning. I suggest that the Rabbis imbue the burial of the Ark with the symbolism of exile both of the Divine Presence and the people (what J.Z. Smith calls “the counter-locative”), while evoking the elusive center to which they would return. This paper engages in a close examination of the description of the Ark in biblical texts, where it is said to contain only the Tablets of Testimony (of the ‘Ten Sayings’, 1 Kgs. 8:9), and intimates that it was taken as booty long before the Babylonian exile (Jer. 3:16). I then go on to explore the rabbinic tradition that describes its burial, along with the contents of the Ark: the jar of manna, Aaron’s staff with its almonds and blossoms, the anointing oil, the Philistines’ gift, and the Tablets – both the second, whole set and the shards of the first (T. Sota 13:1, and various parallels). I point to the exegetical basis for these traditions, but also gesture beyond the verse to a thematic unity underlying them. They symbolize both the potential for divine wrath and God’s beneficence. Like “the fiery ever-turning sword, guarding the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24), the Ark and its contents recall the consequences of divine retribution – banishment – and the longing for return to the epicenter of God’s Presence.

The Old Testament has been subjected to what is often referred to as the historical-critical approach but one major defect of this method of interpretation is that it does not take due cognizance of the meaning of the text to the modern reader. Hence, recent trends in modern scholarship have led to the discovery of various literary methods among which are the narrative and synchronic readings of the text. The narrative analysis studies how the Bible uses the form of story to communicate its message. It also invites the reader to explore the dimensions of the narrative in its final form. Hence, the method is complementary to the synchronic reading which considers the text as the reader encounters it in its completed (i.e. canonical) form. The present study applies the narrative and synchronic method to the creation narratives in their canonical form with a view to making the text meaningful to the African reader in the context of his/her traditional setting. Using this approach Genesis 1-3 is taken it in its story form. The reader may recognize but need not to be bothered by its mythical nature. Rather the method emphasizes the canonical form of the text and the intended theological meaning of this final form. The African context enhances this approach because, (1) storytelling is an effective method of teaching in the traditional setting, and the issue of the historicity of the stories bothers neither the teller nor the listeners; and (2) in Africa very few Christians question the historicity of the creation narratives, so all the African pastor need do is to narrate the story of creation, using African images to bring home the lessons the canonical form intends to teach.

A major problem concerning textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible is the scarcity of witnesses, from which follows that the external criteria are practically unserviceable in discussions of textual problems. Although one single external criterion – the alleged reliability of the MT – is repeatedly invoked in handbooks and studies, in reality, all serious textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible necessarily bases its decisions on internal criteria. For the very same reason – the scarcity of witnesses – conjecture needs to be regarded as a normal text-critical tool. A radical change in the significance of the external criteria – for instance, through the discovery of large amounts of manuscripts – can hardly be expected. However, research on the characteristic features of the existing witnesses will help to balance the application of the internal criteria.

Prepositions have a wide range of meanings in biblical Hebrew. Affix a pronominal suffix, it becomes more interesting. In Isaiah’s Denkschrift, "Immanuel" has often been rendered simply as “God with us.” However, the preposition ‘m in the context of war or hostility is best rendered “against.” So, the giving of "Immanuel" as a sign to Ahaz isn't just "God with us," but also "God against us." This double entendre fits the promise of salvation and judgment on King Ahaz's quagmire stand when commanded to seek a sign. This additional layer then adds new meaning to the sign of Immanuel in chapter 8 of Isaiah. The Matthean text is fully cognizant of this dual feature. The gospel writer uses "Immanuel" (King Ahaz in comparison to Hezekiah [or even Josaiah]) for Jesus over against Herod the Great. Yet, there is one great tragedy that is often overlooked in the canonical consciousness of this Immanuel "child" laden imagery for scripturalization.

This paper will examine how far we have come since the time of Barr's Semantics of Biblical Language. It will show the advances in language studies in that time, and the limitations still in some biblical scholarship, and focus on some of the principles underlying Barr's thesis.

The history of the monotheisms in the Mediterranean has been influenced by powerfully exclusivist tendencies, which are still very much at work. It is, however, also possible to observe the effect of the overcrowding that results from the everlasting presence within the same space of the three monotheisms and their countless followers. This context gives us an opportunity to examine how ordinary behaviors can deviate from institutionalized religions. If we look at the religion in terms of lived experience and in terms of everyday practices, we find that traditions and forms of worship sometimes overlap. The paper will take an unusual look at the religious behaviors of Mediterranean populations, by exploring the permeability of the frontiers that divide its religious communities. It will try to reconstruct an overall picture of a transitional phases characterized by the dissolution of an old Mediterranean order based on enclaves and connections, on a patchwork of territories, peoples and religious forms in which devotional overlapping was frequently socially acceptable. Yet the powerful drive to homogenize both territories and identities has not completely destroyed local specificities. If there appears to have been a decline in religious mixing as a result of the combined aggressiveness of nationalism and of a religious reformism with rigorist and scriptural overtones, the extent of the resistance should not be under-estimated. In some cases, religious pluralism is actually becoming more common, as, for example, in some post-socialist countries. By examining a corpus of data on contemporary phenomena, the paper will put forward a number of general remarks about the division of sacred space, about practices and sociability, and about the interaction between the actors and the structures at sacred places which are nowadays attended by different religious groups. These cross-border explorations ‘make do’ with elements derived from two or more structured religious ensembles, but do not generally result in the construction of new syncretic entities, and nor do they appear, for that matter, to be associated with any significant incidence of conversion.

Marriage has long been a controversial topic in biblical studies; however, most discussions focus upon what makes a marriage, what is permissible within a marriage, who can marry, and other such prescriptions and laws. In the context of a 21st Century protestant church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America), what is needed today is not more prescriptions, but rather a clear vision for the purpose and function of marriage. Luke-Acts, often neglected in biblical marriage debates because it lacks much prescription, serves as a window for the application of such a vision. This paper explores the context of Luke-Acts as a community living into God’s Kingdom in the present while proclaiming the future coming of this Kingdom in fullness. Exegesis demonstrates a shift in Luke-Acts from the common property oriented vision for marriage in the first century to a new vision for marriage as a partnership in service to and for the proclamation of God’s Kingdom, paying particular attention to Jesus' confrontation with the Sadduccees in Luke 20, the community described in Acts 2 and the characters of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Drawing analogies between the paradigm shift in Luke-Acts and the present paradigm shift in North American culture that rearranges the values and definitions of marriage and has led to such controversy and debate, this paper suggests that in order for marriage to survive in this present context, an analogous shift is necessary. Reading Luke-Acts through a metaphor of corrective lenses, this paper calls for a re-visioning of marriage in the ELCA not simply as a social good or expectation, but rather as a partnership in and for God’s present and coming Kingdom.

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A womanist hermeneutic, an interpretive procedure that takes seriously the everyday experiences of being African American and female in the diaspora, says that the life and ministry of Jesus is central to the theology of African American women. Likewise, parables, one of the main genres of the teachings of Jesus, compel the hearers to come to a decision about the person and mission of Jesus. They speak on two levels: the aspects of everyday life and the content which speaks about God or the kingdom of God. The understanding of the relationship between these two levels is reflected in parable theories. Just as Jesus does in the parables, the novelist Octavia Butler cloaks her ideas in metaphorical language. Well-versed in the Bible and the machinations of the African American church, she effortlessly tackles issues in her work that are prevalent in the overall society and in the church such as slavery, class struggle and patriarchy. Butler, with her penchant for science fiction, writes many unusual features into her stories - Butler goes forward in time in The Parable of the Sower and travels to the past in Kindred. Butler’s Kindred, like a fable or parable, tackles the issues of memory, hauntings and resolving old wrongs. This novel describes the slavery of an oppressive and violent regime and resistance to that very same slavery. Kindred, like almost all of Butler’s work, is a text of “quiet” resistance as she makes an African American woman, a very real and visible heroine who is not silenced, ignored or powerless but who, while enslaved, liberates herself from her white enslaver. This paper within the framework of a womanist analysis of Parable of the Sower focuses on the themes of dangerous memory, sacrifice, and eschatology within Butler’s Kindred.

In I Corinthians 12-14 Paul discusses the question of prophecy and speaking in tongues in the context of Christian worship. Throughout the discussion Paul addresses his “brothers and sisters”, and in chapter 14 he welcomes their speaking in tongues, but urges them to give precedence to “prophecy”, or coherent preaching. Presumably both men and women are encouraged to prophesy. Nonetheless, in verses 33-36 of chapter 14, Paul says in no uncertain terms that women should keep silent in the church. The contradiction between these verses and the tenor of the passage as a whole has led some scholars to characterize these verses as a later addition to the epistle. Similar contradictory statements characterize the discussion of women reading the Torah in public in Tosefta Megillah 3:11 (Lieberman edition, p. 356) and BT Megillah 23a. Likewise, the amora Samuel characterizes “the voice of a woman” as lewdness (BT Berakhot 24a and BT Kiddushin 70a), but the context in which the original statement was made is unclear, and it is used in very different ways in the two BT passages in which it is cited. In the former, recitation of the Shema is prohibited in the presence of a woman’s voice. In the latter, it is forbidden to greet a woman, since her greeting in return would be lewd. Later halakhic authorities have turned Samuel’s statement into a ban on hearing women’s singing, but neither passage seems to deal with a singing voice per se. In this lecture we will attempt to elucidate the Pauline epistle and the rabbinic texts in light of one another.

This paper reads the story of the woman who anoints Jesus in Mark 14 with the goal of probing the irreducibility of colonial-gender difference looming in the Markan text. In the first part, I read the disciples’ rebuke of the woman as a mimicry or replication of the colonial logic of representation and fixity (Bhabha) through which the marginalized other is constructed/represented by the conscientized elite group. As a result, it is not only the other herself who is reduced but also her needs, as her role is fixed or restricted to mere economic survival. In the second part, I read the woman’s act of giving in tandem with the philosophical discourse of gift. Here, I raise critical questions as to Elaine Wainwright’s eco-feminist reading in which she associates the woman’s act of free giving with both the Earth that freely gives and Jesus who gives his life freely for others. I argue that while the idea of the “Earth that freely gives” has been the anthropocentric rhetoric for the free plundering of the Earth, Wainwright’s uncritical adoption of the Anselmian atonement theology is also problematic in that what lies at the heart of Anselmian atonement theology is the very economy of exchange that she is trying to subvert. Nevertheless, Wainwright’s reading, when aided by both Derrida’s and Anne Primavesi’s philosophical articulation of gift, highlights the singular-eventive character of the woman’s giving as well as reconfiguring the power dynamics between the woman (giver) and Jesus (receiver). In the last part of the paper, I turn to the unresolved tension in the text which regards the woman’s identity as she is left nameless and speechless through the entire body of the narrative. If silence has been often read by literary critics as the erasure of identity or voice, I suggest that we read silence, as Patricia Duncan argues, as a part of the production of power (Foucault), a radical alterity (Spivak, Chow), and a refusal to participate in the dominant system of articulation. The mysterious presence of the woman in Mark 14 renders both the meaning and the future of the text open ended thus reminding us of the irreducible alterity of the other which lies beyond any totalitarian desire to master the other.

Within the book of Genesis, interpretations typically focus on the human characters and their interactions and oftentimes troublesome nature. This predominance of anthrocentric readings has been practiced to the detriment of the most dynamic, interesting, and unsettling character in the text: God. Foregrounding a theocentric interpretation of various texts in Genesis and their disconcerting nature, I will suggest some theological implications for this oft-neglected portrait of God in the book of Genesis.

This paper explores the understanding of prophecy reflected in several works by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th century writer in colonial Mexico. The examination begins by analyzing the personification of “Prophecy” as a character in “El cetro de José,” a theatrical work based on the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. This will in turn clarify the function of prophecy and direct references to prophetic figures in "Respuesta a Sor Filotea," Sor Juana’s defense of women's ability and right to engage in scholarly pursuits. As the “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” is a response to an earlier critique that the Bishop of Puebla made of Sor Juana’s “Carta atenagórica,” some consideration will be given to the latter work.

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If Wisdom is intrinsically enigmatic, there is something appropriate about her use of a hapax legomenon when she describes herself as an ’amôn in Prov 8:30 (MT). Also telling is the fact that we cannot decide whether God “begot” (Murphy), “brought forth” (NIV, tNIV), “created” (JPS, NET, NJB, NRSV, REB, RSV), “fathered” (Perdue), “formed” (NLT), “made” (Msg), or “possessed” (ASV, ESV, KJV, NKJV, WEB) Wisdom in Prov 8:22. In this case, however, the verb is hardly obscure. And there is little doubt that it refers to the acquiring of Wisdom when used of humans in 1:5; 4:5, 4:7 [bis]; 16:16 [bis], 17:16; 18:15 and 23:23. Although the case for “acquire” in 8:22 has certainly been made (e.g. Bruce Vawter, “Wisdom and Creation,” JBL 9 (1980): 205–16), as a translation, this is remarkably rare. That God may acquire Wisdom, or become wise, would seem hard to believe. This paper will explore how the divine and human embrace of Wisdom in Proverbs not only sheds light on the biblical understanding of covenant, but also helps us fathom the enigmatic nature of Wisdom herself. In a human context, I will suggest, it is most helpful to pay attention to the different meaning this embrace has for Wisdom’s sons and daughters. (Here, I will argue, the counter-patriarchal potential of this distinction has been unwittingly masked by inclusive language translations of the book). In a divine context, my proposal that creation is to be seen as both co-creator and as receptive/responsive will appeal to an understanding of ’amôn as an intentionally bi-vocalizable term. The way in which both meanings illuminate God’s embrace of wisdom will be further illustrated via a sapiential reading of Gen 1.

The book of Revelation is a liturgical text. While the scenes of heavenly worship are its most recognizably liturgical feature, the theme of worship in Revelation is not limited to or exhausted by these worship scenes. Indeed, elements of worship are found throughout the entirety of the Apocalypse. This essay seeks to engage in a narrative Pentecostal reading of the Apocalypse as a way both to discover elements of worship and discern the role of worship in the narrative.

It has been observed that 11Q10 (11QTargumJob) and the Old Greek corroborate one another in many places. This has prompted some scholars to posit similar characteristics on the part of the translators, but they also note the possibility of a common Vorlage. By first delineating what was in the text of the Hebrew Bible used by these earliest translators, and then by exploring the relationship of these earliest translations of the book of Job, we are able to develop a fuller picture of how the writer of 11Q10 viewed his Hebrew text of Job. Modern exegesis can be informed not only by textual critical concerns of recovering the Hebrew Vorlage, but also by these early interpretations themselves. This paper examines a significant portion of text found in the rendition of Job 33:25 in 11Q10 that is absent from the Masoretic Text. While two lacunae in the scroll make this verse difficult to analyze, part of this plus is also represented in the OG, lending further evidence that there is indeed a similar shared Vorlage, or at least a relationship between the two versions. The shared material contains elements from Job 20–21, which fits well with the poem of Job 33—a poem that draws heavily from earlier chapters of the book of Job. With the help of the Masoretic Text, the OG, other Aramaic versions of Job, and the Hebrew of Job 20–21, parts of the lacunae can be reconstructed with a fair degree of certainty. The rest of the plus is more difficult to relate to the OG, but it entails an interpretation that may be similar to that found in the Talmud as well as the Latin Vulgate. Such early interpretation is helpful for understanding the portrayal of the character of Elihu within the book of Job.

Introductory undergraduate courses in biblical literature are frequently structured by the desire to survey a particular collection of that literature. As a result, course design is frequently governed by a primary concern for the content to be covered. The methods and practice of interpretation of these texts follow then as they relate to this particular content. In Creating Significant Learning Experiences (2003), L. Dee Fink advocates a process of course design that focuses on the situational factors of the class and on generating clear learning goals before developing assignments, class activities, and content to be covered. This paper will discuss my application of Fink’s model to the design of a First-Year Seminar course entitled “Ethics of Biblical Interpretation.” Using this approach, I was able to identify and articulate a meta-question that shaped our discussions: How do we make moral judgments about interpretations of the Bible and their use in contemporary discourse? Framing the class around this question contributed significantly to achieving the major goals of our First Year Seminar program, resulting in a class that was discussion-based, interdisciplinary, personally engaging, and that would foster critical thinking about ourselves and about the texts we read. In this paper, I will discuss how Fink’s model of course design and the use of a clear meta-question affected the choices I made regarding assignments, activities and readings, and I will reflect on what worked well and what improvements could be made.

In his widely influential essay on ‘Righteousness of God’ (1961/1968), Ernst Kasemann declared ‘philology’ a ‘broken reed’ in ascertaining the lexical meaning of dikaiosu&ne in Paul’s letters (a relatively pervasive term in Greek literature). Rather than advancing a more sophisticated linguistic analysis in its stead, however, Kasemann went on to insist that the term must be set in the ‘wider horizon’ of ‘the whole Pauline theology,’ which would now be summoned to determine Paul’s meaning in dikaiosu&ne and dikaiosu&ne qeou~. While many writers have recognized the lasting influence of Kasemann’s subsequent definition (i.e., dikaiosu&ne as God’s ‘salvation-creating power’), few have noted the impact of his methodological decision (i.e., his abandonment of philology) in more recent discussions. While Kasemann’s methodological turn may have received cover from Barr’s landmark and scathing critique of philology (Semantics of Biblical Language, 1961), Kasemann’s approach broke decisively with the course-correction counseled by Barr (who advocated the assimilation of ‘philology’ into ‘general linguistics’). For the belief that ‘too much had been attempted by philology’ (particularly in service of biblical theology)—Barr’s central contention—did not mean philology itself was to be abandoned. Much less did it mean that historical exegesis was to be attempted in the absence of philology—which would have appeared to Barr as ‘flying blind.’ In this paper, I will review the oft-cited but little-studied Bultmann/Kasemann disagreement over the meaning of dikaiosu&ne, summarize the most often-encountered ‘pattern of rereading’ in the post-Sanders era, and then (for the majority of the paper) discuss what is arguably//outline the most relevant considerations in the philological data for the determination of Paul’s meaning in this term: i.e., the use of dikaiosu&ne in the LXX Pentateuch and (above all) in the Apocrypha (arguably, the authors closest in spirit to Paul).

Panelist

The vision of the divine throne in Isaiah 6 has attracted a great deal of scholarly discussion. Many aspects of this striking vision remain unclear: the unusual imagery surrounding the divine throne, the call for a volunteer in this context, the meaning of the impurity of lips and the burning coal, and the unusual command beginning “Let them hear but not understand…” (v. 10) Each of these elements can best be understood in the context of the interaction between Judah and Assyria. Assyrian activity is alluded to in vv. 10-11, which speak clearly of destruction and exile. But scholars have not explored the wider implications of a possible Assyrian background to this vision. This paper, which is part of a larger study of the Assyrian background to Isaiah 1-39, explores specific links between this vision and the art and architecture of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Calah. Although constructed in the 9th century, the palace was in use during much of the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, and served as a model for palaces constructed by this king and by Sargon II. Parallels between elements of palace art and Isaiah’s vision include: a) similarities between the multi-winged apkallu figures surrounding the throne and the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision; b) similarities between the purifying coal and the mullilu at palace gates and doors; and c) the awe-inspiring throne room. There are also important parallels between the palace’s function, from the standpoint of a Judahite observer, and the vision of Isaiah. The palace served as a destination for delegations of tribute-bearers from Judah and surrounding states in the years between Tiglath-Pileser’s accession and his first campaign to the southern Levant in 734. These tribute-bearers would then be tasked with the responsibility of returning to their homelands and conveying Assyrian imperial ideology to the political elites. Since they were tradents of political propaganda, the strange message of vv. 10-11 is an apt depiction of their mission: to hide certain pieces of evidence while highlighting others, in order to convince Judahites and others to submit to Assyria. The evidence from Isaiah 7-8 suggests that Isaiah was not supportive of the enthusiasm with which some of Judah’s elite accepted the Assyrian imperial claims of power, and Isaiah 6 critiques this enthusiasm. More specifically, it ought to be read as a critique of the awe of Assyria which the reports of the tribute-bearers inspired. It accomplishes this critique by subverting the reports of the awe-inspiring palace and converting the images of Assyrian imperial power into images of Divine power.

The traditions about prophecy contained in Deuteronomy 18:15-22 have often been characterized as exilic or post-exilic insertions that retrospectively redefine prophecy in response to a “crisis” in prophecy that arose during the final years of the Judean monarchy. Against this viewpoint, this paper will argue that nearly every major concept in Deuteronomy 18:15-22 can be shown to have roots in earlier traditions preserved in Exodus and Numbers, and therefore, that the passage would be better described as a compilation and formalization of earlier traditions than as a late “redefinition” of prophecy. Arguments for a pre-exilic date of composition will also be provided.

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The paper considers, with particular reference to 1 Samuel 8-12 and 2 Samuel 7, and furthering the discussion in Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger (ed.), Die Samuelbücher und die Deuteronomisten, 2010, how far it is sensible to use the D-word in discussion of the book of Samuel.

A common idiom for anger in the HB, and specifically divine anger, is the combination of the root khrh and the noun af, either as the act of anger (khrh af) or anger itself (kharon/khari af). Despite the numerous attempts to decipher these phrases from etymological, lexicographical, metaphorical and physiological perspectives (Dhorme 1923; Johnson 1974; Gruber 1980; Morag 1987; Kedar-Kopfstein 1994; Myhill 1997; Smith 1998; Kruger 2000; Kotzé 2005; van Wolde 2008) there is still disagreement between the lexical definition of khrh as ‘to burn’ agreed upon by the aforementioned scholars and all dictionaries of biblical Hebrew, and the etymological definition of khrh as ‘to cringe’ (Ehrlich 1899 apud Greenstein 2002). In this paper, I want to suggest further evidence to support the etymological definition, which would give the literal translation ‘cringed nose’ or ‘to cringe the nose’ for the undoubtedly contextual meaning ‘anger’, ‘to be angry’. By comparing the functioning of the nose to that of other organs it will be evident that all organs (the eye, the ear, the mouth, the hand, the womb) function appropriately when open, and dysfunctionally when closed. In other words, the ‘cringed nose’ is the opposite of the ‘open’, or ‘flowing’, expressed in the phrase erek appayim. Divine anger occurs when the divine nose is shut and refuses to accept the scents of sacrifices.

Exodus 15:21 recounts Miriam’s prominent call to praise YHWH “for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” Her statement mirrors the negative portrayal of horses in the texts of the Hebrew Bible, primarily as a means and symbol of imperial powers oppressing and threatening weaker nations (cf. Hab 1:8; Ps 20:8). The people of YHWH is advised to shun such power (cf. Isa 2:7; Hos 14:4; Ps 33:17; 147:10). Against this background it is surprising that Zechariah depicts horsemen and horses with chariots among God’s agents. Indeed, the horse imagery seems to have gained access to the Jewish heavenly realm during the Persian period. This paper seeks to trace this heavenly career of horses within early Judaism through the textual and iconographic sources in their historical-cultural settings.

Ecstatic prophecy in the ancient world has been the subject of much concern in the modern era. One of the most well-known and beloved subjects for the study of ancient prophecy is the Delphic Oracle. At its pinnacle of influence, the Oracle at Delphi advised kings and predicted the rise and fall of nations. The renown of its prophetic prowess spread far and wide. In the New Testament book of Acts of the Apostles, a possible allusion to the Delphic priestess in chapter 16 may further confirm her widespread influence as a cultural symbol. Though both the Delphic Oracle and the possessed maiden in Acts have been typically thought to be exhibitors of manic or frenzied prophecy, this assumption has recently come under scrutiny. In this treatment, I will examine the question of whether each of these prophetesses undertakes frenzied prophecy in light of the best available evidence. Through a careful study of the ancient literary sources on this topic, I will consider the merits and shortcomings of each position. Ultimately, I will argue that neither Plutarch’s portrayal of the Delphic Pythia nor Luke’s narrative of the slave girl necessarily validate the idea that either seer performed their oracular function under the influence of a frenzied state of being. I will demonstrate that the assumption of frenzied madness on the part of these two prophetesses ventures too far into the category of speculation, while a more moderate view provides an interpretation that better conforms to the available data.

Daniel Boyarin argues in Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity that the split between Christianity and Judaism was neither so early nor so definitive as previously argued. In fact, Boyarin claims, “Judaism and Christianity were not separate entities until very late in late antiquity.” (22) The Jewish anti-gospels known as the Toledot Yeshu lend weight to the argument that the split between these two groups was a process of self-definition that was articulated in texts and circulated within communities, aimed in particular at those ‘dangerous ones in between’ (to borrow a phrase from John Gager) – that is, at those who might be seen as claiming dual citizenship, e.g. Jewish Christians or Christian Judaizers. The Toledot Yeshu’s portrayal of the split between Christianity and Judaism as something that was not only desired by the Jews but also deliberately engineered by them, with the figure of Peter acting as a sort of double agent on behalf of the separation-seeking Jews, provides evidence that the issue of the ‘parting of the ways’ between Christianity and Judaism remained an issue in some areas long after the first few centuries of the Common Era. The continued importance of self-definition over and against the other can been seen in this text, in particular in the subset of Toledot Yeshu manuscripts that contain an anti-Acts chapter after the death of Jesus. While the dating of these texts is still contested, recent scholars such as Hillel Newman and William Horbury have argued for a date between the fourth and seventh centuries. The texts remained in use up to and throughout the Middle Ages, however, and their continued use indicates that the issues that they addressed remained important to the community in some way.

Speculations on letters play an important role within Late Antique mystical and magical tradition. Letters are regarded as smallest units of speech, but on a more esoteric level they are also understood as tools to gain spiritual progress or even influence reality. Names of angels and heavenly powers which are nonsense clusters of letters, composed by combining them according to certain rules, occur as prominent means of protection and power in early and later Jewish mysticism as well as in Gnostic texts, which are preserved in original or as quotations in polemical writings by the Church fathers. However, in orthodox Christian tradition references and responses on the symbolism of letters are rather rare, despite Christ's famous saying in the Book of Revelation "I am the Alpha and the Omega" (Rev. 1:8, 21:6, 22:13). Nevertheless, exactly this cryptic dictum inspires the remarkable tract "On the mystery of Letters" which was composed probably by a Christian monk in mid-6th century Palestine. This tract is thoroughly rooted in orthodoxy, but presents an astonishing variety of interpretations of the Greek alphabet, revealing hidden secrets by close examination of certain features of the letters like name, shape, numerical value, position in alphabet, pronunciation etc. In 2007, I published the editio princeps of this unique work, accompanied by a German translation and analysis of its content. In order to give a wider public access to this still quite little known text, I am currently preparing an English version of my book. My paper at the SBL Annual Meeting 2011 will focus on similarities between Jewish and Gnostic letter mysticism in the first centuries of the Christian era and the tract "On the mystery of letters". I will show how the author transforms rather heterodox ideas into a truly orthodox approach towards the alphabet. I will also discuss why mainstream Christianity at this time seems to be reluctant to involve into mystical letter speculations.

The book of Qohelet shares a number of traits with novelistic texts: the setting in a far distant time and place, deliberate historical anachronism, emphasis on the inner world of thought and feeling, and a narrative structure organised around an autobiographical retrospect. In this paper I will examine one particular motif which Qohelet holds in common with a number of early Jewish prose fictions, but which this author uses for different ideological ends. The Greek-derived stereotype of the Oriental despot has been found in Jewish texts such as Daniel, Esther, 4 Ezra, 3 Maccabees, and Bel and the Dragon; I suggest that Qohelet’s fictional king is drawn along exactly these lines, with his luxurious wealth and works, his position as the magnet at the center of empire, his over-staffed court, strange peaceableness, and carpe diem melancholy. What is singular about the book of Qohelet is the uses to which this author puts that common trope: the caricature of the foreign oppressor usually expresses the confidence and resistance of diaspora Judaism, but Qohelet’s treatment of his king turns this topos to self-satire, painting the tyrant not as an external oppressor but as a composite king of Israel in Jerusalem. Thus a borrowed motif illustrates the flexibility of prose fiction not only for participation in cultural transfer, but for sophisticated ideological critique and for the re-assessment of historical self-perception taking place in Persian and Hellenistic Judaism.

While scholars may point out how certain claims within the book of Ecclesiastes seem at odds with notions found in the book of Proverbs, this paper argues that such a discussion is better framed at the level of an entire discourse than isolating different verses or phrases. To this end, the paper relies upon the insights of critical discourse analysis (with an emphasis upon the ideological and sociological functions of language) in order to demonstrate that, taken as a whole, the discursive world of Qohelet contrasts markedly with that of Proverbs (particularly Proverbs 1-9). Specifically, Qohelet is in tension with the overwhelmingly patriarchal character of Proverbs 1-9 and indeed often appears to subvert the worldview of the book of Proverbs, whether intentionally or accidentally. This is illustrated via an analysis of the ways in which Qohelet’s discourse constructs various identities (especially Qohelet’s own), contracts various relationships (particularly with the reader/addressee of the text), depicts the distribution of social goods and certain cultural values (within the writer’s socio-historical context), and privileges certain epistemologies or “ways of knowing” for the wise. The discussion proceeds in two parts. The first part aims to establish and describe what “critical discourse analysis” attempts to accomplish, mainly addressing issues of methodology and terminology. The second part illustrates how discourse analysis may be applied to a biblical text, suggesting its usefulness within biblical studies more generally. The primary goal of the paper, however, is to draw attention to the differences between Proverbs 1-9 and Ecclesiastes that are operative at the level of an entire discourse, and that such differences challenge any oversimplified notion of “patriarchal wisdom” in the Hebrew Bible.

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The use of the singular form of the Greek word entole in John's Gospel and in 1 John (e.g. John 13:34, 15:12, 1 John 3:23) reflects the singular form of mitzvah in Deuteronomy (e.g. 5:31, 8:1, 11:8). Lohfink (Das Hauptgebot), Dillman, and others have argued that this use of the singular noun represents the basic covenantal oath to which individual statutes and ordinances are added. The use of this form of entole in Johannine literature has implications that have largely gone unrecognized for both John's christology and John's relation to the Law of Moses. By issuing his own commandment, the Johannine Jesus, in effect, issues his own "Law," replacing the requirements of the Mosaic legislation. This radical development signals both continuity with Second Temple Judaism and a radical break from it.

This paper will explore how the parables in Matthew 13, read through a missional lens, illuminate the Matthean understanding of "training for the Reign of God."

The study of cognition has been an important part of a number of different disciplines over the last several decades. Psychology and Linguistics are the best known for incorporating cognitive studies into their fields, borrowing extensively from recent advances in brain and human consciousness research in areas such as Neurology, Neuropsychology and Primatology. But Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Psychology have also been interested in cognition for some time now. These fields contribute uniquely to the study of cognition because they approach the subject from a group-social rather than an individual perspective. Cognition (for some social scientists, at least) is something that is itself negotiated in the context of human interaction. Such an approach changes how one looks at something so basic to cognitive studies as frames and framing. As biblical studies attempts to take on board the results of cognitive research, it needs to look at the various fields where it has been applied and use them all where appropriate. Social Psychology in particular is one of the fields biblical scholars cannot afford to ignore when looking at ways cognition has been considered and understood. Scripture translation is the laboratory in which the social understanding of cognition will be applied to biblical studies. The social construction (or negotiation) of the self and subsequent self-understanding and self-presentation are fundamental in how key biblical concepts are understood when translated into different cultural contexts.

Both Matthew 11:12 and Luke 16:16 have long puzzled interpreters. Some interpreters have understood these verses as a positive expression regarding the advance of the kingdom—e.g. "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it" (Matt 11:12, NIV). Other expositors have understood these verses as reflecting opposition to the kingdom—e.g. "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt 11:12, NRSV). Apart from these two options, a myriad of other interpretative possibilities are on the table. Drawing upon the theoretical model of James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), this paper will argue that both verses are best explained as a veiled reference to the violent actions of Herod against John the Baptist. In other words, Jesus is offering resistance to a violent and dangerous official representative of imperial power by giving a cryptic rather than an overt critique. A novel yet confirming feature of this solution is that the verses subsequent to Luke 16:16 are also seen to be directed at Herod in a subtle fashion: the saying about divorce (Luke 16:17-18) and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). Although this interpretation has been obfuscated by a hyper-emphasis on Formgeschichte within the guild, it can be demonstrated as probable by a contextual/literary reading.

The Scottish sisters, Margaret Dunlop Gibson and Agnes Smith Lewis, who were known affectionately as “the Giblews,” are perhaps most famous for their discovery of the late fourth century palimpsest, the “Lewis Syriac Gospels,” at St. Catherine’s monastery in 1892. This paper narrates the history of this discovery, and examines their analysis and translation of the palimpsest. The discussion will pay special attention to how the sisters’ extensive travels throughout the Mediterranean (described in their travel diaries) inform their interpretation of the palimpsest and its role in textual criticism of the four gospels.

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In this article I read 1Enoch to show that the apocalyptic process is a gendered and sexual one: its writers equate it with uncovering and unmasking, but it is a process of the construction of secrets/spaces simply to reinforce the categories of knower, known and knowledge, and then the subsequent exposing of those secret spaces to knowledge. Such exposing/discovering/consuming secrets is proposed as a male right and reward, and in a woman’s hands it is profane, sexualized, distorted and disturbing to the cosmos. The article takes the work of earlier exegetes of apocalyptic literature, who view the genre in a more traditional, historical-critical way, and builds on this by using feminist and postcolonial theories to further illuminate the gendered and political assumptions that inform such texts. The only scholar to have undertaken such a combination of fields is Catherine Keller, and she limits her work primarily to the New Testament book of Revelation. My article looks more closely at earlier apocalyptic texts, situated in the political environment of empire that engendered the apocalyptic impulse. I more fully use feminist literary and critical theorists such as Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler and Gloria Anzaldua to build on more traditional interpretations. I define apocalyptic as a hybrid/resistance genre that appropriates the pervasive gendered discourse of the colonizers into its own claims, thus perpetuating connections between power, knowledge and the female, simultaneously valorizing in new ways the very power relations they claim to critique because those power relations are defined as resistance/sacred – combining the authority of the concepts of empire, the sacred, gender, and subaltern idealism and self-righteousness.

Zechariah 11 recounts the actions of an enigmatic shepherd who, among other things, employs two staffs with the monikers “favor” and “unity.” Upon becoming dismayed with his flock, the shepherd breaks his two staffs, which become doubly symbolic when the shepherd reports that he is also breaking the covenant that he had made “with all the people” (Zech 11:10) as well as the kinship bonds between Judah and Israel (11:14). The episode of the two staffs establishes covenant and kinship as keys to understanding (1) the shepherd and by extension leadership in Second Temple Judaism during the Persian Period, (2) the community as it comprised different social groups based in and around Jerusalem, and (3) the identity that said groups created for themselves using distinctively postexilic references to covenants made and broken. This paper explores the issues of leadership, community and identity by studying covenant as it is attested in Second Zechariah. While the shepherd’s broken covenant is the focus, there is consideration of the oracles that begin in Zechariah 9 and continue through chapter 13 in order to indicate an arc of interest in covenant and kinship. Special attention is paid to the covenant of blood cited in 9:11 and the clear intimations of covenant in 13:7-9. In light of the linkage between these passages and the shepherd’s remarks on covenant and kinship (11:10-14), it becomes evident that Second Zechariah has strategically incorporated covenant language into select oracles that collectively mark a new development in Yahwistic religion. Among the paper’s conclusions is that Second Zechariah employs covenant to promote a comprehensive understanding of Israel after the exile, not unlike the view that prevails in 1 Chr 9:3 (but in contrast to Neh 11:4, which parallels the citation in Chronicles). Moreover, while Second Zechariah reflects the discussions about Judean identity carried on in Chronicles and Nehemiah, and is indebted as well to the prophetic literature writ large (Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel), its covenantal oracles function no less significantly as a precursor to the eschatological writings of later generations, especially texts associated with the community at Qumran.

This paper examines the Lord's Prayer against the background of the papyri. In particular, it focuses on the use of Hellenistic royal ideology in the papyri and the Lord's Prayer and explores the implications of the findings for the historical Jesus.

We report here the application of various spectroscopic imaging methods to ostraca. The methods are Mid-Infrared, Raman and the newly developed, Contrast Enhanced X-Ray Fluorescence (CE-XRF) imaging. The imaging methods were tested on ostraca analogs with several different ink formulations; carbon black, India ink and fullerene soot. We chose carbons inks as we are interested in ostraca from the Ancient Neat East and iron-gall inks came into use well after these ostraca were produced We start with Mid-Infrared spectral imaging that, while useful for some samples, has mixed results due to the lack of consistent differences in the vibrational spectra of the ink and the substrate. Raman spectroscopy at 785 nm easily showed the carbon soot peaks at ~1500 cm-1 without any fluorescence from the pottery substrate. This provides another contrast mechanism suitable for imaging with moderate signal to noise. The best results were based on XRF imaging. The contrast between the ink and clay substrate was apparent using any number of elemental lines for imaging for all the inks. XRF imaging was further improved by exploiting the property of carbon soot to actively absorb I2 vapor. The contrast enhancement is a result of the large x-ray florescence of I2 and the preferential absorption of I2 by the ink relative to the clay substrate, since I2 has a larg x-ray absorption cross-section. This also suggests using other exogenous contrast markers such as fluorescent tags linked to ligands selectively adsorbed by carbon.

This paper explores the rhetorical functions of the barbed commentary and the disparate dicta found in Luke 16:14-18. In order to understand the rhetorical thrust of these peculiarly placed dicta, it is necessary to situate them within their broader Lukan context and within the framework of forceful style rhetoric, particularly as described in Demetrius’ On Style. The context suggests that Luke’s repeated references to the law of Moses and the prophets serve as forensic arguments to settle disputes about Jesus’ divine status. The stinging commentary and barb of vss. 14-15 and the disjointed dicta of vs. 16-18 are particularly indicative of Lukan forensic-type humor in which harsh Greek sounds, and seemingly disjointed dicta produce Demetrian punch-like effects. Why does Luke use such harsh rhetoric? The trajectory of Lukan rhetoric persistently aims to de-legitimize Jesus’ rivals as lawless pretenders (20:20), while legitimizing Jesus as the law-abiding Just One (Luke 23:47; Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14). Barbed humor is an effective way of de-legitimizing a rival in Roman antiquity. As in-group literature, the forensic rhetoric of Luke 16:14-18 carries primarily a didactic function. The placement of the dicta between the parables of the Dishonest Household Manager (16:1-8a) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31) makes a strong rhetorical point to the Lukan hearers that defrauding and oppressing the poor is tantamount to idolatry, and constitutes a rejection of God’s Just One.

New Testament scholarship by-and-large has been quick to attribute “ordained through angels by a mediator” (Gal 3:19) as a Pauline creative addition to show the theological inferiority of Mosaic Law to the Abrahamic promise. No angels appear in the MT Sinai story and the language of mediation is foreign to the Hebrew Exodus narrative. Yet both are central to the tradition history of the Sinai events and presented in a positive light. Also, Paul’s further statement, “Now the mediator is not of one, but God is one” (v. 20) appears more creedal than creative. Investigation of the Sinai Moses tradition offers clarity regarding Paul’s use of Sinai story as well as an alternative perspective regarding the theological intent of Galatians 3.

This paper will focus on the origins of the Ethiopic Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) project in the 1970s, a collaboration between the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), Walter Harrelson, then Dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Ethiopian institutional partners. We will describe the equipment and the process used, as well as the locations at which manuscripts were filmed, including the Institute for Ethiopian Studies, the Patriarch’s Library, and the National Archives and Library of Ethiopia. Political upheavals affected the project, first in l987 and later when another set of upheavals prevented microfilming in the major regions of literary production, such as Gonder, Gojjam, Tigray, and Eritrea. In 2005, HMML returned to Ethiopia to recover lost and incomplete images, but the image sets for 2000+ manuscripts remain problematic. We will tell about the ten existing catalogues (mss 1-5000) by William MaComber and Getatchew Haile and the eleventh, which is in process. We will describe the metadata which has already been produced—including the information sheets prepared for each manuscript and shot as the first image, The Bulletin of Ethiopian Manuscripts: Trimester Publication of EMML, edited by Sergew Hable Selassie—and we will describe the unfinished business and work yet to be done: the “recovered” images and what they will require, cataloguing the rest of the mss (from 7001 up), and the question of what format or formats the catalogue information should be in, published catalogues and/ or searchable online databases.

This paper will explore some aspects of the imperial, cultural context in which the collection of prophetic books emerged in Yehud. First, it will note the underlying presence in these books (and in the general discourse of Yehud, which they reflected and shaped) of patterns of ideological resistance that facilitated social and political accommodation within the empire and conversely patterns of accommodation that facilitated ideological resistance, as accommodation and integration, empire and regional identity went hand in hand (at least for the most part) in Yehud. Second, it will explore some discursive, including memory implications of this pattern concerning memories of a future, internal socio-cultural organization of Israel communicated by the prophetic books and concerning the implied world of the intended readership. Then it will begin to explore some of the ways in which the prophetic books reflected a social mindscape in which many of its core concepts and images reflected close interaction, engagement, local appropriation, modification and at times radicalization or regionalization of traditional, imperial matrices of knowledge. For instance, it will dwell on the shaping of mental maps that organized or underlay memories of future socio-political structures (e.g., YHWH as imperial ruler of ‘heaven and earth;’ kingly images of Israel, etc.), future space (Jerusalem as an imperial city, ‘highways’ leading to the center), of peoples in the future YHWH’s kingdom and the like.

Outside the trodden path of the foundation documents, a significant corpus of texts from Qumran displays an interest with what we would call ‘Natural Science’: astronomy, astrology, physiognomy. These disciplines are, in turn, applied for sectarian use: in the calendrical corpus but also in the astrological-physiognomic text 4Q186. While no word for ‘Science’ exists in the scrolls’ vocabulary, modern scholarship must acknowledge the special interest given in the DSS to observing the natural world and producing systematic explanations for it. We must account for this interest by tracing its ideological, epistemological and institutional background, whether in apocalypticism or more specifically within the Yahad. The religious infrastructure for accommodating science in Early Apocalypticism has been studied recently in some detail. Part of the knowledge at Qumran derives from these earlier texts. In several cases it could be shown that this early, mainly Aramaic, knowledge, was translated into Hebrew and copied by Yahad scribes in cryptic script, a fact that may point to its religious function. However, other Qumran texts show novel scientific activity, for example the use of the ‘ascendant’ in 4Q186, a non-Enochic element, which was relatively new even in Hellenistic horoscopes of that period. The enigmatic ‘sundial’ found at Qumran also merits explanation in this respect. The above facts lead to an integrative view of Science as part of the sectarian ideology. Scientific knowledge seems to have been part of the graded revelation model in 1QS VIII. The effort to render science into Hebrew can be seen as part of the linguistic ideology of the Yahad. Science stopped being supported by the “speaking I” of a primordial apocalyptic seer, and became part of the anonymous ‘I’ of sectarian literature. The Yahad, in its unique way, produced a supportive environment for the absorption and development of scientific traditions. Much of the theory and terminology developed for the assessment of Jewish science in the Middle Ages can be used to elucidate the present issue as well.

The biblical scene of 2 Samuel 11:2-4a in which David gazes longingly at the beautiful Bathsheba is a common theme in Renaissance paintings. Artists like Rembrandt were drawn to Bathsheba for the challenge of capturing on canvas lifelike representations of the beauty and sensuousness of the female body. This, however, was not their only goal. The shift in the 16th century away from typological interpretations to reading the text for its plain sense confronted readers with the reprehensible nature of David’s moral offenses. The looming question for Dutch artists of the 16th and 17th century was how David, a man after God’s heart, could fall so far. The answer was inscribed in Bathsheba’s body and the negative or positive qualities that were attributed to her through the appropriation of visual conventions popular in medieval and renaissance art. In this respect, these artists granted Bathsheba a subjectivity that the biblical narrator denied her. Their work also engendered a moral evaluation of her character. While some artists implicated Bathsheba in David’s sin, others rendered the scene with greater moral complexity, evoking the viewer’s consideration of human sexuality and issues of power as well as the viewer’s own complicity in making a sexual spectacle of Bathsheba. This paper will explore the iconography of Dutch artwork of the Renaissance and the Golden Age with specific attention paid to the ways in which Bathsheba is represented and the strategies employed to evoke the viewer’s moral assessment and involvement in the scene.

Greco-Roman education as discussed by authors such as Cicero, Quintilian and Apuleius was explicitly conceived as an exercise in self-discipline and renunciation. Student who completed study under a grammarian or rhetorician were considered morally advanced over those who did not. The cultural perception of education as a moral agent appears again in an unlikely place: The Life of Anthony. Though Anthony explicitly rejects learning, his ascetic regimen arguably draws on this Greco-Roman educational paradigm, effectively re-creating the moral components of classical education.

This paper will offer an extended discussion on the numerous occurrences of nomina sacra in P.Lond. VI.1927 (mid-4th c. CE), and their place within the larger practice in documentary papyri. Is the author operating within the norm for this medium, or is this simply a rare exception to the supposed varied practice of employing nomina sacra? Conclusions on the matter will be supported by data on occurrences in documentary papyri up to the 5th c. along with comparisons to their biblical counterparts.

We do not know who ‘Clemens Romanus’ was, or his floruit. But there are reasons for thinking that he was embedded in an early Jewish-Christian community. In his heavily text-based arguments he quotes almost exclusively from Q material, supposedly verbatim. He has no interest in Paul. His quotations from Q differ from the synoptic text in ways that suggest an early and Jewish source: (1) His quotations contain more Aramaisms than the synoptics; (2) He avoids the word ‘God’, even where it occurs in synoptic Q sayings; (3) His variant readings seem superior in some cases; (4) He apparently denies the divinity of Jesus; (5) He quotes material that does not occur in the synoptic Q sayings at all (but takes the reader’s familiarity with it for granted.) These considerations recommend the tentative hypothesis that ‘Clemens’ is a witness for Q, both because of the variants that look better than the result of paraphrase or poor memory, and because his quotation of missing material is prima facie grounds for thinking he is quoting from a different text; an earlier text, as it seems. He quotes one complete saying, amid his Q sayings, that is completely absent from the synoptic Q material: “Be like reputable [?] bankers.” He is well supported in this. In spite of its absence from all four Gospels, and Thomas, the saying is also assigned to Jesus by Eusebius, Origen, Basilius, Chrysostom, and others. But then, why did the ‘reputable bankers’ disappear from the corpus? I shall examine the early interpretations of the saying, and argue that it is an authentic Q saying. I shall also propose, more speculatively, that it does survive, in highly modified form, in both Luke and Mark, as a parable and an anecdote respectively.

This paper will explore the relationship between Paul’s religious epistemology and his ethical admonitions. It will attempt to show that Paul often appeals to the realm of the mind or intellect when making ethical exhortations. The believer is enjoined, for example, to “reckon” him/herself “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11) in order to prevent sin from mastering the body (Romans 6:12-14). Later in Romans Paul will speak of being transferred by “the renewal of the mind” so as not to be “conformed to this world” (12:2). Paul relates humility and selflessness to having the “same mind” that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:1-5). On the flip side of this same coin, Paul can speak of the failure of mind as the root cause of sinful actions. In Romans 1:18-32, idolatry is understood as stemming from the failure of the knowledge of God to lead to the worship of God, and in 7:7-13 the knowledge of the law leads ultimately to sinful actions. It is quite clear that there is an interesting link in Paul’s anthropology between activity in the mind/intellect and actions of the body. 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4 is an important example of how Paul imagines that his assertions about divine revelation relate to the ethical obligations of the believers. Paul’s discussion of revelation in 2:6-16 amounts to a mini-treatise in religious epistemology in which he emphasizes divine initiative (in the form of the spirit) in the process of comprehending the “mystery” of Jesus’ death. Paul makes stark distinctions between outsiders—those who are perishing and are unable to discern spiritual matters—from insiders—those who understand spiritual things and have the “mind of Christ.” It is clear that one of the conclusions Paul draws from this way of understanding revelation is that the access to divine revelation provided to believers by the spirit should result in a unanimity of thought and judgment (cf. 1:10). In 3:1-4, Paul brings home the point of his instruction on religious epistemology—the behavior of those engaged in quarreling and in-fighting demonstrates that they have failed to appropriate or appreciate the discernment made available to them by the spirit. Paul thus refers to them as “fleshly” and immature. Thus in 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4 Paul deploys a discourse about the mind and the intellect to address the social problem of factionalism. 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4 suggests that Paul has wedded Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic concepts of revelation with the Greco-Roman rhetorical notions of homonoia /concordia. Paul contextualizes rhetorical topoi that call for communal harmony and consensus within a Jewish apocalyptic cosmology and anthropology in which various suprahuman agencies are at work within the human. This conception of the world and the human within it gives a distinctive cast to Paul’s moral discourse.

Eating and drinking are regular human activities that first and foremost serve to keep a human being alive. Thus, ingesting and digesting are characteristics of living creatures. The actions of eating and drinking, however, can also take on symbolic value when they express something that goes beyond fulfilling physical human needs. Sharing in a meal can strengthen the bonds within a group. Meals can (re)create common group memories. They can communicate truth, set things in motion, confirm changes in life, and accompany rites of passage. This paper will consider three text genres inside and outside the canon of the Hebrew Bible that use the human activities of eating and drinking in a symbolic fashion. In particular, it will focus on the human mouth as the metaphorical entrance gate to the human body, through which the divine will enters an individual. First, prophetic call narratives of the Hebrew Bible illustrate that the human mouth can be the location of divine performance rituals that turn the unwilling prophet into the mouthpiece of God. Second, biblical stories about divinely provided or withheld food portray the human mouth as the place where divine salvation or judgment can enter. Third, extra-biblical texts describing the eschatological meal make the human mouth the location where divine knowledge about the beginning and the end of the world is incorporated into the human body. By examine these three ways of symbolic eating/drinking, this paper will explore the metaphorical use of the human mouth from an exegetical, theological, and ritual studies perspective. It will also ask how metaphor theory (or theories) can contribute to our understanding of the human mouth as the place for ingesting, digesting, and finally incorporating the divine will into the human body.

My aim in this paper is to explore the objectives, the scope, and examples from the ongoing Lakota translation of the Bible from the perspective of Arnold Krupat’s working description of “anti-imperial translation.” I will also draw from the writings of Thomas King and Gerald Vizenor, as well as from the ideas of Winfried Siemerling. As a Translation Consultant with the United Bible Societies, I have worked several years directly with the Lakota team of native speakers in their translation of the Bible into Lakota. My role as the TC of this project is not to translate but to inform, guide, critique, probe their work from my experience as a biblical scholar. I am committed to helping them imagine the biblical text and its narratives from their worldview as Lakota natives (i.e., domesticating the text), not expecting them to confine their translation to the worldview of the Bible, and certainly not that of the European-American colonial powers (i.e., foreignizing the text). In their own words, the translators of the Lakota Bible hope “to replace the white man’s Bible” (i.e., the so-called missionary translations of the 19th century) with “a Lakota Bible that draws from both our traditional spirituality and our Christian faith.” It is with their choice of concepts, metaphors, and vocabulary drawn from their tradition that, I will argue, makes this translation a example of Krupat’s “anti-imperial translation.” In Krupat’s description of “anti-imperial translation,” this kind of “cultural transformation” creates a dissonance in the target language and culture because it results in texts that are written in an English powerfully affected by the indigenous world. According to Krupat, such translations transform the cultural practice of both the “target” and the “source.” The combination of traditional Lakota spirituality and Western Christianity results in what Siemerling has identified as the interplay of “western forms” and “Native practices.” By analyzing the Lakota translation of the Bible through these lens offered by Krupat and Siemerling, this paper expects to contribute to the ongoing discussion in cultural studies about the shape of postcolonial translation theory and practice.

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In an essay entitled “How to Read Heresiology,” Averil Cameron challenges scholars to consider anew this seemingly superficial literature of religious ‘othering’ and competitive differentiation. In her analysis of the various obstacles confronting the study of heresiological texts, Cameron suggests most scholarly treatments operate under a false premise, viz. “that heresiologies are there as sources of information, rather than as performative or functional texts” (473). In answering the call put forward by Cameron, this paper attempts to read heresiology as a Christian adaptation (and appropriation) of modes and methods of classical ethnography. As acts of theological classification (and refutation), the heresiological works of Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus parrot classical ethnographic works in their encyclopedic performance of knowledge production. Christian authors, however, turned the genre inward. This paper will begin by mapping the contours of “classical ethnography,” emphasizing the rhetorical, ideological, and literary aspects of a wide swathe of authors, including Herodotus, Josephus, Strabo, Tacitus, and Diodorus Siculus. Even when it is characterizing peoples in passing, pre-Christian ethnography engages in a process of categorizing in a variety of distinct but overlapping ways: cultural translation, normative claims, and techniques of competitive differentiation. Drawing on the work of anthropologists Johannes Fabian and James Clifford, I will argue that Christian ethnographic reasoning is itself a mode of knowledge production, which simultaneously aims to construct the theological, genealogical, geographical, and temporal borders of orthodoxy and heresy. Heresiology operates as ethnography in its aim to taxonomize the contours of an ever-changing Christian oikoumene. The very fact that Christianity was geographically and theologically diverse testifies to the relevance of viewing ethnography as embedded within orthodox Christianity project of classifying its competitors.

At Oklahoma City University, Service Learning is a University requirement for all students earning a Bachelor's degree. The "Introduction to Biblical Literature" course fulfills a General Education requirement for students as well. We have successfully combined these requirements through service learning projects in which students turn their learning into teaching. We will discuss three recent service learning projects: teaching a youth group Arts-Integrated Bible lessons; teaching select Bible passages to older adults at a church-related retirement facility; and teaching about Jewish holidays alongside local synagogue members for a Festival of Jewish Living. In each case, students incorporated material from the "Introduction to Biblical Literature" class and supplemented it with their own research to develop lessons and activities for participants. This resulted in learning for both the students and those they served.

Anathea Portier-Young’s book on "Apocalypse Against Empire" combines a thorough analysis of the historical backgrounds of apocalyptic writings with questions and conclusions concerning a theological interpretation of "Apocalypses." By focusing on the earlier apocalyptic compositions, like the Book of Daniel and some significant parts of 1 Enoch, Portier-Young highlights a historical context that primarily has the Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV in view. Therefore, "Resistance Theology" in those apocalypses considers the relationship between Hellenism and Judaism. This paper provides a review of the monograph within the context of recent publications.

This paper introduces the current state of the discussion of the theology of Lamentations in the scholarly literature. It follows recent commentators (e.g. Boase, Linafelt, Berlin) who have recognised that there is no single theological influence on the book of Lamentations. Accordingly, this paper will argue that there is no single theological message that might be considered the theologically determinative perspective of the book. Rather, instead of presenting a ready made “theology,” Lamentations provides a blueprint for a process by which competing theological claims may be engaged in times of crisis. Much theological reflection on the book of Lamentations has centered upon the unidentifiable “man” of chapter 3 (eg. Westermann). The theological “heart” and “key” of the book is reckoned to be the posture of quiet submission and penitence demonstrated by this man. The central theological “message” is thus that one should wait quietly and endure suffering sent from the Lord. More recently, however, Tod Linafelt, Carleen Mandolfo, and others have rightly reacted against this centralizing and totalizing tendency. They have instead highlighted the protesting figure of daughter Zion in chapters 1 and 2. These alternative readings demonstrate that Zion's protests at her treatment resist and undermine any attempt to claim that “the” theological message of the book revolves around submissive penitence. And yet both perspectives – penitence and protest – are present and each in turn is persuasive. Consequently, neither the “man” of chapter three, who encourages quiet submission to God's punishment, nor the figure of Zion, who protests God's severity, can be taken as a figure to whom to adhere when seeking a “theology” of Lamentations. Thus this paper will argue that appealing to any single figure or perspective to provide a single dominant “theology” of Lamentations is contrary to the book's plurality. A more appropriate approach is to recognise the multiple competing theological perspectives and to explicate the interactions between them. The expression of multiple competing theological claims, in an attempt to understand and explain the unprecedented disaster of 587 BCE, is then taken as paradigmatic for a process by which a discussion of the theologies of Lamentations might proceed.

Drawing on his dissertation at the University of Virginia on Luke 23.39-43, the presenter shows how each proto-canonical Gospel account of the two crucified with Jesus embodies a distinct socio-political strategy of imperial negotiation. As the earliest and pioneering Passion Narrative, Mark's Gospel (15.27-32) stages the two as zealots (lestai/brigands) who mimic the ridicule from the pro-Roman temple leadership, illustrating both imperial loyalty and imperial resistance as futile strategies for negotiation and survival for the followers of Jesus. Matthew (27.38-44) obviously copies much of Mark's account but uniquely includes language borrowed from the Q temptation narrative (“if you are the Son of God”), itself borrowed from Wisdom of Solomon 2.18. That Alexandrian text defends the idea of a personal afterlife against its objectors (perhaps Sadduccees). This subtle addition points to the Matthean affinity for Pharisaic Torah-devotion as the optimal strategy for imperial negotiation and survival, even while solidifying the Markan picture of indicting Temple leadership and zealots as part of the same futile effort to control through violence. John's Gospel (19.18, 31-36) turns the two into nondescript "others" who would not dare to ridicule the incarnate Logos and whose broken legs serve to illustrate Jesus' unique and prophetic status as the unbreakable Passover Lamb. This removal of zealotry from the crucifixion narrative limns a strategy of sidestepping conflict in place of engagement with Roman powers by means of an involved dialogue about the identity of Jesus and philosophical quest for truth. The final, Lucan (23.32-33, 39-43) proto-canonical depiction begins by toning down the language of zealotry (using "kakourgoi/evildoers" rather than "brigands"). More than that, it deploys the episode as a contrastive didactic illustration in which one evildoer reveals the gross impiety and futility of the zealot resistance to Rome, while the other shows the enormous piety and profitability of abandoning such resistance. Leaving zealotry behind brings beatitude in the afterlife; it also secures a place of peace and safety for Christians in the Roman empire in this world. Jesus’ own paradise saying outlines a tamer, more Hellenistic layering of the cosmos in which eschatological hopes for a radical displacement of imperial powers simply do not fit. In conclusion, the death of Jesus as a political criminal was perhaps the most profound social-political problem for Jesus’ early followers. In response to this issue, the proto-canonical Gospels draw on diverse strategies of imperial negotiation carried out by means of carefully revising the story of the two co-crucified zealots.

According to Eusebius, Rome, the imperial city, was under siege in the days of Claudius Caesar. The armies were “the enemy of humanity’s salvation” led by Simon Magus (Hist. Eccl. 2.12.1). This peculiar perception of Rome as the location of cosmic warfare in the time of Claudius, is already anticipated in an early Christian interpretation of the city during Nero’s reign. This ruler, we are told (Hist. Eccl. 2.23.1-3), “took up arms against the God of the universe.” This reading of mid-first-century Rome by the fourth-century historian, appears again as also characteristic of Rome under Commodus. An initial positive narrative is interrupted (Hist. Eccl. 5.21) by Apollonius’s martyrdom, interpreted as demonically orchestrated. The cosmological conflict portrayed by Eusebius in the fourth century predates him, for it was already with Irenaeus in the second. For Irenaeus, the city’s early, original simplicity in its doctrine had become more complicated, more diverse. For Irenaeus, the Roman church had remained pure, as its Episcopal history demonstrated, but not the city. Rome, as the arena of Christian life and history, became, particularly in the days of Anicetus, but even before him under Hyginus, an urban center of Christian communal conflict Easter (Adv. haer. 1.25.6; 1.27.1-2; 3.3.4; ; 3.4.3; cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.14). These years were filled with the arrival settlement, and growth of false teachers (Marcellina, Cerdo, Valentinus) mainly from the East, within Rome. The city became not the locus of well-being, but the locus of heresy’s productivity and of catholicism’s conflict with it (Polycarp of Smyrna, Adv. haer. 3.3.4). Once and originally it had been catholic, but no longer. No longer, for him, was the city of Rome as the Stoics had dreamed it. The ideal of the city as the incarnation of virtue and harmony is gone. Irenaeus and Eusebius both attest to an early Christian vision of the urban, and therefore also of a culture, conditioned upon the experience of Christian persecution and the prevalence of heresy.

Sources and Strategies in the KJV Translations of the Psalms

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This paper enters into the debate between John Elliot and David Balch regarding 1 Peter’s attitude towards society at large. Elliot argued that 1 Peter “conforms to and yet transcends societal norms,” while Balch believes that it seeks to ease tension between the churches and society. This paper argues that all human societies, indeed, all human collectives small or great, use various methods to exercise control over their members. These forms of control can range from the employment of shame to the use of physical violence. By means of their exclusive allegiance to the God of Jesus, the communities addressed by 1 Peter moved outside of the empire's prescribed models of behavior - they moved into “deviant space.” In doing so, they become subject to official (and unofficial) methods of control exercised by imperialistic collectives. However, the “deviant space” inhabited by the church was also inhabited in the eyes of the empire by other “deviants” whom 1 Peter condemns - namely, murderers, thieves, and other criminals - disturbers of good order. 1 Peter is explicable as an exercise of defending “deviant ideology,” on the one hand, and differentiating its deviancy from other deviants who, in the eyes of the empire, inhabit the same deviant space as 1 Peter. The question from the point of view of 1 Peter is how to cast off the mechanisms of social control in a responsible manner. Hence 1 Peter “transcends” societal norms in its allegiance to a deviant ideology grounded in Jesus Christ. However, it also replicates and conforms to certain societal norms by not critically engaging assumptions regarding what constitutes “good order.” This it does largely because it is desperate to differentiate itself from "criminals" who also inhabit deviant space.

In the current debate concerning Paul and Empire, much of the discussion situates Paul’s language in contrast to the imposition of Roman imperial ideology (especially through the emperor cult). Since Paul does not explicitly mention Caesar in his letters, the analysis of his anti-imperial rhetoric is shown primarily from implicit meanings of key terminology (e.g., euangelion, kyrios, pistis, dikaiosyne, eirene, etc.), often drawn out by recourse to post-colonial criticism and Scott’s hidden transcripts. However, there has been no sustained discussion of the earliest non-canonical biography of Paul which sets his martyrdom explicitly in an anti-imperial context. As a result, this paper will consider what light Paul’s interaction with Nero as expressed in The Acts of Paul (AP)—a second century account of Paul’s life, ministry, and death—sheds on the debate about Paul and Empire. In this account Nero’s anger is provoked as a result of the following central themes: Christ is the ‘king’ (basileus) who will destroy all other ‘kingdoms’ (basileiai), and believers as ‘soldiers’ (stratiotai) who serve in his army. This type of language appears infrequently in Paul’s undisputed letters, though it has some affinity with the Pastorals. Accordingly, I argue that although the church held in its memory that Paul’s message stood in contrast to imperial ideology, the AP did not find his undisputed letters particularly important for documenting his supposed anti-imperial rhetoric. As a result, the author may not have considered the anti-imperial language to be as transparent as many scholars argue today.

The mysteries of the Great Gods of Samothrace promised initiates not bliss in the afterlife, but safety in travel at sea. The promise, abundantly attested in literary and archaeological evidence, is unique among mystery cults, but familiar in a range of other ritual evidence from the ancient world, including shipboard shrines, magical gems, and dedicated chapels in ports of call. A number of these rituals had practical corollaries which would help sailors negotiate unfamiliar waters and bring their ship safely into port. I propose in this paper that the promises of Samothrace were similarly real, and that this may be tested through an approach to the epigraphic record using GIS. Inscriptions affirm a Samothracian connection for nearly 100 sites, located from Rome to the Black Sea, but concentrated on the Asia Minor coast. These connections take the form of social institutions – theoria, proxenia, koinia, and local shrines and priesthoods – whose social dynamics created the trust which enabled long distance trade and travel, facilitated communication about conditions at sea, and smoothed the risks in port and at court which could bring down even the most successful long distance merchantmen. The sites, moreover, were linked not only to Samothrace, but in myriad other ways to each other. The GIS data base allows us to gauge the potential for Samothracian networks against the evidence for other culturally created networks – measured by traded goods, mythical genealogies, treaties and leagues - and so consider the potential for Samothrace to have functioned as a ‘super-node’, joining numerous smaller networks and thus multiplying their economic benefits. The Samothracian promises were thus of concern not simply for pilgrims to the site, but for the journeys which were as critical an element in the ancient economy as Demeter’s grain or Dionysos’ wine.

Recent studies by Warren Carter and Boris Repschinski have noted that Matt 1:21 exerts a literary “primacy effect” analogous to the prooimion of forensic speeches; it signals a major theme that is to be elaborated throughout the gospel’s narrative. The references to the forgiveness of sin in 26:28 and 9:2, 5, and 6, identified by the majority of commentators as the passages foreshadowed in 1:21, do not constitute material of either the length or elaboration that would be required to comprise an adequate response to the prooimion. Both Carter and Repschinski employ narrative-critical methods, combing the gospel for additional material that might be seen as elaborating the theme of 1:21. In their search, however, both commentators overlook the legal material that arguably constitutes the gospel’s most significant theme. Matthew’s Jesus is presented as the “New Moses” who preaches about the Torah on a mountaintop, advocating scrupulous observance even of the law’s “less weighty” injunctions (5:17–20; cf. 23:23b). Jesus advocates that the Torah be observed according to the halakhic rulings of the Pharisees (23:1–3). Jesus’ final statement to his disciples exhorts them to “make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (28:19–20). Through the narrative presentation of Jesus’ preaching about the Torah, the prooimion is answered by a major theme in the body of the text and recapitulated at the gospel’s end. Carter and Repschinski have advanced the discussion of 1:21 by identifying its literary function. Neither, however, has identified the most significant elaboration of 1:21: Jesus “saves his people from their sin” not primarily by forgiving sins, but by exhorting his audience to follow the Torah with perfect obedience. By following the Torah, they are enjoined to avoid sin altogether: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).

This paper deals with the theological politics of Deutero-Isaiah, more specifically chapters 40-48. The author is attempting to persuade his fellow-Judeans to accept Cyrus as the agent of YHWH in replacing the native dynasty the expectation for the restoration of which is, exceptionally, nowhere in evidence in Deutero-Isaiah. The argument will entail consideration of royal titulary, Judean and Babylonian, applied to Cyrus; Achaemenid practice with respect to local dynasties including Babylon and Egypt; and the disastrous history of the last four Judean rulers, five including Gedaliah

For several decades Ezekiel scholars have been preoccupied with the troubling aspects of his book, especially the portrait of God the prophet paints. Some go so far as to claim that the book is entirely devoid of love and even in its vision of Israel’s restoration offers little in terms of comfort or forgiveness. We recognize that the prophet served in an extremely dark time in the nation’s history, but is the picture of God that he paints that consistently bleak? This essay will explore the rays of sunlight from heaven that break through the clouds in Ezekiel's response to the dismal day of Jerusalem's demise.

In this paper we will examine the seven recently discovered Sahidic Coptic fragments of the New Testament in the BYU collection. These fragments are important for the transmission of the Sahidic Coptic New Testament since some of these fragments date to either the fifth or sixth century and represent some of the earliest attestations of the Coptic New Testament. Additionally, these fragments contain a few interesting textual variants that are of importance for considering the transmission of the New Testament in Coptic.

While past scholarship has treated Haggai and Zechariah as hierocratic promoters, the present work reveals some distance between these Persian period prophets and the priestly caste. This perspective prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between these prophetic voices and the one found in Malachi, suggesting that the negative stance towards priests is not unique to Malachi. Nevertheless, one does not hear a mere echo of priestly critique throughout Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Instead, there is a discernible development in these books, from slight critique due to facilitation of inappropriate behavior of the people in Hag 2:10-14, to creatively allusive undermining and strongly worded warning to Joshua in Zechariah 3, to explicit confrontation of the priests alongside the people of the land in Zechariah 7-8 expressed with much hope for future renewal, to finally the biting negative attack on the priests with threat of rejection by YHWH in Mal 1:6-2:9. On the one side, this evidence shows that Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi share in common a concern over priestly practices of their time. On the other side, it reveals a slowly emerging response to the priests, most likely highlighting the development of these books over a period of time which saw increasing hostility between the priests and the prophetic group(s) represented by Haggai-Malachi.

Commentators have noted that Jehoshaphat is the subject of a radically different performance in Chronicles both in terms of sheer amount of coverage and his essential characterization. Among the numerous examples one could choose with respect to the Chronicler’s profile of Jehoshaphat, the ruinous maritime venture at the end of Jehoshaphat’s reign in 2 Chr 20:35-37 is particularly intriguing. The same episode is reported in Kings, but the parallel text in 1 Kings 22:48-49 is terse: “Jehoshaphat built Tarshish ships in order to go to Ophir for gold. But he did not go, because the ships were wrecked at Ezion-geber. Then Ahaziah son of Ahab said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Let my servants go with your servants in the ships,’ but Jehoshaphat did not consent.” As is immediately evident, there is no overt mention of causality. Perhaps a connection between the shipwreck and Jehoshaphat’s dialogue with the northern king can be inferred, but occasions no direct evaluation by the narrator. Bearing this in mind, it is a strikingly different story that is told in 2 Chr 20:35-37: After this Jehoshaphat king of Judah joined himself with Ahaziah king of Israel. He acted wickedly. He joined with him in building ships to go to Tarshish, and they built the ships in Ezion-geber. Eliezer son of Dodavahu from Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, “Because you have joined yourself with Ahaziah, the LORD broke your work.” The ships were wrecked, and unable to go to Tarshish. The fate of Jehoshaphat’s attempted voyage is disastrous in both Kings and Chronicles, but otherwise the details of the presentation are antithetical, and in this presentation we will suggest several reasons why this might be the case, and compare the portrait of Jehoshaphat with other figures in this stretch of Chronicles.

The Scriptural account of Moses’ interactions with God suggests that Moses enters the heavenly realm. Moses ascends Mount Sinai into the dark cloud which rests atop it; his face shines as a result of his encounter with the Deity; and he is distinguished as the only prophet with whom God speaks face to face. Nonetheless, it would be possible to claim, from the Scriptural narrative, that it is God who descends to the earthly realm and not Moses who ascends. This paper explores how Ezekiel the Tragedian and Pseudo-Philo utilize and expand upon these and other Scriptural traditions in an effort to ensure that Moses’ ascent of Sinai is understood as an ascent into the heavenly realm. In his Exagoge, Ezekiel introduces a dream vision in which Moses finds himself seated upon the divine throne, looking out over the whole earth and above the sky, with stars bowing down before him. Pseudo-Philo, in the Biblical Antiquities, restricts the ascent of Mount Sinai to Moses alone, three times recounts that God shows paradise to Moses, and intensifies the appearance of Moses’ face after encountering the Deity. In each work, the author’s emphasis on Moses’ entrance into the divine realm and related enhanced relationship with the Lord serves to exalt the character of Moses, perhaps in an apologetic fashion. While Ezekiel confines Moses’ heavenly ascent to a dream vision, which tempers the boldness of his claims, Pseudo-Philo integrates his evidence for Moses’ time beyond the earthly sphere into his larger narrative and places the other characters in the narrative as witnesses of Moses’ splendid appearance, though clearly no one can observe Moses’ visions of paradise.

The Biblical Hebrew shewa is used in two distinct senses. For phoneticians it refers to a very short, centralized vowel; for the Masoretes it was an orthographic symbol standing for two phonetic manifestations: a zero vowel in the syllable coda (shewa quiescent), and a centralized short vowel elsewhere (shewa mobile). How come the same symbol stood for two separate, distinct realities? Bolozky (2005) argues that the reason is that the shewa symbol in the Masoretic text is basically a zero vowel, which is realized as a minimal, very short vowel [usually ?] when a difficult-to-pronounce sequence needs to be broken, or to be avoided (which would have occurred had full deletion applied.) Bolozky shows that although in Israeli Hebrew the shewa and /e/ (cere) (except for items like [teyvá] ‘ark, box,’ where an orthographic yod helps maintain a separate cere) have merged with /e/ (seghol), this seghol/shewa is still required for similar phonetic reasons, to break or avoid impermissible clusters: (a) to prevent violation of the sonority hierarchy, as in yla-dim ‘children’ ye-la-dim (cf. klavim ‘dogs’); (b) to split, or prevent the formation of, identical or closely-similar homorganic consonant clusters, as in avád+ti ‘I worked’ avádeti, xagag ‘he celebrated’ ~ xagega ‘she celebrated’ (cf. katav ‘he wrote’ ~ katva ‘she wrote’); (c) to prevent the formation of other sequences in which the transition from one segment to another involves two simultaneous changes that are too close/ The parallel role of the seghol/shewa of Israeli Hebrew supports the claim that its function in Biblical Hebrew was indeed to mark a non-vowel that could become a shewa mobile when required to break or avoid an impermissible sequence. It also supports the claim by W. Chomsky (1971) that there is little evidence in the tradition of any of the Jewish communities that supports an actual shewa vowel medially, and throws out unnecessary inventions such as a “hovering” shewa, whose sole purpose was to account for “over-application” of the spirantization rule, since the Masoretes refused to accept the simple fact that the process had ceased to be productive.

The topic of this paper is the translation and annotation of the LXX Psalter in Septuaginta Deutsch. Its first part deals with the principles of translation adopted in the project “Septuaginta Deutsch.” Some of the major options underlying the translation will be singled out and illustrated by a few examples.The second part is dedicated to the commentary (“Erlaeuterungen”), to its underlying principles as well as to the different problems to be tackled. Furthermore, some of the most important results of the commentary will be presented, especially philological and theological issues which allow for a more precise characterization of the translation technique as well as the translator’s cultural and theological background.

This paper builds on previous work in the fields of biblical studies and the study of identities, which proposes that bodies of "sacred" literature often play large parts in shaping the goals and ideals towards which a community strives. It further supports the idea that by accepting a specific book or collection as "scripture" a group intends to instruct its members how to fulfill their destiny through the construction of a golden age, whether that is in the past or in some future point. With these premises in mind, this paper looks at several different texts that appear to accept specific books or collections from the Hebrew Bible as scripture and examines what these texts say about the communities that have accepted them (different than the communities for which they may have been composed). By pursing this study we hope to underline two points that are often overlooked in this process. 1) The reception and authorization of literature is largely emergent, coming from different groups in different places often for different reasons, often changing even within communities. 2) The texts that are accepted by these communities are only one part of the construction of identities. Whether we speak of nations, political bodies, or religious groups, the texts they accept as scripture should not be interpreted as reality, or even the ideal situation for these people. Many other institutions are just as, or even more important for the identity of any group.

The restoration of the Jerusalem temple is a central concern of the Persian period Jewish community. Within the prophetic texts of Haggai and Zechariah 1-8, the eschatological hopes of the postexilic community are fulfilled primarily by the temple. As such, the temple functions as a symbol of Yahweh’s presence with and unwavering covenant faithfulness to Israel. For Haggai and Zechariah, the temple functions as the link between the past, the present, and the future. Both prophets employ Deuteronomistic and Priestly traditions to motivate the present reconstruction of the temple. The Zion tradition, on the other hand, provides future hope as it pre-constructs and prefigures the future eschatological hopes centered on Jerusalem. Functionally, the present is characterized by the fusion of the past and the anticipation of the future; it is through such a view that the temple provides continuity with the past and invokes a movement into the future. Thus, it is through Haggai and Zechariah’s appropriation of these theological motifs and the theological and temporal tensions expressed therein that the reader acquire a deeper understanding of their view of the future, the temple, and most significantly, the temple’s role in the future.

When the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCCC) Bible Translation and Utilization (BTU) committee was reconvened in January 2011, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was invited to send a representative. I am the first Catholic to be represented on the BTU committee, which is now charged with making a recommendation on whether the NRSV should be revised, a new translation undertaken, or neither. The involvement of Catholics in ecumenical Bible translation is complicated by a recent Catholic document concerning norms for Bible translation (Liturgiam Authenticam) and the old problem of the deuterocanonical books. These issues are significant given the widespread use of the NRSV (and RSV) among Catholics around the world. This presentation will unfold the major background issues concerning Catholic involvement in ecumenical translations and report on the progress of the committee.

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Analysis of the MalkiZedek traditions in their hermeneutic context helps to illumine aspects of the Christology of the Book of Hebrews.

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The soul represents in the platonizing sethian writings of Nag Hammadi the seat of the self. At the same time, there is a pleromatic instance that can be compared to the world-soul, which might be the level of the Autogenes, where the immortal souls are "at home". Different classes of humans can be distinguished by the behaviour of the individual soul. It needs to be transformed to achieve its ascent to the divine. In Zostrianos, the soul appears as the subject of ascent. In order to meet the conditions for that ascent, it needs to be without evil. Only in that condition the soul can empower the intelligible element, which allows it to ascend to higher levels of being. This seems to imply that the Gnostics adopted a Platonic view of the soul, which has the noetic element in itself. This is in contrast with the theurgic process, where the soul initially does not stand in any contact with the intelligible, but needs to be “brought” there by higher instances it invokes. This process is clearly present in Marsanes, especially in the section dealing with sounds and letters. Whether it is with external aid or not, the soul is transformed on its way to the union with the divine. This can be seen as an internal potency of the soul (Zostrianos) or as something that fills the space the soul has vacated (theurgy). When the soul is preoccupied with the dead, it associates with demons. The sojourn, the repentance and salvation represent different stages of the ascent of the soul, but taken in a fixed way, they might also represent different types of souls. The true realm of the immortal soul is that of the Autogene(i)s. This realm is marked by individual immortality and knowledge. In the next stage, that of Protophanes, the immortal souls get knowledge. This is a perfection of the knowledge the soul already got from Seth. The transformation of the soul is also linked with the four lights and their aeons. From a thought that contemplates the divine in Eleleth, it becomes an angel of the intelligible word in Harmozel. Even if the soul is transformed in different entities, such as angels, it remains psychic insofar as it continues to represent the individual person, which is the substrate of the transformations. The paper deals with the following questions: 1) theurgy (Marsanes) vs. active ascent (Zostrianos), what about the other sethian platonizing texts that do not explicitly deal with the soul? 2)how can the path to the divine union be mapped in terms of cognitive psychology? 3)does the soul cease to be a soul once it reaches the summit of the union with the divine or does it continue to be an individual and personal entity in that union?

Theological notions of the resurrection tend to hold two very different desires in tension: namely, (1) a desire for a spiritual ascent to a new world, and (2) a desire for a transformation and renewal of the material conditions of this world. Throughout history, different biblical texts have played particular roles in the production and maintenance of this tension. One particular text from the Hebrew Bible, Job 19:25-27, has played the part as a materialist counterweight to the metaphysical tendencies of Christian thought. The fleshly focus of Job 19:25-27 has led many biblical interpreters to assert that the resurrection is a radical transformation and yet preservation of the immanent world. In this paper, I will trace the diachronic emergence and development of Job 19:25-27 as a proof-text for the immanent resurrection. I will begin with the Old Greek translation and continue to sketch its actualization through its early Christian readings as well as its performance in liturgy, monumental inscription, and artistic illumination.

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In this paper I will discuss my on-going research into children’s readings of biblical narrative. To make the project manageable, this research focuses on the Gospel of Luke as a text which provides children with a clear entry point into the biblical world. I will give an outline of my empirical methodology. This involves a qualitative study with a purposive sample of readers aged 11-14 years. Each participant is given a copy of the Gospel of Luke to read. Afterwards, I conduct semi-structured interviews with each participant in order to explore her or his reading strategies and interpretations. I will describe some of the issues raised by this research as well as some of the initial findings. This includes a discussion of the significance of the imagination, character empathy and puzzle solving as means of navigating the Gospel of Luke. In conclusion, I will look at the way these child readers’ experience of reading children’s bibles has shaped their approach to biblical narrative. For example, some children use the images found in children’s bibles to enable their own visualisations of the biblical text, while others draw on the ethical and socio-cultural frameworks of children’s bibles to generate the questions they bring to the biblical text.

Ever since E.A. Judge, Peter Marshall, and Ronald Hock promoted the hypothesis that the Corinthians, by offering a gift to Paul, attempted to become his patron, Pauline scholarship has affirmed this theory as commonplace, since it clarifies the mysterious nature of Paul’s refusal. In this paper, however, I will challenge this widespread assumption by closely analysing the ancient norms of gift exchange in relation to some key texts and theological threads often overlooked by proponents of this view. Firstly, it will be argued that the starting point for scholars investigating Paul’s financial dealings, in every case, is the gift offered by the Corinthians to Paul. But, in so doing, they neglect the initial gift of ????? in the gospel from God through Paul to the Corinthians, which is the first half of their gift-exchange relationship (1 Cor. 1:4-9; 2:12; 3:5; 4:7; 9:17). Once that has been established, then, secondly, I will show that, in ancient gift exchange, especially within the patron-client bond, the party that furnishes a return for the initial gift never becomes the patron in the relationship. Lastly, I will suggest that, rather than attempting to become Paul’s patron, the Corinthians actually desired to become his clients, acknowledging him as the source of the initial gift of ????? and thereby revealing a faulty perspective on their relationship. They are working within two-way relational frameworks (like everyone else in ancient society), not three-way. Paul therefore corrects this culturally-conditioned mindset by highlighting his role as the mediator of God’s ?????, so as not to be mistaken as the origin of the gift – God, the vital third party of their gift-giving relationship. Thus, an alternative reason for Paul’s refusal can be propounded.

Before asking about the use of scripture in 1 Corinthians it is necessary to review the epistle’s contents and structure. Accordingly, the paper deals with two issues: (1) how to divide 1 Corinthians; (2) how to set about the task of clarifying the epistle’s use of sources, especially of scripture. The paper takes account of the emphasis placed by others, particularly Francis Watson, on the role of the Pentateuch in the shaping of the Pauline epistles, but it suggests that the use of the Pentateuch can be pinned down with greater precision, especially in the case of 1 Corinthians. Once the role of the Pentateuch begins to become clear, as a form of foundation, the way is more open towards identifying the use of other scriptural texts.

From Mesopotamia and Anatolia, ritual texts survive whose intent was to defend the royal family or others from evil omens. These texts—including Mesopotamian namburbis and Anatolian rituals of the bird augurs—typically combine manual rites with verbal formulae addressed to the gods and other supernatural entities. The existence of such texts implies the belief that an authorized individual could avert divinely-prescribed punishment through correct application of words and deeds. Such a belief was not alien to the Hebrew Bible, as narratives and vision reports attest (e.g., Moses’s intercession following the sin of the Golden Calf in Ex 32, or Amos’s response to threatening visions in Amos 7:2, 5). Interestingly, in contrast to ritual texts from cognate cultures, biblical accounts of intercession against divinely-threatened punishment rarely combine speech with manual rites. The separation of human speech from ritual action is particularly clear in the accounts of David and the census in 2 Sam 24 and 1 Chron 21. In these texts, David sees an angel threatening Jerusalem, intercedes verbally, and only afterward is given instructions for sacrifice. Yet in several other regards, practices portrayed in these accounts resemble Mesopotamian divinatory and apotropaic rituals. In this paper I argue that the biblical separation of intercessory speech from manual rites is no accident, but reflects a desire to portray such speech as persuasive in the ordinary sense, rather than infused with ritual power.

Psalm 2 has a long, complicated, and storied history of interpretation. Christians, who at every turn along the way, strove to appropriate the Messianic nuances of the psalm, presented a fairly unified front in proclaiming the horse sense of the text as they understood it. The history of Jewish interpretation, especially from the time of Rashi in the late 11th century, exhibits a variety of scholars whose commentaries attempt, at various points, to defuse the Christian interpretations of the psalm. This paper will first survey how such stellar Jewish commentators as Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Rambam, and Radak interpreted Psalm 2 within a historical context of polemical banter from the 11th to 13th century. Secondly, specific examples will be cited of how particular passages were nuanced with an eye toward refuting Christian interpretations drawn from the psalm. Next, the Yalkut Shimoni on Psalm 2 which adds to the picture and contributes some interesting aspects will be considered. Finally, the crescendo of the interfaith jousting over the psalm might well be the work of the Karaite scholar, Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, who, in the 16th century, gallantly weighed in on what he saw as the Christian misappropriation of the psalm in his monumental polemic, Hizzuk Emunah. In particular, Isaac had a bone to pick with Paul’s use of Psalm 2, and his repartee on the point is appraised.

The quantity of newly digitized Ethiopic manuscripts makes it possible to explore Ethiopic scribal practice in new ways. In this paper we will analyze two aspects of Ethiopic scribal intervention. First, we will set forth a typology of form and function. Second, we will explore the historical developments of scribal intervention generally, and, more precisely, document the rise of a specific set of intervention techniques around the 18th century. Scribal intervention can be grouped into two major classes of form: insertion of text and removal of text. Several techniques make up the class of insertion of text, such as words inserted interlinearly, lines of text inserted interlinearly, and marginal additions accompanied by insertion symbols. These techniques express a variety of purposes. They can serve to correct spelling and grammatical errors, to insert overlooked text, and to remedy text that had been skipped due to scribal errors such as homeoteleuton and homeoarchy. Also, the insertion of text can function to clarify, to remove ambiguity, and to amplify and explain. The second class of scribal intervention is the removal of text, which is accomplished several different ways. One technique is erasure markings such as lines, dots, or the circling of text to signal it for erasure. A second example is text that had been removed or made illegible by scrapping off, washing off, or the crossing out of text. The primary function of removing text is to alleviate errors, from erasing a single letter to correct spelling, or to remove several words or lines in order to remedy scribal errors of dittography, homeoteleuton, homeoarchy, or contamination. This analysis of the typologies of form and function enable us to consider historical developments. In light of these typologies of form and function, we will explore scribal intervention in a sampling of manuscripts from the 15th to the 20th century in order to analyze any historical trends among the various techniques of scribal intervention. Paleography will be employed to consider when the interventions in a manuscript were written. This analysis will suggest that several techniques rose in prominence over time and later scribes return to older manuscripts and employ these more recent techniques to intervene. Using a wide sampling of digitized manuscripts we will explore these historical developments within the typologies of form and function. This will allow us to analyze how Ethiopian book culture viewed interacting with its manuscripts and how this culture changed and developed over the centuries.

Determining the coherence of the biblical wisdom corpus is a daunting task in light of its literary and theological diversity. Given the ancient rhetorical conventions that shaped the literature, discerning its relevance is equally challenging. An interpretive lens that can bring the corpus as a whole into sharp relief yet preserve its varied insights remains to be found. For the biblical sages, the world was their classroom and moral formation was their goal. The sapiential link between world and will, between creation and character, thus, is key to discerning biblical wisdom’s coherence, perhaps also its relevance. That link is found in the notion of wonder. Wonder, to borrow from philosopher Jerome Miller, instils a reverent, if not fearful, receptivity toward God and the world even as it quickens the eros or desire for knowing God and the world. Such is its paradox. Wonder, moreover, is fundamental to moral formation. Such is its power: wonder engenders wondering, which can lead to wisdom. Wonder, I argue, provides an effective organizing framework for discerning the integrity of the wisdom corpus within its literary and theological diversity while offering a compelling way to explore wisdom’s significance for contemporary audiences. Through the lens of wonder, generative connections, for example, come to light among seemingly disparate sapiential themes such as fear, joy, mystery, knowledge, reason, emotion, beauty, otherness, creation, and ethics. This paper will trace some of those connections among the three books of wisdom.

The style and refinement of the writing in Luke and Acts has prompted many scholars to explore how the techniques of Greco-Roman rhetoric and the exercises of the Progymnasmata might illuminate the formation, function, and impact of material throughout these two volumes. However, Luke’s use of Ecphrasis has received very little attention. While Luke does not engage in long ecphrastic passages (such as the description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad or the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid), he does engage in several shorter instances of ecphrasis throughout Luke-Acts, and these instances fall into a recognizable pattern of usage. The Exercises of Aelius Theon states that ecphrasis should be clear and vivid, creating a mental image of what is being described (paragraph 119) and that the style should reflect the subject (i.e. noble descriptions for noble persons; paragraphs 119-120). This study will focus on the ecphrasis of persons and events in Luke-Acts and will identify instances of ecphrasis in Luke-Acts by the presence of at least two descriptions of that person or event. These descriptions are often visual, sometimes, aural, and serve to further the message of the narrative. An analysis of the forty-four instances of person or event ecphrasis in Luke-Acts shows that Luke tends to use ecphrasis for four reasons: to intensify positively divine action (e.g. Luke 3:21-23 and Acts 1:9-10), to intensify negatively the presence of evil (e.g. Luke 8:27 and Acts 1:18), to portray the nature of crowds (e.g. Luke 12:1 and Acts 17:15), and to support characterization in healings or reversals (e.g. Luke 16:19-21 and Acts 14:8).

All too often, Pauline and Synoptic scholars seem to live in different worlds, all the while forgetting that their subjects of study did not. Moreover, because of the lack of verbal agreements between Paul and the Synoptics, many dismiss a direct relationship between the two. However, many students of Paul, myself included, comb his letters looking for allusions to the OT based not only on shared language, but also on shared themes and the availability of texts, among other criteria. Since it is unlikely that Paul knew the Synoptics in their final form, a fundamental difference lies between identifying allusions to the OT and identifying allusions to the Jesus tradition in the Pauline epistles. However, nearly all Gospel scholars would argue for the active transmission of the Jesus tradition during the lifetime of Paul. Some scholars, such as Michael Thompson, have suggested methods for finding this tradition in Paul (Clothed with Christ: The Example and Teaching of Jesus in Romans 12:1-15:3 [JSNTSup 59; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991]). However, Thompson and other do not fully reckon with the possible influence of eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry. Whether or not one accepts all of the arguments recently offered by Richard Bauckham, it is likely that eyewitnesses to the historical Jesus were members of the Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean during Paul’s life. Moreover, it is also likely that Paul would’ve heard and interacted with such eyewitnesses. In this paper therefore, using a modified version Richard Hays’ method introduced in Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, combined with Bauckham’s recent work on eyewitness testimony, I will introduce a new method for finding possible allusions to the Jesus tradition in the Pauline epistles. I will test this method by examining the possible relationship between Philippians and Matt 5, based on the shared themes of joy, suffering, and Christian maturity. Using the criteria of recurrence, thematic coherence, and historical plausibility from Hays, along with the added criterion of eyewitness availability, I will argue that it is possible that the Sermon on the Mount lies in the near background of Philippians.

Throughout the previous century, John’s Gospel was favored among Protestant exegetes as the anti-sacramental gospel. The history of the logos in the Prologue, Jesus’ long self-referential speeches, and the fact that none of the Synoptics’ sacramental events were retold all resonated with the kerygma of the Lutheran renaissance. However, new readings of the Fourth Gospel informed by Stoic physics simultaneously confirm and contradict the dialectical theologians’ judgment. On the one hand, Jesus’ speeches do not refer to the Baptism and the Eucharist per se; on the other hand, the spoken word is in itself sacramental. As physical signs (phonê), Jesus’ words convey a spiritual reality on his listeners. When the Johannine pneuma is given its Stoic due, the kerygma-sacrament dichotomy can no longer be upheld. Apart from being a cognitive phenomenon, speech was also seen as a physical event that took place in the universal pneuma. The Stoic soul had seven faculties; in addition to the five senses, it also possessed two expressive faculties, speech and procreation. Following the pattern of the Aristotelian epigenesis, speech and procreation were molded on one another. Like the sperm in the womb, words were capable of reorganizing the corpus of beliefs in the listener’s mind and engendering new ideas. Apparently, the Johannine regeneration took place in the performance of the text. In the act of listening, believers were baptized in the Spirit, fed by it – and transformed. Scholars are aware of the special quality of the Johannine Jesus’ language; it is repetitive, metaphorical and paradigmatically organized. Exegetes struggle to come to terms with the (absent) argument. Seemingly, more is at stake in Jesus’ speeches than the rhetorical logos; aesthetics also play an important role in the impact of the words on listeners. In order to understand Jesus’ speeches as sacramental events, two approaches are employed – an ancient: Stoic theories of speech; and a modern: the theories of cognition used in theatre research to capture the impact of the performance on the audience (the study of performativity).

The story of the two disciples’ encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus has always been a puzzling one. Why do the disciples not recognize him during their extensive conversation on the road? Why do they then suddenly recognize him at the breaking of the bread? And, once they have recognized him, why does he vanish? Ancient Christian readers were probably better equipped than we are to grasp some of the meanings of Luke 24 because they were much more aware of the Greek text of the Hebrew Bible, as well as of various Jewish apocalyptic traditions that would have mediated a first-century reader’s understanding of sacred texts. I propose a reading the Lukan pericope as a Christian midrash on Genesis, paying special attention to the intertextuality between Luke 24, the longer Markan ending, Genesis 3, and the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum. This tradition-critical approach yields conclusions that also illumine certain aspects of the early Christian reception history of the Lukan passage.

An enduring difficulty in bringing intertextual theory to bear on the NT is the various levels on which the NT writers engaged with precursor texts. This paper is a preliminary exploration into intertextual relationships at the level of discursive style in the Gospel narratives. Can one assess the way in which the symbolic world created by the style of discourse in OT narrative has influenced the narrative technique of the Evangelists? By framing our questions along the lines of discourse rather than story, we concern ourselves less with the *content* of the precursor text, and more with the *way* in which the precursor text is narrated, and whether a NT text might be seen as imitating that style. As a test case, two episodes in Mark and Genesis will be discussed. Throughout the Genesis narrative, the discursive style creates a symbolic world whereby omniscience separates the human and the divine (see Sternberg, 1985). In Mark 2:1-12, we have what may be the record of Mark’s Christological interpretation of and interaction with the symbolic world depicted in Genesis, and exemplified in Gen 18:1-15. Mark narrates the Gospel in such a way as to create his own symbolic world, within which Jesus’ role in Mark 2:1-12 mirrors that of Yahweh in Gen 18:1-15. The particular combination of two narrative techniques will be highlighted: (1) the presentation of inner thoughts as “speaking to one’s heart,” and (2) the presence of a character within the narrative who possesses the same knowledge as the narrator. Using narrative criticism to juxtapose these two texts, we hope to elucidate some broader levels of intertextuality between the OT and NT. If the primordial narrative of Genesis and the patriarchal narrative of Abraham saturate the shared cultural space of 1st century Jewish culture, to what extent is Mark’s attempt to write an authoritative narrative influenced by the discursive style of those authoritative precursor texts? This paper represents a preliminary (and, admittedly, imaginative) attempt to grapple with this question.

According to the Testament of Adam 3:6 and several Greek, Georgian, Latin, and Slavonic variants of the Life of Adam and Eve, the sun and the moon joined the mourners at Adam’s burial and darkened for the sorrowful event. The motif of the darkening of the sun and the moon occurs primarily in the prominent tradition (developed exegetically in both ancient Jewish and Christian circles out of Isa 24:23, 60:20, Joel 2:10, and Hab 3:11) that only the divine light will shine in the eschaton and/or the Messianic era and that the sun and the moon will darken in front of it (cf. Rev 21:23; 4 Ezra 7:39-42; Sib. Orac. 5:476-483). While according to the Life of Adam and Eve recensions the eclipse of the two luminaries at Adam’s burial is due to the fact that they cannot shine in front of God, in line with the eschatological tradition mentioned above, the Testament of Adam version of the story attributes the behavior of the two luminaries to the fact that the protoplast was the image of God. This paper argues that there isn’t an insurmountable difference between these two versions of the Adamic story and that their conjunction reflects a “divine image” ideology, in which conduct due or shown to God is transferred to God’s image (and vice-versa). It is finally argued here that the association of the darkness in Mark 13:24, Mt 27:45, and Luke 23:45 (the only passage that mentions the sun—yet not the moon) with a darkening of the sun and the moon (association first attested in iconography and texts of the fourth century) is a further development of this Adamic ideology, most probably on the propitious background of the crystallization of a theanthropic Christology and of the ever increasing use of solar and lunar symbols in pagan, Jewish, and Christian funerary artifacts.

Chapters 24-27 announce insistently the destruction of an anonymous city. This town is a foreign one and commentators have recognized it to be in turn Nineveh, Babylon, Carthage, Tyre… Moab is the only entity mentioned in the text (Es.25.10). In chap.15-16 Moab is also presented as a heap of ruins. The oracle charges this nation with hybris, embodied by the security it finds in its numerous fortified cities dispatched on the hillside. In chapters 24-27 the anonymous city is an impregnable citadel, its walls are high and its description reminds that of the tyrants charged with hybris in the OAN. Rather than a historical character, the anonymous city is a metaphor of hybris in the same way as Babel in Genesis. By this way it offers a counterpart to the other city mentioned in those chapters: the city of YHWH, the real fortress which walls bring salvation. (Es.26.1). This city is elevated instead of being put down. The opposition between the elevation of the city of YHWH and the lowering into dust of the overproud fortress reproduce the structure of Isaiah chapter 2. Some commentators already mentioned verses occurring in both passages. They present other similarities: their use of older prophetic material, the theme of the ascent of the nations, but also the quite rare description of YHWH with the vocabulary used for tyrants in the OAN. The theme, the vocabulary, and the metaphor’s filiation of chapters 24-27 and chapter 2 testify to their proximity. Both texts are probably issued from the same hand. Together they create a framework to the other chapters also structured around the hybris theme, of the daughter of Sion (Es.3), of the leaders of Juda (Es.5 and 22), of Samaria (Es.9) and of the nations (Es.10, 13-14, 15-16, 23).

Despite a recent resurgence of interest into Gnostic literature, research into Gnostic texts that employ the genre of “apocalypse” remains in its infancy. In hopes of generating friendly debate, this paper will survey and “debunk” common scholarly “myths” about Gnostic apocalypses: 1) Gnosticism and Apocalypticism are both grounded upon cosmological dualism and pessimism; 2) Gnosticism is the supreme form of realized eschatology; 3) Gnostic apocalypses are products of the Jewish apocalyptic thinking out of which Gnosticism arose; 4) Gnostics inclined towards Greek philosophy lost interest in the apocalyptic genre. Yet scholars of Gnosticism generally no longer define Gnosticism by “dualism” or “pessimism.” Most “Gnostic” texts affirm that the world will end, in ways virtually indistinguishable from contemporary Christians; “realized” eschatology did not always come at the expense of cosmic eschatology. It is by no means clear that Gnosticism was originally a Jewish, not Christian, phenomenon, much less originating in disappointed apocalyptic conventicles. Finally, we possess “Platonizing” Sethian apocalypses that combine Jewish (Enochic) and Neoplatonic themes; there are no “Pagan” Gnostic apocalypses. The picture that emerges from this review is that research into Gnostic apocalypses should focus more on specific intertextual themes and motifs rather than modern theological constructions (“dualism”). Particular focus should be on the Enochic tradition—not just the Book of the Watchers but also Enoch’s heavenly journey and angelification—as well as speculation on the celestial liturgy. At the same time, we can still address philosophical issues, such as the relationship between the idea of Gnosis qua absolute knowledge and the affirmations of total authority common to apocalyptic texts. The distinction between “Jewish apocalyptic” and “Greek philosophical” Gnostic texts is misleading. Rather, Gnostic literature adopted pre-existing Jewish apocalyptic traditions to suit diverse environments, ranging from the Greek philosophical circle to Syro-Palestinian baptist cults.

Apocalypse, groaning and laboring, until now, glory--all these terms point to Paul's apocalyptic outlook in Romans 8:19-22. But rarely studied are the theological and ecological implications of the awkward wording in v 22 which states, "all creation is groaning together and laboring together until now." Attempting to smooth out the strange coordination of present tense verbs (groans and labors) with the phrase "until now," the NRSV translates this passage as follows: "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now." This paper, however, argues that Paul's coordination of the present tense verbs with the time indicator "until now" is theologically significant. Here and elsewhere in Romans 8, Paul hints at the resurrection of Christ as the inaugural moment of the eschatological age that is to be followed by the resurrection of all those in Christ, the apocalypse of the sons of God. The paper argues that creation's groaning and laboring lead to the birthing forth of resurrected humanity. Such a reading recognizes the nonhuman creation as an agent who works alongside God for salvation. The reading also suggests that something important changed at Jesus' resurrection, a change that has begun the unstoppable, Spirit-filled process of liberation and glorification of all God's creation. With such a theological and eschatological vision in place, it only makes sense for humans to align their lives with this liberative vision.

In an article I published a few years ago, I argued that in Romans 7 Paul adopts the persona of Eve from the story of the Primeval Transgression (“The Figure of Eve in Romans 7:5-25,” *Biblical Interpretation* 12 [2004] 1-36). He manipulates a traditional interpretation of Eve as a radically passive transgressor of God’s law—deceived, seduced, etc.—to make a somewhat paradoxical suggestion: the self under sin acts in such a way as to deny itself autonomy. Paul re-imagines the story of Eve’s transgression to show that sin splits the self in half, constituting it as paradoxically passive with respect to itself, and he proceeds to map that divided self onto a traditional Greco-Roman body-soul/body-intellect dichotomy. Here I will follow up that article by examining Romans 8, where Paul once again employs imagery associated with femininity (namely, childbirth)—this time to imagine the eschatological redemption of believers’ bodies. Romans 8’s language of childbirth may have been suggested by Genesis 3:15-16, in which Eve’s labor pains and offspring are presented as both humanity’s punishment and the means of its redemption (the latter, according to a traditional interpretation of v. 15). It is also indebted to imagery employed by biblical prophets. But the Hellenistic background is likewise important, though it has really never been examined, for Romans 8 employs some of the same language as ancient Greek obstetrical handbooks, especially Soranus’ *Gynaecia.* Reading Paul in light of this fascinating literature sharpens our view of the metaphorical childbirth he depicts and clarifies the logic of the metaphor’s development. In particular, Soranus and other Greek gynecological writers figure the parturient as radically passive during her travail (a surprising figuration for English speakers accustomed to a woman’s “labor,” “pushing,” and the like), in terms both of midwives’ manipulation of her body and of the posture of passive suffering she is urged to adopt in the face of her contractions’ violence. Paul’s childbirth metaphor in Romans 8 adopts and expands the parturient’s passivity. She is so passive as to be not simply aided by the God's spirit (Gk. *pneuma*, the same word Soranus uses for a birthing woman’s holding in of her breath—a vital feature of a successful childbirth, according to his account) in the midst of her groaning (Gk. *stenagma*, which Soranus also discusses in great detail), but actually possessed by this spirit (vv. 26-27), who groans on her behalf. Her labor issues not in a birth but in an adoption (vv. 22-23); etc. In antiquity, femininity was conventionally linked with passivity, and Paul’s employment of two feminine images in Romans 7-8—Eve and travail—manipulate this convention in order to figure the self under sin and the self redeemed from sin as both radically passive, in the former case as a self split in two and paradoxically enslaved to itself; in the later case as a self integrated and free, but—again paradoxically—enjoying a freedom that amounts to possession by God’s Spirit.

The sound system of a language is an important part of the matrix of communication. Even in prose it can affect word choice and syntax. Several criteria affect the choice of a pronunciation system and this choice becomes more important if we intend to take advantage of audio approaches in learning. Historical accuracy is a criterion. We are fortunate to have significant data from Judea itself, not to mention the Jewish catacombs of Rome. It is important to know the parameters that were governing communication between NT writers and their audiences. Being able to communicate with other pronunciation systems is also desirable. The system that best bridges all of these goals should be highly valued and preferred. Some of the relevant data and considerations can be previewed at http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Greek_Pronunciation_2008.pdf A brief Koine reading will be demonstrated.

In the scholarly literature, a good deal of attention has been focused on possible Syriac influences on Ethiopic Christianity in the Aksumite period (4th cent.-ca. 900). I. Guidi (1888, 33-34 with n. 1; 1932, 13-15) and C. Conti Rossini (1928, esp. 155-65), for instance, contended that a group of missionaries from Syriac-speaking areas played a key role in the spread of Christianity throughout Ethiopia in the late 5th to early 6th century. Based on this, they attributed substantial Syriac influence to the development of Ethiopic Christianity, including the introduction of monasticism as well as the translation of the Bible into Classical Ethiopic. More recent studies (Marrassini 1990, 1999; Polotsky 1964; Witakowski 1989-1990) have, however, seriously challenged the evidence for this theory. In this paper, I would like to shift the discussion by looking at Syriac influences on Classical Ethiopic literature from the Solomonic period (1270-1770). More specifically, I survey a number of Ethiopic texts that are attributed to Syriac-speaking authors or that passed through Syriac on their way to Ethiopic. In these cases, Syriac influence was almost always mediated by Arabic Christianity, which inherited a great deal from the Syriac heritage. Notwithstanding the Arabic intermediary, these cases provide clear evidence for Syriac influence on Ethiopic Christianity in the Solomonic period. Bibliography: C. Conti Rossini, Storia d’Etiopia (1928). I. Guidi, Le traduzioni degli Evangeli in arabo e in etiopico (1888). idem, Storia della letteratura etiopica (1932). P. Marrassini, “Some considerations on the problem of the ‘Syriac influences’ on Aksumite Ethiopia,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies 23 (1990), 35-46. idem, “Ancora sul problema degli influssi siriaci in età aksumita,” in Biblica et semitica. Studi in memoria di Francesco Vattioni, ed. L. Cagni (1999), 325-37. H. J. Polotsky, “Aramaic, Syriac, and Ge‘ez,” Journal of Semitic Studies 9 (1964), 1-10. W. Witakowski, “Syrian influences in Ethiopian culture,” Orientalia Suecana 38-39 (1989-90), 191-202.

This essay will investigate the ways 2 Peter makes use of Jesus tradition derived from the gospels of Matthew and John. It will begin by discussing some relatively clear instances in which 2 Peter seems to make use of material from these two gospels. Having established that an intertextual relationship probably exists between 2 Peter and these two gospels, the essay will proceed to consider some less certain instances of such use. These are cases where 2 Peter seems to echo Jesus tradition found in the two gospels much as Richard B. Hays argues that the letters of Paul echo scriptural texts in Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale, 1989).

While it has frequently been noted that accusations of magic are common to all of the apocryphal acts, less attention has been paid to the central role that the deliberate contrast between magic and miracle plays in the Acts of Peter in particular. While the text's juxtaposition of the magician Simon with the apostle Peter has been discussed somewhat, the concomitant juxtaposition between magic and miracle - and the significance that such would have had for an audience in antiquity - has not received as much attention as it warrants. That (notoriously subjective) accusations of magic not only functioned as polemic against rivalling religious communities but were also taken very seriously is evidenced by early Christian apologists, contemporaries of the Acts of Peter. In these works a strategy to negotiate this blurry terrain is articulated in prose form, and is one that seems to have held some degree of traction in broader (non-Christian) circles: namely the contrast between characteristics commonly ascribed to magic and magicians, and claims regarding how these differ from their own respective authoritative figures who were held to have (miraculous) wonderworking abilities. My paper will argue that the Acts of Peter is also participating in this seemingly widespread apologetic discourse, yet articulating this strategy of demarcation in narrative form. My paper will further argue that this same tactic can be identified in other contemporaneous narratives, which likewise sought to deflect accusations of magic from their own authoritative figures who were held to have worked wonders: Philo and Josephus on Moses, and Philostratus on Apollonius of Tyana. As such, I argue that rather than solely an entertaining showcase to demonstrate Peter's miraculous abilities, the Acts of Peter is also, like it's contemporaries, engaging in the rather earnest enterprise of deflecting accusations of magic against an authoritative figure, and in turn for the community that reveres him as such.

invited paper

Criteria for establishing literary dependence can put the bar too high. It matters who is doing the persuading and who it is he or she is trying to persuade. If Mark’s earliest audience were schooled on Homeric glosses or raised in a tradition familiar with lists of hapax legomena (Homeric or Biblical), then a single salient word might suffice to link a Markan story to a literary forebear. Additionally, if Mark’s readers assembled around authorized interpreters, the interpreters would not need to work nearly so hard as a Biblical scholar addressing professionally skeptical colleagues. Three instances are proposed: (1) the “digging down” in Mk 2:4; (2) the sending out of the Twelve “two-by-two” of Mk 6:7; (3) the Hellene who is a “Syrophoenician” at Mk 7:26. The first example is lodged in the bizarre account of four stretcher-bearers hoisting a quadriplegic up onto a roof so that they can then dig through the roof and lower him down into a crowded underworld. A telltale word directs the alert (or alerted) reader to Odysseus digging a pit at the edge of the known world and the shades below crowding around to see him. In this case the single word belongs to a constellation of details together signifying the incident of Elpenor’s fall. The second example is of a more familiar type. A memory saturated with Biblical phraseology will want to hear the Twelve being sent “two-by-two” as somehow evoking the paired animals of Noah’s menagerie, but the account gives no further verbal or thematic grounds for the association. Without prior conviction that Mark expects a single word to summon a source, the reader will remain perplexed by what must appear to be a pointless resonance. The third example, an unknown and puzzling name, is as thorny a problem for the modern interpreter as it was a textual crisis for the ancient copyist. Can we find reasons for thinking that we have in the surplus designation “Syrophoenician” for the Hellene woman a contrastive allusion to the Greek epic in which a Phoenician woman from Syriê takes from the top of a table things that do not belong to her? The possibility might make us look more closely at the dogs under the table. The three examples begin to build the inductive case that by means of a rare word or singular phrase Mark intentionally evokes a bit from a well-known source scene when that scene was itself the well-known locus of the “one-off” expression. Meeting a rare word or expression in Mark that is (or is like) a rare word or expression in the Greeks’ Homer or the Hebrews’ Bible should set us to wondering whether something is happening here and we don’t know what it is. Or do we, Mr. Jones?

Robert Cargill recaps the year in blogging and introduces the session.

Ever since Richard Bentley, textual critics and exegetes have been perplexed by the note in Gal 4:25a that Sinai was a mountain in Arabia. Early and important witnesses are divided as to its reading, and this clause, in its four main variations, is problematic not only in terms of its grammar but also in its relation to Paul’s argumentative discourse. This paper revisits this textual problem and comes to the following conclusions. The external, transcriptional, and intrinsic considerations all suggest that v.25a should read t? ??? S??? ???? ?st?? ?? t? ??aß?? (“for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia”), so this reading ought to be adopted in the critical text. Moreover, other evidence suggests that v.25a was originally a marginal note in the archetype of Galatians, so this clause ought to be enclosed in double brackets to indicate that it was not originally part of the autograph of Paul’s letter.

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Approaches to Deuteronomy 23, with reference to immigration issues.

Scholars of Matthew’s Gospel commonly construct the Gospel's "other" in negative terms by means of an ingroup-outgroup dyadic which runs along exclusively "religious" and "Jewish/synagogal" lines. I suggest that such discussions of Matthean identity-formation reflect the dominant commitments of the guild that views the Gospel as religious and Jewish. A consideration of other entities in the Gospel such as "enemies" and "Gentiles" highlights the conditionedness and limits of such constructions. My discussion of 20:24-27 highlights the Matthean “othering” of politically powerful Gentiles and reflects understandings that the gospel is not an exclusively religious text but undertakes social-political (imperial) negotiation.

According to the text of a Petronian fragment as reported by Stern (GLAJJ I, Jerusalem 1976, nr. 195), the "Iudaeus" unwilling to circumcide had to emigrate “to the Greek cities”. Several proposals have been made to emend the text, and more or less popular conjectures have been advanced for the unclear "graia", such as "patria" (Courtney). This note defends the reading "graia" of codex Bellovacensis, and on literary grounds suggests that "graia urbs" might possibly indicate Rome.

I teach biblical studies at Santa Clara, a Jesuit (Catholic) university in Silicon Valley. As all undergraduates at Santa Clara must take three sections of religion over the course of their studies, most who enroll in my introductory Bible course are doing just that: fulfilling their Core Curriculum requirement. One of the challenges that I face in igniting an interest in the Bible with many of our students is that, with years of religious instruction at Sunday and/or Catholic high school behind them, they are not always keen to continue "doing" religion, albeit at the college level. I learned early on that citing ecclesial pronouncements on the value of contemporary methods of biblical criticism generated little enthusiasm in the classroom for further, academic pursuit of the Bible. Thus, it has been exciting to discover the effectiveness of rabbinic Midrash, a genre largely unknown to students at Santa Clara, in moving them to critical thinking and prompting them to entertain new perspectives on biblical narratives that otherwise seem too familiar. This paper presents the experience of using classic Midrash in a predominantly Christian learning environment to lecture on the complexity and polyphony of the Primeval and Ancestral Narratives, to model the close reading of text, and to facilitate small group discussions focused on the evolving reception and relevance of Scripture to the present. Observations will follow on how familiarity with Midrash effects a transformation in how students engage Hebrew Bible and New Testament alike.

The paper introduces ideas from Ulrich Beck on the sociology of risk, and from Jeffrey Alexander on the sociology of trauma, and then proceeds to consider the account of the loss of the ark as narrated in I Sam 4.1-7.1. Alexander’s work is useful to us for raising questions about how the traumatic event of the loss of Ark might have been dealt with by the community and also to help interpret how the loss of the Ark becomes overlain in the tradition by other themes such that the original narration of the event, and the traumatic experience of it, is reduced or even forgotten. In this way, Alexander helps us to theorise the reasons why the Ark Narrative, in the long run, could not function in the social and cultural memory as an account around which shared identity could be built- hence, major elements of the event and its importance are forgotten for social reasons. Beck’s work enables us to lever open analytically important differences between societies across time and to consider dimensions of risk and the toxicity of sacred objects in the description of the Ark in the Hebrew Bible and how social groups sought to deal with these threats to the social and natural order. At the same time, the biblical data is utilised to talk back to the sociological theories of Beck and Alexander and recommendations are made as to how Beck’s periodisation of various risk societies is in need of revision in the light of the case study. Alexander’s work helps us to be clear about what a sociological approach to trauma and collective memory might look like and helps us distinguish a sociological approach from other social scientific approaches, like social psychology, that also investigate trauma and memory. However, Alexander’s commitment to a social constructionist perspective within sociology means that the ‘event’ narrated has no independent reality apart from the narration: a perspective with which other sociologists and historians might have problems.

The paper is in dialogue with structural exegesis from the perspective of Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR hereafter) for biblical studies. It focuses on the Apocalypse of John. Lamb metaphor as “meaning effect” of John’s creativity and his stylistic syntagm, which is similar to Mise en abyme (I term it as Mise en apocalypse or "Story within a story"), are found in the Apocalypse as structures of manifestation. Apart from social semiotics (the study of Sitz im Leben and cultural codes as they manifest in John’s lamb metaphor and mise en apocalypse), structural exegesis, which was originated from Daniel Patte’s interdisciplinary project “Semiology and Exegesis” at Vanderbilt University, can still shed light on the deep, narrative and mythical structures of the text under consideration. The structuralist approach to the Apocalypse is illustrated in the first part of the paper. The second part explores further the potential contribution of structural methodological approach. To certain extent, deep, narrative or mythical structures can be viewed not only “as making a partial selection of the semantic features which participate in the meaning effect of the text” (Patte 85). They also actualizes cognitive capacities of the human mind. Cognitive aspect of the text can be studied through structures. Thus, there is a shift from text to mind, from linguistic to cognitive paradigm. The paradigm shift calls for cognitive semiotics. Methodologically, models of the CSR can now be operational by biblical scholars on religious texts of antiquity. The traditional structural exegesis can then be combined with the new trend of research, namely the CSR for biblical studies. Last but not least, metaphor or ritual theories of the CSR are applied to the structural analysis of John’s “ritualistic” mise en apocalypse.

Interpreters of the death of Moses in Deut 34:1-8 have yet to consider this text in light of ANE honorific burial practices. A number of court documents and royal inscriptions from Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia attest to a practice in which kings provided honorific burials to royal servants who had demonstrated exemplary faithfulness. The gift of a state burial secured the prestige of the servant’s name and ensured post mortem care for his grave site. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is the ideal royal servant (?ebed yhwh, v. 5): he not only mediates the covenant but also obeys Yhwh with his last breath (v. 5). Because of his exemplary and incomparable faithfulness, Moses, like other honored royal servants, not only receives a protected burial place to which no human has access (v. 6), but Yhwh himself also takes on the task of burying Moses (v. 6). Moses’s burial confirms his status as a faithful servant of Yhwh. From a literary perspective, then, Yhwh’s honorific burial of Moses functions in the same way that honorific burials functioned socially, namely, to exalt the recipient of the honored burial.

Spirit, Glory and Sonship in the Gospel of John

A large number of the individual psalms, whether laments or thanksgivings, can be productively viewed as persuasive arguments from Israelites to God over the continuation of the covenant. In times of personal crisis, speakers in the psalms urge God directly to intervene in order to preserve the reciprocal values underlying their relationship, particularly justice in exchange for faithful observance. In four psalms, however, speakers also directly address others, who may include enemies, apostates, or strayers from the path. In Ps 52 and Ps 58, the speaker warns and even threatens these hearers with divine retribution. In Ps 4 and Ps 62, however, the speaker employs the rhetoric of identification, modeling the appropriate behavior for the hearers by describing personal experiences. Psalm 4 in particular displays persuasive strategies, including consideration of the potential objections of the hearers. In this talk, I focus on how the poetic language of Psalm 4 constitutes and intensifies the persuasive appeals. In the first part of the talk, I will review the resistence to the notion that public argument can take poetic form—a division of genre that dates to Aristotle. Second, I will review the issues raised by previous commentators on Psalm 4, laying out the contrasting views of Goldingay and Alter on one hand and Kselman, Barré, Lussier, Levine, and Raabe on the other. Next, I will show how Goldingay's and Alter's readings are supported and extended with a rhetorical reading that assumes a public setting. Finally, I will discuss the implications of viewing the psalms as public argument.

Focusing especially on John Chrysostom's Exegetical Homilies on the Gospel of John, this paper traces and interprets important ways in which Syriac versions of his texts were being used within the Syriac tradition. It follows some of the lines of reception from the original versions to their adaptation into such applications as homiliaries, polemical florilegia, doctrinal anthologies, and so forth. For this work, the paper draws on West Syrian, Melkite, and Eastern sources.

This paper proposes to investigate the Lamb of God in John 1:29 in the perspective of the Greek sacrificial idea. Although unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament never includes any actual sacrifice, the connotation of sacrifice is dominant. One of the famous examples is Jesus’ title “Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36), which is John’s unique description throughout the Bible. Scholars have struggled to define the meaning of “lamb,” but most of them have preferred the Paschal lamb. However, unlike the Lamb of God in John, the Paschal lamb does not remove sin. In addition, the scapegoat model cannot apply to the Lamb of God because the scapegoat is not killed, but just let go into the wilderness. Instead, Bultmann and Cullmann state that the Lamb of God is the sacrificial lamb which may include the symbol of the Paschal lamb and the Greek thysia sacrifice. The sacrificial idea of the Lamb of God in John 1:29 functions to link humans and God by dismissing sin of the world, rather than forgiving sin, which implies that John’s notion of sin was affinity to Greek miasma from which the concept of sin arises. Although the Jewish sacrifice and the Greek thysia sacrifice share some commonalities, their functions are different: While the Greek sacrifice emphasizes communion with the god, the Jewish one indicates that humans cannot be united with God, but just passively receive God’s mercy and forgiveness. The Jewish people might have known both the Jewish and Greek sacrifice at John’s time, but historical events pushed them closer to the Greek sacrifice: While the official Jewish sacrifice ended when the Jerusalem temple was totally destroyed by Roman army in 70 C.E., the thysia sacrifice continued until the fourth century, which might have influenced Hellenized Jews. Therefore, in the light of the Greek sacrifice, John 1:29 presents John’s understanding of sin and its role in promoting union with God.

The Greek word for the islanders of Malta in verse 2 of the passage is “hoi barbaroi (the barbarians)”. According to Luke Timothy Johnson, “The barbaroi were those who did not speak the Greek language, or Greek cultural customs. It is a designation with many uses, including simple alien status or cultural inferiority.” From the perspective of the Roman/Greek people, the Maltese are the barbarians because they were of Phoenician descent and spoke a Punic dialect. This is not just a story of olden days. Because of inability to speak English well or their indigenous life style, Islanders are still likely to be regarded as ‘barbaric’. Many Asians, Africans, or Latin Americans are in the same line with islanders in this point. Acts 28: 1-10 shows a primary division of social network of the first century which many Christians take it for granted. That is, Paul escorted by Roman soldiers is a benefactor or patron and the barbarians of Malta are clients even though they provide hospitality in a place of host. The former is a political, economic and cultural center and the latter is any number of margins politically, economically and culturally subordinated to the center. This binomial subsequently entails secondary binomials: civilized/uncivilized; advanced/primitive; cultured/barbarian; progressive/backward; developed/underdeveloped. My presentation will study this binomial, focusing on the Greek word of “hoi barbaroi”. It also criticizes Paul’s imagery as a Christian hero like Aeneas in Aeneid and as a god like Mr Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, one of classic colonial texts. Acts 28: 1-10 should be decolonized with the standpoint of the islanders who were supposed to serve the 276 shipwrecked people with warm hospitality. What if some of the islanders in the passage express their discomfort occurred after Paul and Roman soldiers entered their land? What if the islanders were forced to convert to Christianity in compensation for Paul’s healing? A stereotypical image of a native (islander) as mute, uneducated and hapless person should be broken up.

Bound up in the figure of the Leviathan are images of God as creator and God as king. It matters, therefore, what kind of a Leviathan God punishes in Isaiah 27:1, whether the Leviathan (and the Dragon) are enemies to God’s creative powers or royal authority. I propose to review primary and secondary literature on this issue and, while allowing for Leviathan’s double participation in both chaos-creation and chaos-kingship complexes, argue that the Leviathan in Isaiah 27:1 is primarily an enemy to God’s royal authority. I will thereby give support to understanding apocalyptic thought, in part, as a strong statement of God’s kingship.

In the study of trade in the Roman Empire, much attention has been given to long-distance, interregional trade. As the primary mode of transportation for this level of trade, water transport has been studied extensively. Somewhat less attention has been given to intraregional and short-haul trade; thus, its primary mode of transportation, land transport, has often been overlooked. The perceived difficulties and prohibitive costs of land transport have also contributed to this inattention. This paper seeks to establish the importance and frequency of land transport in the economy of the Roman Empire using the papyrological evidence of Egypt, including customs-house registers and various archives, as well as demographic data. This paper will also explore the implications of these findings for understanding the itinerant nature of the ministries of Jesus and the early Jesus movement. (For consideration for the first project, focusing on the major aspects of the economy in the ancient world.)

Is he making the mute speak? This paper brings the question to the fore, exploring how abnormal speech acts are presented in the Gospel of Mark and how othering of certain speaking subjects occurs. The paper examines such discourse at three levels. First, in Mark’s story, Jesus appears to interact with those linguistic others whose speech acts are described as cry, dumbness (alalos), impaired speech (mogilalos, or hollow speaking, moggilalos), speaking with foreign language, and even inner speech. I will explore how Jesus makes them speak or not speak. Second, the paper moves on to historicizing the Gospel writing by investigating language practices of ordinary people, particularly individuals marginalized because of their abnormal language practices under Roman imperial rule. Those who speak in these ways are labeled as “unclean,” strange, shameful, or irrational in both the biblical world and our contemporary society, where speaking “normally” is enforced and speaking “eloquently” acclaimed. Third, this paper attempts to unveil the assumption that New Testament texts should be unfailingly studied through the vantage point of Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. Public persuasion as a conscious part of the Western elite male’s legacy from ancient Greece to the present is not the universal form of speech. For instance, such a model of human interaction omits women’s experiences of communication in their daily lives. Moreover, such formal speeches do not embrace the slave culture’s interpersonal communicative in which forbidden information is transmitted. Although some scholars stress the oral and aural dimensions of Gospel transmission, such orality is still focused on the role of preserving the tradition or the dominant patterns of message (e.g., preaching about who Jesus is) and does not consider the audience an active party in the exchange of communication. Along these lines, this paper not only illuminates an unexamined dimension of speech practices in the ancient Mediterranean world but also assesses the impact of Western rhetorical theories and traditions in muting these voices.

The term, “born again” has been popular concept among many evangelical Christians and the story of Nicodemus has been loved by them. For biblical scholars, however, Nicodemus is not an easy character to like because of his ambiguity in the Gospel of Luke and the expression “born anothen” often gives them a headache because of its double/multiple meanings. The uncertainty of Nicodemus in the text formulates “a cognitive gap” that readers should fill up. Following Kwok Pui-lan’s recommendation that Asian Christians should use their own cultural inheritance to create a dialogue with biblical texts, I want to employ an image of a yangban, an elite group of the traditional Korean society, to understand the enigmatic figure, Nicodemus. I hope to compare Nicodemus with a typical Confucian ruling elite, Hong Pan-Seo, from a famous Korean folk tale, Hong Kil-tong Jeon, focusing on the socio-cultural environments that have shaped their viewpoints and behaviors. I also want to find out a literally meaning of “born anothen” in the passage and its socio-economic and geo-political function for the Johannine community by taking the Korean immigrants’ life context as a constructive dialogue partner. I will investigate the situations of the up-rooted people who are eager to recover their sense of belonging by building their own society in a marginal place where they often use “anti-language.” I hope to show that the idea of “born anothen” played an important role for the Johannine society in terms of formulating their communal identity and envisioning a new world they are looking forward to seeing and living in it.

This paper explores how the widely popular Millenium book series by Stieg Larsson can be used in a classroom setting in raising awareness about the multi-faceted phenomenon regarding violence against women. An intriguing plotline in the first novel concerns a murder mystery according to which a number of texts from the book of Leviticus are used as the foundation of a series of bizarre murders of women. This paper will show how particularly the first book, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its Swedish film version, can be used to cultivate sensitivity regarding the way women are portrayed in the book Leviticus which intersects with the gender representations and stereotypes regarding women in contemporary society. A class, though, that utilizes the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book/movie as point of departure will also need to attend to critical questions of whether the portrayal of violence against women in the book/movie version does not contribute to the very culture of violence in society it seeks to address; inadvertently transmitting the assumptions and contractions regarding rape common in the public mindset.

Intimate Partner Violence is a major problem world-wide. One in four women in the US experiences physical abuse in their life. World-wide the statistics reflect that one in three women experience IPV. This does not include sexual assault, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse. The statistics are staggering. However, clergy are listed as first respondents in this issue. Unfortunately, most seminaries have little or no training for students to prepare them to engage this issue in their communities. The Biblical texts have also been used by abusers and clergy to further oppress women and require that they stay in these oppressive relationships. Even more, our culture presents images that encourage females to “submit” to males without question. This “misogyny” also teachers men that oppressing women is acceptable. In my work as a minister and abuse trainer to those in abuse, prostitution, and sex trafficking; I have found that pastoral theology provides a powerful opportunity to provide care for these victims (as well as the oppressors), engage the community advocates, and help others reorient their views of themselves, God/Jesus, and the church. The Biblical texts also provide powerful opportunities for healing, when applied correctly to the lives of those in oppression and those abusing power.

Rachel Carson was not a biblical scholar, nor was biblical interpretation at the forefront of her work, but I contend that her response to traditional interpretations of the biblical creation story (human dominion over nature) with apocalyptic imagery was a cultural moment of biblical interpretation. Furthermore, Carson moved the discussion away from the traditional Imago Dei text to apocalyptic and prophetic tropes elsewhere in the biblical canon. While she did not cite the bible extensively in her work, she draws broadly on biblical themes, and ultimately I contend that she pushes us to reconsider the genre of the biblical creation story. Within her apocalyptic corrective of our vision of the world, Genesis 1 becomes a potentially prophetic text rather than a descriptive or normative one. Future engagements of environmentalists with the Bible could benefit greatly by giving greater attention to Carson and to her subtle biblical commentary.

Mary’s Magnificat is an enchanting text that has inspired composers, liberation theologians and countless of the faithful—and feminist writers also. But from the perspective of a gender analysis, it is also a shocking text for its incorporation into the words of a female character so much masculine ideology. Hardly a word of it fails to reflect male language, and it is ripe for disenchantment, which is, an exposure of its ideological bias. A gender analysis disenchants (1) its construction of the deity, as mighty, violent, holy, paternalistic and totalizing; (2) its construction of the speaker, as lowly, a servant, empty, fearful; and (3) its construction of others as proud, rich and powerful. Mary, though a sympathetic character in the narrative, is in the poem denied subjectivity; though she imagines herself being called ‘blessed’, she will be praised by future generations for no quality in herself but solely because she has become, unknowingly and without her own volition, a mother. She has succumbed to male ideology in seeing the only solution to oppression as the reversal of roles, putting the poor on thrones and perpetuating the structure of domination. A disenchantment is the proper task of critical scholarship—not so as to drive magic (enchantment) from the world or from our texts, but to know it for what it is.

Among the New Testament variants, He 2.9 represents a special case. The evidence choris theou is attested in so few manuscripts, that scholars often do not even mention it. Nevertheless, chariti theou and choris theou mean a so clear opposition of signification, that the variant remains intriguing; moreover, the minor reading is attested in patristic evidence. Barth Ehrman – after scholars such Harnack, Zuntz or Elliott – defended recently the authenticity of choris theou. This paper will argue that the file has to be largely reopen by using the methodology presented in my 2010 book (L’ange et la sueur de sang). I labelled this methodology «through the ancient readership». One can underline that Origen’s evidence on He 2.9 has never been fully considered. Indeed, Origen attests not least as ten times He 2.9, with both readings. Moreover, the work of the regretted Caroline P. Bammel on Vat. Pal. Gr. 204 and Athos Laura 184 B 64 allows one to get Origen’s scholia on He 2.9. New external testimonies have also to be considered in this file, such as P114 and P116. In conclusion, the paper will indicate as next tasks in this quite huge file the study of the Armenian or Syriac versions of the variant.

This paper will explore the representations of emotional and bodily pain in the Passion of Perpetua. In particular, it will focus on theological and sociological themes that are at stake in these representations of pain.

A review of the Hermeneia commentary on 1 Enoch, vol. 2, focusing on the Parables.

The description of Absalom’s death in 2 Samuel 18 has elicited much discussion regarding what precisely transpired in the tree and to whom the blame for this death should be assigned. Typically, the unusual details in 2 Sam 18:14--the three darts which Joab drives into Absalom’s chest, but which do not cause his immediate death--are understood as part of an elaborately detailed account which excuses not only David of any responsibility in Absalom’s death, but also exonerates Joab of wrongdoing on the king’s behalf. G.R. Driver, followed more recently by P.K. McCarter, argued that the three staffs or sticks were not something which impaled Absalom like a dart, but rather were large implements used to dislodge him from the tree. Examination of a) the semantic fields of the root TQ', the verb associated with these implements, and b) the specific syntactic sequences which correlate to each field, demonstrates that this interpretation cannot be correct. This paper will review the lexical and syntactic investigation of TQ? and will show that the three darts or sticks of 2 Sam 18:14 must violently enter the chest of Absalom. That they do not kill him is a remarkable—and perhaps unbelievable—thing, from the point of view of the lexical and syntactic parallels. Implications for the understanding of the greater David story will be explored.

In this paper I investigate the way in which John of Patmos reads, interprets, and rewrites older Scripture, especially the prophets. He does not use citation formulas, and the allusions are usually not marked. Like some other readers of the Jewish scriptures in his time and cultural contexts, he takes the classic prophets of Israel as addressing his own situation and hopes for the future. With powerful literary art, he adapts older images and stories in his composition of a revelatory narrative addressed to a new, challenging time.

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When the Akhmim fragment of the Gospel of Peter was discovered in the winter of 1887, it was immediately considered to represent a docetic christology. This was, of course, due to the testimony of Serapion as reported by Eusebius (HE VI 12.3-6). Although these early assumptions about the Gospel of Peter’s christology have since been called into question, aspects of the narrative which are key to understanding that christology have been ignored. Perhaps the most neglected feature in studies of the Gospel of Peter is the walking, talking cross. Confronted with this crux interpretum, scholars typically provide a list of parallels to animated crosses from later Christian texts (e.g., Epistula Apostolorum 16; Apocalypse of Peter [Ethiopic] 1; Apocalypse of Elijah 3.2-4; etc.). Re-examining these parallels, I argue that their united dependence on a particular interpretation of Matthew 24:27-31 – an exegetical move that is absent in the Gospel of Peter – precludes their use as an interpretive key for the Gospel of Peter. Next, I consider the walking, talking cross within the context of Greco-Roman, then Jewish and Christian traditions about inanimate objects with the power of speech; in particular, talking trees (e.g., Odyssey 14.327; Apollonius, Argonautica 4.579ff; Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.771-773; etc.). From this study I conclude that the Gospel of Peter presents this cross as Christ. By so doing, it represents a dualistic Christology in which the Lord can be “taken up” and left hanging on the cross, or in which he can both “surpass the heavens” and speak from the cross (Gos. Pet. 19, 21; 40-42).

This paper examines the discourse and practice of Roman forms of spectacle in provincial Greece, particularly focusing on representations of Greek gladiators. Elite Greek writers under the Roman Empire often wrote disparagingly of Roman forms of spectacle entertainment, expressing a vehement distaste for the bloodshed it entailed and the bloodlust it occasioned in the crowd. But this discomfort belied the popularity of gladiatorial competitions in many Greek cities. Despite ancient and modern rhetorical attempts to distinguish Greek athletics from Roman spectacle, recent studies of tombstones in Greece show that many Greek gladiators presented themselves as athletes. Drawing on technical athletic terms and using similar modes of self-presentation, these tombstones help to challenge older assumptions about Romanization, showing how Roman practices were transformed by contact with Greek institutions through the agency of Greeks themselves. They thus show us how provincial Greeks found ways to become Roman while staying Greek, to borrow from Greg Woolf. Attending to this blurring of the rhetoric of Greek athletics and Roman spectacle allows us to examine afresh the language of athletics and spectacle in Paul's letters, looking for how Paul himself may have participated in the same processes by which the stadium and the arena were negotiated in provincial Greece. The paper will look specifically at Paul's self-presentation in the Corinthian correspondence.

The descriptive character of Ps. 24:7-10 fueled the imagination of early Christians who raised the passage in a wide variety of contexts. Justin Martyr had cited it in debates with Jewish interlocutors as proof of Jesus’ identity as Messiah, against the Jewish view that it referred to an earthly king such as Solomon or Hezekiah. The periscope easily lent itself to messianic interpretation, particularly in conjunction with other key texts, especially Ps. 110, “The Lord said to my Lord.” But its citation as messianic prophecy also posed problems for early Christians. How could Jesus be described as “mighty in battle” when he was never a warrior? If it is about Christ’s return to heaven, why was the question asked, not to mention that it was repeated, “Who is this King of Glory?” From Justin to Jerome, the question required a response. Tertullian oddly used it to encourage martyrdom. But the passage was employed primarily theologically, especially when linked by common words and concepts to numerous psalms which reference exaltation, glorification and ascent, as well as NT verses of glorification in John, Philippians and 2 Corinthians. Initially interpreted as proof of the Ascension and Resurrection, soon the enthronement at the right hand of the Father and Christ’s bestowal of the Spirit were also construed from the passage. In an early hint of what was to come, Irenaeus pointed to it as proof of the equality of the Son with the Father. It would subsequently be employed by Hippolytus against Gnosticism and by Tertullian, Athanasius, and Basil against Marcion, Arius and Eunomius. As the focus of early Christians shifted, from defending their interpretation of Hebrew Bible texts against Jewish objections to the defense of orthodoxy against heresy, the interpretation of this passage evolved to reveal a tremendously rich and surprisingly flexible text.

The discussion will focus on the challenges of introducing students to the entire biblical canon in just one semester. We will explore the benefits, strategies and problems of taking a historically chronological vs. a canonical approach to the material. We will also discuss options for weaving a particular narrative thread through the course to help students organize and process the material and to help the instructor determine what to include and what to leave out (however painful to do so!)

Semantically, the notion of "fill, be full" includes a minimum of two participants or roles, "container" and "contents." In Biblical Hebrew, the Qal of the verb ml' that expresses this notion encodes either of the participants as subject or object (although "container" is more commonly the subject). Despite the fact that the grammars and lexica describe this as an alternation between transitive and intransitive, syntactically both options appear to be transitive. This odd state of affairs is best explained by means of the "Proto-Role entailments" described by D. R. Dowty (1991). This explanation also enables the solution of instances in which the assignment of subject/object is ambiguous, e.g., Hab 3:3.

The centuries-old view that the Biblical Hebrew verbal forms appear with two distinct vav conjunctions that not only signal relationships between clauses but affect the semantics of the verb forms themselves is quickly disappearing from grammars. However, this slow demise has created a pedagogical gap where previously the notion of “verbal sequences” served in tandem with the idea of two vav conjugations to describe the various inter-clausal relationships exhibited in Biblical Hebrew (e.g., conjunctive, conjunctive–sequential, disjunctive, epexegetical; see Waltke and O’Connor 1990: 650, who in turn cite Lambdin 1971: 162). In this paper I propose a new approach to the description of inter-clausal relationships and the temporal structure of discourse based on discourse representation theory and particularly Smith’s (2003) discourse modes. According to this approach, stretches of discourse in Biblical Hebrew can be classified according to the type of temporal interpretation they receive (atemporal expressions aside): succession, deixis, or anaphor. The syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors that determine these types of temporal interpretation are explained and illustrated with both realis (indicative) and irrealis (non-indicative) types of discourse.

During the turmoil of the Late Bronze age in ancient Egypt – a period that included mass migrations, invasions of Sea Peoples and Libyans, the loss of the Syria-Palestinian empire, and the decline of mineral and metal mines – Egyptians suffered under political decentralization and repeated economic collapse. In Thebes, elite Egyptians had to transition from well-endowed systems of monolithic political and religious institution, adapting to different strategies of rule, strategies that were based on decentralized power structures and a newly formulated reliance on local community. Ancient Egyptians likewise had to adapt systems of funerary arts creation and burial deposition to these unstable political and economic contexts. Theban funerary arts of the late Ramesside Period (and the subsequent Third Intermediate Period) reflect a variety of innovative and defensive burial strategies – particularly against the threat of tomb robbery and the desecration of human remains in the burial. The 20th Dynasty coffin in particular is a survival of a complex negotiation between the opposing forces of institutional instability and increasingly costly social expectations and demands. On the one hand, the extreme economic, political, and social instability of the late New Kingdom made the commission of funerary arts very expensive, but on the other hand, pervasive social pressures and increasingly fluid social circumstances demanded that elites spend large amounts of their income on funerary materials for display in burial ceremonies. The economic and political downturn of the 20th Dynasty helped to shape funerary practices of the Third Intermediate Period, and in many ways the 21st Dynasty burial assemblage is an extension of the socio-political adaptations being made in the latter part of the New Kingdom.

In my RBL Review of On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene I argued that Ernst Käsemann’s posthumously published work may be properly categorized as a radically Lutheran theology of liberation. In this paper, I will advance this line of thought by showing how his characteristically combative perspectives on revolution and violence fit within and contribute to this larger theological vision. The paper will begin with a study of the context of Käsemann’s work, focusing on his own retrospective account in “A Theological Review” (xii-xxi). Here I will address his complex relationship to pietism and Rudolf Bultmann as well as his account of the church struggle in his congregation during the Nazi period. Due to its relevance, this section will also discuss Käsemann’s writings on the 1977 murder of his daughter Elisabeth, who was killed in an Argentinean jail fourteen months after the military takeover. After a concise section on Käsemann’s approach to the Bible, the central section of the paper will then provide a close analysis of his specific comments on the related topics of revolution and violence. Rather than providing a blanket condemnation of revolution, Käsemann insists that in the context of exploitation “for good or ill Christians must take the side of the revolutionaries because they are called to serve humankind and not the partisans of those who cry for order” (26). In the same vein, he contends that “Nothing at all should be said of nonviolence. Such is always ideology, since there never or nowhere is or has been a place free of violence” (129). Through an investigation of such claims and Käsemann’s attempt to ground and develop them in relation to the Bible, the paper aims to contribute to the section’s theme of “the Bible and revolutions”.

The identity of Philo’s Egyptian Jewish ascetics, the Therapeutai, is a perennial conundrum in Philonic scholarship, from the 19th century scholarship that saw in the Therapeutai a description of a community of Early Christians taking at face value Eusebiu’s testimony in Ecclesiastical History ii.17 to the profuse literature that followed the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which gave the Therapeutai an Essene-esque identity. Without getting into the merit of the fictive or true character of the community of the Mareotic Lake, this paper contends that Philo’s description of the Therapeutai, ethnographic or not, may have functioned according to certain tropes familiar to ancient tractates on the ideal Pythagorean life. Following the literary and philosophical picture of the Pythagorean koinonía extant principally in Iamblichus’ De Vita Pythagorica and Porphyry’s Vita Pythagorae, the paper will demonstrate how the Pythagorean tropes of arithmology, vegetarian dietary enkrateia, spiritual askesis of quietude, the active participation of women in the philosophical community and the Pythagorean ideal of radical friendship through communal sharing, all figure in Philo’s depiction of the Jewish monastic community. This paper also argues that Philo intended to portray his Egyptian Jewish community in a Pythagorean light and that such Pythagorizing could well be read alongside the Alexandrian thinker’s efforts to translate Judaism into a cosmopolitan and Hellenistic context – just as his transfiguration of Moses into a divine Sólon in Vita Mosis, the ascription of the Jewish Law to a code that transcends its nationalistic ties reaching the status of Law of Nature, or his recognition of the Decalogue as a means of attaining the ideal of apatheia from the emotions in De Decalogo. If the intention behind Philo’s project of cultural translation was driven by his eagerness to divest Judaism from all its potential parochialism, then one may raise the question of the appropriateness of transforming the Jewish community of the Mareotic Lake into a Pythagorean heitaría. Given the common opinion by the first century CE that the Pythagorean heitaría was sectarian and obtrusive, the paper wishes to discuss whether Philo’s efforts to translate Judaism into a more palatable, cosmopolitan parlance in his De Vita Contemplativa may have backfired.

Recent interpreters have identified a number of stylistic and thematic parallels between Isa 10:5–15 and Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. These parallels add realism to Isaiah’s depiction of an unnamed Assyrian king, even as the prophet ironically employs them to undercut the imperialistic claims of Assyrian ideology. At a crucial point, however, the oracle departs from the typical self-presentation of Assyrian rulers. In vv. 10–11, the king haughtily boasts that the conquest of Jerusalem will pose no difficulty because he has already defeated kingdoms with more numerous images than Jerusalem and Samaria, and Samaria’s idols proved powerless to thwart his invasion. Notably, these verses use multiple terms for “idols” (’lyl, psyl, ‘?b) but avoid the term “gods” (’lhym). In Assyrian inscriptions, by contrast, the deities of enemy nations are generally described with ostensible respect and usually referred to as “gods” (ilani), even in contexts in which divine images are clearly meant. Two conclusions may be drawn from this “non-parallel.” First, Isaiah avoids the usual language of Neo-Assyrian inscriptions to amplify the hubris of the king and make him guilty of blasphemy, thus furthering the rhetorical aims of the oracle. Second, the language of idolatry here and elsewhere in First Isaiah—which need not derive from later, anti-idol polemics, as some scholars have proposed—arises from Isaiah’s developing view of YHWH as the supreme universal deity, surpassing Aššur and all other foreign deities. In Isa 10:10–11, then, the prophet projects his own view of foreign deities upon the Assyrian king. Careful consideration of both the parallels and non-parallels between First Isaiah and its Assyrian intertexts makes possible a richer understanding of the attitude toward Assyria and reception of Assyrian propaganda in ancient Judah.

The neurological potential for experiencing alternate states of consciousness (ASCs) is supported by the anthropological record which shows that a pattern of such practices can be found across cultural divides. The designation for this phenomenon is frequently designated shamanism. Therefore, the term shaman in the first instance evokes the comparative material that enriches our historical and sociological imagination. Secondly, by definition a shaman is a religious functionary or entrepreneur who, based on ASCs, performs certain functions to the benefit of the community. The term ASC is not only a descriptive but also an explanatory one; it provides interpretive power to understand, analyse and explain the shamanic pattern. Shantz cautions us that Paul was not a shaman. But we should not hesitate, the anthropologist Ioan Lewis says, to call a shaman a shaman, because the term truly is a cross-cultural tool that, in the words of Jonathan Z Smith, can be used for "re-visioning phenomena as our data in order to solve our problems". Without explicitly using the label, that is what Shantz does in her book, Paul in ecstasy. Comparative material from anthropological research is supplemented by insights from the neurosciences in order to re-vision (describe, analyse and explain) Paul's ecstatic experiences. Perhaps shaman is the best term available for such a re-visioning.

In this paper, I take as a starting point the observation of structural similarities in the narratives and genealogies of Adam and Cain in Genesis--how both move from favored position to banishment from God’s presence. After comparing the stories, I survey ancient and modern commentary on the relationship between the accounts. I then turn to the analogous material found in the LDS Book of Moses, comparing the narratives of Adam and Cain there with each other and with the Hebrew Bible. I conclude that in the LDS context one finds the homologies between Adam and Cain drawn differently and, more important, structured such that they map onto early LDS theology in ways unnoticed until now.

In 1995 Emanuel Tov and I published the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts, including 4Q365 (DJD XIII). In that publication we separated out five fragments originally included by John Strugnell as belonging to 4Q365, renaming them 4Q365a and arguing that they did not belong to the larger manuscript. Since that publication there has been debate about that decision, centering mainly on the fact that the five fragments were copied by the same scribe who copied 4Q365. In this paper I will consider those debates and reconsider whether or not the five fragments of 4Q365a should be reintegrated into 4Q365.

The Life of Antony of Athanasius of Alexandria is the most influential hagiographical text in the Christian tradition. In this paper I suggest that there are some points in common between the VA and Libanius’ Autobiography that deserve to be put into relief: the sophist may have taken the Christian life in some account when he composed in 374 the first part of his work. After reading all the orations and letters of Libanius, I became aware that he was on friendly terms with several Christian families. One of his best friends was Olympius 3 who was not a pagan, as scholars have maintained so far, but Christian. His brother was Evagrius 6 who was a student of Libanius, translated the Greek Vita into Latin, and later became bishop of Antioch. In this way the sophist may have come into contact with the Vita. Here I am going to highlight the points in Or. 1 that suggest that Libanius may have taken up Antony’s challenge. At age fifteen young Libanius had a quasi-conversion to rhetoric and underwent a radical transformation. The fame of his labors started to spread far and wide. He traveled in a vain quest for a perfect teacher. He refused to marry and developed “ascetic” character traits, such as indifference to food and sleep and compulsive work. Many students started to follow him. He had fierce competitors who attacked him with calumnies and accusations of magic but he prevailed and his orations became models for everyone to follow. Antony had challenged the pagan philosophers saying that their teaching was perishing while Christian teaching flourished. Libanius may have wanted to say a word or two. I think it is important to bring the Autobiography within the context of the "Holy Man Life."

This paper explores the transformation of an Abba-cry to the Lord's prayer and whether the origins of the prayer go back to the historical Jesus.

This paper questions the assumption that the rhetoric of the book of Deuteronomy is aimed against either the Neo-Assyrian empire or its successor, the Neo-Babylonian empire. This scholarly commonplace derives both from the traditional dating of the book to the seventh century, during which the Neo-Assyrian empire held sway over the Levant, and the structural similarities between the book and ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, particularly those of Esarhaddon. In contrast to this consensus, however, this paper argues that geographic indicators in the book point instead to a primary concern with the nations and cultures of the southern Levant. These indicators include the provisions concerning child sacrifice and mourning rituals as well as the concentration of attention on non-Yahwistic deities most plausibly identified among the West Semitic pantheon. Duly attended to, these indicators have significant implications for our understanding of the geographic and cultural orientation of the book as well as the book’s origins and date.

The Deuteronomistic History portrays Josiah as a reforming king who benefited from the recent decline of the Assyrian Empire. Many of these "reforms" are similar to those carried out in decolonized countries of the modern era. This paper will examine a cross-cultural selection of postcolonial political reforms combined with postcolonial political theory in an attempt to contextualize Josiah's social and political reforms as an attempt to construct a new Israelite identity similar to those that occur in recently decolonized nations.

Modern brain imaging technology gives us access to brain function and potentially allows us to understand mystical states of consciousness better. In the first part of my paper, I will briefly consider what contributions these technologies have already made; what further contributions they might make; and the methodological challenge of applying this information to the mystical experiences of long dead people. In the second part of my paper, I will address the question of how religious experience is connected to other aspects of religiosity. In particular, I will propose that a religious movement gains evidence for its core beliefs from some typical form of religious experience that requires the activation of particular brain areas. This hypothesis allows for predictions about the typical operations, group structure, and theological views of the movement. In the final part of my paper, I will consider how the hypothesis helps us understand ancient Jewish and Christian mysticism.

Current methods and conclusions of Ancient Near Eastern study relevant to Levantine and "biblical" history of the early Iron Age.

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Throughout the fourth century, Greek reflection on the person of Christ and his decisive role as Savior in human history was centered, to a large extent, on thought about the Son’s role within the eternal being of God: how does he pre-exist? what is his relationship with creation, especially with humanity? how does that role alter our understanding of what and who God is? It was really not until the 360s that Christological controversy began to widen to include direct reflection on the role and person of the Holy Spirit, and so lead to an explicitly Trinitarian understanding of God. In his Letters to Sarapion of Thmuis, for instance, Athanasius begins to articulate the role of the Spirit in identifying the believer with the life-giving work of Christ, and so concludes the Spirit must himself/itself be a divine hypostasis. Basil of Caesaraea, too, sees the distinct divine identity of the Holy Spirit as required by a right view of the divinity of Christ. Gregory of Nazianzus, in Oration 31, acknowledges that our knowledge of the Spirit’s identity and work is less clearly articulated in Scripture than that of the Son, but must be read from the Church’s present experience of sharing new life in Christ. Gregory of Nyssa, in his Antirrhetikos against Apollinarius, seems to suggest that Apollinarius’s way of conceiving Christ may be a new manifestation of a defective “Spirit Christology” of pre-Nicene times, and so that a proper understanding of Christ may require a new and deeper recognition of the Spirit as a distinct divine hypostasis. And one of Cyril of Alexandria’s central reasons for emphasizing the divine identity of the human Jesus is his conviction that Jesus is the first to receive the Spirit into his human flesh, and that he thus – as enfleshed Son of God - can give the Spirit “without measure” to his brothers and sisters. In this paper, I hope to explore briefly these developing connection of Spirit and Christ, at a crucial time for the formation of the Christian theological tradition.

The goal of this paper is to examine Mahatma Gandhi’s commentary on the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) in its historical setting. Gandhi (1869-1948), the single most significant figure in the Indian independence movement, was an admirer of and frequent commentator on texts of the New Testament, even as a committed Hindu. In the summer of 1920, Gandhi was locked in debate with colleagues on the value of satyagraha (non-violent resistance), and in this setting he chose to support his views by characterizing Luke’s parable of the prodigal son. A close study of the parable and Gandhi’s commentary on it helps reveal the intriguing effects of his historical setting on his interpretation of the parable and other Christian literature. It also reminds us of the important role which Christian literature played in India's anti-colonial struggle.

The paper will deal with the lexical presentation of lexemes in terms of actual definition in association with formal bilingual equivalence. It will examine the problem of contextual consideration in determining the meaning of a term. It will explore the need of awareness of the role that synonyms, antonyms, and metonymy play in conveying meaning in a given text. It will take account of problems generated by endeavor to relate the meaning of an ancient text to the modern interpreter’s world.

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Matthew and Luke inherited a vast array of Jesus traditions, many of which proved problematic for the evangelists’ narrative endeavors near the end of the first century. Challenging traditions clustered around sensitive nodes such as Jesus’ origins (legitimacy of birth and lineage), his ties to John the Baptist (status issues), and his relationship with disciples, most notably with Simon Peter (questions regarding transfer of authority to followers). At each of these neuralgic points one detects the stress of traditions in conflict. How then do Matthew and Luke deal with these troubling traditions? And what are we to make of differences in the evangelists’ treatments of them? Gospel scholars have addressed these issues almost exclusively from the perspective of redaction criticism, a methodology that can reveal some significant aspects of the evangelists’ projects (most notably their theological tendencies), but that also conceals many other interpretive possibilities. Redactional method, for example, is of little help when it comes to interpreting Lukan and Matthean birth narratives. I propose that we employ literary and rhetorical tools to define and compare how Matthew and Luke treat the troubling traditions that come down to them. Applying the categories of evasion, deflection, and confrontation to salient material in the birth narratives, the baptism of Jesus by John, and Peter’s confession and denial, reveals distinctive rhetorical tendencies. For example, Luke is much more apt to evade, avoid, deflect, or deny the problematic, whereas Matthew’s instinct is to confront, engage, argue, and attack. One goal of this paper will be to identify Greco-Roman rhetorical resources (in the handbooks and progymnastic exercises) that may have aided and influenced Matthew and Luke in handling the difficult traditions that came down to them. Another objective is to determine how these ways of dealing with difficult issues illuminate our understanding of the evangelists’ audiences and overall purposes in mounting their literary projects.

Prophetic discourse defaults on the use of female sexuality to infer the divine-human relationship. This trope usually divides female sexuality between that which is acceptable and that which is abhorrent. More frequently, as in a book like Jeremiah, the abhorrent variety appears. Male sexuality hardly surfaces in prophetic discourse on the divine-human relationship. The explanatory note on the prophetic action of the loincloth in Jer 13:11 uses male genitalia in a metaphoric way to portray a desirable human-divine relationship. This unequal relationship is constructed so as to attract the houses of Israel and Judah who ultimately refuse the relationship. The language of this verse that uses male sexuality is marked by the absence of the usual divine vitriol for being spurned and suggests a level of vulnerability not seen in other metaphoric portrayals of the divine-human relationship. Additionally, the verse contains an abundance of male pronouns and references suggesting a same gender pairing in the divine-human relationship and in the uniqueness of the portrayal of the divine-human relationship here. This paper explores the construction of the divine-human relationship in this verse that uses male sexuality. This exploration takes place from the perspective of a same-gender relationship and contrasts the same-gender pairing with the male-female relationships normally used in the book of Jeremiah.

Mystical experience is a black box to non-practitioners. Mystics engage in certain practices (prayer, rituals, etc.), which function as inputs; they have experiences inaccessible to anyone else (the black box); and, at least often, they give accounts of those experiences, which functions as the output. The experiences of ancient mystics are doubly inaccessible, since the practitioners are all dead and we are left only with such accounts of their experiences as have survived the vicissitudes of time. Our information for ancient mysticism comes from written instructions for engaging in mystical praxis; actual accounts of specific visionary experiences; fictional accounts of such experiences (which may nevertheless describe real praxis); and, in rare cases, architecture or artifacts tied to such rites. Such evidence can studied with the normal array of historical critical methods, but also by means of phenomenological comparison with other accounts of premodern esoteric rites and anthropological work with modern shamans and visionaries. This paper investigates how ritual praxis can contribute to our understanding of ancient Jewish and Christian mystical experience, drawing on a range of primary evidence from antiquity to the modern era and exploring the methodologies that can help us extract the maximum amount of of information from that evidence.

Approaches to Deuteronomy 23, with reference to Benedictine spirituality.

Part of a book-length study of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and its history of reception, this paper focuses on the way that cultural memories of a young Jesus were hotly contested in late ancient Jewish polemics and early Christian scribal practice. The argument of my paper will be organized in two parts. First, I will discuss the negative portrayal of Jesus’ childhood in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, and in the early medieval text, Toledot Yeshu ("History of Jesus"). Drawing on earlier gospel traditions and the polemical work of the second-century Greek philosopher Celsus, these rabbinic sources pointedly called into question the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth and accused him of practicing the magical arts from an early age. Here, I analyze this body of literature as part of the wider textual reception of the infancy gospel stories—as a form of (counter)cultural memory practice that sought to subvert contrasting Christian claims about the divine origins and miraculous deeds of the Christ child. Second, I will argue that the early Christian scribal reception of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was crucially framed by attempts to defend Jesus against the same accusations raised by rabbinic Jewish authors. By examining the manuscript record—in particular, the transmission of the infancy gospel in its multiple Greek, Latin, and Syriac versions—I will show how Christian copyists and translators amended (and sometimes censored) the stories in order to address such apologetic concerns. In this way, editorial work performed by anonymous scribes may itself be understood as a “counter-countercultural” memory practice—a means by which Jesus’ childhood was both constructively and selectively remembered, and by which the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was reclaimed for the consumption of Christian readers.

Louis H. Feldman notes that Josephus displays a positive view of the exile in some texts and a negative view in others. He concludes that Josephus’ ambiguity on exile and his relative silence on the future restoration of Jerusalem should be attributed “to the various audiences that he is addressing.” I will argue that Antiquities 4.305-314 reflects a Deuteronomic view of history in which Josephus indicates that the Jewish people are still under the blessings and curses of Deut 27-28. However, Josephus presents this view subtly so that the final element of the Deuteronomic scheme would not sound seditious to Roman readers. While Josephus proposes that the punishment inherent in the curses for his generation occurred in the destruction of the temple and a return to slavery under Roman rule, he makes several changes to the biblical account of Deut 27-28. In 4.307, Josephus records that Moses, not the people, “engraved the blessings and the curses [rather than “all the words of the law”] in order that their lesson would never cease.” In 4.312-13, Josephus edits the biblical description of the curses and inserts that Moses foretold the specific evils that the people would experience if they transgressed the law. Also, Josephus strategically places Moses’ prediction that the temple would be burned due to transgressions at the conclusion of his discussion of the Deuteronomic blessings and curses. The fact that Josephus has Moses voice a promise of recurring restoration in 4.314 indicates that Josephus did propose that the people were still living under the Deuteronomic scheme of history. This interpretation correlates well with 1.14-15 in which Josephus states that the main thing to be learned from Israel’s history is that prosperity comes to those who do not transgress the Mosaic law, but calamity comes to those who commit apostasy.

The notion of progressive revelation was widely employed by nineteenth-century biblical interpreters - both Jewish and Christian. This paper will study its use by Grace Aquilar, a Jewish author who advocated for Jews at a time in England when they were discriminated against in many areas. Aquilar used the notion to explain development within the Hebrew Bible. Her ideas will be compared with Clara Lucas Balfour's, an evangelical Christian who was a prolific writer and an activist in the temperance movement. Balfour contrasted the more primitive religion of the Old Testament with the more enlightened faith of the New Testament. This comparison will include consideration of their place in the history of biblical interpretation as well as the context of women's lives in Victorian England.

In this contribution, I investigate how the Joban poet deploys the conceptual metaphor THE BODY IS A CONTAINER as well as related containment metaphors to express enmity and opposition. By analysing several key texts (mainly Job 16:9-14 and 19:6-12), I argue that there are five subsidiary metaphorical conceptualisations that are based on the aforementioned conceptual metaphor. The first, and for our purposes most significant, conceptual metaphor is based on the idea that skin is the boundary of the container that constitutes the body. Job explains how his skin is broken, pierced, and breached; indeed, his body is torn to pieces. This conceptual metaphor I term ENMITY IS THE BREAKING OF A BOUNDARY (see, for instance, Job 16:12-14). Contrariwise, the protagonist also describes how he is physically locked in, walled up and hemmed in by his enemies. Hence, the second conceptual metaphor to be discussed is ENMITY IS THE SETTING OF A BOUNDARY (among many other examples, see Job 3:23; 19:8.12). Analysis of the prologue and the dialogues reveals three more metaphorical conceptualisations related to the body: ILLNESS IS THE FADING OF BODILY BOUNDARIES (Job 2:7; 7:5; 18:13; 19:26; 30:30), PROTECTION IS THE MAINTAINING OF A BOUNDARY (Job 1:10) and ENMITY IS THE EXTRACTION OF AN INDIVIDUAL FROM A SAFE, DELIMITED CONTEXT (Job 16:11; 19:10). The body is the object and subject of containment, viz. it is both container and contained and, consequently, the correlation between the abovementioned metaphors is significant. The value of this study lies in the insight conceptual metaphors provide in the thought world of the Book of Job. That analysis serves to see the structure in the book’s chaotic plethora of images. Hence, these results illustrate the significance of Conceptual Metaphor Theory for the exegesis of both Job and other texts of lament, such as those found in the Psalms.

This article examines how early Christian authors used the ancient economic classification of slave and master as metaphors in their invective rhetorical discourses, and what the effect thereof was in the years 200-400 A.D. A brief discussion of the dynamics of ancient invective is provided, followed by a listing and discussion of the various motifs exhibited in these metaphors, such as: a) slaves of sin/vice in general; b) slaves of lust; c) slaves of money/greed; d) slaves of vainglory and honour; e) slaves of the belly; etc. These metaphors illustrate how the early Christians borrowed and reinvented various categories of vices from classical Graeco-Roman invective discourse, towards the construction of a new social reality with new power-dynamics, relying heavily on a polarization between rich and poor on the one hand, and on the other, regulating and controlling bodies and sexualities of group-participants. It proves Michel Foucault’s point that ‘discourses’ are rhetorical ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.’ These slave-/master-metaphors, as invective rhetoric, were powerful and popular discourses which constructed a vision of the world as it is supposed to be, and due to their frequency over two centuries, were powerful rhetorical tools which convinced many of the validity and reality of that vision.

I am not a "biblical translator" by training or trade, but I have been "translating the psalms" for over twenty years--in lecture and sermon preparations, in the classroom with students, and for various academic presentations. Each of these undertakings has been interesting, but ephemeral. In them, I could "play" (borrowing Riceourean language) with the text; try out various approaches to the text; change my mind and alter a translation. But during the past seven years, I have worked on two projects that have required a more "committed" approach to my translation work--the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans) and The Voice Biblical Project (Thomas Nelson). The NICOT project required me to translate the psalms and then provide interpretative and theological reflections on each of them. The General Editor's Preface to the series describes its audience as "scholars, pastors, and serious Bible students" who seek a rigorous examination of the text that respects the text's sacred character. As I translated the psalms, a number of issues emerged: (1) translating into English various Hebrew words; (2) representing the purposeful repetition of Hebrew sounds, verbal roots, and words and phrases; (3) maintaining the word order of much of Hebrew poetry; and (4) rendering into English the powerful concrete imagery of the Hebrew language. The Voice project demanded a different approach to the text. It is touted as "a scripture project to rediscover the story of the Bible." The editors enlisted artists (poets, painters, songwriters, etc.), who had, for the most part, no theological training, to translate the text. Their "translations" were then given to biblical consultants like me, who reviewed the "translations" for accuracy in maintaining the "spirit and intent" of the text. I worked on a number of the psalms for the project and will discuss what I encountered in terms of the "semantic borders" of translation. In addition, "The Voice" editors asked me to pick up the translation and commentary on the book of Qoheleth, since their original "artist author" bowed out of the assignment, apparently throwing his hands up in confusion somewhere around chapter 7. I have attempted to render Qoheleth into language that allows the reader to "rediscover the story of the Bible." Unlike the other authors of the project, however, I elected to begin with the Hebrew text (rather than the prescribed New International Version)and render a translation that is artistic (as artistic as a nerdy biblical scholar can be), but true to the Hebrew text. In these three undertakings, I have learned some valuable lessons in the "art" of biblical translation. I would appreciate being granted a session at the November meeting to present my findings and receive valuable feedback from the gathered members.

This paper will reexamine the Ophite Diagram presented by Origen in his treatise against Celsus (6.21-40). I will make a detailed reading of the text and argue that the Diagram is exactly what Celsus and Origen claimed it was, a map of the soul’s journey through the planets. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the prayers correlate to a Neopythagorean ascent pattern. I will conclude with the argument that Origen has preserved for us a piece of an Ophite initiatory handbook, that is the map, prayers and seals used in the intermediate initiatory rite when the soul practiced the death journey through the heavenly realms.

In “Winnicott’s Squiggle Game and Biblical Interpretation”, Ralph Underwood proffers the squiggle game as an analogy for the hermeneutical process, and reminds us of the dynamic and developmental potential inherent in the ‘transitional space’ between the biblical text and the reader/interpreter. This paper seeks to explore other aspects of DW Winnicott’s theories on playing-and-reality, to see what insight they might offer those of us engaged in biblical interpretation. Specifically, the paper will examine Winnicott’s notion of the “environment mother” and Winnicott’s notes on the psychopathology of play, as we ask the question: “What does biblical criticism require in order to be psychologically healthy?”

A strikingly longer version of the account of Saul’s deliverance of Jabesh-gilead was found in 4QSama, and subsequently included in the NRSV. This discovery was significant in underscoring the textual pluriformity of the Hebrew Bible in Second Temple times. The early scholarship on this text-critical discovery, however, was overly polarized, tending to judge in terms of authenticity or inauthenticity. My paper takes its cue from the recent methodological shift in textual criticism, which rejects the traditional sharp distinction between the composition history of book and the subsequent textual variants in that book. Studying composition and transmission together, I examine the plus in 4QSama from a literary-critical perspective. I argue that the account of Saul’s deliverance of Jabesh-gilead went through at least four stages in its literary development. I make my case by means of close comparison of the extant versions (LXX, MT, 4QSama, and Josephus), using the evidence to show that through the process of editing and transmission this narrative evolved from a local tale about the relationship between Jabesh-gilead and Gibeah to one with a pan-Israelite perspective. The argument is strengthened by means of a comparison with editing techniques observable in the redaction of Judges. Ultimately, I argue that the pluriformity of textual traditions in the Second Temple period can provide scholars with a window on the formation and editing of the Deuteronomistic History itself.

The challenges to digitizing manuscripts in Ethiopia are Legion. Delamarter has led several projects to digitize manuscripts there: 1) the digitization of around 6,700 Manuscripts and Archives of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (with support from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme [EAP], the Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library [HMML], and the Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project [EMIP]); 2) around 1,000 manuscripts from microfilms in Ethiopia; 3) the collection of 54 manuscripts from the Mekane Yesus Seminary Library in Addis Ababa; 4) the collection of about 97 manuscripts from the Capuchin Friary in Asko; 5) about 600 manuscripts in the collections of churches and monasteries; and 6) another 100 owned by dealers in Addis Ababa. Surrounding all of these institutions and their collections are a set of dynamics that affect access. Delamarter will contribute to a panel of presenters who conduct similar projects in Ethiopia.

As used in contemporary scholarship, the "Eusebian alliance" refers to that ad hoc group of eastern bishops and theologians initially formed around the figures of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea that lasted from c. 320 to c. 355. Two of the most significant Eusebian theologians are Asterius the Sophist and Eusebius of Caesarea himself. One of the features of an ecclesiastical alliance, as I have argued elsewhere, is the activity of mutual defense and critique. In this communication, I explore to what extent Eusebius defended and critiqued the views of Asterius in his anti-Marcellan works (Contra Marcellum and De ecclesiastica theologia). Asterius was one of the principle targets of Marcellus, and so Eusebius’ anti-Marcellan works can in some sense be construed as writings pro Asterio. By determining the contours of the theological relationship between Asterius and Eusebius, not only do we see evidence for development within the Eusebian tradition, but also we come away with a new appreciation for the crucial role played by Eusebius of Caesarea in the foundation and transmission of an influential theological culture.

This paper seeks to advance previous studies on Philo’s understanding of the Sabbath by focusing on exegetical underpinnings of his description of the Sabbath in De Decalogo and De Specialbus Legibus. While others have explored how philosophical ideas and social factors influenced Philo's discussion of the Sabbath, I argue that many elements of his exposition of the Sabbath may also stem from a careful reading of the text and traditions of interpretation, reflecting possible interpretations of the LXX in line with interpretative trajectories appearing in the LXX translation of the Pentateuch. For example, there may be textual reasons or justifications for viewing the Sabbath as one of ten feasts, the head of the feasts, a day for the people to gather, a time for self-examination, a command to work for six days, and a time of equality. Rather than highlighting the universal rationale of the Sabbath command of Exod 20:8-11 over the covenantal grounding of the Sabbath in Deut 5:12-15 for philosophical or social reasons, it thus appears that Philo's discussion is an attempt to interpret and integrate these two traditions, as he still maintains the special relationship of the Sabbath to the Jewish people while also noting its universal significance. Therefore, in addition to illustrating the way that one Jew adapted the Sabbath command in light of the intellectual and social realities in which he lived, Philo's explanation of the Sabbath also shows the way that one sought to understand traditions of the Sabbath in the Pentateuch that modern scholars view as coming from different sources.

The copying and collecting of apocalyptic and visionary texts constituted a minor industry in 4th-cen. Egypt. Codex Five of the Nag Hammadi Codices, for example, assembles a variety of apocalyptic writings, ostensibly to gather into one place information on the fate of the soul at death; Codex Two also can be read as a collection of earlier texts that could be pressed into service for afterlife instruction. How would members of a 4th-cen. monastic community have understood 200 year-old writings on the post-mortem trial? How would these “guides” to the afterlife have accorded with the process of “Christianizing” death in Late Antique Egypt? What are the connections and disjunctions between these two types of cultural products concerning post-mortem instruction? Addressing archeological excavations of late antique tomb sites and their inventories, the "logic" of codicological composition, and any extant evidence of Christian mortuary ritual, this paper will explore an under-studied and under-theorized aspect of late Egyptian “Gnostic” praxis.

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This paper presents the most salient results of a two-month project of reading Galatians alongside Tamil and Sinhalese Christians in Sri Lanka, chiefly in the context of Christian theological education. These participants used Galatians as a lens by which to reflect on the particular challenges of their context and through which to look for resources to address those challenges. The paper will particularly address the following topics that emerged from the conversations: (1) Paul's autobiographical narrative and "salvation-historical" narratives, and the experience of converts to Christianity from Buddhism and Hinduism; (2) Paul's model of authority and issues of authority in Sri Lankan churches; (3) Paul's vision for oneness in Christ and divisions within Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Christianity; (4) Neocolonial influences in the Sri Lankan churches as hindrances to attaining Paul's vision for community; (5) Paul and Buddha on desire as "problem" and its remedy. The procedure followed in this experiment, which involved contextual reading, engagement in cross-cultural and cross-temporal reading (i.e., contemporary-historical exegesis), and engagement with readings from other social locations, suggests the positive fruits of integrating social-location and traditional hermeneutics for critical reflection on a text and on the challenges of one's own social location.

In the early 1960s, Arnaldo Momigliano argued that Eusebius composed his Ecclesiastical History [HE] partly on the model of Greek philosophical (or intellectual) biography. Since then some scholars have noted Eusebius’ reproduction of this genre (Carotenuto, Tradizione e Innovazione nella Historia Ecclesiastica di Eusebio di Cesarea (2001); Markschies, Origines und seine Erbe (2007)); but none has pursued Momigliano’s insight at length. This paper does so by isolating the elements of Eusebius’ profiles of “all who, without writing or in written works, engaged with the divine logos” (HE 1.1.1) and showing how and why they serve to construct an “intellectual” heritage for Christianity. Previous intellectual biographers such as Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, and Porphyry provided Eusebius with the rubrics he used to profile intellectuals. In this paper, I highlight Eusebius’ location of intellectuals in relationships with masters and students; catalogues of written works; anecdotes that illustrate intellectual activity; and a vocabulary of encomiastic rhetoric that proclaimed excellence in the intellectual field. The interweaving and repetition of such traits in profiles throughout books 2 through 8 of the HE constructed a Christian Hochkultur in the form of a uniform intellectual heritage for Christianity (including “heretical” but still profiled Christians such as Tatian, and purportedly admiring Jewish authors Philo and Josephus). Eusebius aimed these profiles at three audiences. For the Christian community, he created a canon of ecclesiastical writers to maintain notoriety in Christian memory and serve as exemplars for Christian modes of living. For contemporary intellectuals, he provided the Christian ethnos with the intellectual credentials to compete the Greek philosophical school whose literary genre he appropriated. And for other non-Christian elites, a Christianity defined by its geistige Lebensweise (tropos) would appear worthy of inclusion in an empire-wide elite that valued a philosophical way of life as a mark of prestige.

Recently several scholars in articles and conference presentations see the Mesopotamian ritual for inducting a cult image (Mis Pî KA.LU.U3.DA) as the source on which the creation (and installation) of the salam in Gen. 2:7–8 has been constructed. Since the previous anthropogony in Gen. 1:26 refers to statues expresso verbo and since Gen. 2:7–8 seemingly recalls the making and installation of a figurine, the assumption of a base in Mis Pî would seem warranted. Furthermore, Atra-hasis (inuma ilu awilum) like Gen 2:7 had portrayed anthropogenesis as a divine molding from earth/clay (I 210–226). This paper will examine the possible Mesopotamian background for Gen 2:7–8. A statue or figurine in the ancient Near East was made from different materials and for widely divergent functions, for which each was often consecrated by a specific ritual. Is the Mis Pî KA.LU.U3.DA ritual the best schema within which to understand Gen 2:7-8?

A ritual can be viewed as a test, trial, contest or examination, involving both winners and losers (Howe 2000:76). This study has selected two exempla – first-century Corinth and the present-day denomination of the Reformed Congregations in The Netherlands – that have in common the performing of the ‘Lord’s supper’ (1 Cor 11:20). More specifically, the exempla share the realisation that performing this meal involves risk – that the ritual can in fact fail. The warning of the apostle Paul to the Corinthian believers not to eat and drink in an unworthy manner lest they eat and drink judgment on themselves (1 Cor 11:27–29) points to the possibility of some kind of flawed or ‘infelicitous’ performance, with dire consequences for the performers involved in this ritual infelicity (Grimes 1988a:103). This Pauline warning also features in the script for the performance of the Lord’s supper in the Reformed Congregations. As a result, it carries considerable weight in the religious engagement with and the actual performance of the ritual in this denomination. Hence, both the first-century church at Corinth and the contemporary micro-context, the Reformed Congregations, testify to the fact that something is at stake in the performance of the Lord’s supper, and that ritual ‘failure’ or – to put it less severely – ritual ‘imperfection’ can occur (Schieffelin 2007:16). Via the four moments of the comparative enterprise this study aims to investigate the risks that accompany or are inherent in the performance of the Lord’s supper in the contexts of the two selected exempla. Secondly, this study will examine how each exemplum copes with these risks. It will investigate whether effective internal measures are in place to prevent mistakes and failure. If effective risk management appears to be lacking or, alternatively, if risk has been worked in the ritual so forcefully that it causes paralysis, this study will analyse the kind of ritual imperfection or ritual failure that ensues. Thirdly, since every performance has a so-called ‘emergent dimension’ (Schieffelin 1985:722), this study will explore what the performance of the Lord’s supper as performance brings about in social reality – and thus in the experience of the principal performers and the other participants in the contexts of the two selected exempla. It is the emergence of realities and presences in performance and their movement into the domain of social historical events which constitutes the movement of ritual efficacy into the human world (Schieffelin 1996:81). This is true even when what emerges is not necessarily predictable or desirable, as in cases of ritual imperfection or failure. It is recognised from the onset that categories like ‘failure’ and ‘imperfection’ are value-laden; they cannot be used in any final or absolute way. Rites are flawed from group X’s point of view or in relation to goal Y (Grimes 1990:209). Consequently, a multi-perspectival approach is applied whereby the positioned differences in relation to the allegations of flaws in the ritual are clarified (Schieffelin 2007:16, 19).

Early Christian missionaries and apologists made frequent reference to the awesome majesty and terror of the future divine judgment, a powerful image that nonetheless was remote from the sense perceptions of their audience. Indeed, many people, including some Christians, disputed God’s ability to see all things and to know human thoughts, and thus to assemble damning evidence against them; additionally, many questioned the reality of eternal fire and other forms of post-mortem punishment. Yet acceptance of their existence, despite the lack of immediate evidence, was necessary to cultivate the “fear of God,” one of the fundamental (if largely overlooked) components of early Christianity identity. In the following paper, I will discuss how the fear of God was nevertheless made present to the human sensorium. The fear of God is at once an image, a disposition, and a philosophical exercise to be deployed in certain situations, such as temptation. At its center is the scene of divine judgment, usually imagined as an individual standing before a tribunal composed of Christ and a crowd of the righteous, “naked” in several senses, as one’s entire personal history, including thoughts, becomes visible to all, with eternal punishment or bliss imminent. The cognitive and corporeal internalization of this image was a central goal of Christian discipline, for which the greatest body of evidence is found in monastic sources. In this context, I will explore three central aspects of the fear of God, namely feelings of shame (associated with vision), guilt (associated with hearing), and bodily pain (associated with touch), and the process by which these are incorporated by novices as they gradually acquire the monastic habit.

Speech and silence are often considered to be mutually exclusive: silence is the absence of speech. However, this perceptual frame limits, rather than opens up, interpretive possibilities when reading ancient texts. Textually, speech and silence are mutually constituted in subtly intricate and inextricable ways. Silences can be meaningful discursive events, powerful aspects of – not absences of – linguistic exchange. In this paper, I consider the complex narrative representations of speech and silence – and the ambiguities they introduce - in the Gospel of Luke. In the first section, I argue that narrated silences introduce ambiguities into the Lukan narrative in two distinct ways: first, the silences of Lukan characters must be interpreted. Still, philosophical conceptions and practices of silence are culturally specific, which means that representations of silence in ancient narratives are easily misunderstood. The second way that silence introduces ambiguities into the narrative is that narrators often omit or delay crucial information, creating narratological gaps that readers must fill as part of the interpretive process. The Lukan narrator’s silences invite readers to attend to significant textual omissions as meaningful, rather than as simple lacunae. Although silences create ambiguities, they also facilitate a kind of dialogue between text and reader as the reader seeks to resolve those ambiguities. One way to read the Lukan text is as an early Christian proclamation – not only of the gospel message, as readers have rightly understood – but also of the proper way to behave as a follower of Jesus in light of that message. Thus, in the second section of the paper, I utilize conceptual tools from narratology and reader-response criticism to explore the ways that complex intersections of narrative representations of speech, unspoken words (thoughts), and silences offer crucial touchpoints for understanding how the Lukan narrative attempts to shape its readers.

Much about the 2012 phenomenon seems historically unprecedented and thoroughly modern. Its basic timetable is non-biblical (Mayan). Its doomsday structure accommodates a wide range of expectations, many of which seem far removed from traditional apocalyptic speculation. Its intimate relationship with the Internet and other modern social media is distinctively contemporary, particularly insofar as it has rebooted the message and purposes of the apocalyptic worldview in light of a fully wired and global public. Yet many of these features are not as new or unanticipated as might first appear. For example, the "superflat apocalypticism" fostered by the Internet has a conceptual antecedent in mediaeval apocalyptic manuscripts (text, illumination, and glosses/marginalia). The essential fluidity of the 2012 message is reflected in the logic of the worldview and in the recombinant nature of many of its earlier expressions, while the "flexible" aspects of this message (syncretistic, trans-national, and multi-cultural) are hardly unique from a historical perspective. Most importantly, the propositions of the apocalyptic worldview regarding time, space, and human destiny have not changed for over 2,300 years. All of this points to some larger issues. This paper seeks to locate the 2012 phenomenon in the context of apocalypticism as a historical and organic worldview. Such an enquiry naturally embraces a discussion of subordinate categories such as genre, social settings, discourse, historiography, and eschatology.

The interpretation of the Old Testament in Hebrews, so fundamental to the letter’s argument, is a subject addressed by all commentators, and it has been the specific focus of numerous very valuable studies over the years (such as those by, for instance, Markus Barth, George Caird, and Graham Hughes). This paper will argue, however, that the application to Hebrews of a new methodology may enable us to better understand the author’s use of the Old Testament and to identify some of his characteristic exegetical techniques which have been previously overlooked. The approach advocated here begins from the premise that Hebrews should be placed firmly within the context of early Jewish bible interpretation, and is inspired by current research within the field of Jewish Studies, particularly the work of Alexander Samely, who has within the last decade developed a highly sophisticated methodology for defining targumic and mishnaic exegetical techniques. Some key sections of the letter which draw heavily on scripture will therefore be analysed to illustrate this methodology, including Heb 7:1-10 (Melchizedek) and Heb 11:1-22 (the patriarchs in the Book of Genesis. The paper will use these passages to seek to explore issues such as: the relationship between Hebrews and other genres of scriptural interpretation found within early post-biblical Judaism, including targum and rewritten bible; the attitude taken to reproducing the exact wording of a scriptural text; the techniques by which a text could be assigned as relevant to a particular topic; the ways in which the author prepares his audience for his ensuing interpretation of scripture by the provision of new literary context for a citation; and the factors which allowed for the linking of two or more scriptural texts.

Recent research by scholars such as David Hollander, William Harris, and Peter Temin among others, has drawn attention to the increasing likelihood that credit instruments constituted a far more significant portion of the money supply during the Late Republic and High Empire than we have traditionally thought. The purpose of my presentation is to push this argument in a new direction by illuminating various roles the state played as an actor in the credit market, as well as its motivations for doing so. The presentation will proceed programmatically in three steps. First, I will first offer some hitherto unexamined data that seems to imply that accounting and non-coined financial instruments were centrally important to the financial administration of the empire. This will include not only arguments about the provincially-internal nature of imperial pay and donativa, but also about the balancing of civic and provincial expenditures with tax revenues due the imperial aerarium and fiscus. Second, I will provide a sample of the evidence that illustrates the involvement of the state and the emperor’s subordinates in the lending market. Evidence such as that concerning imperial freedmen in the Sulpicii archive and the importance of government lending in Pliny the Younger, though impressionistic, provide important insights into the nature of imperial finance and investment. Finally, given this information I shall explore several reasons behind the state’s activity in the credit market. To give one example, several letters between Pliny and Trajan may suggest that government-issued loans were given as an attempt to secure and increase provincial treasuries. Other evidence suggest the state had a direct role in financing commerce as well.

This paper traces the author's engagement with 2 Maccabees, first arguing for its viability as an historical source on the basis of its superior representation of the timeframe for the death of Antiochus IV over against the presentation of the same in 1 Maccabees, and thus against its relegation to the genre of "pathetic historiography." The author traces his movement away from concern with defending the book's historical value and more interested in the epitome's author agenda in writing, using traditional literary patterns and manipulating" the course of events. The epitome's casting of the trial of the 7 brothers and the mother within a traditional mythic pattern has been ignored by the author of 4 Maccabees in his telling of the story, a text that shows a clear, early instance of the reception and imprint of 2 Maccabees.

Cyprian of Carthage’s treatise De opere et eleemosynis represents an important contribution to the emerging early Christian discourse about the redemptive value of almsgiving (so Jerome, Ep. 66.5; see R. Finn, Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire, 123-26). Throughout the treatise, Cyprian draws deeply upon the language of scripture in order to develop his claim that almsgiving serves to purge the post-baptismal sins of the donor. It has been suggested that Cyprian employs a collection of scriptural “proof-texts” to demonstrate the validity of his assertion (Finn, 125). There is no doubt that Cyprian often presents ethical exhortation on the basis of scriptural proof-texts (see Testimonies 3). Yet in De opere et eleemosynis, Cyprian offers a nuanced reading of scripture that goes beyond mere proof-texting. This paper will explore one aspect of Cyprian’s hermeneutical strategy in the treatise, namely, the bishop’s employment of “prosopological exegesis,” an interpretative technique that allows Cyprian to identify the Holy Spirit as the “speaker” of certain biblical texts. This is seen, for example, in the citation of both Prov 16:6 and Sirach 3:30 in the opening of De opere et eleemosynis — two texts (along with Luke 11:41) that provide the foundational scriptural warrant for Cyprian’s theological claim that almsgiving removes post-baptismal sin— although the reading strategy is found throughout the document (e.g., 4, 5, 9). Thus, Cyprian’s appeal for Christians to participate in the ministry of almsgiving and his critique of pagan euergetism is supported by a hermeneutical strategy that identifies divine authors of biblical texts. Rather than simply assembling a list of “proof-texts,” Cyprian’s De opere et eleemosynis presents the whole of scripture as a witness to “the strain and exhortation of the Holy Spirit,” who commands all who hope in the heavenly kingdom to give alms (Eleem. 4).

The MT and the LXX diverge significantly in their interpretation of circumcision in Josh 5:2-9, where the MT represents the more expanded textual tradition over the shorter LXX. The differences have given rise to debate over the literary priority of the two textual traditions. A. G. Auld, working in the tradition of S. Holmes, argues that the MT pluses are expansions to the more original Vorlage of the LXX, added for theological reasons. The clarification in the MT of vv. 4-7, that all males were circumcised in Egypt, is meant to counter the opposite statement in the LXX, that only a portion of the Israelite males where circumcised. D. W. Gooding reverses the literary relationship of the MT and the LXX. He argues that the LXX version of the wilderness journey in vv. 4-7 is a latter explanation for the problematic statement in v. 2 of the MT that the Israelites circumcised for a second time at Gilgal. M. van der Meer extends the argument of Gooding, attributing the textual differences between the MT and the LXX to the Greek translator. The debate clarifies how different the textual traditions of the MT and the LXX are from each other in the composition of the story of circumcision in Josh 5:2-9. I wish to build on this research by adopting E. Ulrich’s hypothesis of textual “pluriformity” to explore the way in which competing views of circumcision in the post-exilic period may be influencing the MT and LXX textual traditions.

Some scholars argued that Eusebius' Binitarianism is responsible for the later, "Eusebian" tradition (and its Pneumatomachian part) and assumed that in Eusebius' eyes the Spirit has an unclear position between Creator and Creation. This was reckoned as an effect of a certain Origenistic tradition. Holger Strutwolf who stresses the high level of Eiusebius' theology, refused this interpretation and pointed out the Trinitarian passage in Praep. ev. XI and De eccl. theol. A detailed analysis of both passages shows that in Praep. ev. XI the reference to Ps.-Plato, ep. 213de is merely a "traditional" one (it follows esp. Clemens Alex.), while Eusebius pays much more attention to the Father-Son-relation in Middle- and Neoplatonism. In De ecclesiastica theologia the profile of Eusebius' theology is heavily dependent on his opponent Marcellus. And Marcellus is the first theologian as far as we know, who has a really Trinitarian starting point (Ansatz) of his theology (all others were concerned primarily with Christology); so the pneumatological parts of De eccl. theol. are the reaction to this. The relevant section in Book III is very interesting because of its effects upon the symbol (creed) tradition in the later fourth century; but in itself, it is a quite limited pneumatology dependent upon the struggle against Marcellus. So, even if the opposition between binitarianism and trinitarianism cannot be maintained in its strict sense, the impact of the theology of Marcellus (and its effect in Eusebius) on the pneumatology in the Trinitarian controversy should not be neglected.

Although Old Testament exegesis in the Antiochene school is known for its emphasis on the literal and historical ("historia"), it it equally well-remembered for the exceptional cases in which texts do point beyond Israel to Christ and the church. Psalm 2 is the first of perhaps only four psalms that Diodore, Theodore and Theodoret take in a christological sense. Their approach is not without difficulty, particularly in that their readings turn on a difficult identification of the nations in conspiracy (2:1). This paper will present an analysis of the touchy and somewhat atypical reception of Psalm 2 at Antioch.

The paper is devoted to the presentation of some results of the author's research concerning the inscriptions discovered by the team of Yitzhak Magen in the vicinity of the former Yahwistic sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim. It seems that in the Persian and Hellenistic periods the Yahwistic groups in Samaria and Judea had two official sanctuaries: on Mt. Gerizim and in Jerusalem. Whereas the history of the Judean community with its center in Jerusalem was described by many studies, the Yahwistic community with its centre on Mt. Gerizim remained in the shadow. Even some recent publications concerning the history of Levant during the Hellenistic period simply omit its existence. The archaeological excavations led by Y. Magen in the vicinity of the former Yahwistic sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim, and especially the discovery of a high number of fragments of stones with Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions, indirectly provide an important evidence for the history of this community. According to the editio princeps the Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim are dated approximately to the 3rd – 2nd centuries, some of them perhaps to the 5th-4th centuries BCE. More precise dating of the inscriptions is however necessary in order to obtain from this epigraphic material the utmost for further historical research. More exact dating, that we wish to present in our paper, is based especially upon the paleographic analysis, seems to be confirmed by some historical circumstances, and represents a starting point for further considerations about the Yahwistic community in Samaria during the Hellenistic period.

Increasingly, or rather retrogressively, students coming out of high school have fewer learning skills and a mistaken notion about what constitutes learning. These characteristic are appreciatively noticeable in their lack of reading comprehension skills. Moreover, when it comes to reading the Bible, a subject over which students often have preconceived notions and some vested interest, students tend to abandon what reading skills they have acquired and read the Bible "on the flat" without nuance. Metacognition refers to the ability to observe and analyze one's own thought process, such as deliberatively choosing a strategic method for solving a problem. A metacognitive approach to reading seeks to get students to think about what the process of successful communication through reading entails and then deliberatively to employ appropriate reading strategies. This paper briefly outlines the problem, defines metacognitive reading for successful communication, and then presents a couple of specific strategies and exercises that have worked in an undergraduate setting.

This paper examines the problem of the sexually differentiated subject/body in Paul and his early interpreters in conversation with Judith Butler’s recent work on ethics, mourning, and violence as constitutive of subjectivity. Confronted with a Pauline typological matrix oriented around the male bodies of Adam and Christ, early Christians (including Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, and authors from the Nag Hammadi corpus) faced a basic theological conundrum: sexual difference simply does not fit in any obvious or uncomplicated way into a theology of creation and resurrection grounded in an Adam-Christ typology. Ancient authors responded by figuring the paradigmatic “woman” (whether Eve, Mary, or simply an abstract “femininity”) in multiple ways: as a temporary aberration, as a specific site of the divine in the world inassimilable to the Pauline “two man” paradigm, or as a secondary supplement to that paradigm. But none of these approaches, I argue, entirely succeed in delivering the coherence that they promise. Rather, the early Christian dream of an absolute fulfillment of type in antitype, creation in eschaton, stumbles over sexual difference. Here Butler’s work proves useful for exploring the implications of this discursive failure for feminist and queer theology. Following her lead, I contend that this failure of coherence on the part of early Christians need not be construed as an ethical one—nor as a theological dead end. Instead, these texts offer us a vivid illustration of one way in which “[any] account of myself is partial, haunted by that for which I can devise no definitive story” (Giving an Account of Oneself, 40). Yet precisely the failure to produce a definitive story for sexually differentiated theological anthropology has the potential to force open the space for other kinds of stories. But this process may entail a certain necessary mourning for the loss of a putative (if problematic) anthropological stability—a mourning that, as Butler notes, “has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance” (Precarious Life, 21).

As an American heterosexual woman and a feminist, I function in a society in which women live under the names of men—their father’s or their husband’s. Exposure to my husband’s Turkish culture has intensified my interest in the patrilineal—the sustained and counter-intuitive social effort to trace family entirely through men, from father to son, and revealed to me the extent to which the system of surnames in English perpetuates patrilineal concerns. Women are to some extent erased as progenitors, or serve only as generational links between men, in this process. Although, or perhaps because John lacks a birth narrative, the idea of begetting is central to the first two chapters of this gospel, in the narrator’s initial explanation of Jesus’ mission and in Jesus first narrated conversation, with Nicodemus. In both, the focus is entirely on the father’s role, so that the word “born” is in fact something more like “begotten” or “fathered.” Birth according to the flesh, from the mother’s womb, is despised, while birth according to the spirit appears to involve no mother equivalent. Looking at these two chapters with issues of family definition and patrilineality in mind, I will examine in this paper the extent to which John’s preference for spiritual over physical birth effectively erases women from the procreative process.

The abuse of indulgences was only the tip of the iceberg of Luther’s case against the papacy. In 1520 he published his open letter To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, calling upon the German elite to resist both the spiritual and material excesses of the papacy. In May 1521, Luther’s colleagues Philipp Melanchthon and Lucas Cranach the Elder collaborated on a 26-page pamphlet which made the same case against the papacy for the benefit of the third estate: Passional Christi und Antichristi. Each pair of facing pages of Passional contrasts woodcut images from the life of Christ with images of the excesses of the Pope, with texts below each images quoting scripture and/or canon law. Many of the images of Christ emphasize his poverty over against the material wealth and ostentation of the Pope, a particular concern of the sixteenth-century Reformers. A particularly notable example is the page depicting Christ’s nativity, which is paired with a text not from the gospel of Matthew or of Luke, but with 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” The texts accompanying the woodcuts of Passional are not mere illustrations; rather, the images and texts of Passional combine to create a powerful and synergistic message amplified across its 26 pages of an ostentatiously wealthy papacy serving as vicar to a poor and humble Christ. Other texts highlighted including Christ’s sending forth of the disciples with nothing but the clothes on their backs; the miraculous finding of the coin in the fish; and, as the title would seem to indicate, images of Christ’s Passion. These are contrasted with images of the Pope indulging in feasts, being carried in a litter, providing bishoprics only to wealthy and prestigious towns, and (of course) signing indulgences. This paper will examine the ways in which Passional Christi und Antichristi worked hand in hand with contemporary evangelical sermons, visually preaching the doctrine of the poverty of Christ as a prophetic corrective to the sumptuary and mercenary excesses of the papacy, particularly those of Julius II and Leo X. Passional borrowed from the artistic traditions, both visual and literary, of German devotional prints and the poetry, to create a hand-held visual prophetic sermon against the papacy that was accessible to the German laity at all levels of literacy. It is a unique document in the genre of early Lutheran print propaganda, in that its images were produced by a well-known master artist rather than anonymously; that it carries both a positive message affirming the values of the evangelical movement as well as a negative message against the papacy; and that it ingeniously functions as both propaganda and prayer.

This paper focuses on the Christian reimagination of Roman history and identity through the ascribing of two roles to the apostles Peter and Paul as part of their cult in Rome: founders and citizens. In On the Crowns of Martyrdom, the poet Prudentius sings the praises of Peter and Paul and of their cultic centers on the Vatican Hill and Ostian Road. However, he also directs the focus of the audience to the Tiber River, which he presents as the conceptual bridge between the shrines and traditional locations of the shedding of apostolic blood. In doing so, he evokes the foundation myths of Aeneas, Father Tiber, and Romulus and Remus, but then recasts the narrative to present the apostolic pair as the twin founders of the city, a full half-century before the famous sermon of Leo I. Another important image for the proliferation of the apostolic cult was Peter and Paul as "citizens" of Rome itself. Several bishops specifically appealed to this citizenship in order to re-assert the primacy of the city vis-à-vis Christian centers in the East. This language occurs in a poem placed by Damasus at the Catacombs on the Appian Road, the earliest documented site of the apostolic cult in Rome. It later appeared again in a letter from Gregory I to the empress Constantina, in which Gregory recounts a failed attempt to take the apostolic relics from Rome to the East. Gregory highlights the identity of Paul and Peter as citizens of the city of Rome as a central factor in the failure of the attempted translation. He also implicitly draws upon themes from Rome's hallowed past, namely the "evocatio deorum" and scenes of imperial "adventus." These presentations of the apostles as founders and citizens were employed to justify the claims that the apostles and their cult were fully Roman and that Rome was a fully empowered apostolic city.

This paper examines ways in which the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas engages the classical tradition.

Given the Persian period frame of reference for the initial composition of the Book of the Twelve, it seems likely that editorial activity within the scroll continued after the Pentateuch achieved a measure of authority. Nonetheless, the Book of the Twelve displays surprisingly few citations or allusions to Pentateuchal texts or traditions. Therefore, the various texts within the Book of the Twelve that evoke intertextual association with the Decalogue (e.g., Hos 4:2, 13:4, Amos 8:5, and Mal 3:5) provide a basis to examine whether they reflect a "proto-Decalogue" or evoke the authority of a received Tetrateuch or Pentateuch. Finally, I shall explore the role the Decalogue (or Decalogue related texts) plays within the structure of both the Pentateuch and the Twelve, and how the authority readers attribute to the Decalogue shapes their perception of the implied meaning of the two corpora as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to explore various instances when Israel's Greek Scriptures were "corrected" to conform to NT citations, presumably in an act of harmonizing the LXX text to the citation given by the NT text. After cataloging and exploring some of these interesting textual phenomena, this paper will be concerned with the question of coherence, or lack thereof, which such changes introduce into the LXX context(s). Additionally, it will be argued that these kinds of corrections not only give an indication of the access which LXX copyists had to various NT texts, but of an understanding that the texts should agree with one other.

The two temples described in detail in the Hebrew Bible, the Temple of Solomon and the wilderness Tabernacle, contained in their innermost chamber, the focal point of Israelite worship, the Ark of the Covenant and two sculpted representations of fantastic winged creatures, the cherubim. Understanding the symbolic function of these cherubim may be central to understanding the ancient Israelite cult. The prevailing view regarding this question is that the cherubim formed or supported the throne of YHWH, while the Ark beneath them served as His footstool. The Temple cherubim and Ark are thus considered together as an instance of the sphinx-throne, a known motif in Phoenician and Canaanite visual art from the biblical period. This paper challenges the prevailing view on several grounds. First, biblical sources explicitly define the cherubim as having the role of guardians, not throne-bearers. These sources cannot be down-dated and dismissed, since they are backed up by multiple sources which consistently show that the cherubim were not the primary objects in the Temple and Tabernacle, as would be expected if they served as the throne of YHWH. Second, no actual throne is mentioned in the Bible in relation to the cherubim. Third, the cherubim as described in the Bible stood upright, while all throne-bearing creatures in Ancient Near Eastern visual art are quadrupeds. Fourth, the large dimensions attributed to the cherubim of the Temple would have left insufficient space for a proportional throne. It is shown that the cherubim as described in the Bible correspond to a separate motif in Egyptian-Canaanite iconography, that of the winged protectors. In this motif, two or more winged creatures flank a deity, a person, or an object, and spread their wings toward it in a gesture of protection. A common form of this motif, in which the wings meet in a diamond pattern, appears in several Iron Age items from the Land of Israel, and corresponds specifically to the cherubim of the Tabernacle as depicted in the Bible. A less common form, in which the protecting beings appear en face with their wings spread to the sides, appears on the 14th-century BCE sarcophagus of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and corresponds to the cherubim of the Temple.

Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage (Matthew 5:31-32 // Luke 16:18; Matthew 19:1-12 // Mark 10:1-12; cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11) has proven an especially interesting case in which to evaluate his standing with regard to Jewish law. The study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has both deepened and complicated current understandings of this problem (Temple Scroll [11Q19]; Damascus Document [CDa; 4Q271]). While earlier comparative studies noted a continuity between Jesus’ prohibition of divorce and earlier legal traditions found in the Scrolls, more recent treatments of Qumran’s legal thinking on divorce have advanced a rereading of the problem in which Jesus’ prohibition was completely unique within its ancient context. This divide in current scholarship has left us with either a Jesus who is wholly similar to Qumran’s sectarian teaching on divorce or a Jesus who is entirely dissimilar to all known currents in early Jewish legal interpretation. This paper argues that comparative studies of this problem should focus analysis more narrowly on attitudes toward remarriage in both the Gospel and Qumran evidence, before moving too quickly to the question of divorce. A reading of both New Testament and Qumran evidence regarding remarriage more fully reveals Jesus’ standing within a stream of popular legal interpretation that was increasingly concerned with the dangers of illicit remarriage. While Qumran may or may not have taken the additional step of prohibiting divorce entirely, the Scrolls help to contextualize Jesus’ ardent concern over remarriage within contemporary currents of sectarian legal interpretation; and this alternative method of comparison between the two overcomes an important impasse in the current climate of scholarship on this question: Beyond the “either-or” of previous comparative methodology, reorienting the discussion on remarriage offers the more complex possibility that Jesus’ position had both continuities and discontinuities with earlier legal attitudes toward marriage.

This paper will compare and contrast patristic (Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Augustine and Theodoret ) and Reformation era commentators (Erasmus, Luther, Bucer, Alesius, Aretius, Calvin, Bellarmine) on Psalm 2. The aim is not so much a competition (whose exegesis is 'better'?) as to see how the different eras of interpretation complement each other. The paper will start with a consideration of which verses seemed worthy of more or less commentary. Perhaps surprisingly for some fathers (Jerome and Augustine) the issue was more that of anthropomorphisms and theo-logy while for the late medieval-early moderns it was Christology that was the focus, although one can see this shift beginning with Cassiodorus. There are some like Calvin, for whom the theology serves as metaphysical scaffolding for a consideration of the travails of the Church. Through a dialogue of interpreters, these questions will be addressed: How far does Peter's interpretation of the Psalm in Acts 2 determine later Christian interpretations? Did the attempt to take the Hebraica veritas seriously actually make a material difference to the later period's exegesis (compare Erasmus with Aretius)? How can Christ be both the servant and the conquering king with implications for the political order?

This paper argues that a primary objective of priestly ritual is to stimulate continually God’s memory, the arousal and maintenance of which ensure the continuation of God’s covenant with Israel. An analysis of the memory terminology used by the authors of the priestly portions of the Pentateuch (i.e., "sign," "remembrance," safeguarded thing" and "token portion") reveals that this tradition conceptualizes memory as a function of sensory stimulation. In contrast to Deuteronomy’s conception of memory as a verbal exercise for sustaining semantic content, priestly literature assumes that memory is prompted mainly by visual, aural and olfactory cues. Such cues serve to prompt Israel’s memory of particular obligations and prohibitions, but their most important purpose is to prompt God’s memory and attention, both of which are crucial guarantors of God’s covenantal promises to Israel. In consequence, a primary objective underlying priestly ritual is to provide a continual supply of sensory stimulants for God’s memory. The paradigm for priestly ritual derives from the sacrifices offered by Noah (Gen 8:20-21) and the sight of the bow (Gen 9:12-17), both of which bring about a reaffirmation and restoration of creation. On a microcosmic level, the high priest’s garments Exod 28), the trumpets blown on set days and festivals (Num 10), and the fragrance of sacrifices and the "token portion" (azkkarah) (Lev (Lev 1-4, 24:5-8, Num 5:15-31) keep God mindful of his promises to Israel.

This paper attempts to do two things. Part one addresses the concrete historical circumstances behind the letter. A proposal is made that shows that 2 Corinthians should be understood as a single letter that is tied together by Paul’s account of his own and Titus’ travels: Paul’s own between Ephesus and Macedonia until he met Titus coming up from Corinth (chapters 1-7), Titus’ return to Corinth from Macedonia – accompanied by two other brothers – to prepare for the collection (chapters 8-9) and finally Paul’s own arrival in Corinth from Macedonia as prepared for by Titus (chapters 10-13). It is argued on methodological grounds that this travel scheme settles the issue of the unity of the letter before one begins to consider all the traditional issues (of literary form and concrete content) that have engaged scholars since J.S. Semler. It is further claimed that one previous commentator did see this methodological division of the tasks to be addressed: P.E. Hughes (NICNT 1962). But his insight was lost, probably under the burden of the more traditional approaches. Part two of the paper then addresses in more detail chapters 1-7, the internal coherence of which – viewed as a travel account – constitutes the basis for the reading presented in part one. Here the paper addresses the specific question of how Paul employs and connects four theological themes in the ‘reflection section’ of 2:14-7:4 to lay the ground for his celebration in 7:5-16 of the Corinthians’ return to obedience. The four themes are: his own qualification as an apostle (passim), the advantages of the new dispensation (Paul’s) over the old one of Moses (3:6-18), the presence and activity of the pneuma in Paul and believers in the present and future (4:7-5:10), and the theology and actual practice of reconciliation (5:11-7:4). In this part of the paper the focus is on the way the concrete historical circumstances of the letter gave a very specific form to these theological themes and to their inner connection.

What theoretical insights might re-reading the Song of Solomon through its contemporary musical afterlives, and through postmodern conceptualizations of love produce? Love re-defined as: 1) a highly commodified, “regulatory fiction,” constituted through rituals of consumption that (paradoxically) afford “utopian transgressions” of the capitalist daily grind (Eva Illouz); 2) the crucial “ideologeme” grounding an “intimate public sphere” that is sustained by a “women’s culture” of film, novels and music. Therein “universalized features of the heart” generate a “politics of true feeling” which dissolves sex/race/class/ethnic differences and produces societal “progress” (Lauren Berlant); 3) a conflicted, defiant quest for transcendent/metaphysical experience within hyper-commodified life-worlds, one that nevertheless includes cynical acknowledgments that confessions of “true love” are thoroughly mediated through clichés, conventions, and citations from popular culture (Catherine Belsey). I propose that the Song of Songs, and especially its musical afterlives, participate in the discursive composition of these postmodern versions of love. I attend particularly to musical enfleshments of the Song whose un-conventional erotic semiotics disrupt the transmission of normalizing socio-romantic energies within the intimate public sphere, thereby countering religio-theological models of love that enlist and prescribe the Song’s timeless wisdom that “love conquers all” to bolster heteronormative institutions of love, sexuality, marriage, and family. Following Belsey and Berlant, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ "Flos campi"(1925)—a seemingly bucolic “symphony of eroticism” (Trible)--becomes a dystopic allegory of postmodern love: its quasi-cliché pastiche of amatory musical conventions is complicated by RVW’s enigmatic use of 1) musical pastoralisms; 2) parodic military idioms; 3) modal-tonal vacillations; and 4) ambiguous text-music relations in which wisps of the text are never sung, but used instead as a paratext of voiceless, prefatory citations. Biographical detail and historical context further intensify reception of the work as a postmodern language of love: gestating during WWI when RVW collected the dead and wounded as an ambulance driver in France, then written during a post-war decade of severe, collective disenchantment with the Great War’s socio-political balance sheet, "Flos campi" arguably constitutes an ambivalent response to both RVW’s individual, as well as a more collective experience of national, post-war trauma. My interdisciplinary analysis of "Flos campi" elaborates three new trajectories for Song interpretation. "Flos campi" and other unsettling musical afterlives of the Song: 1. allegorise, via acutely material sets of dissonant gestures and conventions, the thoroughly mediated nature of love as a cultural practice, thereby challenging religio-rhetorical use of the text to promote falsely universalist “politics of true feeling”; 2. invite a re-situation of the Song-as-love-song within the musical discourse of love as a cultural practice; 3. obliquely ‘reference’ the haunting, ‘archaeological’ dis-connection of the text from its originary “songfulness” (Kramer)--a rift paradoxically flagged in "Flos campi" through the text’s absent presence. This archival lack constitutes an overlooked “trigger” of “insatiable desire” that biblical scholars anatomize in the Song-as-text (cf. Boer; Moore and Burrus). The Song’s portrait of desire-as-lack (another postmodern/Lacanian construction of love) supposedly stems from its perversely repetitive formal and metaphorical properties, but the Song’s irretrievable musical ‘body’ also amplifies desire’s ache.

The Egyptian ritual of “Opening the Mouth,” wpt r, details actions performed in order to quicken statuary for use. The animation rite involved various implements and gestures describing the clothing of the statue, its anointing, and presentation of elaborate offerings. Textual reference to the ritual is attested in the 4th dynasty through the New Kingdom. Of note are the inscriptions and pictorial representations found on the tomb of Rekhmire (18th d.) attesting some seventy-five episodes. The ritual was performed by a distinctive group of officiants. The primary role of craftsman and fashioner was held by the sm-priest under the direction of the ?ry-?bt, “ritualist.” Throughout the ceremony the sm-priest repeatedly puts on and takes off the qn? garment and in its stead dons the skin of an animal. Changing garb is the first action taken by the sm-priest in the “mouth-opening” ritual and at no point throughout the ceremony is the officiant not wearing some sort of special article of clothing. The initial time the qn? garment is taken off the sm-priest then dons the skin of a bull. Later in the ceremony a switch of adornment involves the slaughtering of a bull and subsequent presentation of its parts to the statue. The change of the sm-priest’s garb throughout the rite signaled a change in his role and status at distinct points throughout the ceremony. The switch in clothing made the actions that he took while wearing the various garments ritually effective, as though the articles themselves were transformative. Likewise, special garb plays a significant role in the biblical regulations of priestly clothing detailed in Exodus 28-30. The elaborate preparations for the donning of the priestly garments include regulations regarding fabrication, consecration, and ritual cleansing. The subsequent donning of the articles is deemed essential in order to perform specific cultic responsibilities, as though the garments themselves provided a conduit by which the actions of the individuals were made efficacious. This paper proposes a shared ancient perception of specialized clothing utilized for cultic purposes between the Egyptian ritual of “Opening the Mouth” and the biblical priestly regulations in Exodus 28-30.

This presentation reviews six decades’ anthropological research into Mediterranean cultures and its three decades of application in biblical research. The first part of the presentation consists of a historical account of the development of Mediterranean anthropology from the 1950s onward (with some reference to earlier work), criticisms that have been levelled against it and a critical reply to those criticisms. It is argued that the ethnographic work on rural cultures carried out in the 1950s-1980s is of abiding importance given their rapid transformation and disintegration. While the importance of a more nuanced and particularistic understanding of the cultural features highlighted in that research is acknowledged, these features are still useful at appropriate levels of abstraction. This discussion concludes with the more recent work of the last two decades and where it might take us. The second part of the presentation shows how Mediterranean anthropology continues to shed light on the historical meaning of biblical texts in ways that are difficult to achieve otherwise. In particular, cultural difference is real (and it is not ‘Orientalism’ to say so) and the importance of Mediterranean anthropology in helping modern readers socialized in post-industrialist, individualistic societies understand texts produced in the very different agrarian, collectivist societies from which the Bible emerged remains.

David’s sinful census in 1 Chronicles 21 has invariably been read in light of its putative Vorlage, 2 Samuel 24. Differences between the Chronicler’s account and the Deuteronomist’s have often been noted, however, there is no consensus over why the census is viewed as sinful. Furthermore, the Chronicler is often one to explain such ambiguity in his sources (e.g., explaining Uzzah’s death by appealing to legal precedent). In Chronicles and Exodus Johnstone suggested that the sin of the census in 1 Chronicles 21 was David’s failure to implement Mosaic legislation (Exod 30:11-16) requiring the collection of a levy from each person during the census, else a “plague” come on Israel. Unfortunately, Johnstone failed to convincingly support this provocative thesis and few seem to be convinced. However, this paper will follow Johnstone’s lead and examine the relationship between 1 Chronicls 21, 2 Samuel 24 and Exodus 30, drawing on Bakhtin’s ideas of diaologism. The levy required in Exodus 30 is to be collected in the context of impending sanctuary construction. The census of 2 Samuel 24 occurred immediately before Solomon’s ascension to the throne (1 Kings 1ff). Since Solomon was to be the temple builder, in the Chronicler’s view this census, occurring so close to the temple’s construction, should have collected the levy. Therefore, in 1 Chronicles 21 the Chronicler created a literary context of impending temple construction by reducing the narrative space between the census and David’s request to build a temple (from 17 chapters [2 Sam 7, 24] to 3 [1 Chr 17, 21]) and narrating David’s temple preparations immediately thereafter (1 Chronicles 22). Thus, the Chronicler intends the voice of Exod 30:11-16 to be heard in dialogue with 2 Samuel 24 and the mystifying divine wrath on David’s census.

The answer is not ‘Solomon’. Rather than try to identify a specific individual responsible for the Song of Songs, the paper aims to construct the identity of the author based on clues from the text itself. It will deal with the following questions: (1) is there one poet or many?, (2) when did the poet write?, (3) the sex of the poet, (4) the age of the poet, (5) the education of the poet, (6) the influences on the poet, (7) the project of the poet; i.e., why did the poet write the Song of Songs?, (8) the success of the poet, (9) unfortunate side-effects of the poet’s project.

Alongside the figures included in the genealogies of critique that Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood intermittently sketch out in Is Critique Secular?, we could well add various modern critics of the Bible. As Brown notes in her introduction, Karl Marx’s critical project, for instance, emerged out of the “critical criticism” of the Young Hegelians—including the biblical scholarship of D.F Strauss and Bruno Bauer. As a contribution to a genealogy of biblical critique that would not be reducible to a history of a progressive liberation of secular thought from religious dogma, I explore certain key critical gestures in D.F. Strauss’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835). In particular, I highlight the inexorable slippage in Strauss’ work between tendencies that correspond roughly to Butler’s distinction between criticism—the work of judgment by which one discerns or evaluates an object—and critique—the work of elaborating the conditions of possibility of such an object of judgment. As critique, Strauss’ work was dedicated to articulating and sustaining the social, religious, and political crises of Vormärz Germany. He undertakes a comparative analysis that destabilizes the Christian exceptionalist priority ascribed to the objective historical content of the stories of Jesus; in doing so, he explicitly attends to the contingency of a certain politico-religious ontology of the subject—an effort whose radical implications subsequent biblical scholarship has largely ignored and abandoned. At the same time, however, Strauss also develops a renewedly exceptionalist rhetoric of modernity that corresponds to a vision of a normative constitutional state. In elaborating on this tension, I explore the precarious ambivalence that Asad identifies at the heart of Butler’s distinction between criticism and critique in light of one of biblical criticism’s once-infamously secularizing interventions.

This presentation explores the space of Delilah from the experiences of a Pacific Islander. The reading comes from a space in which islands depend on the ocean for food and foreign government aid for funds, are vulnerable to Climate Change and global warming, are often embraced by tourists for their exotic beauty, while at the same time neglected for their remote locations, and finally, have often been used as central strategic locations for major international colonizing operations through religious missions and military campaigns, including Nuclear Testing. In this way, those spaces are not so different from Delilah’s precarious location between the Philistines and Samson in the book of Judges. Throughout Christian history, Delilah is identified as one of the “bad girls" in the Bible. Biblical scholars have overlooked through repetitive discourse the space of Delilah as a place where important action occurs, such as regarding the source of life, romance, love contested and rejected, international intrigue, power plays and death.

Eliminate conjunctions from a piece of well-written prose and their significance becomes immediately obvious. Syntactically, semantically and rhetorically a conjunction can be pivotal. Syriac conjunctions are no exception. According to the light up to which they are held, they can even be seen as small discourse crystals flashing hues of colour. Yet often they are perceived as the most colourless, the most inconsequential, of all lexemes. Their minor place in the best Syriac lexicons relative to the magnitude of their use and impact is witness to a subject begging further exploration. This paper takes a fresh look at the place of the conjunction in classical Syriac literature and lexicography. It focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on the syntactic, semantic and rhetorical functions of conjunctions in the Syriac New Testament as a literary translation and thus seeks to provide a point of entry into the study of conjunctions in all Syriac literature, original and translated. While a selection of conjunctions is discussed, especial attention is given to the ubiquitous particle Khad, its various meanings, the manner in which it has different syntactic functions at the same time in the hierarchy of the grammatical structures to which it belongs, and what we can learn about its functions in Syriac as a natural language from its relationship to the Greek that it translates. The study of this fascinating subordinating conjunction has led to a thirty-two column lexical entry. This is in contrast to the three words given to its primary functions (as distinct from its well-established use in idiomatic collocations) in Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum and Sokoloff's A Syriac Lexicon, twenty-four lines in R. Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriac, and ten-line summary in J. Payne Smith’s A Compendious Syriac Dictionary.

One of the customs among some of the people of South Africa is that as a rite of passage into manhood, young men must go through traditional circumcision. Thus, this paper focuses on both the theological and legal implications of the practice of Circumcision in South Africa, with special reference to the provinces of Limpopo, Eastern Cape and Free State. First, we examine the Biblical view of circumcision. Here the focus is on the understanding and practice of circumcision in both the Old and the New Testaments. Second, we will discuss the role and significance of circumcision among men in rural communities. The focus here will be on the social/cultural dimension of circumcision. Third, we look at the role of religion/theology in South Africa either in promoting or discouraging circumcision practices. Our fourth focus is the legal implication of the practice of circumcision. Whereas in the past, there were no legal implications of the practice in South Africa, (except the application of criminal law in the event of the death of an initiate) nowadays, with the recognition of Indigenous law the practice is being increasingly regulated by law. The influence of the Constitution (which is the supreme law of the land) and of provincial statutes on the practice will also be highlighted here. Finally, the paper focuses on the role of African Biblical Hermeneutics on the challenges facing the practice of circumcision.

The Shephelah experienced dramatic demographic and political changes during the 8th-3rd centuries BCE. Following a settlement peak in the 8th century BCE, the region was devastated in Sennacherib's campaign of 701. The region only partially recovered during the 7th century BCE, before suffering another blow in the Babylonian campaign of 586 BCE. Resettlement was slow and gradual, and only during the late Persian period can we speak of any sizeable settlement. Recovery continued in the Hellenistic period, but even at this time settlement in the Shephelah did not reach Iron Age levels. The present paper will examine the history of the Shephelah through the prism of the new excavations at Tel 'Eton, where significant remains from the Iron Age IIB and the Persian period were unearthed. The finds uncovered at Tel 'Eton will be compared and contrasted with those discovered in other sites in the Shephelah, in order to reconstruct the demographic and political history of the region.

This paper reads David’s refusal to kill Saul in the biblical narrative of 1 Sam 24 and 26 in light of Judith Butler’s work and the theorists she is in conversation with throughout in, Giving an Account of Oneself. Butler’s ethical framework is communal. The “I” must give an account of itself and its constitution as a moral agent, but this account will always be incomplete because of the self’s opacity in relation to its dependency upon others, and the social conditions through which one acts. The character of David is without an identifiable essence that would enable him to act ethically towards Saul in the situation in the narrative that he encounters. David, the subject, cannot know himself until he begins to break into the social and linguistic processes that can help him to form the concept of his selfhood. David allows himself to be de-centered by his own opacity, which gives him the ability to recognize, be undone by, and act responsibly toward the other, Saul. David is able to become ethically responsible to Saul because he risks his own self-exposure. David acknowledges the contextualized singularity and opacity to his own self-formation, allowing him to then affirm the commonalities inherent between himself and the other, creating the basis for his ethical behavior towards Saul in the narrative.

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In an epistle to Theodorus, Emperor Julian’s High Priest of Asia, Julian wrote that Jews would willingly choose to die rather than eat pork or any animal that had been strangled. In this paper, I examine Julian’s sources and consider what role dying for ancestral food laws played in Julian’s argument against Christianity. I demonstrate that Julian was aware of IV Maccabees but drew upon a Neoplatonic philosophical tradition which attacked Christians for not following Mosaic food laws, and also incorporated the language of the Apostolic Decree. Julian’s struggle to create a new ‘Hellenic’ Empire at the expense of Christianity is well known. In this letter Julian contrasts the Jews’ zeal for their laws favorably with ‘Hellenic’ apathy and against a wayward Christianity. Structurally and literarily, this argument resembles anti-Christian polemic and likely appeared in the lost parts of Contra Galileos. Julian attacked Christianity by appropriating its Scriptures. Unlike Christian exegetes who had either removed the word “strangled” from their texts or had allegorized the Apostolic Decree, Julian read the text plainly. By doing so, he highlighted Christianity’s failure to follow its own practices. This is an argument that would have reverberated deeply within Christian Antioch. Years later, John Chrysostom raged against Christians who kept Jewish practices in Antioch. Julian hoped that these Judaizers might keep Jewish ancestral practices. In Julian’s own day, the controversial cult of the Maccabean martyrs began to blossom. Opposition to the cult is attested on the grounds that these were Jewish martyrs who had died for Jewish law. Julian joined the debate by seeking to redefine martyrdom and the identity of the Maccabean martyrs. True martyrdom, he argued, was to die for one’s ancestral laws and not for belief in a man. By re-characterizing martyrdom as death for the laws, Julian sought to change the rhetorical discourse of martyrdom in order to deconstruct established Christian norms and discourses about martyrdom and thus Christianity’s understanding of itself.

At several occasions words in Songs of Songs are positioned janus-faced (e.g. 1:12; 2:12; 7:1.6). These words are polysemous. Their translation depends on the preceding and subsequent passages and has a pivotal function for the linking of the poetic passages. Some words are not only ambiguous but refer to different roots with the same consonants others need a vocalization different from the masoretic texts. This paper points out possible instances and discusses their effect on the interpretation of Song of Songs.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, historical memories of the biblical past began to move toward the center of both Jewish and Christian religious identities, and European biblical scholarship was significantly transformed by the emergence of historicist approaches to reading Scripture. Leading scholars such as John Calvin, Joseph Scaliger, Daniel Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, and John Selden emphasized the importance of appreciating ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman religious practices in order to achieve an accurate understanding of both the Old and New Testaments. Historical approaches could be both validating and subversive, and European scholars were acutely aware of this ambivalence. These methods were used constructively to show that Christian Scriptures were true because they were historical, to reconcile contradictory accounts in the New Testament, and to support their authors’ views regarding the political organization of their own societies. Additionally, Catholic and Protestant scholars used the Bible’s ancient historical context to subvert the theological doctrines of their adversaries. This paper demonstrates the absorption of these methods of biblical scholarship by one of the leading rabbis of seventeenth century Amsterdam. Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira argued that many elements of the New Testament reflected the influence of ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religious practices that were prevalent in the Mediterranean world where Jesus lived. Furthermore, he attempted to show that there was evidence for the development of the Gospel texts over time. By dislocating the study of Christian Scriptures from the realm of theological study to the discipline of historical analysis, Morteira sought to encourage certain Christian movements to adopt Jewish perspectives regarding the canon of Scripture, and to demonstrate the superiority of the Hebrew Bible. In so doing, however, Morteira participated in the historicization of biblical memory and the emergence of modern methods of biblical criticism in early modern Europe.

The work of the Early Jewish and Early Christian Mysticism Group significantly widened earlier definitions of mysticism (April DeConick, ed. Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, Atlanta: SBL Press, 2006). Very recently, the Religious Experience Section, as well as the work by Ann Taves (Religious Experience Reconsidered, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), helped to sketch the parameters for investigations on religious experience (Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz and Rodney Werline, eds., Experientia: Volume One, Leiden: Brill, 2008). As these arenas of investigation have demonstrated, the definitions and the relationship of mysticism to religious experience are close and sometimes overlapping. Here, I explore the idea that mystical practice is usefully construed as a sub-category of religious experience that entails perceived events rooted in individual bodily expressions of an epistemological personal revelation. Such a revelation, while not necessarily new within the mystical or religious framework, is singular in that it is freshly orienting and purposeful for the mystic. I investigate The Testament of Abraham, a late antique text of either Jewish, Christian, or “god-fearing” provenance. Regardless of its exact origin, the text encodes esoteric mystical practice, recognizable only to elite ritual experts, within a larger religious story, which is aimed at a general Jewish or Christian audience and which involves practice of a different order. I argue that this text’s encoding strategy speaks to the self-constructed, emic identity of some early mystics (whether Jewish or Christian), who saw themselves as standing within but above non-mystical strains of their religion, as a result of their own profound personal somatic and epistemological experiences. Finally, I argue for a categorical shift in our contemporary discussions of “mysticism” and “religious experience.”

Fleddermann will speak from his book, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary (Peeters, 2005), on Luke's compositional use of Q. He will be responded to by Dennis MacDonald, John Kloppenborg, Thomas Brodie, and Leslie Keylock.

The emerging field of masculinity studies poses both questions and opportunities for feminist biblical interpreters. While the forms and features of masculinity in biblical texts vary widely and can be difficult to extricate, feminists can practice and extend their hermeneutical principles through the critical analysis of male characters as well as the rhetorical impacts of the texts in which male characters appear. Such critical analysis should be informed and guided by feminists so that the infrastructure of masculinity studies does not collapse onto women or obstruct the view of individuals without power, either in antiquity or today. As the profile of masculinity studies rises, so does the need to establish a framework to guide future contributions to it. Feminist biblical interpreters can determine how masculinity studies and biblical interpretation can work together. By delineating key principles and laying a foundation for the critical, ethical study of masculinity, feminists can establish an identity for this interpretive lens. As a result, the study of masculinity in biblical texts will be able to define itself in relation to other interdisciplinary approaches to biblical texts. This paper will assemble a framework for a hermeneutic that recognizes the diversity of ancient masculinity and excavates the contours of the male figure as it takes shape in biblical texts. The hermeneutic also aims to highlight how biblical authors weave together messages about masculinity with religious and political dynamics. This multi-faceted lens allows interpreters to see not only the interplay among race, class, and gender, but also the ways that biblical texts can subvert power structures and lift up rather surprising heroes.

In the Spring of 1970, I made my first computational study of a biblical text, an eigenvalue analysis of the incidence patterns of ntn in Jeremiah. Frank Andersen, my Semitic philology professor, already had a huge store of index cards inscribed with Pentateuchal clause patterns and thus was very receptive when I suggested that use of a computer might facilitate his work. By the end of the year, I had devised a transliteration scheme, had designed a home-brew Hebrew font, and had modified assembler code to allow its display. By early 1971, Frank had input a pilot corpus (the book of Ruth) and was inputting and correcting Hosea, Amos, and Micah. Together, we were at work segmenting the texts. In this paper, I will describe what we did over the ensuing four-plus decades and explain why we did it that way. In the process, I will answer a few questions that I have repeatedly been asked (or should have been asked!), share a few anecdotes, and supply a few cautionary tales…

This paper reads Jesus’ night encounter with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21 and Mary Magdalene’s entrance into the darkened garden tomb in 19:41-20:18 through the lens of apophatic theology in general and The Cloud of Unknowing in particular. I argue that these two encounters unveil darkness as the space between discovery and devotion to the Divine. They demonstrate the tensions between apophasis and embodiment, seeing and unseeing, and knowing and unknowing that are part of a longstanding apophatic tradition where darkness is valued. My reading serves to destabilize the negativity of darkness in the Fourth Gospel and its interpretation. The symbolism scholars have traditionally attributed to Nicodemus’ choice of darkness fails to acknowledge this darkness in a positive way. I argue that in John 3:1-21 darkness is a blinding, luminous Light, one Jesus calls Nicodemus not to eschew but to embrace. Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus is a power struggle over knowledge. Nicodemus proclaims what he knows, Jesus tells him what he does not know. Not so with Mary Magdalene, who always speaks of what she does not know, “unsaying” in true apophatic fashion. Though she searches for Jesus in the darkness, she does not find him where she expects him to be. Only after Mary unsays what she knows—about where Jesus ought to be, and even about what Jesus ought to be doing—is she able to “say” a new proclamation. Only after she “unsays” what she knows can she listen to Jesus’ revelation. Only after she “unsays” what she knows can recognize the face of Jesus. The blindness caused by her tears allows her to “see” God anew. Her unseeing and seeing, her unsaying and saying, occurs only after she enters the darkened space of the tomb and buries what she knows of God. *Full paper available upon request.*

A number of issues surround discussions of the parabolic material in Q. First, the extent of parabolic material is debated. This paper will look at the problems that accompany deciding which parabolic elements belong to Q, and why such material might be especially problematic. Secondly, the paper will explore how the parables function in the Q context to promote the ideological and religious perspectives of those who framed the Q document.

Wisdom books are not static texts. They develop by accretion, rearrangement, rewording, and other forms of enrichment. The authors themselves sometimes claim to use the wisdom of the ancients. They see themselves as conservators, not innovators. The Egyptian wisdom books often exist in multiple documents (some of which are "copies," other of which are editions). This paper will look at the kinds of developments one sees in the major variant editions to determine the apparent motives of these changes. It will also consider Proverbs, in this case using mainly the LXX as the point of comparison. As time allows, Ahiqar and Ben Sira will be brought into consideration. The primary claim is that scribal modification is the way Wisdom develops. The "final form" in any textual series may be simply an historical accident.

This is a prepared response to Ronald Stroud's paper, Ancient Magic and Social Context: New Evidence from the Sanctuary of Demeter in Corinth.

Norms about food--not only its ingredients but also the manner of its preparation and the context of its consumption--served as important markers of the distinction between Jews and gentiles within the Hellenistic world. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Paul and members of his communities use food-related practices to express and debate ideas about what it means to be a believer in Christ. Paul himself uses discourse about food to communicate the message that Jews and Greeks, while different, nevertheless constitute a single Christ-believing community distinct from its Greco-Roman surroundings. Although Paul’s norms regarding food do not depart radically from those of contemporaneous Jewish authorities, the communal identity he forges through these norms is explicitly not Jewish. His conception of Christ-believing identity, moreover, differs significantly not only from the ideas associated with Jesus in the Gospels but also from those that become normative within later Christian communities.

The identity of the "man" who wrestled with Jacob has long been debated. Most commonly, the figure is identified with God or God in human form. But such an identification creates problems. How can Jacob hold his own with God? I explore efforts to overcome this difficulty, including issues of divine self-limitation in the exercise of power.

Quotations and allusions to the Book of Numbers within the Book of the Twelve are rare, but nonetheless crucial. Some pertinent examples include the reference to the Baal-Peor account (Num 25:1-5) in Hosea 9:10, the mentioning of the leadership of Moses with Aaron and Miriam (Num 12) together with an allusion to the Balaam narrative (Num 22-24) in Micah 6:4-5, or the midrashic reference to the covenant of peace (Num 25:12-13) in Malachi 2. In addition to these more or less clear references the question arises to what extent the references to the forty years in the desert (e.g. Amos 2:10; 5:25) already reflect the narrative context of Num 13-14. Likewise, the allusion to the impurity of corpses in Haggai 2:12-14 may already presuppose Num 19. The paper will discuss the relevant passages focusing on diachronic conclusions with regard to a pre-priestly account in the Book of Numbers, on the one hand, and its literary growth in the later Persian period, on the other hand. The observations will be evaluated against the background of the redactional processes within the Book of the Twelve.

Nero appears as a significant symbolic resource in Revelation, but is absent from similar contemporary material found in 4 Ezra. Why is Nero useful in Revelation but irrelevant to 4 Ezra? This paper uses Stephen O’Leary’s theory of millennial rhetoric to explain the difference. O’Leary argues that apocalyptic discourse is characterized by the restructuring of public time in order to resolve the problem of evil. While 4 Ezra and Revelation both bring time to its denouement in typical apocalyptic terms (the messiah brings evil to an end by destroying the Roman Empire), the texts organize time around different problems and present a different logic of theodicy. For Revelation, temporality revolves around Satan’s persecution of the saints and a sacrificial logic of martyrdom justifies God’s current inaction. 4 Ezra, on the other hand, organizes time around the fate of the Jerusalem temple and resolves the problem of evil by asserting that the wise have secret knowledge which explains the delay of justice. So Revelation recalls Nero as a useful image for an understanding of the suffering of the saints, while 4 Ezra focuses instead on the Flavian emperors and claims to have revealed knowledge about the consequences of their assault on the Jerusalem temple.

This paper is concerned with the economic situation of Christian communities in Carthage and Alexandria at the turn of the 2nd to the 3rd century (cf. Schölgen 1985; Haas 1997; Jakab 2001; Fürst 2007) and its impact on and relation to their view of martyrdom. As is generally recognized, both the treatises of Christian authors of this time and area (viz. of Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement, and Origin) related to the topic of martyrdom, and the accounts of the martyrdoms themselves (the respective Acta Martyrum, cf. Barnes 2010) are mainly addressed to those situated within circles of higher status in Roman-African society. On the basis of this insight the pragmatic intentions of those texts and their intended readership will be elaborated in this paper. Of particular interest is the question, whether the thesis, contested since at least Nietzsche (cf. Warren Smith 2006), that self-denial and martyrdom form a strategy of religious reevaluation to express the will to power, is justifiable and fruitful for the interpretation and explanation of the theologies of martyrdom found in these texts. It will be argued that these texts rather promulge aristocratic, though christianized, virtues, like duty and honour, instead of the wish for eschatological exaltation above former suppressors and persecutors. In comparison to relevant New Testament passages (e.g. 1 Peter, Revelation), it will be shown that changed social-economic conditions influenced the understanding of martyrdom.

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Chapter 18 of LXX 3 Kingdoms is a part of the translation unit (Thackeray’s so-called Gamma-Gamma), which has one of the highest numbers of differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts within the broader context of 1-4 Kingdoms (MT Samuel-Kings). When MT and B (Codex Vaticanus, the earliest Greek manuscript we have) are compared side by side in this chapter, about 6% of the Hebrew text has no correspondant in B and 11% of B is material not witnessed in MT. Many of the differences between the two readings occur in vv. 29-39, where there are transpositions and other re-ordering of Elijah’s actions. When compared to MT, B has more repetition, detail and explications as well as a greater attention to the execution of commands. Intentional altering of the text is apparent. The question of which reading is more original—or in other words determining the direction of textual change whether in the Hebrew or in the Greek—is the main quest in this analysis. The MT reading will be compared with readings from various Greek manuscripts, and for textual differences, especially in vv. 29-39, a possible Hebrew Vorlage differing from proto-MT will be considered, as well as the possibility that the differences are due to the translator’s addition or omission of material or to later revision in the Greek. The findings of this analysis should help clarify the origin of the many large-scale differences between the Hebrew and Greek in this translation unit.

While Jesus’ view on halakha (i.e. Jewish law) has been of general interest to New Testament scholars, “giving to the poor” as an integral part of this discussion has been largely neglected. Even the pioneering studies of New Testament scholars E.P. Sanders (Jewish Law between the Bible and the Mishnah [Trinity Press, 1990]) and J.P. Meier (A Marginal Jew: Law and Love [vol 4; YUP, 2009]) have overlooked the manner in which “giving to the poor” functions in Jesus’ view of the law. Yet, biblical legislation, as well as the subsequent legal developments in the Second Temple Period, indicates that charity played a distinctive role in observing the commandments. Moreover, there are several narratives preserved in the Synoptic gospels that discuss charity in relation to other commandments. In fact, these discussions at times closely parallel the legal discussions codified in the literature of the early rabbis, especially the Mishnah and Tosefta. Therefore, the purpose of this paper will be to explore four Synoptic narratives, “The Rich Young Man” (Matt 19:16-22; Mk 10:19-22; Luke 18:18-23), “The Law and Righteousness” (Matt 5:17-20, 6:1-4), “The Widow’s Mites” (Luke 19:1-10), and “Zacchaeus the Tax Collector” (Mk 12:41-44; Lk 21:1-4), in light of the legal context of “giving to the poor” in Second Temple texts and early rabbinic literature in order to shed light on an area of Jesus’ so-called halakha that has been heretofore ignored.

The presenter has been a leading proponent of the idea that a number of personal letters on papyrus, principally dating from the IVth century and Egypt, should be identified as having been written by members of the ancient Manichaean community. Examples include letters in Greek such as P. Harr. 107, P. Oxy. 2603 and 4965; as well as many more from ancient Kellis in Coptic that the presenter has himself edited. Although these are sometimes termed ‘Manichaean letters’, it would be more accurate to speak of them as letters that incidentally evidence authorship by persons of Manichaean belief. The whole matter has occasioned some controversy. For instance, David Martinez in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. R.S. Bagnall 2009, at pp. 601-602) has questioned some of the arguments concerning P. Harr. 107, and indeed Lincoln Blumell read a critical paper on the whole subject at Atlanta in 2010. In this paper Gardner takes the opportunity to clarify the crucial issues, as well as presenting new and relevant data from recently edited portions of Mani’s own Epistles.

For ages the topography outlined in the prose and the poetical account of the Deborah-Barak-Composition has been troublesome. According to the Song of Deborah, the battle took place at Taanach near the waters of Megiddo where, as a result of a sweeping torrent of the Kishon, the kings of Canaan were killed. Thus the miracle took place in the Plain of Esdraelon. In the prose account, on the other hand, the location of the battle is not clarified. Only the encampment of both armies - on Mt. Tabor and near Kishon - is specified. Sisera fled to an otherwise unknown Oak of Zaanannim after the battle while Barak chased the Canaanite army as far as Haroshet-ha-Goiim, which may be identified with the fertile Plain of Esdraelon. Thus a location of this battle more to the north seems possible, contrary to the Song of Deborah. In this respect, topographical considerations may have an effect on the literary history of Jdg 4-5.

In 2009, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS Church, published the Santa Biblia Reina-Valera 2009. This Spanish Bible publication was the result of a translation project that followed the historical pattern of review and revision within the Reina-Valera textual tradition and produced a conservative, linguistically-oriented revision of the 1909 Reina-Valera text with accompanying study aids. This 2009 edition is intended to enhance and facilitate personal and congregational study and use of the scriptures. This paper will briefly review the project, providing insights into the motivation behind it, the philosophy that guided it, and the process by which it was completed. It is hoped that this study will spur additional thought and consideration for other languages that have older, well-established Bibles that are now too difficult for modern readers to use and embrace.

In preparation of a critical edition of Ecclesiastes for the Göttingen Septuaginta Series, images of manuscript Rahlfs Number 159 were acquired after a long search. This is a Catena manuscript of LXX Ecclesiastes, Proverbs 25-28:12, and Canticum, and has not been consulted since the collation of G. L. Spohn in 1785 and the publications of E.Klostermann in 1892 and 1895. Recently the manuscripted was re-identified in a Library in Moscow. A paper was given at The Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Litera¬ture in November, 2008 on “Reading the Missing Pages,” but the half has not been told.

Digitization in rural Ethiopia provides rich rewards, but access can be extremely difficult and conditions are invariably rough. It is a far more expensive undertaking than working in towns as one requires a 4WD vehicle to get within a day’s walk of some sites, and a full range of supplies including a photographic field studio, food, water, camping gear, a reliable energy source and experienced personnel. A two-camera field team requires a minimum of four people. Equally important are the necessary permissions to undertake the work, which invariably carry a significant economic factor. Even with permissions in place and contracts signed, the local community can cancel a project from one day to the next. It is highly recommended, therefore, that any expedition have alternative venues.

Scholars have long recognized infelicitous ritual activity in the legend of Kirtu. The tragedy at the center of the tale involves an unfulfilled vow to Athiratu, which results in a plague upon the king and the ironic disavowal of the very heir that the vow was meant to insure. This paper argues that the unfulfilled vow is merely the last of a series of ritual improprieties by Kirtu by examining the ritual activities of the king, with special attention to markers of temporary cultic status change. At the outset of the tale, Kirtu is alone and in need of an heir. The king is given explicit ritual instructions by the Ilu involving washing, reddening, a tower ritual and other preparations for war. Kirtu's washing and reddening can be seen as preparation for both the roof ritual and subsequent war. In an immediate sense, the washing and reddening is construed as allowing him to perform the tower ritual; in an elongated sense this ritual enables him to proceed with the military campaign to insure a wife. The tower ritual is as a manifestation of Ba‘lu’s divine favor that helps assure Kirtu of success. However, the narrative clearly depicts Kirtu as unconvinced of such assurances, having him make the additional vow to Athiratu. Kirtu does not satisfy the requirements for any of these temporary rites of cultic transition since the text nowhere subsequently indicates a return to a quotidian state. By viewing the vow as the last in a series of status changes placed upon Kirtu, this paper argues that the text is heaping such status changes, one upon another, onto Kirtu without a return to the quotidian, without a ritual resolution. Such a ritual understanding helps explicate the need for Ilu—as opposed to Athiratu—to intervene late in the story.

This paper explores the realized eschatologies of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In it, I attempt to do three things. First, I begin by establishing the presence of realized eschatology in the Dead Sea Scrolls by looking at key texts from the scrolls. In particular, I focus on 1QH, 1QS, and 1QSa noting specific eschatological expectations that are taking place in the present. It is here I argue that one can find six elements of realized eschatology in the scrolls: eternal life, judgment of the wicked, purification, new creation, communion with angels, and the acquisition of special knowledge. Second, I compare the findings of the first section with that of realized eschatology in John. John’s realized eschatology is strikingly similar to that found in the Dead Sea Scrolls; the one major difference being that for John the messiah has come, whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls await a future fulfillment of the messianic hope. Lastly, I offer a thesis that the shared similarities between the eschatologies of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls are largely due to similarities between Jesus and the Qumran community. I argue that because both Jesus and the Qumran community, for their respective documents, constitute a new Temple, they function as the arbiter of God’s truth, the nexus between the heavens and the earth, and the place where atonement is made possible. It is only through Jesus (for John) and through the community (for Qumran) that one is able to experience eschatological realities that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this way, John’s eschatology is tightly bound to his Christology, whereas the eschatology of Qumran is bound to its ecclesiology.

In this paper, I will explore the relationship between ancient Israelite warfare and sacrificial practices, attending to the textual evidence for various juxtapositions of sacrificial ritual and the conduct of military campaigns: sacrifices in preparation for and at the conclusion of military campaigns, as well as sacrifices in the midst of conflict. I will also discuss the ongoing debates about the relationship between sacrificial slaughter and “violence” raised by René Girard’s theory of the origins and inner dynamics of sacrifice. My goal is to enhance understanding of the “native” Israelite meaning given to the categories of “war” and “sacrifice” and to consider how these culture-specific meanings might influence general theories about sacrifice and its relationship to “violence.”

Bodily imagery and aesthetics are closely linked. The construction of a body is a way through which an individual or a community express themselves or their image of the "other". Whether this body is shown as beautiful or ugly, desirable or repulsive, alluring, threatening or grotesque determines the way it is perceived. Metaphors and metaphorical concepts play an essential role in the process of assembling and designing bodily imagery. Furthermore, these images help to structure the perception according to their underlying cognitive strategies and thus to lead the readers to a specific response. In this way metaphorical body images offer an insight into a rhetoric strategy. This paper will explore the dynamics of the metaphorical rhetoric on examples of the beautiful but, nevertheless, threatening “other” in the prophetic oracles to the nations. It will analyse how body metaphors map conceptual structures and images in order to construct an alluring but ambivalent image of the “other”. In the prophetic oracles the body of the “other” bears traits of an ideal image but it reveals grotesque and hybrid images as well. Although metaphorical language recognises the alluring aspect of the beautiful “other” the metaphors, nevertheless, tend to deconstruct their beauty in the eyes of the reader.

Bakhtin describes the dialogue of ideas as “similar to what happens in painting when a distinct tone, thanks to the reflections of surrounding tones, loses its abstract purity, and only then begins to live an authentic ‘painterly’ life.” A similar process took place when the biblical narrative was edited and different episodes and stories were juxtaposed. Individual episodes took on new life and interpretation in their new context and our reading of them is greatly enriched by attention to such juxtaposition. The episodes often come literally from different voices and so Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and the polyphonic novel is an interesting avenue for exploring how these voices interact and reinterpret one another. Using Bakhtin’s analysis of dialogism in the novel, this paper will examine how juxtaposed episodes can dialogue with one another through contradiction, corroboration and complementation, in particular a question and answer relationship. It is this dialogue which consequently affects the interpretation of the episodes in juxtaposition. This understanding of dialogue will be applied to stories in the Elijah and Elisha narratives. For example the juxtaposed episodes of Elijah providing the widow of Zarephath with food and then raising her son from the dead in 1 Kings 17 simultaneously contradict, corroborate and complement one another. Elijah’s ability to perform miracles is corroborated, the nature of the widow’s faith is contradicted and the meaning of the stories complement each other through the resolution reached in 17.24. Not only is the interpretation of an episode changed based on its new context, the resulting three-dimensional dialogue brings tension, complexity and intensification to the reading.

Though commentators have long noted the importance of the apocalyptic term "mystery" in 1 Corinthians, this paper attempts to refine further the background and nature of the technical term. The Pauline mystery is deeply indebted to the book of Daniel, and its presence is felt throughout much of 1 Corinthians. Once the Danielic background is understood, Paul's discussion of the cross, his stewardship as mediator of revelation, the nature of tongues, and the resurrection is more fully appreciated.

There is a general consensus that one translator produced the Septuagint (LXX) Minor Prophets. One of the books often given short shrift in the study of the LXX Minor Prophets and in the question of their unity is Micah. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the translation technique of the translator of LXX Micah and to consider what implications that evidence has concerning the unity of the Minor Prophets in the LXX. In conclusion it will be important to consider what this evidence contributes to our understanding of the translator of the LXX Minor Prophets.

The poetic genre qinah plays a significant rhetorical role in Ezekiel's oracles against the ruler of Tyre (Ezek 28.1-19). The judgment oracle against the prince of Tyre in Ezek 28.1-10 and the funeral dirge over the king of Tyre in Ezek 28.11-19 may be distinguished on form-critical grounds, and in all likelihood the two literary units have distinct origins. Yet, as this paper argues, in their present redactional framework, the two passages function jointly. Although Ezekiel 28.11-19 bears the label "dirge" (qinah), many of the genre's formal features are absent in the passage. Of those characteristics of the dirge enumerated by Hedwig Jahnow, only a few remain, most notably, the once-now pattern which contrasts the king's past glory with his present demise. Some have explained this dearth of formal features as a "disintegration" of the genre. The nonconformity may result, however, from the transformation of the dirge by Israelite prophets into a gleeful taunt over enemies. In Ezekiel's dirge, the modification of several elements attests to the presence of parody: public humiliation replaces admonitions to keep the death private from enemies, and eulogies of incomparable terror substitute for statements of irreplaceability. We should add to Jahnow's list one more characteristic of the funeral dirge: the irreversibility of the deceased person's fate. In contrast to a lament, which presupposes a situation of distress that can be changed by divine intervention, the funeral dirge suits a situation that cannot be altered. The irreversibility of the king's fate suggested by the dirge genre figures prominently in the rhetorical strategy of chapter 28: the past-oriented dirge in Ezek 28.11-19 punctuates the future-oriented judgment oracle in Ezek 28.1-10 as a fait accompli.

This paper aims to put 1 Corinthians 8 in dialogue with the issue of the eating of eidolothuta in Chinese (Malaysian) context. To speak of eidolothuta in popular Chinese beliefs and practices, we first note that for Chinese, everything (material and immaterial) is made of Qi (breath or energy). There is no dichotomy between the visible and invisible worlds. Rather, they are a continuum where yin-yang (a dynamic complementary system); heaven-earth-humanity (a triadic verticality); five phases (wood; fire; earth; metal; and water); and nine fields or palaces (horizontal division system) form the essential components for correlative thoughts in Chinese semantic universe. As such, gods, ancestors, and ghosts are not ontologically different from human beings. This worldview is important to Chinese interpretation, especially when Bourdieu’s habitus or Merleau-Ponty’s “habit body” remind us that our being-in-the-world shapes our mind and behavior, and vice versa. Thus, Chinese ancestor veneration or worship is not just a cultural form of filial piety or a grieving therapy; nor is it merely a kind of “superstitious” practice to allay fear or to receive blessings from the deceased. Rather, it is both, since Chinese worldview is non-dualistic. In Roman Corinth, the ubiquitous presence of altars, temples, etc. also seems to reflect such a close everyday interaction with the invisible powers (1 Cor. 8:5). Given this inter(con)textual discourse, the eating of eidolothuta is not just about “to eat or not to eat” (8:8); nor is it merely about “knowledge” vs. “love.” Paul, moreover, does not set “love” against “knowledge.” For Paul, if all things come from (the one) God and (the one) Lord (8:6), then our sense of identity should be understood within the death and life of Christ (8:11). This cross-oriented interpretation is helpful to Chinese context as it offers a more (w)holistic view on the eidolothuta issue. (300 words)

The genre of children's bibles has a much briefer history within Judaism than it does within Christianity, beginning only in the nineteenth century. In the context of modernizing Judaism, the Bible replaced the Talmud as the centerpiece of the education of Jewish children. The form in which the Bible was taught also changed; no longer did young children learn to read the original Hebrew text word-by-word, but instead they were taught through collections of Bible stories in English that were highly modified texts, created specifically for children. This paper will explain the educational goals of Jewish educators with respect to teaching the Bible and will then examine sample stories from popular collections to see the extent to which educational theory was carried out in the stories being read to children in religious school classrooms. Attention will also be paid to the ways in which the American environment influenced the directions in which biblical narrative was changed to children's story, particularly with regard to moral values and the nature of God. A brief comparison to Bible story collections created for an Israeli audience will highlight the importance of cultural/historical context for the specific shaping of these texts.

In my doctoral dissertation (defended July 2010), I demonstrated an evolution in the representation of purity law from the earliest biblical law to the latest figurative ideas expressed in Ezra-Nehemiah. I showed that the concrete move from (1) ritual purity to (2) moral purity to (3) genealogical purity necessarily involves an unfolding of denigrating images of women and the female body. Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls marks a further refinement in the Bible’s purity laws. Klawans has put forward what I call a “fourth category” in Sin and Impurity in Ancient Judaism. He shows that, in general, the Scrolls often collapse the categories of ritual and moral purity. In this paper, I seek to determine whether gender plays a significant role in this fourth representation of the biblical purity laws. Secondarily, depending upon how women are portrayed in the scrolls in connection to purity law (and this can range from neutral [as in P] to exceedingly bad [as in Ezekiel]), I will use methods I have already developed from biblical studies, women's studies and anthropology to assess the portrayal of women in the scrolls

This paper proposes to that an important aspect of the mental and cultural world of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is the Roman cult of the dead in North Africa in the early third century. There are a significant number of direct references and allusions within the Passion to the North African cult of the dead, and these references have perhaps previously not been seen to be what they really are. In essence, a new contextual frame is being proposed for this important text. Without negating the important Christian and apocalyptic elements in the text, this paper highlights the setting of Perpetua within a culture in which the cult of the dead had an extremely significant place within both pagan and Christian society. The Passion of Perpetua should not be considered as a sacred and timeless liturgical text, in the sense of being divorced from its context. The ancient liturgical use of the text, together with the long-standing debates regarding its orthodoxy, have perhaps clouded the evidence of the text itself, in its own historical context. Having proposed a new context for this ancient text, this paper then attempts to reconsider the function of the text. The role Roman ideology of refrigerium within the Carthaginian Christian communities is explored, as suggested by the internal evidence of The Passion of Perpetua. Fundamentally, the paper will argue that the Christian community which produced this text understood the function of the cult of the dead to be to transcend the worlds of the living and the dead, as well as the past and the present, and essentially, to create community unity and identity. As part of this, it seems that the sacral use of the text itself had a significant role in fulfilling this purpose.

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Acts 15 has been called the “most crucial chapter in the whole book” and, appropriately, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. In recent decades, it has been the subject of a variety of rhetorical analyses, which have highlighted such features as the deliberative nature of the speeches in Acts 15, Peter’s use of refutation, and the ways that aspects of the rhetoric of the passage contribute to Luke’s overall aims. The present paper contributes to this ongoing discussion of Acts 15 by bringing the passage into conversation with a little-discussed feature of the progymnasmata, namely, instructions on proposing or refuting a law. This specific compositional exercise drew on the skills mastered in the earlier exercises as students utilized compositional and rhetorical skills to persuade the reader or audience to enact or abandon a particular law based on the topics of legality, possibility, advantage, and appropriateness, among others. Reading Acts 15 in light of this particular aspect of the progymnasmata yields insights into the biblical text on two levels. On one level, this paper explores the three individual speeches with regard to the extent to which they correspond to these ancient guidelines for opposing or introducing a law. The believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees (v. 5) argue from necessity in support of their proposal. Peter (vv. 7-11) opposes their proposed law using the arguments that it is unnecessary, impossible, and even shameful and inappropriate. James (vv. 13-21) renders his decision against the proposal with an argument of advantage and legality (citing the words of the prophets), and makes a new proposal of his own based on what is good for the Gentiles. According to Luke, the argument and rhetorical features of these speeches were highly effective in persuading the audience; their adherence to rhetorical conventions may have contributed to this. More significantly, this paper examines Luke’s retelling of this event as a whole, as itself an instance of opposing a law according to the conventions of ancient rhetoric. The effectiveness of Luke’s own presentation is not provided by the text and must be judged by the reader of Luke-Acts. This paper finds that, given the instructions provided in the progymnasmata, the process of refutation of a law inscribed in Acts 15 is a process that would have communicated effectively to educated Greek and Roman audiences about the credible and persuasive way in which it was decided that Gentile Christians should not be subject to obeying the entire law of Moses.

Apparently formulated in a pagan Greek context, the collection of moral and religious aphorisms known as the Sayings of Sextus had a brilliant afterlife among early Christians. Over 50 years ago, Henry Chadwick suggested that the Sentences of Sextus might aptly be called “the wisdom-literature of early Gentile Christendom.” Writing before publication of the longer Coptic version discovered among the codices that would become known as the Nag Hammadi Library, Chadwick stressed the extensive Christian readership of the sayings in Armenian, Greek, Latin, and Syriac language versions “from Britain to Mesopotamia.” This paper offers an orientation to the sayings and revisits Henry Chadwick’s suggestion that they are of great importance to “that neglected subject, the history of ethics” (Henry Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus, Cambridge, 1959).

A continuing problem for the historian of ancient Israel and Judah is how to relate texts and archaeology, especially when the data sets from the two sorts of sources appear to contradict each other. This paper will examine several examples from Iron Age and Persian period Jerusalem and make some suggestions of principles that might apply.

The flood narrative from Genesis 6-9 has been retold in numerous, recent pieces of literature, ranging from Julian Barnes’s “The Stowaway” to David Maine’s The Preservationist. Though extensive, none of the scholarship on this phenomenon—such as Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg’s recent monograph Sustaining Fictions or the collection Subverting Scriptures, edited by Beth Hawkins Benedix—attempts to argue for or to define the term “retelling,” however. These scholars seem to simply assume that we all know a “retelling” when we encounter it. This paper disagrees, so it will first provide an explanation for why the term “retelling” should be preferred above the others currently in use, such as “afterlife” (e.g. Sherwood) or “transfiguration” (e.g. Ziolkowski). It will also propose a distinct definition of the literary phenomenon of biblical “retellings,” which oddly no scholar has done yet. Most basically, biblical retellings are those post-biblical pieces of literature that initiate a dialogue with the biblical text—which also acts as its predominant source—through a variety of overt correspondences. This definition will be useful not only in literary retellings, but in other mediums (like film), as well. Finally, this paper will proffer a vocabulary that traces how contemporary flood narratives adapt the biblical deluge; this vocabulary includes terms such as reorientation (the telling of a biblical story from a different or new point of view and/or voice) and repopulation (the addition of totally new characters into the biblical story). These terms are helpful not only because readers can use them as categories of analysis—to illuminate individual retellings and to compare different retellings—but also because they may, in turn, reveal aspects of the Bible that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.

This paper takes up the relationship between violence and aesthetics in the Book of Jeremiah through an analysis of the function of repetition in the Oracles Against the Nations. The violence of the Oracles against the Nations draws much of its power from the use of repetition. Specific images, fields of metaphor, and rhetorical structures of address repeat across the collection of Oracles and even within a single oracle. While this repetition is sometimes understood as either an accident of composition or deliberate literary excess, I argue that the repeated structures of the text are both deliberate and not oriented toward aesthetic pleasure. Instead, I suggest reading the repetitions of the Oracles against the Nations as a "repetition compulsion," following Freud’s work in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle." Repetition, even the repetition of violent fantasies, signals a literary negotiation with trauma. As such, the Oracles against the Nations are best read not as a reflection of real or desired political violence against the other, but rather as the symptom of a deeper drive toward death and a violence against the self. In constructing this argument, I will begin my analysis with the Oracle concerning Edom and then situate this text in the larger contexts of the Oracles against the Nations and of Freud’s theorization of the death drive, as well as more recent work on repetition and trauma.

Bakhtin’s interest in modern novels (e.g., Dickens and Dostoevsky) helped him fashion his distinctive theory of heroic characterization. I will borrow from that work and supplement it as well to offer a characterization of Jeremiah considering ten factors (e.g., overlap with the narrating voice, shared speech with another central character [God]), vast network of named associates, predilection for violent metaphors, potential for re-casting in the arts [drama, music, painting]). For each of the factors I will define the term or concept, offer key data, and distill a significant ‘take-away’ point. Those distillations will offer a fresh and provocative ‘character scan’ on the prophet.

The author of 2 Peter is familiar with and uses the early Jesus traditions. The most prominent examples of his engagement with these traditions are the reference to Peter's imminent death (1.14) and his account of the Transfiguration (1.16-18). His appeal to these traditions is part of his attempt to counter the influence of the false teachers who “secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them” (2.1). This essay will focus on the way that the author of 2 Peter utilized the epistemological category of testimony in his presentation of the traditions. The author’s method of presenting the traditions as testimony is a central plank in his polemic. The essay will also introduce some ancient and current reflection on the nature of testimony.

Exodus 21:22 has figured prominently in halachic discussions. This paper will look at the representations of this verse in a number of different Jewish biblical translations, from the Septuagint and Targumim, to the twenty-first century. The primary purpose of this analysis is not to determine which renderings are “better” or “worse” in comparison with the admittedly enigmatic Hebrew text. Rather, our goal is to assess each version in terms of the historical, cultural, and religious circumstances or contexts in which its translator (or group of translators) worked.

It is by now well-known that there was wisdom literature at Ugarit. However, all the wisdom texts that have been found are written in languages that are not West Semitic. Nevertheless, there is wisdom embedded and embodied within texts written in Ugaritic. Such wisdom can be discerned in gnomic expressions, quasi-philosophical formulations, wisdom themes and motifs, as well as passages that have demonstrable parallels in biblical wisdom texts. In view of this material it can be suggested that Syro-Palestine or Canaan was the breeding ground for the biblical wisdom tradition.

Building on the work of other wisdom scholars, I argue that three (rather than two) distinct voices may be “heard” within Qoheleth. Each voice has its own characteristics, which can be traced throughout. Voice 1 (QP) is that of Qoheleth, the Preacher. His is the true voice of wisdom. He speaks with authority and dispenses nuggets of practical theology, primarily in second-person imperatives. Voice 2 (QS), by contrast, is that of Qoheleth speaking as Solomon. Serving as Qoheleth’s foil, QS speaks in the voice of the great and wise king Solomon as a means of reflecting on Solomon’s misguided wisdom. Solomon, allegedly the most wise man in the history of Israel (Ecc 1:16; 1 Kgs 4:29–34), failed to find ultimate meaning in life “because his heart was turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel” (1 Kgs 11:9). The two voices together seemingly mock Solomon as one who should have been content with everything under the sun, but was not because he did not fear God. A third voice may also be heard on two brief, but prominent, occasions. This voice (QFN) serves as the “Frame-Narrator,” to borrow from Fox’s parlance, and is found in the third-person narrative sections of chapters 1 and 12. He not only speaks about Solomon, but also speaks for Solomon.

For over a century, most scholars have assumed that the presence, activities, and prestige of Jewish priests declined sharply following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 C.E. As a result of this assumption, little attention has been given to the subsequent fate and role of priests in Jewish society. However, an increasing amount of evidence indicates that priests did not disappear after 70, but continued to contribute in significant ways to Jewish social dynamics throughout Late Antiquity. Several sources suggest that priests continued to function in non-cultic capacities such as serving as judges, teachers, recipients of tithes, and participants in liturgical synagogue worship. Because Jewish priesthood was determined by lineage, there must have been a way for the community to recognize which individuals and families could be identified as priests so that they could perform these responsibilities. In this paper I will examine evidence for the preservation of priestly lineage after 70 C.E. Literary and epigraphic evidence indicates that some priestly families – both within and outside of rabbinic circles – retained their identities as priests for centuries after the First Revolt. It is also apparent that priestly lineage retained a high degree of prestige in the Jewish community. This is made clear by individuals claiming priestly titles in the writings of Josephus, early rabbinic literature, numismatic legends, and inscriptions found in funerary and synagogal contexts. There is even evidence that some priestly families after 70 continued to identify themselves as descendants of the twenty-four priestly courses. This raises the issue of how priestly lineage was preserved and verified during this period. Unfortunately, we are not able to reconstruct these logistics fully, but hints in the extant sources allow us to make some preliminary observations. For example, Josephus (writing in the late 90s) claims that priestly marriages after 70 still required genealogical documents attesting to the bride’s lineage in order to ensure the “purity” of the priestly line. Interest in priestly lineage continued in subsequent centuries. This is shown by conflicts between some priests and rabbis over the regulation of priestly marriages and the legal status of their offspring. Patriarchs and rabbinic sages attempted to assert their authority over these matters in the third and fourth centuries, but there is evidence that not all priestly families adhered to their guidelines. Although different circles disagreed on the parameters of priestly lineage, it is clear that the issue continued to be an important part of Jewish dynamics long after the loss of the Jerusalem temple.

This session will focus on ways to employ computer technology, such as video Podcasts and classroom management systems, in introductory Bible classes where the number of students is often quite large (i.e. high double and triple digits). In addition this seminar will show how to provide a rich multifaceted learning experience that matches with a variety of different student learning modalities. The challenge with larger sized introductory Bible classes is, on the one hand, the necessity of getting students on board with a number of basic conceptual "tools" and approaches (i.e. historical background, cultural context and genre-specific information) and, on the other hand, providing students the opportunity to engage in close readings were they get to employ the "tools." This session will demonstrate a combined methods approach where learners practice close reading learning experiences in a "safe" environment vs. mostly memorizing and reproducing facts about the Bible and its context. This session will outline how to: 1. Leverage available computer screen capture and video rendering tools to produce enhanced lecture video Podcasts and 2. Integrate podcast viewing with an online Class Management System, such as Moodle, and small group size close reading experiences. Data will indicate that this method of instruction enhances student learning and comprehension of the New Testament.

Ps 22:10-11 and Ps 139:13-16 are full of body-language. They describe the womb as starting-place of the close relationship between God and human beings. The paper asks which aspects of interaction and cognition theories of metaphor are helpful for the interpretation of birth metaphors in the Psalms. What concepts of pre-natal life and birth do the Biblical texts reflect? What connotations do these birth metaphors attribute to YHWH, the God of Israel? What associations are created in the interaction of these special metaphoric fields?

During the 2006 season of the New Excavations conducted at Ramat Rahel, the remains of a Royal Garden were discovered. Throughout the following five excavation seasons, between 2006 and 2010, the ancient garden was gradually unearthed. The physical remains reviled an evenly laid layer of rich dark “garden soil”, several plastered water pools, tunnels and channels, carved stone gutters as well as a water reservoir. The intriguing features of the garden, its monumentality and grandeur, mark it as a unique archaeological complex - the first and only of its kind to be discovered in pre-Hellenistic Judah. This paper seeks to understand the different aspects of the garden at Ramat Rahel in light of the Iconographic and textual representations of gardens in the Ancient Near East, as well as in the Old Testament. The biblical analysis will focus on three words that may shed light on the purpose and function the garden in Ramat Rahel may have had: gan (garden), pardes (orchard) and kerem (vineyard). The archaeological, iconographical and textual examination will provide an answer to the question of the role the garden played in the site, its date of construction, and the social and cultural implication such a garden might have had in Late Iron Age Judah.

Bernard De Géradon proposed that biblical texts often presented the makeup of the human through bodily actions located within three somatic zones: emotion-fused thought, self-expressive speech, and purposeful action. While de Géradon conceived the tri-partite body-zone model primarily within semitic expression, a broader Mediterranean first-century socio-cultural understanding attests to viewing external, material, bodily actions as being reflective of the inner person. Specifically, Greco-Roman physiognomic thinking governed what actions were appropriate and fitting to any given circumstance. Analysis of the social and cultural encoding of the three body-zones helps to display the rhetorical dimensions of these actions in biblical texts.

In the final speech before his death, the 4th century anchorite Antony is shown in his hagiography to be hostile to the preservation of the bodies of the deceased, a mortuary ritual most often associated with traditional Egyptian practice. However, a closer examination of the text, together with other references to mummification in 4th century Egypt shows that the factors at work in this contested ritual are not solely wrapped in religious identity. Instead, several tensions are laid bare by the portrayal of mummification in The Life of Antony: Greek and Egyptian ethnicity, Nicene orthodoxy and the Melitian church of the martyrs, episcopal and monastic power, and local and imperial power. This paper argues that the simplifying rhetoric of the The Life of Anthony attempts to mediate and resolve the tensions surrounding these contested identities. The compiler of The Life uses Antony as the lens to focus these issues precisely because he is, in many ways, a liminal figure, sitting between many of these dualisms presented in the text. This paper argues that this ritual treatment of the dead maps onto late-antique Egyptian discussions of ethnicity in Roman Egypt, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and the use of the cult of the martyrs. Additionally, the compiler's retelling of Antony's death and diatribe against Egyptian mortuary practice lays the groundwork for situating Antony's legacy among other prominent figures who either leave no corporeal remains (Jesus and Elijah) or whose remains are lost (Moses) and then claiming that power for the Alexandrian episcopate.

What is the significance of retelling a foundational narrative with new coordinates? In this essay I analyze the radical Johannine relocation of the divine-human territory of encounter offered in John 1:1-18. Using border theory and my identity as a US-Mexico borderlander as critical lenses, I compare and contrast the divine-human encounters in Genesis and the Prologue of John in light of the main models of borderlands interaction. In reading the biblical stories with these cartographic images I explore, on the one hand, the eschatological need of the Johannine community in revamping the foundational story and on the other hand the geopolitical ramifications that such a story offers as a model for transnational interactions between Mexico and the United States.

The famous painted synagogue of Dura-Europos preserves 15 narrative panels that retain enough data to identify their contents. A significant portion of them, 5 panels, shows deviations from the biblical text in favor of Mesopotamian Jewish folklore. This paper explores the visual communication of these panels, in order to highlight their non-biblical content. I argue that these paintings do not depict the Hebrew Bible. Instead, they reflect folkloric versions of the biblical stories recorded also in Mesopotamian rabbinic literature dating between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, best known in the collection Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg. The striking similarity between the early medieval Mesopotamian rabbinic stories and the pictorial contents of the late ancient wall paintings at the Dura synagogue suggests not only continuity, but also highlights the importance of oral culture as a foundation of religious didactic art among the Jewish communities of early 3rd century northern Mesopotamia.

The unsuccessful risings in support of the deposed House of Stuart stirred deep anxieties in England and contributed to the breakdown of the clan system in the Scottish Highlands. This paper explores how some Church of England preachers used texts from the Books of Samuel to assert, in the face of the uprisings, the authority of the established realm and church. It draws data from Sampson Letsome’s The Preacher’s Assistant, which catalogs sermons from the restoration of Charles II (1660) to 1753, and John Cooke’s 1783 expanded catalog. Particular attention is given to uses of the story of Absalom’s rebellion in 2 Samuel. The paper also sets these eighteenth-century uses in the context of earlier literature, including John Dryden’s widely-read poem, Absalom and Achitophel (1681-2), as well as sermons preached in response to the Duke of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion of 1685.

Authors of Korean literature enjoy developing a story’s flow through implicit hints and descriptions of circumstances rather than through the narrator’s direct voice. A ‘foreshadowing (bok-sun)’ is a prevelant strategy in general. Having an Asian background, Hebrew Bible narratives are also quite familiar with this method of implication. The Joseph narrative is an excellent example of this narrative strategy. Due to its great volume (Gen 37-50), the longest single narrative in the Hebrew Bible, the author employed a ‘preview’ by presenting the Judah story in chapter 38 as a miniature to foreshow the resolution of its final stage. Apart from the present paper’s approach, however, Genesis 38 has suffered from long and painful history with regard to its interconnectedness with its surrounding chapters. Looking back over two thousand years of the history of interpretation, the majority of scholars are not favorable to the relatedness of the Judah story to the Joseph narrative. Even prominent Hebrew Bible scholars deny the two unit’s close relationship, arguing that chapter 38 is isolated in every way. In the midst of these suspicious problems, however, some contemporary scholars have begun to view the Judah story with respect to its neighboring context. In spite of these positive tries, the present paper points out that the solutions so far seem just fragmentary, arguing for unity yet failing to develop the theme of the whole narrative. To resolve this vagueness about the function and placement of chapter 38, this paper will show how certain miniatures in the inner narrative preview the resolution of the whole narrative. To support this claim, this paper will argue that (1) positioning the Judah story right after chapter 37 is justifiable; (2) demonstrate what purpose the narrator has by positioning this chapter there; and then (3) examine four miniatures in chapter 38 showing how they anticipate the resolution of the whole narrative.

Galut (Exile) in Biblical theology is simply a punishment. The people no longer live in their homeland since they do not deserve to live there: "For the land shall be forsaken of them… while they atone for their iniquity" (Lev. 27:43). However, most of the Jewish people lived outside the Land of Israel during the Second Temple period. Did they see themselves as being punished? How did they explain the punishment of the "exile"? In my paper I will examine some Jewish-Hellenistic authors' views, but mainly the way the LXX understands the concept of Galut. Based on the words and terms the LXX uses to translate the semantic field of Gola, we will suggest that the punishment is not the sojourn outside the homeland but the circumstances of life in those places. Thus enslavement and captivity are the true negative essence of Gola: a free man anywhere in the world is not in exile at all.

The purpose of this essay is to show the development of the “new creation” motif from Gal 5:15 to 2 Cor 5:17 against the backdrop of the parallels established between Paul’s threefold use of the circumcision/uncircumcision contrasts in Gal 5:6, Gal 5:15 and 1 Cor 7:19. These parallels demonstrate that, for Paul, the “new creation” of Gal 5:15 is to be interpreted in terms of a life characterized by “faith working itself out through love” (Gal 5:6), which in turn can be framed in terms of “keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7:19). In view of these mutually interpreting concepts, Paul’s reference to the “old things” in 2 Cor 5:17 refers to the “old age” human distinctives of ethnic identity, while the “new creation” refers to an eschatological, ontological reality (cf. the now programmatic essay of P. Stuhlmacher). Contextually, this reality should be interpreted in terms of the life-pattern established by Christ’s love on the cross as outlined in 2 Cor 5:14-15. For as this text makes clear, for Paul the cross provides both the impetus and model for the life of the new creation, which against the background of the development of the theme of new creation in Galatians and 1 Corinthians can be understood as a keeping of God’s commands as they find their fulfillment in this cross-shaped love (Gal 5:6 in view of 5:13-14 and 1 Cor 7:19 in view of 1 Cor 13; cf. Rom 13:8-10). To support this conclusion, the essay will outline the conceptual parallels between 2 Cor 5:14-15 and 5:20-21 as Paul’s decoding in the immediate context of what it means to be a “new creation in Christ.”

A Coptic apocryphal gospel now largely eclipsed by the “Gospel of Judas”, the fragmentarily-preserved “Gospel of the Savior” from the Berlin Papyrussammlung was announced as a major discovery in 1996. Since then, much has been speculated about its date and place of origin and its original length and contents. Taken together with allegedly similar pieces from other manuscripts (the fragmentary “Strasbourg Coptic Gospel” and the brief but complete “Stauros Text” from Qasr el-Wizz in Nubia), the text was considered as one “complete gospel”, interpreted in the light of “Gnostic discoveries” like the “Nag Hammadi library” and taken to contain possibly original sayings of Jesus. Because of the title “Savior” used for its main character and the words “we, the apostles” used in the narration, the fragments were called “Gospel of the Savior” and have been tentatively identified as the “Gospel of the Apostles” referred to in early Christian sources. In spite of some controversy in the scholarly debate, this “Gospel” seems to have been more or less “taken for granted” in recent years. None of this, I argue, places the work in its proper context. The Berlin and Strasbourg “apocryphal gospel” fragments and the “Stauros Text” have many elements in common with about a dozen other Coptic texts, most of which are completely preserved and have been published long ago, but seem to be largely unknown to or ignored by specialists. When studied together, these texts clearly refute the current interpretation of the “Gospel of the Savior”. For one, they are not “complete gospels” (say, from Advent to Ascension): the core of most of them is a single dialogue of Christ and the apostles, before or after “Easter”, focusing on the revelation of “apocryphal data” and contained in a book allegedly written by one of the apostles or evangelists. In most cases, this part is further embedded within a homily attributed to a famous bishop or patriarch, surrounded by a prologue and epilogue with an alleged eye-witness account of the discovery of original apostolic writings preserved in “the library in Jerusalem” or of copies kept in the patriarchal library at Alexandria. With or without “find frame”, the “traditions” preserved in these texts are decidedly written rather than oral, and it would be a methodological error to look for parallels only in well-known Gnostic works. Moreover, several of these “gospels” also exist in Arabic, Ethiopic and Old Nubian versions. What all this means for the date and place of origin of the so-called “Gospel of the Savior” remains to be seen; in this paper, I will first of all present a reappraisal of the “Gospel of the Savior” and other Coptic “apocryphal gospels” in view of their overall structure and content details, also referring to the “Gospel of Peter”.

To what extent can we think of sound as material culture? In what way is sound an object to be observed? And how does sound function within the early Christian literary and aesthetic imagination? These questions are at the fore of this paper, which turns our attention to sound as an important feature of the material imagination of late antiquity. The ancient “eye,” of course, was a tremendously productive paradox, simultaneously vulnerable and powerful; but the “ear” was just as paradoxical as the eye, and perhaps even more so in a world where orality and aurality were central: ears can hear the voices of angels or the songs of the demons, the voice can speak truth or lies, sounds can distract or discipline the body—the difficulty is knowing the difference.

Hinneh – Biblical Hebrew the Practical Way balances two major pedagogical demands of a language program: the presentation of frequently occurring lexical and grammatical examples, and the sequencing of the material in a way that allows for easier teaching and learning. Hinneh provides students with what is deemed necessary information for the introductory stage, postponing minute linguistic details for later, should they wish to continue beyond the introductory level. Attention is given to imparting the most efficient and effective lexical and grammatical skills and tools. Rather than through ineffective memorization, competence and proficiency are built through wide exposure to, and translation exercises of many Biblical verses, prose, and poetry. These are supported by a heavy use of the lexicon and a rich 'Tool Box' containing frequently occurring vocabulary lists, paradigms and parsing charts. However, skills and tools are not enough. Openness to the unaccustomed, creativity and even some educated guessing are also encouraged. At every stage, even beyond the introductory level, much insight can be drawn from context. Therefore, students are expected to always integrate the results of their lexical and grammatical findings with information extracted from context in order to reach a sound understanding and translation. There is no perfect translation for any literary text, certainly not for the richly layered and theologically loaded Hebrew Bible; an important objective of the Hinneh program is to shake students from their confidence in only one favored translation. Students are exposed to a variety of translations, old and new, and have opportunities to compare the solutions of different translators to problems stemming from grammatical, lexical, thematic, and other features of the text, and to discuss their results and effects. This way, students develop also their ability for critical examination and evaluation of Biblical translations as well as build their confidence in their own attempts. www.hebrew-with-halabe.com

One of the most important skills that Biblical studies learners must practice and master is close readings of texts. Hence, one of the most important tasks for teachers of Biblical studies is to design activities and assessments that help learners masters close reading skills. These skills are easier to teach and assess in small class settings. But how does one have the same success in a large lecture course? This presentation will demonstrate the utility, especially in large courses, of an electronic response system (e.g., iClicker) to significantly enhance students’ ability to read texts closely, critically, and analytically.

Recent pentateuchal scholarship has made the case for reading Genesis 11–25 as an exilic and postexilic narrative that reflects the situation of returning Jews in the Persian period. While a prehistory for the material should not be discounted, the final shaping of the material points to the collective memory about Abraham and Sarah in a later period; the chapters present a “meaningful past” that remembers the past in order to construct Jewish identity in the postexilic present. If the collective memory of a given group is the key to its sense of identity, what then do the wife-sister episodes in Genesis 12, 20 and 26 indicate about the construction of Jewish identity in the postexilic period? This paper will examine those chapters to ask: What is the memory of exile-forced migration that the episodes perpetuate? And what, based on this memory, is the paradigm for Jewish identity that they constitute? Finally, by considering the wife-sister motif alongside the book of Esther, this paper assesses Genesis 12’s contribution to the postexilic debate over the possibilities of diasporic existence.

There are several texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a paired reference to women’s divination and sexual deviance is used as an insult. In Isa 57:3, for instance, “sons of a soothsayer” (‘onenah) is used in parallel with “offspring of an adulterer and a harlot” (mena’ef, tizneh), or in the vernacular, “sons of witches” and “son of a bitch” or “bastard”. There are similar repeated parallels between the sexual deviant (zonah) and the mistress of sorcery (ba‘alat keshafim), and between their respective activities (zenuneha, keshafeha), in Nah 3:4. The association is made more subtly in Prov 6:26, where the sexually dangerous woman is said to hunt nefesh. While this is usually read in terms of seduction, the phrase occurs only here (nefesh… tatsud) and in the equally searing condemnation of the divining women of Ezek 13:18 (letsoded nefashot), and should be understood to refer to divination in Prov 6:26 as well. In each of the above cases, the language is clearly metaphorical. (As a point of comparison, consider the uses of mekhashefim and mena’afim in immediate succession in Mal 3:5, where the context is a list of literal transgressions.) Other cases are more ambiguous: these behaviors are also derided in tandem, for example, in Jehu’s biting reference to the sexual deviance and sorcery of Jezebel (zenunei Jez., keshafeha), spoken rather viciously to her son (2 Kgs 9:22). Various types of associations between sorcery and sex are also found in the Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft literature. While there are many references to male witches, individual accusations are predominantly against women. The preponderance of literary accusations of women’s sorcery, coupled with sexual language, sets the tone for the biblical material and offers a fuller picture of the social background for such ideology.

Many scholars have observed that there are passages with gender specific language in the Source Q. W. Arnal called parables like Q 17:34-35 or Q 13,18-21 “gendered couplets“ and most scholars assume that women were addressed deliberately in these passages (compare, for example, A. Batten). On the basis of Q 12:51-52 and 14:26, L. Schottroff argued for Wandercharismatikerinnen in the Q communities. However, H. Melzer-Keller has criticized the idea that women play any special role in Q. In this presentation, I shall try to offer an intermediate position to the above Schottroff and Melzer-Keller. I shall survey examples of the so-called “gendered couplets“ and other significant passages in Q which specifically refer to women and their way of life. This investigation will show that these passages are very different from one another and that it seems inappropriate to classify them all as part of a single category. Q 17:34-35 for example seems to illustrate ordinary daily life and need not to be interpreted as a passage which tries to address both genders. Of all the passages examined, only Q 14:26 suggests the possibility that women left their families and households to evangelize other people.

In a recent article in Theology & Sexuality (Boer 2010), Roland Boer explores the interconnection between power, writing, and the production of prophetic masculinity. Boer focuses on prophetic texts that refer explicitly to writing (esp. Ezek 9; Jer 36). What he does not consider, however, are texts crucial to the production of prophetic masculinity that represent authoritative speech through the medium of writing. Such a text is Jer 44, in which the prophet Jeremiah, recently faced with a charge of speaking falsehood at the scribe Baruch’s behest (43:2-3; cf. Jer 36), is represented as speaking the truth on behalf of Yhwh. Divine speech is represented here in inescapably gendered terms. It is not simply that the prophet is male, nor that the god on whose behalf he speaks is male, both obvious points. More significant is the fact that in the written representation of the conflict between Jeremiah and devotees of the Queen of Heaven over the theological import of the destruction of Jerusalem (44:15-19), only the male god is permitted, by the scribe, to speak. Moreover, the voices of women in this text are silenced. In 44:19, it seems that women are speaking (cf. Peshitta), yet in 44:15 the entire speech in 44:15-19 is attributed to men, with the women only mentioned in passing. The scribal representation of truthful speech on Yhwh’s behalf thus constructs the prophet’s spoken words as both divine and masculine through the silencing of both women and the goddess. In the written corpus of Jeremiah, then, truthful speech on behalf of Yhwh — the bedrock of the theology of the book — is inextricably linked with both the scribal construction of the masculinity of the prophet and the scribal construction of the hyper-masculinity of the deity, expressed through merciless, violent retribution against devotees of the silenced goddess.

invited paper

During the second half of the 20th century, functional equivalence was the primary theoretical approach in Bible translation around the world. Developed in the context of American Descriptive Linguistics, this theory provided a very pragmatic approach to numerous translation challenges in the world’s diverse languages. Translation Studies scholars such as Gentzler and Biblical Studies scholars like D.A. Carson have pointed out many of the limitations of functional equivalence, which have provided helpful correctives to the theory, expressing many of the concerns raised by many Bible translators themselves. These correctives and concerns will be presented in the paper’s theoretical overview, which will also include a re-evaluation of Nida’s concepts of identity and equivalence from his 1964 text, The Theory and Practice of Translation. Further questions about notions of equivalence have been raised by cognitive models of inferential communication which expect more nuanced awareness of the sociocultural setting of the communicators. The various ways in which the sociocultural turn in communication and translation theory is influencing Bible translation practice will be explored in this paper, with specific attention given to the intersection of the notion of equivalence with the concepts of domestication and foreignization. Consideration will also be given to aspects of postcolonial criticism that are impacting Bible translation, as greater attention is given to the diverse places from which Bible translations are being read. The paper concludes by teasing out several implications of the sociocultural turn for Bible translators, followed by recommendations for further research.

As Christopher Faraone has shown, ancient curse tablets and binding spells (defixiones) use the language of violence not to kill but to constrain a victim within a particular pattern of political or social competition (Greek, agôn). This "agonistic" context explains why curse and binding spells target specific body parts for restraining ("The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells," in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991]). Athletic curses, for example, attempted to bind the parts of a charioteer's body in which his competitive skill lay, such as the shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, and eyes. Judicial spells, likewise, targeted the cognitive and rhetorical faculties in which victory in the art of litigation lay: an orator's psychê, mouth, and tongue. In this way, defixiones aimed to incapacitate a victim even before the actual agôn began (e.g., "tongue-tied" in court). This paper argues that the Ephesian household code (specifically, Eph 6:5–7) participates in a language of violence and an "agonistic" context similar to those found in the defixiones. The author of Ephesians, for example, targets a slave's psychê as an object to bind and so to control. By constraining the psychê and so binding a slave's cognitive and personal motivation, the author of Ephesians hopes to incapacitate a slave's will to fight back or rebel. The hope is that the will of slave will be defeated with minimal effort, even before potential struggles begin in household management.

The late Professor Jacob Milgrom published important articles on the Temple Scroll shortly after it first came to light (when I was his student) and was also a primary participant in the new Princeton edition. His articles, “The Scriptural Foundations and Deviations in the Laws of Purity of the Temple Scroll,” (1990) and “The Qumran Cult: Its Exegetical Principles” (1989), written over 20 years ago, argued that the Temple Scroll, in particular, took an expansive approach to biblical purity laws which was more stringent and exclusionary than evidenced heretofore (Milgrom, 1989). However, recent claims of some scholars suggest that the Temple Scroll is not so elitist. In support of this view, it is noted that the author invites the resident alien into the Temple courts (Wassen, 2010) and even tolerates intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew (Loader, 2010). In this paper I argue that the Temple Scroll is, first of all, a legal document with strong ties to Scripture, and the author is well aware of his biblical parameters. His nod to intermarriage is a legal fiction which allows him to be true to the law while, in fact, legislating a different view entirely. The plan here is to 1) examine the exclusions and expansions of the Temple Scroll on both the temple city and the ordinary city; and 2) to examine the passages related to the captive war bride as well as the resident alien. This paper is relevant on a larger scale, as well, since it points to the nature of exclusion in a certain strain of Second Temple Judaism.

Recently D.C. Lopez and B. Kahl have investigated the iconographic evidence of Aphrodisias and Pergamon in discussing the political implications of Paul’s gospel in the Roman province of Asia. As far as we know, Paul visited neither city, so arguments about Paul’s interaction with the imperial ideology of ‘victory’ depend more on the ubiquity of the Julio-Claudian propaganda in the eastern Mediterranean than on any contact Paul might have had with the monuments. Strangely overlooked in this regard is the Sebasteion at Pisidian Antioch — a city visited by Paul on his first missionary journey (Acts 13:14-50) — with its depiction of conquered barbarians on the central arch. Indeed, the Augustan arches throughout the Empire stereotypically depict the humiliation of barbarians, including the sites of La Turbie (Monaco), Glanum (St. Rémy), Carpentras (Provence), and the triple arch at the Roman Forum (Rome). In once case, a barbarian is depicted as the grotesque buffoon and 'stupidus' of the comic mime productions (L’Orange, Provence). Other media — cups, gems, reliefs, coins, statues, and the Augustan poets — reinforce the social divide between barbarians and the Roman overlord. However, there were other messages that conflicted with the triumphal ideology of the Augustan arches: the signing of a peace treaty with 14 Alpine tribes at Susa (Italy) and the Roman gesture of reconciliation and assimilation towards a barbarian captive (Glanum). These different understandings of the intersection of Roman rule with the provinces expressed an alternate vision of social relations between conqueror and conquered. This paper will investigate the social and theological import of several texts of Romans against the backdrop of the iconography of the Augustan arches: namely, Paul’s indebtedness to Greeks and barbarians (Rom 1:14), the reconciliation of enemies (5:6-11; 12:17-21), the victory of Christ on behalf of believers (8:37-39), and his rule over the nations (15:7-13).

The paper analyses the narrative describing the resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of Peter (9,35-11,45) with special attention to the narrative structure of the text and its literary genre. The Gospel of Peter skilfully intertwines the story of the guards at the tomb with the events observed by them, thereby creating credible witnesses for the resurrection. Even more interesting in my opinion, are the possibilities this composition offers for the narration of the story. It is told from the perspective of the guards and therefore confined to what they see. In consequence, the climax of the story, the resurrection itself, is not narrated. As long as the men from heaven are inside the tomb no account can be given about them, the focus shifts to the activities of the guards instead, leaving a gap at the most important point. Furthermore, the structure of the narrative makes it diffcult to decide about its literary genre. The text contains elements of an epiphany story, but the portrayal of the guards, for example, does not resemble that of other human recipients of heavenly appearances. On the other hand, a relationship to miracle stories can be observed and might help to understand how und why the resurrection account of the Gospel of Peter differs so considerably from other known early Christian writings.

The healing of the man with dropsy is a surprisingly under-noticed passage in Luke. Few commentaries give much attention to it at all. Where attention is given, the passage is usually heard in one of the following ways: 1) in the context of healing stories or Sabbath healings in general, and thus through the lens of form criticism and how this story participates in the larger context of healing stories; 2) in the context of the symposia or meal stories since this passage introduces such a scene, and the background for understanding the passage is thus the literary topos of meal stories in the Greco-Roman world; 3) many debate whether the apparently uninvited guest is an unusual occurrence in an ancient meal scene, or perhaps if the man with dropsy might even be “a plant”, set up in order to trap Jesus in some way. In each of these readings, the fact that the man has dropsy specifically is essentially irrelevant to the story; he might as well have been blind or lame or deaf. Yet this is the only occurrence in the NT of this specific condition, and I would like to suggest that dropsy is not incidental to the story at all. Rather, the dropsy is itself key to the story. Dropsy is used widely in the ancient Greek world, particularly in the writings of philosophers (Philostratus, Lucian, and Stobaeus, to name only three), and it is frequently a metaphor for greed and wealth. Dropsy is a condition marked by the body’s inability to process fluids, thus the victim continues to drink more and more until he eventually dies from drinking too much. Dropsy, then, is an appropriate metaphor for wealth and greed, as the victim thirsts for more wealth, only to find that the wealth is eventually his undoing. Among the commentary tradition, few scholars take notice of the dropsy metaphor (Talbert, for example, notices but only offers a couple of sentences in the way of comment). I propose a paper that will do a few things. First, I will mine the Greek philosophical tradition for examples of dropsy to build the case for its metaphorical usage. Second, I will apply that metaphor to this passage in Luke to see if it serves the interpretation of the passage well. Third, I will speculate about how this passage might fit well within the larger landscape of the Lukan narrative. As a part of this third goal, I would also address why such a story is a great fit within the Gospel of Luke, perhaps in a way that it is not a great fit for Mark or Matthew, as it so perfectly fits Luke’s larger themes and purposes in his understanding of Jesus’ mission and ministry.

In Mark 4:10-12, Jesus offers this explanation of his storytelling technique, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’ In the Gospel, the Sower in 4:1-9 and theWicked Tenants in 12:1-11 are the only narratives designated as parables, and yet the latter does not correspond to Mark’s “theory of parables” in 4:10-12. Rather, the Wicked Talents corresponds to a well-known genre throughout the Mediterranean world – the Greek µuthos (Lat. fabula) – a genre that would have a profound influence upon the storytelling traditions in Mark’s earliest interpreters, Matthew and Luke. In antiquity, fables were popularly attributed to Aesop, the sixth-century Phrygian slave from Samos. This paper is an exploration of the influence of the Aesopic tradition upon Markan composition generally, and the storytelling tradition specifically

Abraham’s character depends on movement and the founding of territory. His very purpose is to set the borders of the Promised Land and to keep them quiet through alliance. Abraham marks the land with ethnicity and gender. Because it has a founding father, the motherland becomes realized as the male nation of Israel. By combining theories of masculinity and nationalism, I suggest that the establishment of gender dynamics coincides with the first representations of the nation. In other words, the very conditions of national representation at once demand the subordination of women and non-nationals. These conditions are at work in Abraham’s covenant. Marked through circumcision, this covenant designates Abraham as the progenitor of nations and kingdoms (Gen. 17:6), establishes an eternal bond between Abraham’s descendants and God (17:7), and transfers the site of Abraham’s sojourns to a perpetual inheritance for male heirs (17:8). This is perhaps best expressed by the case of Moab and Ammon, born of incest initiated by their mothers and destined for the godless land beyond the Jordan. The Hebrew Bible characterizes gender deviance as Moabite behavior. Not only are Moabites depicted as deviants, but political passivity on the part of men and political assertion by women is also categorized as Moabite behavior.

As Christianity spread across the Mediterranean world, propelled in part by its ethic of sacrificial generosity and care for the needy, it progressively integrated the generally Jewish contours of its social ethic into the more complex frameworks of Hellenistic philosophies. Significant work has been done regarding the influence of Cynicism on early Christian wealth ethics; neither are Stoic or Middle-Platonist ethics untilled soils. But Neo-Pythagoreanism garners rather less attention than it ought to do, and so it will be the goal of this paper to bring the spotlight back on that exotic school of thought, and to sketch it’s pertinence to one aspect of early Christianity: wealth ethics. I will first attempt to propound an account of Neo-Pythagorean meta-ethics. The task of discussing Neo-Pythagorean meta-ethics is a challenging one, considering the limits of available material, and I will be obliged to give a synthetic presentation, though drawing especially on the fragments of Numenius. This will provide a platform for specific discussion of Neo-Pythagorean wealth-ethics, with special attention to Apollonius of Tyana. In this endeavor I will attempt to coordinate what we can glean from the (controversial) biography by Philostratus with what we know more generally of Pythagoreanism from other sources (such as Iamblichus). The description of Apollonius’ teachings on the right use of possessions will be supplemented by comment about the teachings of other philosophical schools on which Apollonius (or Philostratus) may have drawn. Finally, I will discuss how an apprehension of Neo-Pythagorean ethics might shed light on a variety of early Christian texts, including mention of the alleged communism of the Jerusalem Community in Acts 2 and 4, the (not-exclusively Christian) Sentences of Sextus, and certain ascetic Syrian-Christian groups.

These letters (perhaps as many as eighteen in the archive), written in Greek and Latin in the early part of the second century, are notable for a number of features: the vulgar Latin, the references to various aspects of life, especially military life, and the interesting lists of goods ('a cloak of beaver skin'?). The letters are also full of references to letter writing and letter delivery. This presentation will include discussion and analysis of: a) the artefacts themselves - their physical form and the style of address used on the verso; b) the references to receiving and writing letters (including Claudius Terentianus' note on the value of letters of recommendation); c) the use of lists of goods alongside shipment of goods with the letter carrier; d) the role of the letter carrier in the communication process; e) the relevance of this to the study of early Christian letters (briefly!).

The BYU-Oxford Syriac Electronic Corpus is conceived as an essential component in the digital infrastructure for the field of Syriac Studies. This paper will present some of the first fruits of this project and illustrate how this electronic corpus will impact the study of Syriac literature. Specifically, the paper will illustrate how the Syriac Electronic Corpus can impact 1. Syriac Manuscript Studies; 2. Text Critical Studies; and 3. Literary Studies.

This presentation is intended as an historical introduction to the grand collections of Syriac manuscripts in Europe and North America. It serves as both an orientation to the various collections, and a survey of the major periods of western acquisition of Syriac manuscripts. Appropriate attention is given to manuscripts related to biblical studies, and to the practical issue of getting access to manuscripts in various collections.

Starting from my monograph (Hiob – vom Gottesfürchtigen zum Repräsentanten Israels, FAT 70) about the last stage of the formation of the Book of Job, this paper is meant to reveal the methods and intentions of the reception of literature from the older Israelite curriculum of texts into the post-exilic Jewish tradition literature. In doing so, this paper will discuss the theses by D. Carr and K. van der Toorn. According to my monograph the composition of the book of Job as poem framed by a prose text has been developed by adding the prose frame to an earlier independent poem. In this earlier poem Job was depicted as a pious pagan, who held onto his relationship to his deity. In the Yahweh Speeches the God of Israel reveals himself to Job. The earlier poem deals exemplarily with the question of God‘s attitude towards suffering. This earlier text can be compared to other Ancient Oriental and Egyptian poetry that puts forward an accusation against God. It goes back to a text which was used for the education of the elites. The prose frame, however, transfers the image of Job from the older poem into a theological concept of history. In the prologue is Job presented as a pious worshipper of Yhwh, and he becomes a representative of Israel‘s fate. His final restoration prefigures the coming restoration of Israel and thus constitutes a contrast to the deuteronomistic theological concept of history of the books of Samuel and Kings. Similar observations can be made with respect to the secondary framing of Achikar and the teachings of Merikare as well as within the bible in the Book of Proverbs. By comparing these four examples (Achikar, Merikare, Job, Proverbs) it will be suggested that post-exilic Jewish literature addresses a wider audience of readers and listeners and is more intentional. The new texts pursue certain theological intentions as will be shown by the examples of Job and Proverbs.

Second Isaiah is a text filled with tensions and paradoxes. Perhaps most striking among these are the diametrically opposed commands by the divine voice “do not remember the former things” (43:18) and “remember the former things” (48:9). While these commands are fairly typical of Second Isaian modes of thematic cohesion, they nevertheless present a puzzle to the hearer of the text. Which command is to be obeyed? Should the former things be taken to mean the same things in each case or different things? What, if anything, has changed in the relationship between speaker and hearer between the two commands? This paper will explore these questions and will examine the two commands within their immediate poetic contexts, the use of the memory motif in Second Isaiah as a whole, and the broader poetic flow of Second Isaiah. The aim of the paper is to gain some traction in the question of the significance of these two statements.

The Testament of Abraham exists in a Greek long recension, a Greek short recension, and there are, besides a Coptic and an Arabian version, two or three different Ethiopian recensions. Nearly every manuscript of the two Greek recensions developed a text of its own. The Coptic, Arabian and Ethiopian versions had the Greek short recension as its Vorlage, but developed the text more in line with certain dogmas viewed as orthodox. In particular, the Oriental versions have a preface which sees their text as canonical, and they added further texts which are regarded as indispensable for obtaining salvation. Amazingly, the Oriental versions were copied with much more care than the Greek versions.

The book of Proverbs employs many strategies to motivate its readers to learn. In fact, the number of motivational materials is astonishingly high. This paper surveys all such materials in the book, classifies them into categories, and compares the differences between the various sub-collections. The paper explores how various agents' motivational strategies differ (personified wisdom, the father, mother(s), anonymous speakers, etc.) and analyses the motivational force of proverbial statements about expected learning outcomes. Motivating factors belong to personal and social, emotional and material, spiritual and secular, as well as other kinds of categories. Representative examples of these categories will be examined in detail. A full account of these motivational strategies provides valuable insights into the foundational values underlying the different sub-collections of the book of Proverbs. Finally, the paper will briefly explore motivations for ethical behavior and explore commonalities and differences between the motivational strategies in these two key aspects of the book of Proverbs.

The task of writing a Commentary on a complex textual tradition presents the commentator with a number of challenges which in themselves shed light on our understanding of and approach to growing texts. Scholarship appears to have outlived the death of the author – itself a questionable concept in antiquity. Can we survive the death of the text? In the course of my work on a Commentary on the Qumran Community Rule manuscripts a number of questions must be raised: should I be writing more than one Serekh commentary since there are several Serekh traditions? How do I avoid privileging one manuscript over the others for the wrong reasons such as the (accidental) state of preservation, or (accidental) order of discovery and (not entirely accidental) date of publication? I would like to suggest that scholars have been faced with such phenomena for a long time: textual critics know ‘the text’ is a myth. But where is the line to be drawn between textual criticism of one complex text and the attestation of (alternative or successive?) multiple texts or documents?

Is the Gospel of Peter dependent on the canonical gospels or was it composed independently of them? Scholars have long been divided on this matter, but those who have concluded that it is dependent have fallen short in providing a precise description of the nature of this dependence. This gospel contains very few verbal parallels to the NT gospels but resembles them much more closely in its general plot. The relationship between the Gospel of Peter and the NT gospels is thus significantly different from that between, say, Matthew and Mark, which have frequent verbal parallels. In this paper I offer a new proposal about the precise nature of the relationship between the Gospel of Peter and the canonical works. Specifically, I appeal to the category of Second Temple Jewish literature that has come to be identified as “Rewritten Bible.” These texts, though differing in genre, authorship, and date, are united in that they retell portions of the Hebrew Bible in order to address the new situations of their authors and readers. I suggest that the relationship between these Rewritten Bible texts and their biblical antecedents is precisely the type of relationship between the Gospel of Peter and the NT gospels. The paper briefly surveys the ways in which the Rewritten Bible texts have altered, expanded, combined, or omitted source material, often in a manner that appears to be apologetically motivated. Following this, I show how the very same types of redactional work are reflected in the Gospel of Peter’s handling of the canonical gospels. In light of this similarity, the paper concludes with a proposal for a new category of early Christian literature – “rewritten gospel” – and other potential candidates for membership in this genre are suggested.

This paper will examine the reception of Daniel by its earliest readers using texts from Qumran,*Hazon Gabriel*, and 2 Baruch.

Dating texts in the book of Isaiah is notoriously difficult. Perhaps no section illustrates this better than Isaiah 24-27. One finds an exceptionally wide span of proposed dates for these chapters in the history of scholarship on this section, ranging from the 8th century BCE all the way to the 2nd century CE (!). The discovery of the complete Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa) among the Dead Sea scrolls suggests a terminus ad quem for the book of no later than the 2nd century BCE, but that still permits a considerable compositional range for Isaiah 24-27. This paper will analyze the arguments made by scholars for dating the text to three periods: the Assyrian period (8th century), the Babylonian period (6th century), and the Persian period (late 6th-5th century). I will conclude by making a renewed argument for dating this text in the Persian period based on historical- and redaction-critical grounds.

The notion that prophetic books are scribal artifacts represents only half of the story. This paper reassesses ANE evidence for the relationship between scribes and prophets in the transmission of prophecy. While one does not necessarily expect letters and literary texts to preserve oral prophecy with word for word accuracy, the case for loose transmission is often overstated for these genres, particularly the triad ARM 197/199/202 (water beneath the straw). Evidence from Nineveh and Deir Allah as well as consideration of divine letters and Egyptian royal oracles furnish models whereby scribes worked in concert with authentic prophetic tradition.

Recent interpreters of Philippians 2.6-11 seem agreed that the theological function of the last clause of the hymn’s final strophe, ‘to the glory of God the Father’, is to qualify the exaltation of Jesus (2.9a) and specify the uppermost boundary for what the bestowal of the divine name might entail for his status (2.9b-11a). This way of reading the clause is not limited to those interpreters who advocate a ‘low’ Christology; proponents of a ‘high’ or highly exalted Christology employ nearly identical terminology to describe the function of 2.11b. The purpose of this paper is to present a two-pronged challenge to this construction of a competitive relationship between 2.9-11a and 2.11b. First, it will be argued that Jesus’ exaltation (2.9a) and reception of the name kyrios (2.9b-11a) do not indicate his equality (Gleichsetzung) but instead his identity (Identifizierung) with the subject of Isaiah 45.23 (cf. kyrios in v. 25). Recognizing this distinction will enable a reconfiguration of the question of the ‘degree’ of Jesus’ exaltation. Hence, second, it will be argued that such an identification of Jesus with the kyrios of Isaiah 45 operates on a distinct conceptual plane from that of the ordering of God and Jesus’ relationship to one another as distinguishable agents in Phil 2.6-11, in which Jesus’ action and role is subordinated to God’s in the transition from 2.6-8 to 2.9-11. In this way, it will be argued that specifying a relationship of subordination, as is the function of 2.11b, does not threaten or qualify or otherwise interact with the identification between God and Jesus in 2.9a-11a. These two elements of the text—identification and subordination—remain conceptually distinct and complementary, traversing the same ground twice over (hence, ‘redoublement’) with different conceptual registers.

The books of Chronicles include seven Zachariahs. The most famous, “Zachariah, the son of Berechiah,” was the sixth-century prophet (Zech 1:1). Another famous one, “Zachariah, son of Jehoiada, ” was a priest at the end of the ninth century, who was stoned to death in the courtyard of the Temple (II Chronicles 24:20-21). These two Zachariah’s are confused in Matthew 23:35, but not in the parallel account in Luke 11:50-51. This confusion is further entangled in the apocryphal account, Protevangelium of James where these two Old Testament Zachariahs are mixed up with Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. An apocryphal story developed an elaborate setting for the mix-up—claiming that Herod killed Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father. For the sake of clarification, I will list some of the scriptural references from the Zacharias issue: 1. In Matthew 23:35 The Lord refers to Zacharias son of Barachias. This man is the last of the minor prophets in our Old Testament as is stated in Zech 1:1 “Zechariah the son of Berechiah.” This sixth century prophet is confused with the following Zechariah. 2. II Chronicles 24:20-21 refers to another Zachariah, son of Jehoiada the priest, who was stoned to death in the Temple court at the end of the ninth century. Luke clarifies the reference to him in Luke 11:51 in the parallel passage of Matthew 23:35. 3. Luke 1:5 introduces Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, as a priest of Abia (not the high priest, who was Jesus son of See), living in the days of Herod the king. 4. The Protevangelium of James (23-24) combines these three figures and claims that John the Baptist’s father is also “the son of Barechiah,” and the high priest. The account then winds a whole false story around this misunderstanding and changes John the Baptist’s father to the reigning high priest, killed at the temple. This apocryphal account found its way into early American newspapers and from there into the LDS Times and Seasons. This caused a cascade of LDS publications to broadcast it as a truth, including Joseph Fielding Smith’s, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Sunday School and Seminary manuals. This story of John the Baptist’s youth is now quoted as a historical fact throughout the LDS church by BYU Professors as well as lay Sunday School teachers. I would like to explore it in detail.

In the final pages of Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson begin to explore the spiritual dimension of the embodied mind and gesture toward the ethical and ecological implications of an embodied spirituality. Although they contrast the “embodied person” with the “conception of the person assumed in much of Western religion,” the Hebrew Bible offers many examples an embodied spirituality that assumes an intimate connection between the person and the physical world. The etymological relationship between the Hebrew words for human being (’adam) and for ground or land (’adamah) points to a conceptual metaphor that is fundamental to the view of the human person expressed in the myth of Genesis 2–3. In that myth, I argue, the ground is the mother of humankind (and of all living things) via the metaphoric inference pattern “biological resource as parent.” This paper focuses on a disturbing metaphor in Ezek 36:13-15 that upends the classic description of the promised land as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” In an oracle concerning the land of Israel (’admat Yisrael, 36:6), Ezekiel repeats and then lends credence to an “insult” (36:15) against that land by other nations: “You devour human beings (’adam), and you have bereaved your nations of children” (36:13). I argue that the metaphor of the devouring land is best understood against the background of the covenant curses in Leviticus 26, and in particular as a counterpart to the threat that desperate parents will eat their sons and daughters (Lev 26:29; cf. Deut 28:53-57; Ezek 5:10; Jer 19:9 and Lam 2:20, 4:10). Ezekiel evokes the horror of cannibalism via the conceptual metaphor of the maternal land/ground, implied by the juxtaposition of ’adamah and ’adam. Although Ezekiel 36 is an oracle of restoration, the purpose of this metaphor is to emphasize that Israel’s “abominations” have led to a fulfillment of the covenant curses.

The recent global economic collapse and associated high-profile cases of fraud and negligence have revived interest in business ethics and corporate social responsibility. The Romans were also concerned with such issues. Though he held a rather dim view of trade (Off. 1.151), Cicero nevertheless conceded that one could pursue the occupation honorably (Parad. 46) and, in the De Officiis, even provided a number of case studies in what might be termed ‘business ethics’ to illustrate how this was possible (e.g. Off. 3.50-53). His best-known example asks whether a merchant importing grain to a famine-stricken Rhodes has an obligation to tell his buyers that more ships are on the way, thus reducing his profit. Cicero believed he should but not everyone shared this opinion. Similar discussions appear in Plutarch, Pliny the Younger (Ep. 8.2), and Justinian’s Digest (e.g. 47.10.13.7). This paper examines how the Romans distinguished between legal, illegal, and legal but dishonorable business practices and what their discussions of this issue suggest about the nature of the market in the late Republic and early Empire. I will argue that the Roman discourse on ‘business ethics’ betrays considerable anxiety over information asymmetry in transactions but little concern for dangers associated with entrepreneurial rivalry (i.e., competition among sellers).

The assumptions undergirding a paper delivered in this section last year will be exposed as an exercise in historiographic modeling. What range of options can be legitimately advanced regarding object provenance, temple archives, observational astronomy? To what extent can Sennacherib’s actions, in Babylon and elsewhere, be deduced from the vestiges of his reign?

It is widely assumed that an account of the Spirit has little purchase on pressing ethical issues. An appeal to the work of the Spirit is frequently thought to be compromised by the whims of human subjectivity. St. Paul’s portrait of the Spirit in Galatians emphasizes, however, the concrete work of the Spirit in curbing the Flesh, of aligning humanity to the new reality revealed in the revelatory proclamation of the crucified Christ. In this paper I offer a reading of the work of the Spirit in Galatians as that of God’s invading power, the promised Abrahamic blessing which baptismally grasps women and men with a view to the difference it makes for an account of human sexuality. If such is the case, then, ethical discussions are advanced beyond that of the articulation of principles or rules for conduct in favour of the promise, the effective presence of God’s activity in the Spirit which gives rise to persons capable of living in harmony with the new creation. Three points follow, I argue. First, the identity of the Spirit is that of the wonder-working power who re-contextualizes human activity by aligning it with the way things really are. Life in the Spirit is truly ethical life, a life that yields to Scripture’s proclamation as the means by which Christ brings his people into conformity with ethical reality. Second, the Spirit’s power to overcome the Flesh serves as an important resource for ethical self-criticism. Accordingly, the Spirit disrupts attempts to offer hardened solutions with respect to particular ethical issues. I argue, instead, that Paul’s linking of the Spirit in Galatians as being ingredient in revelatory proclamation rather than Law-observant attention to the Scripture evokes a posture of genuine humility before difficult ethical issues. What needs to be done, before a “do this” is spoken, is to hear ever anew what is being said. Ethics begins and so ends with hearing the message. Third, I bring the cry of the Spirit, the “‘Abba! Father!’” to bear upon matters pertaining to human sexuality (Gal 4:6). By championing a positive (eschatological) orientation to ethics grounded in the Spirit’s own plans for humanity in overcoming the Flesh run-wild, I argue that forms of human sexuality consistent with the proclamation by which God kindles faith, are those in sharp contrast to the law. An approach to human sexuality rooted in the Spirit rather than law aligns us to what is coming to pass, the hope of rectification (Gal 5:5). What is coming to be is bodily life that transcends the divisions of the old. This allows us to frame the debate about the blessing of same-sex unions in a manner that takes more seriously the fruits of the Spirit when it comes to articulation of forms of human sexuality concomitant with the Spirit’s plans for the human race (Gal 5:22).

In the Hebrew Bible's divine courtroom, where God the judge presides over trials of humans, sins serve as the evidence against the people standing trial. The divine legal lexicon refers to sins with the same terminology that is used to describe evidentiary actions in trials between human litigants. Thus, for example, the prophet's prayer in Jeremiah 14:7 speaks of sins "testifying" against ('-n-h b) the community. So, like its counterparts on earth, the divine tribunal must also preserve evidence in order to use it at trial. One way it does this is by "binding" the sin, as in Hos 13:12 and Job 14:17. The proposed paper will consider texts like these in light of parallel procedures for the gathering and preservation of evidence in human courtrooms, both in the Hebrew Bible as well as in trial records from Mesopotamia.

This paper explores some of the early traces of the concern with interpreting miracles of healing as proof of Jesus’s divinity. It is noteworthy that a substantial trajectory for this line of interpretation is located in material associated with late antique Syria and Palestine. The beginnings of this tradition are represented by the Abgar legend, the works of Ephraem the Syrian, and the Pseudo-Clementine literature. The trajectory then reaches to the Acts of Mar Mari and early Syriac and Arabic apocryphal infancy narratives. Identifying, tracing connections, and evaluating this material allows one to reconstruct a historically and theologically important dimension of the late ancient history of the interpretation of Jesus’ miracles. At the same time it lays the necessary groundwork that allows one to discern the ideological and intellectual context in discussion with which later interreligious debates between Christians and Muslims concerning the status of miracles as such and Jesus’ miracles in particular are to be situated.

Recent assessments of the social world of biblical wisdom have not included reflection upon the economic realities of that social world. Nevertheless, the collections of proverbial sayings reflect a certain mode of economic thought throughout. Focusing upon the sayings in Prov 10:1-22:16 and 25-27, this paper presents this economic thinking as consisting of the following four modes of reflection upon reality. First, there is a readily apparent “means-ends” instrumentality throughout the collections, whereby it becomes clear that the sages’ advice is not an end in itself. Appeal to YHWH’s authority is itself typically a means to some other end. Second, this instrumentality is defined further by a rationality that is more akin to maintaining proportionality than to reason. Third, value, particularly the value of wealth, is most often expressed in terms of utility. Fourth, and finally, that utility is nevertheless contextualized by an awareness of scarcity that calls for disciplined ways of decision-making, thus the warrant for wisdom itself.

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This presentation will be a broad but focused survey of Jesus speeches and dialogues mainly in Mark and Q as a basis for discussion of issues and texts that this new Consultation might focus on. Jesus offered the blessings of the kingdom of God to the poor, and declared that it would be virtually impossible for the wealthy to enter the kingdom. In focusing his message and mission on the poor, he stands squarely in Israelite tradition, especially of the Mosaic covenant/ the Decalogue and the prophetic indictments of oppressive rulers. Some of the same concerns are reflected in the law-codes of the Judean temple-state. These are the basis on which the speeches of Jesus in the Gospels address the problems of debt, hunger, and disintegrating families and village communities, and indict both the Jerusalem ruling house/high priests and their scribal representatives for draining resources needed for support of families to support of the Temple. Several sorts of questions might be asked of the political-economic-religious situation Jesus addressed and/or of the Gospel presentation of Jesus speeches: Was the impoverishment of the people due mainly to the greed of the Herodians and high priestly families, as attested in Josephus’ histories? Or was it also due to the increasing centralization of economic power in the temple-state and its integration into the Empire-wide economic system and the (multiple layers of rulers and their) demands on the economic base of the peasantry? What role did the massive “development” projects of the Herodian kings (Caesarea, Herod’s Temple, and Antipas’ new capital cities) play in increased demands on the producers? What role did the “deregulation” of the centralization of the Judean economy under the Hellenistic and Roman Empires (and Herod and the new high priestly families) play? Did Luke “water down” Jesus’ pronouncements on poverty? Is Jesus’ covenant-renewal of economic cooperation transferable to communities beyond Galilee and Judea addressed in Matthew? How do the Gospel portrayals of Jesus’ mission focused on poverty counter the individualism of Western interpretation of Jesus’ teachings?

On the question of, “What practical applications might be made of psychological understandings of the Bible in congregational settings, pastoral counseling, and community work” I will look at the book of Job as a model by which the Church or congregational settings may wrestle with the notion of the idealized projection of perfection versus the ego maturation that is possible as a result of living through the reality of trauma with one another. By excavating the traditional or perhaps “favored” deuteronomistic leanings found within the underlying theology of “the friends” in the book of Job and Job’s not-so subversive aggression in response, I will show how Job is perhaps giving the church permission to re-evaluate and re-imagine fast-held dogma and entrenched god-images that oppress and divide in times of crises. The re-imagining may in fact allow for ego maturation, individually and communally in the life of the congregation, as one challenges the dogma that has perpetuated a state of isolation and inward regression. Using W.R.D Fairbairn and Henry Guntrip, two post-Freudian object-relational psychoanalysts, I will analyze what lies behind the schizoid state of relating we read between Job and his friends and how Job’s persistent aggression and questioning of deeply held beliefs of self, God, and other provides faith communities, congregants, and even academics today with a new way to imagine healing.

Wendy Doniger, in describing the myth–making process in her book, The Implied Spider, has argued that Levi–Strauss’s concept of myth as bricolage is an apt metaphor, in that an old, old story, that has been told in many situations and for many different people, sometimes seems as if it was “dropped and broken into pieces, then put together again differently–not wrongly, just differently.” The Synoptic Gospels in the Christian canon give us a glimpse into the bricolage of myth–making by early Christian communities. We can see that the gospel authors, at least the authors of Matthew and Luke, used the same set of written texts–e.g., the gospel of Mark, the Septuagint, the hypothesized Q–dropped them, broke them into pieces, and put their “Lives” of Jesus together again differently, in ways that apparently made better sense for their individual community’s experience of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. In my paper, I will explore Matthew and Luke’s use of similar material in light of this theory of myth as bricolage, in conversation with Bruce Lincoln’s theory of myth as discourse that is useful for subordinate classes to use as an instrument of struggle, and on behalf of social change. In addition to looking at how their different arrangements of the same material create different answers to the question, “Who is this Jesus of Nazareth?” I will ask whether these authors are, in fact, arguing for, or against a particular social order, including the structure of their own social formation as followers of Jesus, and the community’s response to the Roman Empire. How do these authors utilize the social, cultural, mythic, and communal imaginative resources available within their audiences to address the social interests of these two, apparently very different, groups? The authors’ use of the stories of Jesus’ encounters with women, particularly those who are unnamed, will serves as specific examples for my discussion.

Among the more suggestive texts in the collection of documents from Qumran, 4Q184 or the “Wiles of the Wicked Woman” is most ripe for the application of queer hermeneutics insofar as its saucy star flits as freely between the realms of the natural and the supernatural as between the male and the female. This paper argues that a queer reading of 4Q184 reveals an intentionally ambiguous use of gender-charged language which serves the pedagogical function of seducing readers into an uneasy identification with the text’s mister/mistress, and it is primarily by means of this identification that the text achieves the effect of cautioning its readers against transgression of Torah boundaries. Drawing heavily upon the work of Melissa Aubin on gender and Scott Jones on pedagogy in 4Q184, this paper serves as a bridge between these perspectives by suggesting that it is the very queering of gender distinctions that make this text pedagogically and rhetorically effective. In order to support this thesis, the paper compares the (wo)man of 4Q184 to the similar “Strange Woman” in Proverbs 7 so as to illuminate the distinct queerness of the figure here. The results of this comparison reveal that not only is this (wo)man more cosmic in scope than her counterpart in Proverbs, but also, as an original translation of 4Q184 proposed by the paper demonstrates, she is masculinized almost to the point of being unrecognizable as a woman. Ultimately, the paper concludes by asserting that reading this wisdom text with a queer lens is necessary in order to understand the text’s injunction against breaking the clear boundaries set by Torah.

Epigraphic evidence from the tenth century Levant not only corroborates Rollston’s thesis concerning writing and literacy during the Iron Age but also demonstrates its validity a century earlier during Iron IC–IIA. When these inscriptions are analyzed in their archaeological contexts (or lack thereof) they bring an important data-set for understanding literacy during this time period. According to Rollston there are three levels of literacy: literate, semi- (functionally) literate, and illiterate. The ability to read and write during this time period is described by a spectrum which begins with proper names and concludes with the strong possibility of a running text. Each piece appears specifically in the categories of a literate or a functional production. The content of this collection indicates that ‘functionality’ falls into the following three categories: practice exercises, labels, and ownership or destination. Based on the find date the Gezer Calendar provides the first item in the collection which includes provenanced and unprovenanced items, while the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon provides the last in the series. Ironically the Gezer piece covers two categories as an extended literary ‘ditty’ as well as a probable practice exercise. Rollston interprets the epigraphic record from the following periods to indicate that literacy was not confined to the scribal elite, but was a reality for other trained professionals (129). Tenth century data indicates the same situation also existed at an earlier date, providing continuity in the data and a longer time frame for the development of literacy at least on the professional level. In sum, the multilingual and multicultural dimensions of the epigraphic evidence indicate that writing was used primarily for functional reasons in the tenth century. Its employment by both professionals (“literate elites”) and non-professionals (non-elites and “functionalists”) occurs in personal and administrative contexts, all within the linguistic cultural spheres of Phoenician, Philistine, and Hebrew in northern, central, and southern Israel.

The realm of the sacred is at once both apparent to humans and concealed from them, both known and secret, both public and private, just as access to the presence of the sacred is both public, as in ceremonial divine travel, and private, as in the increasingly restricted access to sacred space as illustrated by temple regulations. Sacred communication, both in written and in oral or visual communication, also has elements of secrecy. This secrecy may be illustrated for Israel by the exclusiveness of God’s secret council (the sod), where the deliberations of God and the numinous associates may involve a prophetic presence as auditor or participant or be taken up by a literary narrator,as in the Book of Job—all of it secretive but important to make known to others. In Egypt, on the other hand, the emphasis in mortuary texts such as the Book of the Dead (i.e., The Book of Going Forth by Day) is not on secret divine deliberations. Rather, the emphasis is on secret divine words and rituals, to judge from the numerous emphatic references to secrecy. There were degrees of secrecy, ranging from knowledge kept strictly by the deceased, to knowledge that could be shared with select friends or family. In some of the exhortations, knowing or hearing the sacred words or seeing the sacred rituals may be forbidden for other persons, even if father or son of the deceased. Those forbidden to know may also include not only foreign slaves who might not understand anything they heard not comprehend what they saw, but even gods themselves who presumably would comprehend the secret. This leads to examining the role and character of such secrecy, secrecy which was important to emphasize or urge in the writings, but yet secret knowledge which had to be communicated. Secrecy is part of the process of negotiating the gulf between the divine realm and the human realm. Total secrecy for sscred writing/communication is not an option.

When one reads the Gospel of Matthew with attention to its narrative dynamics, one observes a remarkable divergence between the character of the Matthean Jesus and the Matthean narrator as regards the question of the Gentiles: the former (Jesus) displays little interest in them whatsoever until after the Resurrection at the very end of the Gospel (Matt 28:16-20), while the latter (the narrator) employs Scripture throughout the Gospel to suggest to the reader that salvation will indeed come to the Gentiles (e.g., the appropriation of the narrative paradigm of the exodus in Matt 2 and the quotations from Isaiah in Matt 4 and 12). This paper will draw on contemporary theories of the concept of intertextuality and ancient categories of kenotic Christology to explore this narrative tension and its ultimate resolution in the Resurrection, at which the Law is fulfilled and all accomplished (cf. Matt 5.17-20), permitting the Gentiles full entry into the people and promises of God.

This paper explores the linguistic and philosophical background of the so-called "Epistula Anne ad Senecam," arguably the only extant Jewish text in Latin prose. In 1984, Bernhard Bischoff published what he believed to be a pseudepigraphical letter from the high priest Annas to the philosopher Seneca. Discovered in a ninth-century manuscript in Cologne, this text bears the superscription "Incipit epistula Anne ad Senecam de superbia et idolis." The latter half of this incipit presents no interpretive problems, for the text, marshalling arguments the Old Testament and other Jewish writings (especially Wisdom of Solomon 13-15 and Sibylline Oracles 3-5), ridicules the arrogance and futility of philosophical inquiry and the absurdity of idolatry. But the first half of the incipit is more problematic. Bischoff and several subsequent scholars understood it to describe the text as a letter from one "Annas"--possibly the high priest--to the philosopher Seneca. As such, the text was understood to be a forth-century Jewish effort to produce something akin to the correspondence between Paul and Seneca. But other scholars have argued that the superscription is merely a textual corruption of "epistula Annaei Senecae," "An Epistle of Annaeus Seneca." Having eliminated any mention of the high priest "Annas," these scholars have also argued that the text is Christian rather than Jewish, noting that parallels to its thought and language can be found in third- and fourth-century Christian authors. This paper re-examines the linguistic and philosophical parallels that may help determine this text's religious and intellectual origins. Of particular interest are its allusions to the Vetus Latina, its etymologies of biblical names, and several peculiar arguments against idolatry and animal sacrifice. Furthermore, prior debates about whether the text is Jewish or Christian must be revisited in light of more recent work on the nature of Jewish and Christian identity in late antiquity.

The startling language of 2 Cor 5:21 has commanded the attention of biblical scholars and theologians alike, and may with profit be used as an indicator of the exegete’s overall understanding of Pauline theology. A major aspect of the ongoing debate over this verse focuses on the identity of Paul’s “we” language as personal, apostolic or general, and therefore what the word dikaiosyne might mean. Especially important to this discussion is whether or not the verse constitutes a Pauline articulation of what comes in Christian tradition to be known as “the great exchange,” and, if so, whether the transformation should be envisaged in terms of soteriology, apostolic privilege, or something more grand. In dealing with these questions, this paper will take note of the prominent language concerning the physical or glorified body in the verses surrounding 2 Cor. 5:21, and consider the importance of outward, visible manifestation in Paul’s description of the righteousness of God. Taking this as a point of departure, I will offer a reading of chapter 5 that comes to a climax in verse 21, where the “righteousness of God” here is portrayed as something tangible and even perhaps physical, displayed not only in the apostolic ministry but also in the community that does not receive the grace of God “in vain.” Where in virtually every other case in the Pauline corpus dikaiosyne theou refers to God’s very own righteousness displayed before Israel and the Gentiles, here it is used exceptionally in order to indicate the outward display of the new creation in human beings.

My presentation examines the expressions 'tent of meeting' (’hl mw‘d) and 'tabernacle' (mškn) with a view toward further elucidating the Priestly perceptions of the sacred tent, YHWH's relationship to it, and the interaction between YHWH and his people in and around it. Many previous studies have focused on the questions of the perceived permanence of the divine presence in the sacred sphere and the origins of the two expressions. While my presentation certainly will address these questions, its primary focus lies in examining the ideological import of the two Priestly designators for the sacred compound. More particularly, it investigates the connotations borne by each designator and, with two options available, the Priestly choice of one at the expense of the other in specific contexts. While the Priestly texts often employ the terms interchangeably, at times their application of terms appears selective, suggesting that it bears rhetorical freight. The Priestly labels 'tent of meeting' and 'tabernacle' indicate the sacred tent's primary functions as both a home and as a meeting point, yet the text is quick to distinguish both functions from mundane analogues. When the text employs one term at the expense of the other, it often seems to be addressing one of the two primary aspects of dwelling or meeting. When read together, the descriptors speak to the dual nature of the sacred tent and its special role as both a divine dwelling place and place of human-divine commerce.

Although there is no question that 1 Timothy reflects the context of a Christian community struggling to survive and thrive in the province of Asia, several clues in the text indicate that the letter was deeply influenced by Hellenistic Judaism. The argument in 1 Timothy 2, for example, assumes that readers will catch allusions to Torah, e.g., “God is one” (2:5--Deut 6:4), and, “Adam was formed first, then Eve” (2:12--Gen 2). But in order to follow the argument, the reader must be familiar not only with Torah but also with traditional Jewish interpretations of Torah. The tradition of the sexual seduction of Eve (2:14), while not found explicitly in Genesis, is strongly reflected in Hellenistic Jewish literature (2 Enoch, Philo, 4 Macc, Life of Adam and Eve) and picked up in early Christian thought (2 Cor 11:3. Protev James 13.1). This paper will suggest that 2:15 can best be understood as an allusion to the rabbinic tradition that women die in childbirth because of failure to observe three specific commandments assigned to women.

In the last chapter of "Postcolonial Commentary of the New Testament Writings," R. S. Sugirtharajah concludes that “the creative and productive future of postcolonial biblical criticism depends on its ability to reinvent itself and enlarge its scope. It should continue to expose the power-knowledge axis but at the same time move beyond abstract theorization and get involved in the day-to-day messy activites which affect people’s lives.” If this is so, a fundamental question is whether postcolonial discussion of identity of the oppressed really helps them to change or overcome their suffering context. Postcolonial discussion of identity has been heavily influenced by poststructuralism. Noting that colonization has been practiced more through discourse rather than through violence, Edward Said pointed out that the Orient was defined and constructed as a homogenous entity according to the norms of the West in the process of colonization. Essentialism and Eurocentrism played a great role in the West’s construction of the Orient. As Michel Foucault rejected the Enlightenment goal of objective truths because of its oppressive regime, Said also criticized categorization of identity because of its dominating power. This tendency to repudiate construction of a unified and homogeneous group identity of the oppressed is still found in recent postcolonial discussions of identity of Asian and Latino. Namsoon Kang, rejecting a generalized and unified identity of Asian, argues that there is no essential core of Asianness. Michelle Gonzalez opposes categorizing Hispanic as a monolithic race because of diversity of Latinos in terms of race, culture and biology. Both of them strongly reject the search for essentialized group identity of the oppressed but promote diversified and individuated identity of them. However, construction and elevation of individuated and isolated identity in postcolonial discussion of identity of the oppressed does not change the day-to-day suffering realities of the oppressed. The two reasons are (1) the voices of the oppressed, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak implied, cannot be heard unless they become collective individuals; (2) as Minjung theology and Marxist theories have made clear, it is not isolated individuals but a collective Minjung that shares similar experiences and thus have a unified group identity that can resist dominating powers. Therefore, I contend that postcolonial criticism, instead of only focusing on deconstruction of group identity fearing of its dominating power under the influences of poststructuralism, must seek positive construction of a group identity of the oppressed that is capable of resisting power. In this paper, I will first examine postcolonial discussion of identity of the oppressed in detail by critically evaluating Said’s, Spivak’s and Homi Bhabha’s understandings of the identity of the oppressed and a current tendency to repudiate construction of collective identity of the oppressed. I will then study how current biblical studies on the body metaphor reflect this tendency and argue that the body metaphor in 1 Corinthians is a rhetoric not only for emphasizing diversity in unity but also for imposing a new collective group identity of the believers.

Paul’s story of the non-praiseworthy celebration of the Lord’s Supper at Corinth (1 Cor 11:17-34) demonstrates to the church at Corinth their own un-ethical and loveless celebration of the Lord’s Supper (ouk epaino, 11:17, 22 and anaxios, 11:27) in relation to the other (have-nots). Using the narrative-critical and sociological methodology of Norman Petersen, this paper will explore Paul’s strategies to address the issue. It will examine how Paul implicitly taps into the different social relationships that he has with the Corinthians (apostle–church of God; founder/teacher–founded community; father/mother–children) to initially correct the situation. However, for the practical implementation of the changes that needs to be done to redress the situation intra-ecclesially (within the Corinthian church), Paul explicitly relies on siblingship, i.e., both his own sibling relationship with the Corinthians and their own sibling relationship with each other (adelphoi mou( 11:33). However, Paul also employs extra-ecclesial (non-Corinthian Christians) pressure with the same move of maximally using the implicit and explicit social relationships between himself and the Corinthians as well as the relationship of siblingship among Christians. Evidence of this is found in Paul’s self-presentation as somebody who is both inside and outside the Corinthian ekklesia (cf. the promise or warning of his coming visit, 11:34) and in the re-consideration of the often neglected reference to the additional addressees of the letter ( “with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,” 1:2). Hence, with the combination of intra- and extra-ecclesial pressure Paul expects the Corinthians to correct their conduct at the Lord’s Supper so that it will be celebrated in an ethical and loving manner.

Most modern lexica and wordbooks of the biblical languages make the claim that “righteousness” (tsedeq/tsedaqah) in the Hebrew Bible is a relational concept, in contrast to “righteousness” (dikaiosyne and iustitia) in Hellenistic contexts, where it is a norm concept. This claim is repeated as an established lexicographical fact in countless Bible dictionaries, commentaries, and works of theology. The relational interpretation is the view that “righteousness” in the Hebrew Bible does not mean conformity to a norm or distributive justice, as it often does in Greek and Latin contexts. Rather, in the biblical/Hebraic thought-world, “righteousness” denotes the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, since the relationship itself is the norm. Although there were precursors in the 19th-century Ritschlian school, the relational interpretation was first articulated in this form by Hermann Cremer in 1899. On the basis of his relational interpretation of “righteousness,” Cremer argued that “the righteousness of God” is his faithfulness to the covenant expressed in his saving activity toward his people. Cremer’s novel lexical theory has exercised a profound influence in both OT and NT scholarship throughout the 20th century to the present. In this paper, I examine Cremer’s chief arguments for the relational interpretation of “righteousness” and attempt, in the spirit of James Barr, to raise some doubts about this widely-held scholarly assumption.

Humor is rarely a term associated with the gospels. However, laughter is a foundational human emotion that, as Quintilian observed, may be invoked for rhetorical purposes with powerful effect. Not only has the use of humor rarely been pursued in relation to the gospels or historical Jesus, even among performance critics the subject has been largely ignored. Given the immediacy and dynamic interchange between audience and performer, it would not be surprising to find scenes that might be exploited for comedic effect in a live performance. The objective of this paper is to explore this neglected feature of the gospels within the context of performance. In particular, the discussion will focus on the depiction of the disciples in Mark’s gospel. Beyond highlighting the ways in which a performer might invite laughter, the paper will also consider the performative impact of humor, that is, the possible theological and sociological implications of humor in Mark’s gospel.

When reading the book of Ruth, migration patterns standout as key to the characters’ identity and transformation. The migration patterns (rationale and practices) among Caribbean people offer insights into the biblical narrative and its noted rationale and characterization of both Ruth and Naomi, two models of migration. These models evidence various dimensions of individuation and community identifiers, including, economic, social status, racial and gender identity, citizenship, and shared un/conscious. To explore the identifiers and related issues of characterization, this paper approaches Ruth and Naomi from the vantage point of a Caribbean expatriate interpreter. The study proposes a dialogical hermeneutical approach and as such incorporates the book of Ruth and Caribbean migratory experiences as texts. Accordingly, this study consists of two sections. First, the textual investigation probes the narrative construction of the characters as essential aspects for understanding the individuation process portrayed therein. Second, the study uses the identifiers to frame the discussion regarding the migration models and related issues of individual and community identity.

With the increasing interest in both "Jesus Studies" and "Paul Studies" by acknowledged Jewish academics as well as the American Jewish communities in particular, the question naturally arises as to why this increasing interest (other than intellectual) and whether or not such investigative work has potential benefit for the ongoing conversations between Jews and others, including Christians. This paper/presentation is an attempt both to address and answer such questions.

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When the set of manuscripts known as 4QReworked Pentateuch (4Q158, 4Q364-367) were first published and analyzed, most scholars characterized them as exegetical amplifications of the Pentateuch and located them under the generic rubric of “Rewritten Bible.” Recent years have witnessed a near complete reversal of scholarly approaches to these manuscripts, whereby they are commonly regarded as expanded versions of the Pentateuch. On the whole, the move away from characterizing 4QReworked Pentateuch as the exegetically motivated “Rewritten Bible” and into the realm of “scripture” has witnessed an attendant drop in interest in exegetical elements in the text. But, this approach obscures the larger lessons that 4QReworked Pentateuch has taught us about exegesis within scriptural traditions. When scholars first encountered 4QReworked Pentateuch, it became clear that this text would contribute to conversations regarding both the development of the scriptural text and the history of scriptural interpretation. Yet, these two areas were continually regarded as distinct fields of inquiry. The growing consensus of 4QReworked Pentateuch as a scriptural text should not diminish the significance of its exegetical elements. On the contrary, renewed interest in the exegetical techniques of the text has potential to frame the emerging sense of what a scriptural text looks like in Second Temple Judaism. This paper examines the exegetical technique of one of the most commonly discussed passages in 4QReworked Pentateuch – the expansion of the festival calendar in 4Q365 23 to include the Wood and Oil Festivals. My treatment of this passage: (1) seeks to uncover the exegetical techniques employed by 4QReworked Pentateuch in its attempt to interpolate these two festivals seamlessly into the Pentateuchal festival calendar and; (2) considers the implications of this analysis for understanding the broader debate about the scriptural identity of the text.

With the discovery of the Dura synagogue, the long-held belief that Late Antique Jews eschewed artistic portraiture based upon the Second Commandment was visually debunked. Included in the corpus of frescoes at Dura, is a scene evoking the prophetic text of Ezekiel 37:1-14, known as Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones. The text reinforces the notion of the life-giving power the God of Israel provides, and seemingly insinuates immortality secured by God, an idea that ingrained itself into Judaism following the Hellenization of the Ancient Near East. The same scriptural scene from Ezekiel is represented in an early Christian funerary context, as it appears on numerous Roman sarcophagi fragments of the fourth century. Although the scene is depicted in Jewish and early Christian contexts quite similarly, one unique feature in the early Christian evocations is that the figure of Ezekiel is replaced by Jesus. Jesus as Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones is an iconographic theme that reiterates the restorative abilities early Christians painted upon their deity. Both Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert Kessler notably argued of the congruity and perhaps overlapping influence that existed between the frescoes of Dura and early Christian representations. Instead of viewing the Dura scene as a response to Christian typological readings of Scripture found in apologetic texts such as Justin Martyr (or fourth-century Christian sarcophagi images as a response to Jewish attitudes), the scenes must be interpreted in their particular context. This paper will examine the Ezekiel painting at Dura and several early Christian examples of the Jesus/Ezekiel scene, and will argue that both harbor several stylistic and contextual differences. However, the scene operates alike for both synagogue and Christian funerary audiences. In both contexts, Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones was meant to express the immortality secured by the divine.

This paper will argue, against common art historical interpretations, that imperial iconographic themes in fourth-century visual art were adapted to convey a different message than the supremacy of the earthly ruler, or the power of the Roman state. Juxtaposing a variety of art objects with texts from the same time and place, the author will show that the Pauline emphasis on victory over death and the devil must be considered as equal to (if not more significant than) imperial propaganda in the composition of iconographic programs that included the empty cross, christogram, wreath, and throne.

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Even though neither Second nor Fourth Maccabees were considered canonical among Anabaptist groups during the period of and surrounding the Protestant Reformation, these texts were perceived to be helpful resources for equipping Anabaptists to face persecution -- often mortal -- during this period. This paper explores specific resonances of 2 and 4 Maccabees in the Anabaptist literature of the period with a view to exposing their role as authoritative witnesses to the value of laying down one's life for the sake of conscience before God, if not as authoritative Scripture.

The repetition of Paul’s Damascus Road experience has been a source of puzzlement for biblical scholars who question the literary logic of the iteration of this story in chapters 9, 22, and 26 of Acts, finding the discrepancies between the accounts difficult to reconcile. This work contends that these questions are largely resolved when Acts is envisioned as a literary work composed upon the basis of familiar performance vignettes that had been foundational to the community life of the composer(s) of Luke-Acts. One of the central themes of the two-volume work is the failure by many Jews to recognize the significance of Jesus. Therefore, Paul looms as a heroic figure in Acts; he is the harshly oppositional Jew who transforms to fervent proponent of Jesus as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Paul’s dramatic encounter with Christ is re-enacted throughout chapters 9-26 of Acts, each with increasing intensity—from a narrated account (Ac 9), to a trial scene (Ac 22), to a performance within a performance (Ac 26), wherein Paul is presented as acting out his experience (“Paul stretched out his hand” [v. 1]) before King Agrippa. The variations between the three accounts are therefore attributable to the popularity of this drama and attest to the prior history of this vignette’s adaptation for various audiences and settings, as per the instructions of Quintilian to ancient performers. The final literary work of Acts features three such interpretations of the familiar and pivotal drama of Paul on the Damascus Road.

This paper explores the various ways the Sepphoris synagogue floor mosaic creates continuity between its community and their Torah scroll. The mosaic is a fascinating primary source that provides a visual account of how the community understood its connections to its central texts. While this analysis does not claim to solve the crux of interpreting the zodiac at the center of the mosaic, it offers a way of viewing the combination of mosaic panels as an effort to create continuity for a community far removed from the world of the Torah and the temple cult. The floor of the Sepphoris synagogue is not just a decorative work of mosaic art; it also serves as a spatial, temporal, and theological matrix for creating continuity between the synagogue community and the Torah. The mosaic floor not only creates continuity with the idea of Torah, but specifically with the community’s Torah scroll. The composition juxtaposes a number of motifs that create a spatial and symbolic framework in which the Sepphoris community could see itself as part of the history of the Torah, its festivals, and its cult. As a result, the community is able to see itself as spatially, temporally, and theologically continuous with its sacred texts even though it exists in a time characterized by the absence of the temple, the sacrificial cult, and some of its festivals. Such a visual matrix would have been deeply formative for the people who convened religious and other community activities in this space.

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This paper addresses the place of the Lord's Prayer in Q and in the reconstruction of the historical Jesus.

Among dispensationalists, the KJV, and especially the Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford) is treated as the one most authoritative translation. My paper looks at the reasons behind the preference for the KJV among this segment of U. S. fundamentalists and among dispensationalists in particular. It also deals with the place of the Scofield study Bible among dispensationalists. Several key points of interpretation in the dispensationalist system of belief are drawn from KJV and motivate the continued preference for the KJV. It's aesthetic qualities are also celebrated, so the preference is not merely doctrinal.

Isaiah 60 was probably written in the late 6th century B.C.E. in the Persian province of Yehud by a Babylonian Jew who had returned from exile. If he came with Deutero-Isaianic hopes of restoration, he would have been disappointed by what he found in Jerusalem: a poor, sparsely populated sacerdotal outpost. In Isaiah 60, he depicts Yahweh metaphorically addressing the city as a woman, commanding her to shine forth her light, showing her carts laden with the “wealth of nations” coming from afar to beautify her. But then the poem drops both the personification of Jerusalem and the symbol of light; instead, it copiously describes the nations bringing tribute to the city. How do these two sections of the poem interrelate? Using Yi-Fu Tuan’s continuum between space and place and Edward Soja’s concept of Thirdspace, I argue that light in Isaiah 60 functions as a means to connect the physical reality of Jerusalem as undifferentiated space to the symbolic conception of Jerusalem as place—as the place in the nascent Jewish imaginary. It transfers the emplacedness of the nations onto Jerusalem, reversing the space/place dynamic to bring it into line with the audience’s conceptual expectations. In Soja’s terms, the poem projects the audience’s Secondspatial conceptions of Jerusalem as place onto the Firstspatial reality of Jerusalem as space, creating a Thirdspace (a lived experience of space) from which it is possible to hope for the city’s renewal. The poem functions rhetorically to sustain the hope that the machinations of history will once again unite its audience’s conceptions of Jerusalem as center with their perception of it as a ruin.

Since the textual criticism of the NT has placed a historically determined emphasis on the four gospels, it is for most scholars self-evident that parallel pericopes exercise influence on the textual transmissions of the individual sections. It is for this reason that a synopsis with text-critical awareness is indispensable for synoptic studies. However, influence on the text to be copied is not restricted to the influence from the text of parallel passages. A scribe who knows the biblical text reasonably well was in danger to be distracted by any text elsewhere in the corpus where a similar sentence structure occurs, a similar phrase is used, or where a similar move in the argument is made. Starting from the Corpus Paulinum it will be demonstrated how frequently this phenomenon happens on the level of individual manuscripts. Text that has just been copied influences following text, but also text immediately following moves in and changes the current wording. This phenomenon happens within a single Pauline letter but also between letters. There may be some examples where the Pauline corpus has even managed to influence the textual transmission of the Greek Old Testament. The influence from the total corpus reveals itself mainly in the form of additions and substitutions, but rarely as an omission of text. It will be argued that the scope of this phenomenon is such that more variants than commonly assumed can be satisfactorily explained by means of this 'mechanical' process.

In the Deuteronomistic History, David, the archetypal king, and the generic ancestors become the standard by which Judahite kings are measured. The pre-exilic Deuteronomist (Dtr1) compares and contrasts the successors to David, specifically his devotion to God, while the exilic Deuteronomist (Dtr2) looks to the ancestors’ influence over the post-Josiah successors. To differing degrees, the successors are depicted as “stereotypic reproduction” of their ancestors, a replica of the past. Despite the idealized portrayal of David in Chronicles, however, the Chronicler does not reflect on the legacy of his “personality” but primarily on the cultic institutions organized by him. Rather than look to the past in the figure of David or the generic ancestors, the Chronicler defined each generation according to their faithfulness to God. Though scholars have generally attributed the difference in portrayal as determined by the Chronicler’s ideological agenda, the need to legitimate the cult over kingship, this shift from the past to the present in defining the identity of the kings may actually stem from the sociological change arising from exilic community. Without the physical land to transmit the familial traditions and memories, the exiles (first generation of forced migrants) and consequently, the returnees (first and second generation of forced migrants) emphasized their present devotion to past institutions, not to the familial past. The Chronicler and his/her audience were physically removed from the ancestral “personality” to reflect on its impact on the present generation. The Chronicler did not feel culturally compelled to depict the imprint of the ancestors on the Davidic successors; he/she felt alienated from them.

Conjectural emendations are reached for when none of the available witnesses to a given passage provides a text that seems to fit the context. Over the centuries, textual critics of the Hebrew Bible have proposed hundreds of emendations. Yet very few of them command general support. Preparatory work on the critical edition of 1 Kings for the Oxford Hebrew Bible has raised the question what policy should be adopted in respect to emendations. Should they be completely eschewed as being too subjective? Should they have a place in the apparatus? Or are there circumstances that justify their adoption in the critical text? On the basis of specific examples, the paper will plead for a modest policy of adoption of conjectural emendations and seek to define the methodological parameters regulating this policy.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was the foremost theoretician of the 1930s literary movement known as the Negritude, a postcolonial response to Western hegemony and global dominance. Senghor defines negritude as the sum total of African values, that is to say, the spirit of its civilization. This paper investigates the relationship between Senghor’s theoretical vision and articulation of a negritude politics and African Postcolonial Biblical hermeneutics and theology. It highlights the specificity of Senghor’s interactions with and theorizations of African traditional cultures and values, and how these various dynamics and precisions might advance or enhance the field of African postcolonial biblical interpretation. I will interrogate whether Senghor’s approach to cultural identity can be negotiated for an effective African-indigenous interpretation of the Bible in the twenty-first century.

James M. Robinson has proposed that the Palestinian Jewish “Q movement” may have “faded from history as the heresy of the Ebionites.” Robinson suggests that the people responsible for the composition of Q split into two different factions or groups: a “proto-orthodox” group that merged with the Matthean community and a “proto-heretical” group that ultimately merged with or developed into Jewish Christian Ebionites. Like the group or community responsible for Q, the Ebionites are properly part of the study of “Jewish Christianity,” “Christian Judaism” or “Jewish Believers in Jesus.” Was Q a significant intermediate station along a first-century "Jewish Christian" trajectory? At first sight, there may not seem to be any "Ebionite" elements in Q. There is no explicit rejection of Jesus’ virgin birth or the sacrificial system, elements prominent in heresiological descriptions of the Ebionites. Q does not explicitly criticize Paul nor does it mention James, the “pillars,” or the Jerusalem community. There are also chronological differences between the two groups and traditions. On the other hand, the identification of the author, community and provenance of Q continues to be debated and there does not seem to be any reason why the community responsible for Q could not have developed in a “heretical” direction. Consequently, it seems worthwhile to test Robinson’s conjecture that (at least part of) the Q group eventually separated from “mainline” Christianity to form (or join) the Ebionites. A careful comparative study of Q and the Ebionites may indeed sharpen the picture of early Jewish Christianity and provide us with an intermediary element in its historical trajectory.

Hebrews calls its audience to embrace an identity of liminality. Employing stories of the past in order to construct the present and the future, Hebrews 11 describes the faithful ancestors as “strangers and foreigners” (11:13) for whom God has prepared a “better country” (11:16), and promised a heavenly city (11:16). The proper place of the community is with Jesus “outside the camp” (13:13) because they have “no lasting city,” and they “look for a city that is to come” (13:14). This motif resonates deeply in African American hermeneutics: “African American slaves knew what it meant to feel like ‘strangers and foreigners’ and to ‘desire a better country,’ one in which God would be rightly honored and in which they could live in freedom” (Massey, True to Our Native Land, 457). Appealing to the time of slavery claims this motif as an empowering heritage of faith and hope. However, it does not explore the way the text constructs this liminal identity in an urbanized imperial/colonial context where the ambivalent spaces created by legalized forms of belonging (like citizenship) have complex material implications. In this paper I argue that by juxtaposing the situations of contemporary black migrant workers with the text of Hebrews, we can better see how alien identities are always very political in-between spaces, “like gifts from the enemy, precarious – filled with tension and expectation” (Burman, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, 188). Drawing on postcolonial, race, and empire studies and scholarship on early Christian identity formation, I will examine how thinking with the diverse and changing contexts of people of African descent can further elucidate both the alien motif in early Christianity and the comforting but also dangerous survival game of claiming an identity that is “neither here nor there.”

Roma, Gaia and Ekklesia: Iconographic Explorations in urban Asia Minor

"Gnostic" works such as those found in the Nag Hammadi codices are full of descriptions of transcendent religious experience. Clearly such experiences were important both to the readers and to the authors of these works. Work on these texts has, quite rightly, dealt with these accounts in detail. However, I will argue in this presentation that there has been a tendency in modern scholarship to focus on the social, ideological and doctrinal factors that influenced the way that these experiences were constructed and presented. Going along with this, there has been a linked tendency to overlook the experiential and cognitive aspects, the personal and subjective underpinnings of the experiences. Using the Valentinian Gospel of Truth as a case study, I will discuss these tendencies, linking them to the controversies between the Constructivists and the Neo-Perennialists of the 1980s and 1990s. I will suggest that our understanding of works such as the Gospel of Truth could be expanded through an increased willingness to consider religious experience in its subjective, experiential context, as well as its ideological context.

This paper proposes that James' use of Elijah is much richer than often discussed. While most commentators assume that the main purpose of the example of Elijah in 5:17-18 derives from James' comment that Elijah "was a man like us," there are profound parallels between the story as it is told in 1 Kings 17-18 and both the immediate context in James 5:13-20 and the larger themes of the epistle. James allows this framing of the larger story from 1 Kings by alluding to Elijah's beginning and final prayers and explicitly naming the time period between, thus creating an inclusio of the narrative. Within this three and a half year time period to which James alludes, Elijah enacts a prophetic denunciation of a wandering people (leading to the challenge of Jas 5:19-20); cares for a starving widow's physical needs (cf. Jas. 2); raises a child from the dead (setting a dramatic outer limit to the prayers for healing in Jas. 5:14-16); challenges the double-minded to return to purity (consistent theme in James; cf. Jas. 1:8; 4:4-10); and exemplifies the prayer of faith (Jas 5:16; cf. 1:5-8). By using this one narrative from Elijah’s life, James is able to illustrate the power and use of prayer on a multitude of fronts, and the illustration serves to integrate themes from the whole letter as it is brought to a conclusion. I propose that when the entirety of the narrative of 1 Kings 17 and 18 is examined in relation to its context in James 5:17-18, a fruitful dialogue can be constructed. The example of Elijah is not a secondary illustration, but serves to draw the themes of the epistle to a dramatic, memorable conclusion.

Bible software is a tool whose value lies, as generally with tools, in how it is introduced, explained, and used. Such software presents texts (biblical texts in original languages, translations, as well as important secondary texts) and tools (lexicons, dictionaries, apparatuses, commentaries, maps, etc.) in a portable and searchable digital format that also makes it convenient to integrate texts and tools for the purpose of study. While a growing number of textbooks are available in digital format, they generally are not designed to be used as self-contained teaching environments for learning the languages, but complement or supplement human instructors and print textbooks. * Introduced too early, Bible software is likely to become a crutch, confounding and short-circuiting the process of learning the ancient languages. Once students have developed a good grasp of grammar, vocabulary, and basic syntax, however, they will be in a much better position to responsibly engage and query the content of the software. And once users have learned how to navigate the software, they can read with greater engagement and increasing control over the language and text. Well-designed software can reduce the friction and frustration of interpreting as well as enable the asking of questions that are virtually impossible to answer with traditional print resources. The rest is up to the interest, imagination, and discipline of the student! * Account will be taken of some of the literature in Computer-Assisted Language Learning and what it might suggest for the use of technology in teaching biblical languages, but I will primarily draw upon my own experiences both as a user and developer of content for Bible software as well as a teacher of Biblical Hebrew and Ugaritic. * To help teachers appraise the value of Bible software, I will also explain the general procedure by which print works become digitized and the pertinent caveats that accompany this process. I will offer an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Bible software in its current incarnation (as a commercial market, it is about twenty years old) as well as a look at possible trends for its development in mobile formats, and I will demonstrate with live examples of various workflows.

In his seminal work on parallelism in Biblical Hebrew poetry, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History, James L. Kugel argues that rabbis “forget” the feature of biblical style that modern critics have identified and termed parallelism. For Kugel the rabbis consistently read each half of a parallelistic line as having unique significance because of their commitment to the omnisignificance of scripture. As he describes the approach of the rabbis, “B always means something beyond A” (p. 101). Closer examination of the collections of Tannaitic midrashim exposes a number of instances in which the early sages seem to evince an awareness of biblical parallelism as discussed by biblical scholars since Robert Lowth. In this paper, I discuss the evidence for a rabbinic appreciation for biblical parallelism in Tannaitic midrash. In many examples the early sages exploit parallelism for purposes of philological explication, such as clarifying a more obscure term through the presence of a less obscure term in an adjacent clause of a parallelistic line. These examples raise the question of whether or not Kugel was correct in his assessment of the approaches to biblical parallelism by the rabbis. I then explore the implications of this evidence for the broader discussion of early rabbinic approaches to scripture, particularly the notion that the rabbis’ commitment to the omnisignificance of scripture led them to forget this characteristic feature of biblical style.

The story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in Genesis is remembered in a variety of contexts and given a whole range of meanings in Jewish and Christian texts. One specific aspect of Hagar’s role has been central to feminist exegesis: When she is forced into the wilderness with her son, God encounters her at the well; she talks to God’s angel and she is the first one to name God. How did early readers of the Genesis text deal with the fact that the slave girl from Egypt and surrogate mother who was mistreated by her owners, was given this important role of talking and naming? Did the Jewish historians, Church fathers or rabbinic interpreters at all pay attention to this scene? This paper will highlight this speech act and engage with texts that deal with the memory of Hagar.

The unusual iconography that modern art historians call the Syro-Palestinian “Ascension of Christ” depicts Christ in the sky. Mary his mother stands arms-raised below him, flanked by the male apostles. As if to reinforce this depiction of her ecclesial leadership, Mary is sometimes seen larger than the men, with a halo, or with a bishop’s pallium. The earliest exemplars of this iconography are dated fifth century, with sixth- and seventh-century artifacts from Ancient Syria, Palestine, Coptic Egypt, and Italy. Ernest T. Dewald wrote the seminal work on this iconography, and noted that nothing in the canonical accounts of the Ascension explains it. He suggests perhaps an unknown apocryphal text as its underlying source. This paper explores the possibility that two early Christian texts, the Gospel (Questions) of Bartholomew and the Six Book Dormition narrative, underlie this iconography. The original composition of these texts is generally dated to the third and the fourth centuries respectively, and both texts depict Mary the mother of Jesus raising her arms and leading the men in prayer -- just as she is depicted in the iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Ascension of Christ. Manuscripts depicting Mary as the prayer leader of the men are relatively rare, which may explain why these two texts have not previously been identified as possible literary sources for this iconography.

Apocalyptic hope is a feature that increasingly became dominant in the history of ancient Israel beginning from the exilic period onwards. We find it famously showcased for example in the book of Daniel where a vision of the Ancient of Days and his vicegerent, the Son of Man, who triumph over the powers opposed to Israel becomes a rallying point for Israel to hold on to a glorious apocalyptic future for the chosen people. In this study, we will examine in particular the gospel of Luke and see how such an apocalyptic hope morphed and developed, first, in the life and ministry of the historical Jesus, then, in the early Christian communities in the aftermath of Jesus’ death and alleged resurrection where it took the form of the expectation of the Parousia, and, finally, in the crisis of a perceived delay of such a Parousia. Attention will be focused particularly on: the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus, the initial success of Jesus’ ministry and the gradual realization of Jesus that death would play a crucial part in his overall mission, the resurrection and the hope of the Parousia that it brought, finally, the disappointment elicited by the delay of the Parousia and the efforts of Luke to make sense of the delay in his writings. This study will suggest that there is a common pattern present in the above-mentioned stages with regards to apocalyptic hope. They are: 1) a straightforward expectation or hope that God will intervene in history; 2) based on that hope, concrete action to help realize the hoped for divine intervention; 3) a gradual perception that the expected divine action will not be realized; 4) disappointment because of the failed expectation; 5) the springing of new hope in the aftermath of the failed expectation; 6) as a result of the above process, a new vision of life and a new resolution for concrete action. Furthermore, this paper will show that apocalyptic expectation does not have to be seen exclusively as a delusional hope which ancient Jews and Christians cherished and later abandoned when it become clear that the hope was never going to be realized as expected. Apocalyptic expectation can be seen rather as a process consisting of expectation-disappointment-new vision, a process through which ancient people grappled with the harsh realities of their existence and used their faith to survive and flourish despite all odds and, in some cases, moved on to growth in wisdom.

Dr Kavrus-Hoffmann, currently compiling a catalogue of Greek manuscripts in the U.S.A., describes, compares, and analyzes the codicological features (such as format and ruling patterns) and scripts of the two manuscripts and compares them with other manuscripts copied with similar writing style. This can help to date the two manuscripts more precisely and to identify possible regions or circles where the manuscripts might have been produced.

This paper explores the possible relevance of the Orphic/Platonic view that the body is a tomb (soma sema) for interpreting Paul’s unusually reflexive ‘body language’ in Galatians, especially but not exclusively his claim that “Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Part 1 briefly surveys ancient indications and modern iterations of the thesis that the soma sema metaphor reflects a sharply dualistic and darkly pessimistic Greek view of the body over against Paul’s allegedly more monistic and optimistic Jewish perspective. The results strongly suggest that contemporary commentators and historians of early Christianity have simply followed ancient Christian apologists in setting the soma sema metaphor in opposition to the Jewish and Christian doctrine of a future bodily resurrection. Focusing on the second of Socrates’ four interpretations of the metaphor in Cratylus 400C, I argue that the under-appreciated representation of the body as the means by which the soul signifies in the present reveals a critical gap between the received wisdom concerning Plato’s pessimism and the ancient practice of entombment. This gap is most evident in the ongoing custom of memorializing heroes and civic founders, wherein both the body (or relics) of the hero and the tomb itself serve as markers of civic pride and warnings against trespassers. Part II develops select snapshots of a culture in which Paul could reasonably expect the Galatians to ‘read’ his body language as referring to a tomb in which his psyche is interred, together with the pneuma of Christ, and through which he ‘signifies’ Christ to them. Primary attention is given to literary and archaelogical evidence for tombs of founders (archegetai, oikistai, ktistai) and heroes—individuals who continued to exert influence from beyond the grave, whether through established social mechanisms, ‘mystical’ epiphanies, or last words. The significance accorded to the bodies or relics of such individuals indicates that ancient Greeks held a more optimistic and holistic view of the ‘self’ in practice than in theory, in which case tombs are perhaps better understood less as prison cells holding mute corpses than as tokens or ‘signs’ of life after death.

In the apocryphal "Dialogue of the Paralytic With Christ," Jesus tells a paralyzed man that "The one whom the Lord loves, he cures." The Dialogue is a complex and ambiguous retelling of John 5.1-5, but this statement aptly summarizes one function of Jesus' healing miracles in late antique Christianity: such stories suggested that proper Christian bodies were well bodies. My paper will explore how Jesus' healing miracles, especially as they were interpreted by his later followers, invited Christians to scrutinize bodies and assign religious significance to their physical conditions.

There is basic agreement that Ezekiel 40-48 comprises a single literary unit but determining the precise literary form of this unit has not been easy. No one form has adequately been able to capture the unique composition of this section of the book. At least three distinct literary forms have been attributed to these nine chapters. 40:1-43:12 contain a vision report that describes the temple complex. 43:13-46:24 are a law code establishing the laws that regulate the temple personnel, the sacrificial cult, and the ritual calendar. 47:1-48:35 present the life-giving river that flows from the temple as well as directions for the distribution of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel. This paper proposes that the form of these chapters can best be described as an ancient near eastern creation account. This type of narrative portrays not only the creation of the physical world but also includes the creation of a human society. To maintain this society, certain institutions need to be set up: a temple for the gods, a code of law, a king to govern the people, and land for the development of the society. Creation is not complete until these institutions are in place. All of the elements that characterize an ancient near eastern creation narrative can be found in Ezekiel 40-48; however, the prophet has adapted this literary form in order to communicate his own message regarding the restoration of Israel. The ancient near eastern creation narrative not only accounts for the basic unity of chapters 40-48 but also demonstrates that Ezekiel envisioned the restoration of Israel to be a new creation that God was working in Israel, a theme that originates with the salvation oracles in chapters 34, 36, and 37.

The physical body of Jesus is strikingly absent from the Gospel of John. In Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity, Colleen Conway locates this absence of physical descriptions of Jesus' body within the gospel’s overall program of presenting a hyper-masculine Jesus. Following Musa Dube's call for scholars to acknowledge the overlapping ideologies of gender and imperialism, this paper puts Conway's observations into close dialogue with recent empire-critical readings of John. First, I read John's text closely to observe a dialectic of presence and absence with regard to Jesus' body. Indeed, there are little to no physical descriptions of Jesus. However, references to his clothes (John 1:27; 13:4, 12; 19:2-5; 20:6-7) or the holes in his resurrected body (20:25-27) provide subtle hints of his body's presence and his ultimately ambivalent gender identity. This presence-absence dynamic resonates with the imperial ideologies Dube and others have observed in John's gospel. Jesus' body is simultaneously not there, yet everywhere. He exists before the narrative begins (1:1-18), after it ends (20:26-21:25), and beyond the pages of John's gospel (20:30-31; 21:25). Following these observations, I compare this dynamic of presence and absence with the role of the emperor's body in a range of Roman Imperial images and rhetoric. S.R.F. Price and others have observed how various texts, statues, and inscriptions make the absent emperor present throughout the entire empire and cosmos. As gender-critical scholars have shown, the emperor in text and in statue was the paragon of ancient masculinity. The Jesus of John's gospel thus mimics the presence-absence dynamics of the Roman Emperor. However, John's ambivalence around Jesus' physical appearance is telling. In the end, I argue that the Gospel of John presents a Jesus whose simultaneously fragile and transcendent masculinity both resembles and resists Roman Imperial ideologies of power and gender.

This paper will address from both African post-colonial and cross-cultural perspectives the woman of Endor in 1 Sam 28: 3-25 and her relationship with King Saul. It argues that the divinatory techniques from the Basanga people, who live primarily in the southeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), help us to understand better what is occurring in this passage. The study maintains that the woman of Endor has been defamed by use of the label “witch,” which does not appear in the Hebrew text. Further, such use of the term “witch” is inconsistent with the understanding of witchcraft both in the ancient Near East generally and today on the African continent. Instead of being a witch, the woman of Endor is actually a law-abiding, kind, generous, and extremely wise woman, who assists Saul in facing his demise. I conclude that the origin of this defamation of the woman of Endor rests in early and, especially, medieval Christian ideology. Such a misreading has been perpetrated through missionary colonial and imperialist efforts on the African continent and has contributed to African self-loathing and identification with its colonial perpetrators.

After a long neglect in modern biblical studies, the tabernacle account (Exodus 25-31 and 35-40) has recently begun to receive due attention. Exegesis of this text has been especially fruitful for theological reflection as an example of morally ordered human work. In recent work in theological ethics (Reed 2010, Brock 2010) one now finds recourse to the association of wisdom with the work of a craftsperson (Ex 28:3; 31:3, 6; 35:26, 31, 35–36:2). There is much more to be found in this text for the theology of work, however. In this paper, I will critically evaluate the recent scholarship on the Tabernacle accounts by Davis (2009) and George (2009) and extend the possibilities for this text in theological reflection on work. In contrast to Davis’ use of the agrarian critique and George’s thorough deployment of Lefebvre, I will reconstruct a moral deployment based on the political force of Hebrew worship, in this case the construction of the place of worship. I will argue that the inherently social account of work for worship presented in the latter Exodus texts carries contours which are amenable to the themes of wisdom and free-work developed by Davis and George, but I will also explore the ways in which this account speaks to work specialisation, the political shape of human participation in work, and the sacral involvement of the quotidian.

The book of Habakkuk consists of several literary units, such as dialogues, speeches, oracles, and a psalm. Yet the shortest unit, 2:1-4, determines the overall impression of Habakkuk. While biblical scholars and Christians have emphasized theological connotations such as “faith” and “endurance” as the essential meaning of Habakkuk, readings of Habakkuk have neglected a critical historical context, the Neo-Babylonian colonization of Judah and the Judeans. The Neo-Babylonian control of the Levant was about massive military campaigns, economic exploitation, the suppression of weaker entities, and colonization of the minds of people through cultural superiority. This imperial claim is quite similar to European colonization of Asia and Africa in the modern era and current U.S. imperialism. With regard to the colonial history of Judah as a backdrop to the book of Habakkuk, this paper will define the book of Habakkuk as resistance literature – that is, a text designed to subvert the Neo-Babylonian ideology and its regime. As a hidden transcript and a counter-discourse, the book of Habakkuk criticized and mocked the Neo-Babylonian imperial aspirations in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3, utilizing intentional hybridization of Neo-Babylonian meta-narrative and Israel’s own tradition, the book of Habakkuk attempted to undermine the Neo-Babylonian imperial ideology and its authenticity. I, also, will argue that this imperial critical reading is necessary for Asian people who undergo the U.S. imperialism, neo-liberalism, and globalization, which subjugates those the U.S. views as inferior. Reading Habakkuk as a radical resistance against imperialism, rather than a theological literature of “faith” and “endurance,” will present a significant perspective by which Asians may recognize and reflect critically on the neo-imperialism and a new type of colonization in the global era.

Several scholars (e.g., Lack, Sweeney, Tomasino) have noted correspondences between Isa 1 and 65–66, suggesting that these chapters form an inclusio around the book as a whole and touch on many of the book’s major themes. These chapters also tap into one of the book’s primary meta-phorical wells—the realm of household relationships—in order to depict the people of Israel and their capital city in relation to YHWH and to one another. This paper will explore how these re-lational metaphors function rhetorically within the book’s framing chapters and observe how they are used to portray the development of both people and city from the beginning of the book to its end. Zion is initially presented as a vulnerable, defenseless daughter (1:8), who is abandoned due to her shameful engagement in harlotry (1:21), but she is ultimately transformed into a radiant and caring mother, miraculously giving birth to her children before the onset of labor pains (66:7–12). Similarly, the people are first introduced as the defiant children of their divine parent (1:2–4) but are eventually rebirthed by Mother Zion to become contented babes nursing at her breast (66:11–12) and receiving YHWH’s maternal comfort (66:13). Yet not all of YHWH’s rebellious children experience this dramatic change—only those who willingly take on the role of servant in YHWH’s household (66:14; cf. 65:8–9, 13–15) experience the satisfaction and delight of Zion’s maternal care and provision.

This paper focuses on the language and the cultural identity of Ruth, especially on the relationship between the language and the social condition (i.e. patriarchal culture) in the narratives. I address this relationship by a two-layered approach to the text. First, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and field is used to offer a way to acknowledge how the social condition (i.e. patriarchy) that surrounds Ruth shapes, re-inscribes, and reinforces the identity-construction and the language of her and other characters in the narrative. Second, I offer Korean women’s experience under the patriarchal tradition and Japanese domination as an intertextual trope to view and understand Ruth and her speeches/acts in a non-classical (non-idyllic) way. The painful collective memory of the Korean Comfort Women pushes readers to resist the redeeming (goel) rhetoric of the patriarchal language in the text. The testimony of the survivors in the Comfort system makes a powerful memory/intertext that can illuminate the structured violence of patriarchy within the narrative of Ruth. In her Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, Kwok Pui-lan states, “[The comfort women] disrupt national history, mock the identity formation of a people, challenge sexual normativity, and resist any forms of erasure.” She continues to assert, “Memory is a powerful tool in resisting institutionally sanctioned forgetfulness.” Thus, in light of her understanding of ‘memory,’ this paper proposes an intertextual reading that can re-member the testimonies, stories, and languages of silenced women under patriarchy— in our reading of the biblical text on the one hand, and in our actual history on the other.

This paper explores how postcolonial literary criticism construes Paul’s identity politics shaped by his rhetoric of wisdom in I Cor. 1-2 in the dialogue with literary works of Korean poet and journalist Sang Ku (1919-2004) which both reflect and attempt to overcome ideological, cultural, and political conflict around the Korean War. It is convinced that this cross-cultural hermeneutic juxtaposition between two works motivates us to be further advanced to explore how both Paul’s rhetoric of wisdom in I. Cor. 1-2 and Sang Ku’s poetics of wisdom can be reappropriated to create a new mode of Christian identity by overcoming the tragic trauma of ideological, colonial, cultural conflict which has deeply been embedded in Korean people’s collective memory of Japanese colonization and Korean War. For these two ways of hermeneutical dialogue are raised three interrelated questions as follows: (1) How does Paul’s theology of wisdom I Cor. 1-2 suggest new social identity to Gentile Christians in order to solve the issues of discord and dissension shaped not only by ethnic, political conflict, but also by religious conflict based on different ontological mindset ? (2) How can postcolonial literary strategy and rhetoric, such as H. Bahbha’s ‘mimcry’ and B. Ashcroft’s ‘parody’, ‘writing back’, ‘appropriation’, be applied to both Sang Ku’s literary strategy and religious thought in his works such as Wasteland of Fire (1956) and Paul’s rhetorical strategy and political theology in I Cor. 1-2? (3) How can Korean Christians formulate new social identity to foster reconciliatory postcolonial political ethos which can not only transform globalized imperialistic banking capitalism but also create peace movement for reunification in Korean Peninsula, just as Paul’s rhetoric of wisdom attempted to transform Roman colonizing political culture and rhetorical convention? Concerned with text analysis, this paper will interrogate how Paul’s postcolonial rhetoric such as parody and ironic question in I Cor. 1:12-13, 20 and ‘writing back’ in 1:19,31; 2:9, 16, ‘appropriation’ in the usage of ‘wisdom’ and ‘spirit’ in 1:19-2:16 contribute to effectively contesting colonial and imperialistic political culture of Roman Corinth and how Paul's postcolonial rhetoric makes parody of the internal rhetorical convention of Roman Corinth in order to implicitly create new social identity of Gentile Christians. Regarding contextual interpretation, it also asks how Paul's theology of wisdom can enhance Christian social identity in Korean pluralistic political and religious context by virtue of postcolonial interpretation of identity and wisdom in Sang Ku’s literary works. In result, this study is expected to provide us the interstitial third space where both Sang Ku’s poetics of wisdom and Paul’s rhetoric of wisdom can effectively cultivate new Christian social identity for sharpening post-colonial reconciliatory strategy of transforming globalized Neo-Liberalist banking capitalism.

Scholars have persuasively presented that Isaiah 1-2 and 65-66 share close linguistic and thematic connections. Brevard Childs in his Isaiah commentary, picking up Claus Westermann’s observations, argues that the initial sections of the so-called Third Isaiah also share close linguistic affinity with Isaiah 1-2. This study intends to examine this claim in further details, paying attention to the intertextual connections between Isaiah 1-2 and 54-57. The study will enlist and investigate the cases of intertextual correlations and subsequently assess as to what kind of inner-biblical exegetical work is evident in these two interrelated units. It is hoped that this analysis may shed further lights not only on the compositional relationship between First Isaiah and Third Isaiah but also on the social and theological reconceptualizations of the pertinent concepts within the book of Isaiah as a whole.

This paper deals with discourse analysis, particularly in terms of styles and structures, which affect significantly the process of Bible translations and also its results. As we cannot ignore the authorial styles and their structures regarding style-usages in the interpretation of the text, so these factors should not be overlooked on the process of translation of the Bible. Otherwise, we may translate the text based on the misguided assumptions disregarding the frames of the biblical discourses. Linguistics, particularly regarding syntax and semantics, has made an invaluable contribution to the field of Bible translations. Among the various linguistic factors, styles and structures have not been emphasized and considered on actual processes of Bible translations, properly and meaningfully. These are not ones of ‘extra-factors’ but significant ones in translation. Three exemplar texts are presented: Mt 24.42-51, Rom 1.18-31, and Jn 7.18-24. In each analysis of three texts, their structures regarding main styles are demonstrated in terms of how they are designed on purpose. And then, we will discuss them regarding how they can be reflected in the process of translations and its accepted outcomes.

Engaging specifically with the concept of othering as articulated by Gayatri Spivak and described by Mary Louis Pratt, this paper explores the politics of othering in the book of Judges. Othering is part of colonial discourse in which the colonizer’s self identity/image is confirmed through a construction of its others, in part by using literary-rhetorical strategies in its creation of others. In Judges the process of othering is not straight forward and shows uneasiness in using imperial strategies to construct others as enemies in order to define the identity of Israelites. The paper argues that this reflects the positionality of those who edited Judges, who were victims of the empires. To bring this point to a greater relevancy the paper examines the application of othering in Colonial America where the varied groups of Europeans forged themselves as “Americans” or “Whites” in contrast to the indigenous people whom they constructed as the common enemy. But the European colonizers were also ambivalent about using imperial strategies of othering when they themselves were trying to liberate themselves from the empires. Could it be that ancient Israelites and colonial Americans were in a similar interstitial space, caught between the others and the empires?

Throughout the Secret Revelation of John, readers encounter numerous cases of hidden beings, references to mysteries, and veiled symbols. What might all this mystery and secrecy portend? Recent scholarship has pointed to the multiple aims and effects of such claims and the practices that presumably accompany them. The paper argues that, on the one hand, SRJ shares aims similar to those of other early Christian literature: to gain prestige (and perhaps profit) for themselves and their teaching; to protect themselves from persecution, ridicule, and denunciation; to promote a new imagination of the world, one whose notions of God’s justice and human piety stood in sharp contrast to those of many of their contemporaries. But it also offers specific uses of themes of secrecy and mystery to establish the plausibility of the “second world” it articulated as Christ’s revelation; to give that teaching substantiality through material artifact and embodied practice; to offer a model for training in a hermeneutics of social critique; and finally for protection both against “the rulers of this world” and fellow Christians who declared its teachings “dangerous heresy.” All these work together to communicate a particular view of human existence in which Christ, the agent of the ineffable God, reveals the saving truth and offers hope to beings caught in a web of dangerous violence and deceit. The strategies employed by SRJ in the name of mystery and secrecy ultimately are aimed not at concealing the truth from other people, but at revealing it.

The depictions of Bathsheba painted by Rembrandt van Rijn and his school have often been discussed in research in recent times, while the drawings showing Nathan admonishing David have been paid little attention. However the latter show a fascinating and ambivalent encounter between prophet and king which is worthy of discussion. Is the sceptre in David’s hand, the majestic robe and crown a reference for a religious-political interpretation of these drawings? Would they have had special appeal to conservative Calvinists in the Netherlands who tended to support William III and also favoured the church over the state? Or do the paintings refer to Rembrandt’s personal situation, especially the conflict with his housekeeper and mistress Geertghe Dircx? Alongside assessment of the relevant historical and biographical context, there remain questions to be asked about how Rembrandt and his school interpret 2 Sam 12:1-14: How are adultery, lies and murder on the one hand and repentance, forgiveness and restart on the other hand shown in these five drawings? I will endeavour to address all these issues in my presentation.

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After following Mark’s order to Mark 1:16-20, Matthew reaches ahead to Mark 1:39 to find material for his introduction to the Sermon. This initiates a sudden, concentrated series of transpositions that alternate with returns to his absolute forward position in Mark 1-2, a pattern of utilization that ends just as abruptly as it began, after the Mission Instruction in Matthew 10. Some regard Matthew’s sudden and temporary shift to a completely different utilization practice as so anomalous as to call into question the argument from order and Markan priority as these operate in the 2DH, a skepticism fed not least by less than satisfactory redaction-critical accounts of Matthew’s transpositions. With some exceptions redaction criticism remarkably has defined its problem solely as Matthew’s use of Mark in chapters 8-9 when it can easily be seen that this turbulence in Matthew’s use of Mark correlates with a density of Q sequences in Matthew 5-12. The conception, inherited from the form critics, of Q as a sub-literary collection of sayings doubtless has contributed to its being left aside in analysis. In fact Q is the key to the Markan transpositions. When viewed in the framework of ancient scribal utilization and tradent practices, it emerges that the transpositions are constitutive elements of Matthew’s ingenious and economical solution to the problem of integrating two major sources, more specifically, to the problem of reconciling Mark’s order with Q’s order. This is executed such that Mark’s and Q’s articulations of the tradition continue to fundamentally structure, in their combination, Matthew new composition. At the same time—as the redaction critics have shown—Matthew’s project constitutes a re-enactment, a renewed articulation, of the Mark and Q tradition.

The Hebrew Bible enshrines a variegated wisdom tradition ranging from Proverbs’ tight connection between human righteousness and God’s blessing in the world, to Job’s wrestling with a God whose work in the world is inscrutable, to Qoheleth’s angst that the God in heaven works all too little in the world. Joel and Ethan Coen have presented this very diversity of voices in their recent films. In “No Country for Old Men,” the Coens present a story in which God is real and yet devastatingly unknown “under the sun.” Evoking the world of Qoheleth, this film depicts a reality in which wisdom and righteousness go unrequited and death is the only sure future for people. Job’s world of inscrutable divine activity forms the conversation partner for “A Serious Man.” This dialogue occurs not only in the regular allusions to the biblical text but also in posing the unrelenting and ultimately unanswerable question, “What does it mean that God at work in this world of suffering and loss?” Finally, “True Grit” invites its audience to interpret the film through Proverbs’ more black-and-white lens of retributive justice: grace is free, but everything else is paid for (or rewarded). This paper will first provide some interpretation of each film in conversation with its biblical antecedent and then conclude with some reflection on the three films together as a representation of the polyvocal Biblical wisdom tradition.

Using the Jacob narratives of Genesis as examples, this paper will provide a critical analysis of some of the advances made in Folklore Studies with regards to oral transmission and identify the ramifications for biblical studies particularly with regards to the Jacob story. Some time ago the much respected folklorist Alan Dundes wrote a passionate if not compelling book which argued for an understanding of the oral precursors of much of the biblical text. (Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore 1999) Dundes was a non biblical scholar and presumably held to no particular theoretical reconstruction of Ancient Israel, and might therefore have been thought of as impartial when describing the many ways the biblical text could still be seen to betray an essentially oral origin. Unfortunately, he provided no method or technique for differentiating between texts with oral precursors and those without such precursors. Instead he simply reiterated certain generalizations about what he termed were ‘echo texts’ and assumed that this was evidence enough to suggest an oral pre text for much of the bible which itself had had a long history of oral transmission. Transmission of oral narratives is hardly something that can be studied in an historically linear fashion when the only evidence is the final ancient written texts themselves, yet theories still abound in an effort to argue for the antiquity of certain biblical texts on the basis of their having been originally constructed as oral tales. More recently the area of memory studies has attempted to introduce some important distinctions when speaking about memory of historical events and the way it operates especially when conveying national identity. This paper will suggest ways in which memory studies compliment folklore studies in the manner by which it describes oral transmission and the implications this has for biblical studies.

Throughout the centuries Biblical scholars have long struggled with the meaning of the Hebrew phrase karat berît. The traditional translation “make a covenant” is inferred from its literal meaning “cut a covenant”. Nevertheless, the expression is not unique to Hebrew. It is attested in Sumerian as nam-erim2 … kud, Phoenician as krt ’lh and Greek as ????? teµ?e??. Each of these phrases shares the same meaning: “cut a curse”. It is, therefore, possible that berît functions as a euphemism for “curse” and that its actual meaning may be related to some feature of ancient Near Eastern oath rituals. In order to uncover the social context and meaning of the expression, this paper will examine the use of related terminology in Sumerian and Akkadian oath rituals in which food is consumed. The occurrence of the Akkadian phrase assakku akalum, “eat taboo food” in these rites may provide new support for L. Koehler’s proposal that berît refers to a type of food item, thereby suggesting that the term is derived from vbrh meaning “consume food”.

Greek and Roman formulations of rhetoric and dialogue often acknowledged the profound link between speech and space. From the imaginary rooms of mnemonics to the spatial metaphors of Platonic dialogues, the place of speaking shaped both the social conditions of conversation and its content. This paper investigates the link between speech and its setting in the context of rabbinic discourse. By focusing on accounts from the Tosefta and the Palestinian Talmud, it examines how a banquet hall with its hierarchy of status, or the city street with its public exposure, dictated a certain behavior and prompted the rabbis to discuss their mode of discussion. These passages mark self-reflective moments, in which the rabbis reveal the discursive mechanisms of their Oral Torah and the physical conditions of its production. The Graeco-Roman architectural setting of this production is, therefore, crucial and its exploration forms a significant part of this study.

This paper examines the relationship of Samaria and Aram-Damascus in the late 840s BCE, the period of Hazael’s enigmatic rise to power. It suggests that Hazael justified his action against Samaria not as an arbitrarily timed response to a Samarian invasion into Aram in a previous generation, but as retaliation for an Israelite (that is, Samarian and Judahite) attempt at exploiting the death of Hazael’s predecessor. Specifically, this paper questions the consensus understanding of the phrase “And the king of I[s]rael had entered previously into the land of my father” (wy‘l . mlky[š]/r’l . qdm . b’rq . aby) in lines 3-4 of the Tel Dan Inscription. A problem arises from the supposed adverb qdm, “previously,” which necessitates translating the waw-consecutive verb wy‘l, “and he entered,” as a pluperfect. However, wherever the waw-consecutive syntagm is attested, it is used to indicate sequential events, never anteriority. Additionally, an investigation of qdm itself reveals that this morpheme is never used adverbially. The paper offers an alternative interpretation of qdm which avoids the temporal and syntactic difficulties with the current consensus interpretation. It then applies the impact of the new reading to our understanding of Hazael’s rise, an understanding that should be modified in light of the common misinterpretation of the Tel Dan Inscription.

At first look, the relationship of Babylon and Jerusalem in late literature is unequivocally that of enemies. In some oracles (e.g., Jer 50-51), Babylon is doomed because of its bloody conquests and repeated deportations of Judah. Commensurate with the cruelty with which Nebuchadnezzar devastated the Davidic kingdom and the Jerusalem temple, Yhwh will single out Babylon for an extra measure of divine justice. Ezra-Nehemiah seems to hint at the partial fulfillment of such a future divine intervention. The work highlights a series of Judean returns back to the homeland. Within this larger depiction, Babylon figures prominently as the source both of the returned temple utensils plundered from Jerusalem and of the repatriates themselves (e.g., Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Ezra). Things seem to be coming full circle as the homeland community is gradually restored at Babylon’s expense. This essay explores the changing dynamics of what initially seems to be a binary opposition to suggest a more complex understanding of the relationship between Babylon and Jerusalem within a larger imperial context. From the first return under Cyrus (538 BCE) through the second mission of Nehemiah (432 BCE?), the chronology of Ezra-Nehemiah is extensive, involving a much greater length of time than the period traditionally attributed to the exile itself (598/587–538 BCE). The selective coverage points to a long history of relations between the homeland community and the Diaspora. Indeed, the narratives of return and rebuilding presuppose not only the survival of a Judean community in Babylon, but also its gradual development into a formative center of Judean leadership and learning. Each of the major initiatives undertaken within the work stems from someone or some group living in the Diaspora. The diachronic progression points to the emergence of a much more complex and productive relationship between the two very different centres. Indeed, the portrayal of continuing relations between the Diaspora and the homeland community is critical to grasping the writers’ implicit case that within an immense empire the ongoing existence of a sister community in Babylon has its benefits for Jerusalem.

The statement “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” attributed to Jesus in some copies of the Gospel of Luke, fits within a larger effort among Christian writers to claim a status of hero, gentleman and philosopher for their Messiah. Placed within Luke, the saying gains an added nuance: the forgiveness Jesus extends to some of his murderers at the moment of death is gradually revoked as the full scope of the Lukan narrative progresses such that, by the end of Acts, the blame for killing first Christ and then his followers has been shifted away from Roman authorities toward Jewish critics of the Jesus movement. Situating this unstable Jesus tradition both within the narrative program of Luke-Acts and the changing circumstances of the Jesus movement, this paper compares the Lukan forgiveness motif to Roman notions of clementia. Whether or not the Gospel originally included this saying, its preservation within Christian tradition evinces both a complex attitude toward Roman propaganda and a fraught competition for prestige on the part of Jesus’ followers. The affirmation of the long-suffering patience and compassion of Christ on the cross assumes and depends upon the every-day brutality of imperially sponsored violence. Nevertheless, the transmission of this saying in particular is accompanied by a troubling willingness to deflect imperial brutality away from certain Christ followers by redirecting it toward others, be they “heretics” or (fellow) Jews.

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In the majority of scholarship on the Hermetica, scholars have constructed or relied upon an abstracted system of belief from the texts, Hermetism, and assumed that underlying this system is a historical community of practicing Hermetists. One of the most recent and certainly the most influential instance of such an approach to the Hermetica is that of Garth Fowden contained his 1986 book "The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Antique Pagan Mind." During this paper, I will critique the well-worn quest for Hermetic origins aimed at glimpsing inside the “Lodge” and documenting the practicing Hermetists therein. To this end and drawing upon Frederick Wisse’s critique of the category of Sethianism, I will contend that there is insufficient evidence to argue that the authors, editors, and readers of Late Antique Hermetica constituted a unique and circumscribed community influenced by but essentially distinct from all external forms of religious or philosophical belief and practice in Late Antiquity. In this way, I will highlight the methodological divide between phenomenological and socio-historical approaches by examining the lack of evidence for claims to social exclusivity, concrete and distinct ritual practice, and finally unique doctrine or mythology in the Hermetica. In particular, I will concentrate on the relatively late manuscript evidence and the frequent citation of Hermetic works among early Christian authors, such as Cyril of Alexandria, to further deconstruct two problematic contentions concerning Hermetica, i.e., the Corpus Hermeticum as a collection existed in antiquity as well as that practicing Hermetists were a highly secretive and socially circumscribed, conventicle organization. Furthermore, in responding to allegations of unique ritual practice, I will reexamine NHC VI, 6-8 and argue against interpretations that these Nag Hammadi tractates contain an account of or instructions for distinctly Hermetic rituals. Ultimately, it is my contention that it is best to envision Hermetic texts as containing no indication of exclusive association with ritually initiated and doctrinally coherent Hermetists, but instead as texts emerging from the dynamic world of late antiquity in which pseudepigraphy and revelation were common strategies for increasing the persuasiveness of one’s specific perspective through a “manipulation of conventions.”

Israel as a nation seems to want to exist within the genre of epic, as Bakhtin defines it—in a world characterized by its wholeness and clarity. At first glance, it appears as if the text itself is subversive of this desire. For example, one of the reasons the Israelites request a king is so they can be “like the other nations” (1 Sam 8:20), but the king they are given is crowned and then decrowned. Carnivalistic laughter is more appropriate at Saul’s first public appearance (or not), when he is found hiding among the baggage, than hushed reverence and awe. In fact, throughout the Deuteronomistic history, Israel’s kings are presented as people who are deeply human and flawed, far away from the idealized and whitewashed heroes of the epic. But as Israel returns to the land after the exile, they also return to their desire to live in the mode of epic, where the past is valorized and monochronic. In the epic, there is no place for openendedness, indecision or indeterminacy. Such a world would be wildly seductive to those returning from the uncertainty of exile, and various texts show the lengths to which the Israelites will go to get there. This paper will consider how Bakhtin’s insights about epic are worked out within Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, Haggai and Zechariah. These insights are also strikingly relevant for our current world, and the identities we construct within it.

Source criticism is often among the greatest challenges for students in an introductory Biblical Studies course. Its intellectual challenges are compounded by spiritual struggles for students coming from a variety of religious backgrounds. When introducing multiple models for the formation of ancient texts, as with the formation of the Pentateuch, the already difficult task of introducing students to source criticism becomes all the more complex. To address the many pedagogical concerns around this important element within an introductory Bible course, this paper proposes an embodied three-dimensional, multisensory approach for introducing source criticism to students. By using several colors of modeling dough to construct color-coded source critical “models” in the classroom, a teacher and/or teaching assistants can lead students in learning interactively, using their bodies, and engaging multiple senses so as to develop a fuller understanding of the material “at hand.” The familiar and playful associations many students have with modeling dough and bright colors have a calming influence on the heightened anxiety in the classroom caused by the intellectual and spiritual challenges of the subject matter. This paper models the method as applied to the formation of the Pentateuch, discusses the educational research supporting the use of such a method, and presents the results of the author’s experiences using it with first year seminarians over the course of several years.

There was no abstract conception of religion in antiquity, but religious beliefs and practices were closely intertwined with ethnicity in the Greco-Roman period. Building on the groundbreaking studies of Denise Kimber Buell, I investigate the use of ethnic reasoning in Christian identity formation with the epistle of Barnabas as a specific case study. In contrast to some scholars who insist on a sharp “parting of the ways” between Christianity and Judaism in the late first or early second century, the author of Barnabas seems to directly respond to a concern that the socially-constructed boundaries between the two communities remained quite fluid and permeable at the ground level. Barnabas utilizes ethnic reasoning to create a distinct Christian ethnic identity and to manufacture sharp differences between Christian and Jewish social praxis. In order to promote the idea of a homogenous Christian ethnic identity with pure origins, Barnabas re-appropriates the legacy of Israel while representing the Ioudaios (“Jew” or “Judean”) as an adversarial foil.

The semantics of verbs of “coming” and “going” have been studied in many languages. To account for seemingly simple differences between English sentences such as “Shira came home already” and “Shira went home already,” studies by Charles Fillmore (1966, 1971, 1983) focused attention on deixis, arguing that the acceptable uses of “to come” and “to go” depend on complex interactions between variables of time, space, and social location. Fillmore discussed more complicated examples such as “Jack came to the bank early,” which I could say to you if either I or you were at the bank now, or had been there when Jack got there. Building on the early work of Fillmore, who pointed out some differences between the semantics of English “come” and its closest parallels in other languages, other linguists studied verbs of “coming and going” in languages from around the world (e.g., Gathercole 1977, 1978), and the study of deixis has become a major sub-field within linguistics (e.g., Levinson 2004). Some researchers have turned their attention to the interaction between languages with regard to such verbs; studies have found that learners of a second language tend to impose the semantic structure of their native language on the language they are learning (Stringer 2007). Within Biblical Hebrew, it is obvious that the roots hlk and bw’ do not correspond neatly to English “go” and “come,” from sentences like bo’ el Par‘oh “go to Pharaoh.” The lexicons even claim that BH bw’ has multiple meanings, among them “to come” and “to go.” Clearly this is not a case of polysemy, but a question of defining with more precision the semantics of the Hebrew word, much as Fillmore and others have done for the English words. Some comments on the semantics of bw’ and hlk are found in biblical commentaries and other types of scholarship, but no study has been devoted to clarifying these issues. This paper aims to fill that lacuna. Additionally, it will be argued that the semantics of hlk and (especially) bw’ change over the history of ancient Hebrew. Plausibly, this can be related to interference from other languages in the minds of multilingual speakers. The semantics of the parallel verbs in other languages in contact with Hebrew, therefore, will be briefly discussed and a hypothesis will be offered regarding the history of the verbs within Hebrew.

Ezekiel is often called the ‘priestly prophet’. The theology of the book that bears his name is focused on the temple, its sanctity and purity. However, the label ‘priestly’ comprises yet another moment: The book of Ezekiel shows some intriguing parallels in language and phraseology to the so-called Priestly source in the Pentateuch. Nevertheless the relationship of Ezekiel and P is a matter of dispute: scholarship after Wellhausen, which assumes an exilic-postexilic origin of P, usually sees Ezekiel as a predecessor of P (e.g. the comprehensive commentary of W. Zimmerli). In contrast, the Kaufmann-school, which argues for a preexilic dating of P, makes Ezekiel the creative recipient of P (e.g. M. Greenberg, D. I. Block). Finally, recent research has added a third option: An exilic-postexilic date of P is assumed, but at the same time the final shape of Ezekiel is classified as post P by dating the book in the postexilic era. However, the question of the relationship between Ezekiel and P consists of more than just determining the direction of literary dependency. If two texts use the same language and phraseology, this by no means implies that they share the same theology. Therefore with regard to holiness and purity the question has to be raised whether the concept in Ezekiel is in accordance with its parallels in P or if we can determine different concepts of ‘priestly theology’. I would like to follow this path by analyzing the concept of holiness as it is found in the second temple vision (Ezek 40–48). Here an elaborate system of holiness can be determined, which can be compared with its parallels in the Pentateuch. The text presupposes an amount of tradition that comprises not only of elements usually assigned to P, but also includes tradition from the late Deuteronomy. The cultic laws for the priests in Eye 44 nearly cover the complete Pentateuchal legislation that refers to the priests. Even though the rules in Ezekiel differ in many ways from their parallels, it cannot simply be said, that they are “in direct conflict with P” (J. Milgrom). Things are more complicated. Rather it seems, that Ezek 40–48 should be named a ‘Zadokite Halacha’, that interprets Pentateuchal legal traditions from a specific point of view, namely the monopolistic claim of the Zadokites, which itself can be understood as an exclusive interpretation of the covenant with Phinehas in Num 25:12–13. Thus Ezek 40–48 can work as a critique of the cultic practice at the second temple in Jerusalem not by opposing the Pentateuch, but rather by interpreting and extending its legal traditions.

Saint Paul’s views on marriage do not appear to be entirely consistent, and the history of early Christian interpretation highlights the ambiguity in his letters. Clement of Alexandria devotes the third book of his Miscellanies to a consideration of marriage and sex, in which he takes strong exception to Christians such as Tatian and Marcion who depreciate marriage but also to advocates of sexual license such as Prodicus and Epiphanes, whose On Righteousness Henry Chadwick described as “the scribblings of an intelligent but nasty-minded adolescent of somewhat pornographic tendencies.” Clement’s argument against these positions takes the form of a wide-ranging exegetical debate: he quotes his opponents’ exegeses of specific biblical verses, disputes their interpretations, and adduces other passages to buttress his argument. This paper argues that Paul’s letters are of central importance in this discussion and shows how Clement construes Paul as staking out a via media between radical asceticism and sexual freedom. Of particular interest is the great variety of Pauline texts that figure in the debate. These include, in addition to 1 Corinthians 7: 2 Cor 6:16-18 (“Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them.”), Gal 3:28 (“There is no male and female.”), Rom 6:14 (“Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”), and Rom 8:8 (“Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”). Clement is one of the few patristic voices to praise marriage, although he sees sexual desire as a threat to the spiritual life and advocates continence within marriage. To defend marriage he points out that Peter and Philip were married and suggests, on the basis of Paul’s reference to his “loyal companion” in Phil 4:3, that Paul himself was married. The nineteenth-century translators for the Ante-Nicene Fathers, apparently worried about “pornographic ravings” of Epiphanes and others, sought to shield Miscellanies 3 from public view by translating it into Latin, not English. This paper argues that this early debate about exegesis of Paul deserves wider attention.

J.M.S. Baljon’s 1898 Greek New Testament contains more conjectures in its text and apparatus than any other edition before or after. The paper will put the edition in its intellectual context and evaluate Baljon’s use of conjectural emendation. It will also trace the influence of Baljon on the Nestle editions.

Besa’s reputation as a writer has long suffered in comparison to Shenoute. This judgment results in part because Besa relies on extensive quotations from the Bible and writings by monastic leaders. These passages are often strung together, interrupting the flow of his argument and accompanied by little direct interpretation. I will use both William Johnson’s concept of a “reading culture” and cultural memory theory to argue for a new view of Besa’s use of authoritative texts, both the Bible and Shenoute’s. Johnson has argued that reading cultures are formed through the particular reading and writing practices of a group in a way that contributes to their social identity as members of the group. Here the reading culture of Besa’s White Monastery has been created by Shenoute, both in his application of the Bible to defining monasticism and in his collation of his nine _Canons_. These _Canons_ preserve in textual form Shenoute’s performance as a prophet. Because these works continue to be formative, the “textual Shenoute” continued to exert spiritual leadership in the community. While all monks in late antiquity read and recited the Bible, the monks of the White Monastery are “monks of Shenoute” because they also read the works of Shenoute. Besa thus uses a distinct monastic corpus through which he instructs the monks under his care. Cultural memory theory allows examination of the relationship between Shenoute’s ‘canonical’ texts and Besa’s ‘cultural’ ones. Besa repeatedly castigates the monks for not remembering what they have read. Besa’s lists of biblical quotations, far from being literarily under-developed, serve a pedagogical purpose: to remind monks of the relationship they have with the foundational texts for their community. Recognition of how Besa performs both the Bible and Shenoute’s texts, and for what purposes, reveals what makes his texts a distinctive form of monastic literature.

The second century witnessed a semantic shift in the meaning of the term euaggelion from designating an oral preaching to a word referring to sacred written texts. Valentinus’ Gospel of Truth is generally thought to be a written meditation on the earlier definition and not considered a written gospel text. However, the ubiquitous references to the sacred book as an object within the Gospel of Truth suggest that Valentinus’ idea of gospel was not strictly oral or written. Instead, the polyvalent symbol of the book in Gospel of Truth reflected the term’s elasticity, a growing awareness of gospel as a material entity and Valentinus’ own position on the media of divine revelation. Valentinus embraced the idea of a multiform gospel and suggested that his own composition, the Gospel of Truth, be regarded as one of them. The Gospel of Truth’s passion narratives exemplify Valentinus’ gospel concept. Valentinus described the Son as a “living book,” who imparted the good news of the knowledge of the Father on the cross. The gospel was delivered orally as the crucified Jesus privately instructed the elect and then recited his teaching publically. However, gospel was also presented as a written document, a fact Valentinus emphasized through his dramatic depiction of Jesus as a crucified scroll. Subsequently, the elect were transformed into embodied gospels, each receiving a book “inscribed on their hearts,” which they were instructed to “speak forth” to humanity. A fragment from a lost writing of Valentinus indicated that he thought about the book of the heart in terms of physical books. In it, he noted that many published books were all literary glimmers of the heavenly book. This fragment linked actual published texts of Greco-Roman authors to the concept of the book of the heart and indicated that Valentinus’ notion of gospel was one of “living scripture.” Because each member the spiritual class possessed a book written upon his heart, he was eligible to publish his book of the heart, just as Jesus did. Anyone who possessed a book written in the heart had the authority to disseminate its contents in written or oral form. Valentinus’ passion scenes were a call for all spiritual Christians to read the living book, distribute it, and develop it with their own writings. The many ways Valentinus conceptualized the book as an object—as an oral text, book of heart, embodied scroll, written document—suggest that Valentinus’ Gospel of Truth should be thought of not just as a sermon but as one of these expanded books.

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Historians of antiquity and religion have long noted the importance of Greek rhetoric and philosophy as most influential to the development of proto-orthodox Christian theology in the second through fourth centuries. Central to this theology is the tenet that the attributes of the Christian God correspond to those of the supreme god of (so-called) pagan monotheism. Given the evidence of Greek-writing Christian intellectuals - Eusebius perhaps foremost among them - this theory seems to hold; the consensus agrees that the Christian God must be immaterial, immoveable, and impassible. Philo of Alexandria was a proponent of this view, as were many Greek Christian theologians (e.g. Origen and John Chrysostom). Despite differences in argumentation among these individuals, the basic premise remains: the inherent frailty of human language and understanding obfuscate one’s ability to grasp the true nature of God. Yet scholars thus far have neglected to question whether these opinions were maintained by other Christian intellectuals. The evidence of fourth-century Latin-writing Christians shows that the range of opinions about God’s emotions and the interpretations of representations of the Christian God varied remarkably. In this paper, I examine Lactantius’ De ira Dei as indicative of the sorts of counter-arguments made by Eusebius’ contemporaries. Lactantius relies on cleverly veiled allusions to the Hebrew Bible to argue, in a Ciceronian fashion heavily reliant on rhetoric and rhetorical theory, that God’s anger is necessary for (though not equal to) divine justice. I will suggest that Lactantius’ argument in support of divine emotions, although using the same general rubrics as those employed by Eusebius, is thoroughly distinct for its privileging of the Latin and Ciceronian rhetorical and philosophical traditions. I will also suggest that the current narratives about intellectual traditions in late antiquity merit reconsideration.

This statement made by the philosopher Damascius (late fifth – early sixth centuries C.E.) in his commentary on the Phaedo regarding the disparate approaches to the divine is well known to scholars of Late Platonism: “To some philosophy is primary, like Porphyry and Plotinus and many other philosophers; to others hieratic practice, as it is to Iamblichus, Syrianus, Proclus, and the hieratic school in general.” Infrequently, however, is the succeeding line cited: “Plato, however, recognizing that strong arguments can be advanced from both sides, has united the two into a single truth by calling the philosopher a ‘Bacchus’” (In Phaed. i.172 Westerink). The Hegelian-esque scheme posited by Damascius, in which the synthesis is found in the chronologically prior term (Plato) and the thesis and antithesis in the philosophical luminaries of his own era (Porphyry and Plotinus, and Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus, respectively) is an irenic and ecumenical solution to a dispute over the proper role of the theurgy in the Platonic tradition. The towering prestige of Iamblichus (~245 – ~325 C.E.) and of Proclus (412 – 485 C.E.), two luminaries of Late Platonism and advocates of the hieratic regimen, ensured that theurgy would become a vital and, for some, a defining component of the philosophical way of life, but it would seem that not all favored the insertion of theurgic rites into the Platonic curriculum. The friction between the two opposing views was not merely about personal preferences but was rooted in issues of self-definition, i.e., what did it mean to be a “Platonist”? Was a “Platonist” defined primarily by either a commitment to the hieratic lifestyle or by a dedication to theoretical philosophy? Was there a middle ground of a sort not apparent in Damascius’ description? This paper will take up these questions, but also will evaluate Damascius’ statement in the context of the contemporaneous pressures and issues he was attempting to negotiate. It will be argued that his Hegelian-esque construct served multiple purposes - to buttress his own position on the relationship of philosophy and hieratic praxis against competing claims which, in turn, allowed him to formulate his own definition of the term, "Platonist," and, finally, to reform the Athenian Academy in such a way that its products would be philosophers who conformed to this definition.

With few exceptions scholars have understood the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls in purely religious terms: they evince one form of early Judaism among others. I offer a thought experiment determined by a different perspective altogether, one informed by theoretical perspectives on ethnicity, nationalism, and hegemonic states (Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity, Cambridge, 1997; David Goodblatt, Elements of Jewish Nationalism, Cambridge, 2006; and James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, 2009). What happens when we read the scrolls as the works of competitors in a vital battle to define Judean ethnicity in an era when emergent nationalism challenged ethnic self-definition? After clarifying the theoretical framework I complete the thought experiment by offering a fresh reading of 4QMMT. I conclude with observations on how this approach contributes to the debate over the nature of the “Qumran community” opened up recently by the contributions, among others, of John Collins and Alison Schofield.

The term “new creation” (kaine ktisis) was introduced by Paul in his letters to underscore the radical newness of the condition in which believers in Christ found themselves. Modern scholars tend to neutralize the radicalism of this concept by focusing on the Jewish background of the idea. Early Christian interpreters, by contrast, often referred to 2 Cor 5:17 and, albeit less frequently, Gal 6:15, in polemical passages, directed either against Jews or those whose views were judged “heretical” – or both at the same time, since the two categories tended to intermingle in early Christian discourse. Polemical elements, primarily with regard to Judaism, are especially forceful in Cyril of Alexandria’s writings, yet a number of themes raised in this context by Cyril surface already in earlier authors. In this paper I discuss the references to 2 Cor 5:17 and Gal 6:15 in select early Christian texts of the first four centuries (thus prior to Cyril), in which the concept of “new creation” is employed to demonstrate Christian superiority in relation to Judaism. I begin with Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem, where 2 Cor 5:17 is quoted and alluded to several times, mostly in combination with Is 43:18, which supplied the prophetic “justification” for the rejection of Judaism. This writing is of interest with regard to how anti-Jewish and anti-“heretical” polemics are interrelated as it shows how the God of the Hebrew Bible needed to be “defended” against Marcion’s charges at the cost of the Jews. Outside of the anti-Marcionite debates, the understanding of new creation as necessitating the rejection of the Law and Jewish customs and practices recurs in different contexts in patristic literature, often supported by allusions and quotations to other places in the Pauline letters, as well as to what the authors considered to be Paul's scriptural hermeneutics. In the second part of my presentation I focus mostly on the homilies of Origen, but I also consider briefly some examples from the fourth century, including Didymus the Blind and, among the Latin writers, commentaries on Paul's letters by Ambrosiaster.

Like many women who felt called to a vocation of preaching, renowned revivalist preacher of the Holiness Movement Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874) confronted tradition and Scripture in order to justify her own call to ministry. Palmer bases the argument of her central work, The Promise of the Father, on her reading of Joel 2:28-29, interpreting the promise of the Father as being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit, who is being poured out upon God's daughters, enabling them to prophesy. In effect, Palmer comes to the understanding that to preach is essentially to prophesy, as God had promised in Scripture. Palmer understood her life's work of preaching, teaching, and writing as obedience to God's call to be his instrument. Palmer’s influence was far-reaching; the pamphlet “Female Teaching: or the Rev. A. A. Rees versus Mrs. Palmer, Being a Reply to a Pamphlet by the Above Named Gentleman on the Sunderland Revival“ written by Salvation Army’s co-founder Catherine Booth popularized her argument for women’s preaching well into the twentieth century.

Modern scholars view Josephus in a more complex and nuanced way than their predecessors. Weber’s notion of the historian as a Flavian propagandist appears to be inattentive to ambiguities and contradictions in the War, especially if one adopts a post-colonial sensibility. Similarly, Hoelscher’s conception of Josephus as an unimaginative Vielschreiber subject to his sources has yielded to the late twentieth- century portrait of the historian as a conscious, though inconsistent, literary artist. These complexities pose challenges for the contemporary commentator. Also, given the progress of social-scientific criticism, a traditional historical-critical commentary like Walbank’s on Polybius would not suffice. This paper will exemplify one approach to designing a modern commentary. It will closely analyze a short section of Book 3 to demonstrate how newer forms of criticism , literary as well as social-scientific, may complement traditional criticism and furnish a deeper understanding of the historian. As in the case of Mark and the Greek novelists, even such minute details as repetition and sound effects may be calculated to affect an audience in a recitatio.

In ancient Roman society, the “normal” role for women was that of a wife and mother. Although widowhood was a common occurrence, widows were socially anomalous. Yet they were curiously visible in early Christian communities. Indeed, there may have been proportionally more widows in these communities than in society at large. In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, the author devotes an extended discussion on several groups of widows. Scholars often comment on the difficulty of this text. By looking at the text from the perspective of age structure and women’s life course in the ancient Mediterranean world, I argue that the author perceived a problem with the functioning of age hierarchy in the community. Evidence in Mediterranean ethnographies suggests that the cultural value of honour has important connections with age: public behaviour that violates age norms compromises familial honour. For the author of 1 Timothy, when people in the “household of God” (3:15) did not behave properly according to age norms, it put the whole community at risk of being perceived as dishonourable. For example, the author suggests that some members were not caring for their mothers and grandmothers properly (5:4, 8). Such neglect would be evident to outsiders, and risked compromising the community’s reputation. I propose that the author was even more troubled by a group of middle-aged women who were supposed to take care of the younger women, including younger widows. Represented by the “believing woman who has widows” (5:16), the author perceived middle-aged women as shirking their responsibility to get the younger widows remarried. The author’s enigmatic statements about the younger widows were really directed at these middle-aged women. He contrasts them with the ideal old widow who had proven her virtue over a life-time of modesty, self-control and virtue (5:9-10).

The work of George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and distinguished scholar of metaphor, is widely cited by biblical scholars. This session is dedicated to his influence on biblical studies. Professor Lakoff will deliver the key note address, highlighting current trends in metaphor research. Later, he will respond to papers given by three biblical scholars (Marc Brettler, Pierre Van Hecke, and Karina Hogan) who will reflect on Lakoff's contribution to the field of Bible.

As scholars have long recognized, the Biblical Hebrew verb nasa’, when used with a noun for sin as its direct object (such as ?awon, ?a??a’t, or peša?), can denote either the ‘forgiving’ of sin or the ‘bearing’ of the consequences thereof, two ostensibly divergent notions. Recent studies (particularly by Baruch Schwartz, and picked up by Gary Anderson) have rightly pointed out that these two notions have their unity in a single idea – namely, the metaphor of sin as a physical burden that weighs upon the sinner. However, the emphasis on a single metaphor behind these two senses of nasa’, while valid as an explanation of the origin of such expressions, has tended to result in the glossing over of important functional and structural differences in their usages in context. This paper will take a fresh look at the relevant occurrences of nasa’ in light of recent theoretical work on metaphor within the philosophy of language. In particular, the phenomenon of “lexicalization,” or the literalization of a metaphor over time, is especially germane to the metaphorical semantics of nasa’, for the use of the verb to denote ‘forgiveness’ shows evidence of having been highly idiomatic in most if not all of its contexts of occurrence. Furthermore, the distribution of the two usages (with the sense of ‘bearing’ sin being limited to the Priestly source, Ezekiel, and Isaiah 53:12) suggests the possibility of a dialectical, if not diachronic, explanation for the development of these expressions. The relationship between these metaphorical senses and the usage of the Akkadian cognate našû(m), which like its Hebrew counterpart is found in legal formulations denoting the ‘bearing’ of sin’s consequences, will also be discussed.

In contemporary academic inquiry, fifty years is a long time to be reading a book. Ideally, we would no longer need to read James Barr’s _The Semantics of Biblical Language_: his criticisms of theology’s use of philology would have been incorporated and submerged within the field, and their author only dimly remembered. But biblical scholars have not yet heard Barr. Many philological discussions today, including updated theological dictionaries, may be traced still to Kittel’s _Theological Dictionary of the New Testament_. As fluency in biblical languages continues to decline, the kinds of abuses that Barr so clearly identified and critiqued only appear to be on the rise; indeed, non-specialists frequently expand upon old or invent new forms when they turn to words to buttress their arguments. As a way of exploring the current state of the field, the first half of the current paper takes up the case of _metanoia_, its meaning and use in the New Testament and related literature. The second half of the paper, however, goes on to consider the ways in which Barr or, at least, a certain reading of Barr may be responsible for the failure of philology—with the exclusion of a number of recent, intriguing studies—to develop apace other forms of inquiry into biblical literature over the past fifty years. Barr’s thoroughgoing critique of its specious appropriation for theology has left many justifiably skittish about employing it to any significant effect and has contributed, perhaps, to the sense that ongoing engagement with the original languages of biblical literature is not a necessity and, certainly, not an avenue to creative scholarship. The paper will conclude with a few examples of how we might approach a study of language as a way of arriving at critical insight into the cultural particularities of, among other topics, ancient Israelite thinking about “mind” and “emotions.”

“Of Gods and Demons at Corinth” Proposal for the SAMR Session “The Book and the Rock” John R. Lanci Stonehill College In chapters eight and ten of 1 Corinthians, Paul appears to address a situation in which the first followers of Jesus at Corinth are being tempted to worship idols in temples and at the homes of their differently-believing neighbors. Particularly in 1 Corinthians 10, he comes down hard against partnering with “demons” (daimonia) when eating and drinking. Paul’s articulation of the situation—worshipping either God or evil demons—has stood the test of time and framed our understanding of the “Christians” at Corinth to this day. However, in this paper I suggest that archaeological excavations of private homes in first century Roman cities such as Corinth yields a different picture and a different way of framing the Corinthians’ situation. For gentiles, daimonia were not necessarily bad entities to venerate; indeed, these “lesser gods” were a fundamental component of the rich mix that constituted Greco-Roman popular religion. It is possible that Paul’s letter offers evidence of a Corinthian attempt to honor their ancestral household deities while at the same time incorporating beliefs in Christ into traditional domestic life. After a brief discussion of the various meanings of the words we translate as “idol” and “demon,” I will quickly survey archaeological material from Corinth and elsewhere that points to the positive role that daimonia played in the domestic sphere. I will conclude, using methods developed by those who practice “history from below,” that 1 Corinthians displays evidence for on-going negotiation between Paul and his correspondents that led not to conversion—probably an inappropriate religious concept to consider in the first century anyway—but to accommodation of old and new religious rituals and beliefs in Corinth.

At approximately the same time as the initiation of Leben-Jesu-Forschung in the late eighteenth century, the French Enlightenment thinkers Dupuis and Volney first advanced the theory that the historical Jesus, in fact, never existed. Since then, the so-called “Jesus-Myth Thesis” has been articulated by numerous authors, with wildly varying degrees of sophistication. Although such a theory has never commanded much of a following within the guild of professional biblical scholars, the writings of some proponents attracted the attention of such figures as Napoleon, Engels, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and even Lenin. Recent versions of this thesis exercise a small but noticeable impact on understandings of Jesus in popular culture, and in some cases manage to be more influential than mainstream historical Jesus research. This paper seeks to trace the evolution of the Jesus-Myth Thesis over the past two hundred years. Its primary aim is to describe and understand a movement that is generally ignored by contemporary New Testament scholars. Furthermore, it suggests that although this theory has very little to commend to it in terms of plausibility, its continued viability should engender more reflection and concern among biblical scholars than it does at present.

In two parallel scenes in Isaiah, 7.9-25 and 8.1-18, the conception and birth of a child is a sign of the imminent end of the Syro-Ephraimite threat and the advent of the Assyrians. The child is a sign of the future, as are all children, and of the immemorial past; the birth of Immanuel, in particular, has Mosaic, patriarchal and edenic echoes, and promises a reunification of the Davidic kingdom. Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz is preinscribed, the progeny of prophetic witness. His birth evokes the intimacy between prophet and prophetess, who may represent two kinds of prophetic speech, and a supplementarity that cannot be contained by the sign or the message. We do not know what Immanuel will be; if, for instance, he is the son of Ahaz, he may be a success or failure. Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz, likewise, learns to say “Daddy, Mummy”, independent of the great events he signifies. In the story of Maher-Shallal-Hash-Baz the child is paralleled to writing. As a sign, he does not need witnesses, but embodies his message. Similarly, Isaiah and his sons are signs (8.18), whose meaning is sealed, testimony to divine concealment. We will read Isaiah 7.9-8.18 in conjunction with Derrida’s discussion of Plato’s Phaedrus. Plato argues that writing is inferior to living speech, since it is an orphaned son, ever adrift from its original author. However, the metaphor Socrates uses to describe living speech is that of writing, an inscription on the soul etched more deeply than any grapheme. Isaiah’s children exist only on the page and our imagination; they are bearers of the fate of Israel and the promise of the new age. But they are also themselves, with an unknown destiny, resistant to any meaning ascribed to them.

This paper presents a new reading of the Lukan eagle logion (17:37). My interpretation depends on three primary exegetical commitments. 1) I want to respect the Lukan redaction and, thus, resist the temptation to harmonize Luke’s version of the logion with its Matthean counterpart (Mt. 24:28). Matthew places this saying within his apocalyptic discourse in ch.24, in the immediate context of the Son of Man’s sudden parousia, and has the eagles gathering around a corpse (t? pt?µa). Luke, by contrast, locates the saying within his so-called “travel narrative,” in the immediate context of a direct address by Jesus to his disciples, and places the eagles around a body (t? s?µa). 2) Since regarding Lukan redaction requires a reader to appreciate the narrative context of the saying, it is necessary to respect that the logion occurs in an address by Jesus to his disciples and as an answer to their question. One should assume that Jesus’ answer is directly relevant to those disciples in that narrative and not subsequent followers of Jesus, as most interpreters conclude or imply. 3) As several recent studies have shown, it is now imperative that interpreters take seriously the identity of the ?et?? in this saying as “eagles” and not “vultures.” My thesis is that the “eagles” correspond to hostile, capturing forces—as they are represented on numerous occasions in Jewish literature—and that the “body” corresponds to Jesus himself—as in the five occurrences of the term following ch.17. According to this reading, Jesus warns his disciples of an impending division among them. When they ask where this division will occur (v.36), Jesus answers with a parabolic prophecy that foreshadows the night of his arrest (ch.22), when enemy forces gather and divide him from the disciples and the disciples from each other.

The Book of Ben Sira includes several allusions to and quotations of the Book of Jeremiah. The extant Hebrew text leaves little doubt that Ben Sira himself based these employments on a Jeremiah text which was close to the MT version of this book. In his Greek translation, the grandson renders his grandfather’s Jeremiah allusions and quotations mostly without regress to the Jeremiah Septuagint. The only exception to this rule is Jeremiah’s description in the Praise of the Fathers. In Sir 49:7, the grandson bases his rendition of the allusions to Jer 1:5, 10 on the Septuagint although the Hebrew text of Ben Sira employed in both cases the MT text of Jeremiah. That Ben Sira’s grandson knew hence the Jeremiah-LXX and employed it, is further corroborated by allusions to Jer 5:31 (Sir 12:18) and Jer 21:12 (Sir 4:9) which the grandson added to the Greek text of Ben Sira. Both allusions are taken from the Jeremiah-LXX. The Greek translation of Ben Sira establishes thus a terminus ante quem for the Greek translation of Jeremiah before the year 117 B.C.E.

Medieval Biblical manuscripts and the late Rabbinic Midrash Bereshit Rabbati by Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan of Narbonne preserve lists of variants recorded from a Torah-Scroll that the Roman emperor Severus – probably Alexander Severus (222-35 C.E.) – donated to a synagogue in Rome. The variants recorded in this list have been the object of several studies. Partly due to the delayed publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, to date, the Torah Scrolls from the Dead Sea, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the textcritical evidence of biblical quotations and allusions from Second Temple Jewish literature have not been taken into full consideration in the study of the Severus Scroll variant lists. A comparison with the textcritical evidence from the Second Temple period finds some of the Severus Scroll variants also attested in textual witnesses from the Second Temple period and confirms thus earlier claims by Siegel as to the antiquity of the Severus Scroll readings (J. P. Siegel, The Severus Scroll and 1QIsaa). Contrary to the classification of the Severus Scroll as a vulgar manuscript by Siegel and others, comparison with the biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea shows that it was part of the protomasoretic textual tradition of the Pentateuch. As other texts from that textual tradition, the Severus Scroll attested to a few exceptional readings against the consonantal text of MT. Some of the Severus Scroll variants can even be found in medieval Masoretic manuscripts of the Pentateuch. That several hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple Jewish scholars found the variant readings of the Severus Scroll worth recording points to the progress in the textual standardization achieved since the Second Temple Period.

The malleable and active processes of memory work in such a way that more recent events are constantly combined and integrated with earlier sites of memory to form flexible mental schemas. As such, memories of real and imagined events flow back and forth in time, from past to present, and vice versa. Cultural memories of trauma are intergenerational sites of memory that may be revisited by later groups with new causes and extended into their social worlds. For instance, the analogy between the Exodus from Egypt and the return from the Babylonian Exile established in Jeremiah, Second Isaiah, and Ezra-Nehemiah was appropriated by later mnemonic communities, such as those that produced Damascus Document and Pesher Habakkuk. This paper will look at the ways in which the traumatic memories of the destruction of the first temple and the subsequent exile are revisited as sites of memory that are used for identity formation in Damascus Document and Pesher Habakkuk. More specifically, I will argue that both texts revisit these sites of memory in creating a bifurcation of the collective self that separates the elect from the traitors, or the pure from the impure. In other words, I will consider the ways in which Damascus Document and Pesher Habakkuk represent restoration and recovery from destruction and exile as processes of cleansing or eliminating impure elements from the collective self. In this paper, I will focus on the following: 1) the ways in which the repetitive temporality of traumatic memory triggers and collapses the distinctions between the past and present—events and figures—so that the desires of the present are imposed on the past and historical figures are used to authorize the discourse of the text; 2) the roles of spatial exile and temporal continuity and discontinuity in separating the elect from the traitors; 3) the role of memories of exile and return in imagining the desired end of a restoration of Jerusalem and the temple.

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In 2 Kings 5 Naaman's skin disease is healed after he follows Elisha's advice and washes himself in the Jordan river. Naaman immediately declares that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. Shortly thereafter he asks Elisha for Yahweh's pardon when he bows down in the temple of Rimmon with his lord, the Aramean king. Elisha's only reply is "?? ?????"("Go in/to peace"). Does this mean that the prophet has granted Naaman permission to claim exclusive devotion to Yahweh and nevertheless bow down to another god? Most modern commentators believe that it does. Among the remainder, most conclude that Elisha's reply is too laconic to justify such a conclusion. However, a few believe that Elisha’s words are an ironic way of refusing Naaman's plea. In the blunt assessment of one such critic, Elisha's "'Go in peace!' is a kind of 'Go to hell!'" Much seems to be at stake, considering how often this story has been used to justify—or condemn—the practice of "bowing down in the house of Rimmon." To what extent are our interpretations of Elisha's reply influenced by our own assumptions about the appropriate way to profess and show loyalty to the biblical God? After addressing this issue I will examine Elisha's general attitude toward worship of other gods. Does Elisha really have any interest in stamping out worship of foreign gods in Israel, as do the zealous Elijah and Jehu? Is Naaman really espousing an "absolute" monotheistic faith, as some scholars contend? After examining the narrator's attitude toward syncretistic religious practices in other biblical texts, I conclude by deciding whether it is more likely that Elisha's words are meant as a heartfelt "go in peace," as an expression of indifference, or as a harshly dismissive "go to hell!"

In the Winter War (1939-1940) Finland lost part of its territory to the Soviet Union. In The Continuation War Finland joined the German attack against the Soviet Union in 1941. Part of the national motivation was connected to the wish to reoccupy the lost land but, also, wishes to occupy other areas in East Karelia were expressed. For many the attack in 1941 was a “crusade” and holy war. The paper examines the war rhetoric during the years 1941-1942. The paper analyses how the terminology used in the book of Joshua was reinterpreted in the Finnish wartime context. After the analysis of Finnish context, the paper will also return to the book of Joshua to explore its ideological motivation. Postcolonial analysis will be used in the study of book of Joshua.

In the paper I argue that the Gospel of Mark patterns its plot after the schema for Israel's restoration from exile adumbrated in Deut 30.1-10 in order to construct for its readers an innovative narrative identity centered on the figure of Jesus. Deut 30.1-10 contains a schema, placed on Moses' lips, that outlines Israel's restoration from exile in four successive stages: (1) Israel's exile from its ancestral land, v. 1a; (2) Israel's turn to its god, Yahweh, in renewed allegiance, vv. 1b-2, 10; (3) Yahweh's turn to Israel to restore the exiles to their homeland, vv. 3-5; and (4) Yahweh's renewal of Israel's collective heart and covenantal blessings, vv. 6-9. This schema is a literary construct designed to imbue Israel's history with meaning by giving it a narrative configuration. Deut 30.1-10 represents one attempt to refigure Israel's identity in the wake of the national crisis precipitated by Judah's defeat and exile in the early sixth century BCE. I argue that the Gospel of Mark engages Deuteronomy 30.1-10 as a canonical script awaiting performance. Mark has appropriated Deuteronomy's schema for Israel's restoration to structure the plot of its narrative about Jesus of Nazareth. The amalgamated scriptural quotations that commence the Gospel align the narrative with stage 1 of the Deuteronomic plot. These quotations presume both that Israel's exile persists into the first century CE and that Israel's god is about to bring it to an end. The first episode in Mark, John the Baptizer's summons to national repentance, corresponds to stage 2 of Deuteronomy's schema, Israel's turn to Yahweh in renewed obedience. John's activity at the Jordan River functions to presage and catalyze Israel's eschatological restoration. The rest of the narrative in Mark concerns stages 3 and 4 in Deut 30.1-10. Jesus functions both as the agent of Yahweh's compassionate turn to repentant Israel and as the embodiment of restored Israel itself. To facilitate narrative identity formation the Gospel of Mark has replicated and adapted the sequence for Israel's restoration set out in Deut 30.1-10. The act of replication lends authority to Mark since the Gospel implements the pattern of the Mosaic exemplar. At the same time, the act of adaptation brings the schema set out in Deut 30.1-10 into alignment with Mark's innovative ideological program for Israel's restoration centered on the figure of Jesus. This enables the Gospel to claim the privileged identity of restored Israel for readers who affirm with the Roman centurion that the crucified Jesus is God's son.

Criticisms of the Mediterranean as a discrete cultural area need little rehearsal here. The conflation of cultural diversity (Herzfeld 1984), the forced isolation of characteristic themes as the ‘quintessential and dominant questions of interest in the region’ (Appadurai 1986, [honour and shame, gendered division of labour, atomistic kinship, evil eye etc]) along with a suspicion that a political agenda is at play to distance Anglo-American anthropologists from dwellers of the Mediterranean region (Pina Carbral 1989) have all featured prominently in the literature. Others have purposefully focused on how the socially marginal and muted agents (particularly females) often under-represented in the ethnographic record do not neatly enact or support the constructed social systems of which they are assumed to be a part (see Abu-Lughod 1993 and Papataxiarchis 2001). Here, adopting a rather different tact, a review of sensory studies of southern Europe and the Middle East will be conducted. Sensory anthropology is a relatively new discipline which explores the ways in which particular contexts and cultures use and value ‘senses’ differently. One can start to perceive a sensory profile evidenced in elements such as language, material objects, the body, values, cosmology the built environment etc. One particularly important contribution of this discipline has been to raise the profile of the sensory impaired, the blind and deaf etc., and how they differently negotiate the cultural contexts of which they are a part. Shlomo Deshen’s 1992 ethnography, Blind People: The Private and Public Lives of Sightless Israelis for example, documents the experience of visual impairment and the resulting reconfiguration of identity and family ties. Such studies offer different ideas of belonging to [so-called] ‘Mediterranean’ cultures, offer alternative perspectives from which to construct ‘Mediterranean’ identities and, as will be seen, provide new heuristic perspectives from which to approach a variety of Gospel traditions.

Electronic editions of the New Testament respond to many needs of contemporary scholars. By keying grammatical and syntactical tools to the Greek text and including libraries of standard reference sources, digital versions of the New Testament facilitate study by accommodating a growing preference for electronic media. But existing electronic New Testaments preserve the traditional organization of the New Testament into chapters and verses, a convention devised to accommodate a culture of printed books. Traditional versification of New Testament compositions obscures their structural integrity as performances. Sound, not logic or semantics, organizes the compositions of the New Testament because its original audiences heard this literature spoken aloud and comprehended it by attending to its auditory signals. The dynamic environment of electronic media creates opportunities not available in the medium of print to recapture the sounded quality of New Testament compositions in their original contexts as spoken, public performances. This paper will propose a digital version of the Greek New Testament that restores the organic, auditory structures that organized its performance for its original audiences. The presentation will include a mock-up of desirable features of a digital New Testament for sound and performance, including graphic display of its auditory signals and the connections among interpretive clues that emerge from sound analysis. The demonstration will exhibit possibilities for the dynamic presentation of aural structures and for hyperlinks to translations and performances inspired by the New Testament’s characteristics as spoken sound. The digital New Testament demonstration will be created and presented by student interns in Tulsa Community College’s Digital Media Associate in Applied Science degree program.

Eliab’s word to David, his youngest brother in 1 Sam 17:28 seems to have at least two literary functions: it characterizes himself and David, and it has the ‘double-voiced’ rebuke/warning against David. With the literary functions, the character also seems to allude to the Deuteronomistic ideology of the exilic community. Eliab is first introduced in 1 Sam 16:6-7 which describes David’s anointing by Samuel and then he appears in 1 Sam. 17:28. 1 Sam 17:28—30 describes a dialogue between Eliab, the firstborn of Jesse, and his youngest brother, David. The character of Eliab seems to be related to the Joseph’s story in Gen. 39 in that he can be jealous of his youngest brother. Keith Bodner suggests that the character of the Eliab characterizes David through the dialogue in 1 Sam. 7:28-29 (Keith Bodner, “Eliab and the Deuteronomist.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 28, no. 1 (2003): 55-71.). In the narrative, it is Eliab that rebukes David, but it is also the voice of the author/redactor, which is Deuteronomist, that alludes to the future evil deed done by David. Therefore, in the narrative of 1 Sam 16 and 17, the character of Eliab seems to play a role in at least two dimensions: characterization of David and the ‘double voiced’ warning against him. Especially, the second feature of the double-voiced discourse can be considered as containing dominant or acceptable theological ideology of the Deuteronomist during the period of Babylonian exile. Their theological reflection on David can be related to their imminent historical situation of exile after the fall of Jerusalem. The Deuteronomistic voice is spoken through Eliab’s character and his warning against David could resound to the readers of the Babylonian exile as a tool of understanding or reflection upon their situation. Therefore, Eliab in the discourse of 1 Sam. 17:28-30 seems to reinforce the dominant ideology of the Deuteronomist in the exilic or the post-exilic community.

This essay proposes to contribute to the eco-ethic discussion by broadening the horizon from a few well-discussed texts from the Pauline corpus (most notable are Romans 8:19-23 and Colossians 1:15-10) to other texts; especially the texts where Paul draws a correlation between Christ and the creation. The majority of scholarship acknowledges the christocentric foundation of Pauline ethics and thus, the hope is that new terrain for ascertaining a moral imperative for caring for the earth might be explored further. It is the intent of this paper to explore how Paul’s carefully crafted theological statements about Christ in 1 Cor 8:6, which typically are studied in regard to Paul’s theology of Christ’s relationship to God, might also provide insight into Paul’s emerging view of the centrality of Christ’s relationship to creation; both the human and non-human realm. By extension, focused consideration will be given to how the directives provided to the Corinthians betray an emerging Pauline ethic informing how those in Christ are to relate to the created realm within the new eschatological age. The importance of this particular text lies in that it is one of the only Pauline texts which comments on the relationship of humanity with elements of the created realm; in this case food/meat. Establishing a creator role for Christ seems to be central to Paul’s directives. This following questions will guide this study: What does 1 Cor 8.6 articulate about the relationship between Christ and creation, both cosmological origins and the ongoing creative process? What is the relationship between Christ, God, all things, and us? How might Paul’s specific directives concerning meat/food provide new terrain for ascertaining ethical principles for contemporary questions about the human relationship to the created realm?

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While still a relatively new area of exploration, recent work on Mark’s Christology has argued that Mark cryptically, but nonetheless consistently, identifies Jesus with YHWH in striking ways throughout his narrative. One can observe such identification both through Mark’s application of OT YHWH texts/concepts to Jesus (such as Rikk Watts has argued), and his ambiguous use of kyrios for both Jesus and God (as Johannson has argued). However, other scholars, noting that God clearly has an identity distinct from that of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, argue that Jesus is best understood as God’s “chief agent” (Yarbro Collins), royal son (Kingsbury), or quasi-divine royal son (Marcus). This impasse suggests that scholars have yet to articulate a coherent “grammar” through which to understand the paradox that Jesus is somehow “identified” with YHWH yet clearly distinct from him in Mark’s gospel. This paper attempts to find a way through that impasse by examining three passages often neglected in the study of Mark’s narrative Christology. Through detailed exegesis of the three apocalyptic Son of Man passages (8.38, 13.24-31, 14.62), with special focus on Mark’s intertextuality with the OT (and through comparison with contemporary Jewish literature such as The Similitudes of Ethiopian Enoch and The Psalms of Solomon), I argue that it is precisely through Jesus’ divine-filial identity that Mark successfully identifies Jesus with YHWH and yet distinguishes Jesus from him. Jesus is the bearer of YHWH’s glory (8.38), the one who acts and speaks as YHWH acts and speaks (13.24-27, 31), and the one who sits on YHWH’s throne (14.62). Yet, Jesus does all of this not as the Father, but as the Son, something which each of these three passages emphasizes. These passages (and others) strongly suggest that Jesus’ divine-filial identity is the locus at which he can be “identified” with YHWH and yet distinct from him. Mark’s narrative “pressures” the reader to see Jesus’ sonship as far transcending human, royal sonship, yet also as that which situates Jesus in a position of obedience to the Father.

This paper explores the ways that ancient Near Eastern art encodes images of divine and kingly violence, particularly the tendency for artists to obscure direct representations of kings killing foes. A similar tendency obtains in certain representations of violence against enemies in the book of Psalms. This paper suggests the reasons for these similarities and the hermeneutical implications for the Psalms.

Although ancient Egyptians in the Early to New Kingdom periods recognized the debilitating effects of physical impairment, their attitudes toward impairment ranged from stigmatization in some cases, to full acceptance in other cases, and even to veneration in yet others; this range of reactions was influenced by Egyptian theology. During the Late Kingdom, Persian, and Hellenistic periods (1069-30 BCE), Egypt experienced significant changes as it became more internationally exposed. This project explores Egyptian views of disability during this time period, considering how earlier views may or may not have changed and why.

No less than their prose counterparts, the authors of Israel’s historical psalms used the tools of the ancient historiographer to produce their accounts of the nation’s past. A fascinating window of research is opened onto the historiographic techniques of these psalms when attention is paid to their use of inner-biblical allusion. Through study of these psalmists’ use of inner-biblical allusion, we are able to discover not only information about the state of Israel’s historical traditions at the time of the psalms’ composition, but also how the psalmists themselves interpreted these traditions and marshaled them to guide the minds of their readers. In this study, I will focus primarily on the use of inner-biblical allusion by the author of Psalm 78. While due attention will be paid to the sources underlying this important psalm, the key focus of this study will fall upon the interpretive techniques used by the psalmist in dealing with these sources and on the psalmist’s use of these inner-biblical allusions to shape the larger argument of the psalm. Here, it will be evident that the author of Psalm 78, just like Israel’s prose historians, does more than simply repeat earlier traditions. On the contrary, the psalmist carefully evaluates, reorders, and explains these traditions as he directs them toward the psalm’s overarching goal, namely a call for Judah’s estranged neighbors to the north to turn away from the rebellious path charted by their ancestors and once again embrace Jerusalem and the Davidic monarchy.

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By the first half of the eighth century BC, Israel had become deaf to its theological language. Faced with this situation, the prophet Amos employed homiletical inversions so as to upset the equilibrium of his listeners and move beyond the familiar, the expected, and what had become clichés for his audience. Throughout his book, the prophet takes Israel’s theological premises and reshapes them to awaken his listeners from their spiritual lethargy. He cites assumptions that his audience believed could not be contradicted and contradicts them. Amos peppers the nation’s leaders with challenging “in your face” questions. What if Israel is just like the other nations (1:3-2:16)? What if the election of Israel means the people’s judgment (3:1-2)? What if their worship is a crime (4:4-5)? What if the nation is not alive at all, but dead (5:1-17)? What if the Passover happened again, but this time Israel is the firstborn of Egypt (5:17)? What if the Day of Yahweh turns out to be the night of Yahweh (5:18-20)? And what if Yahweh had accomplished an exodus for other nations (9:7)? By relentlessly posing these unsettling inversions, Amos takes the people’s language and turns it against them. In this paper, these texts are considered in greater detail to suggest that Amos offers not only a rhetoric of preaching, but also a theology of preaching.

One of the more intriguing archaeological sites to be excavated in Israel in recent years is that of Khirbet Qeiyafa, a small, more-or-less single-period early Iron Age fortified site in the Judean Shephelah, situated on a low hill overlooking the Elah Valley, at approximately the place described in 1 Sam. 17 as the site if the duel between David and Goliath. The site has been excavated since 2007, and it seems to have been occupied only during the Iron I/Iron IIa transition. Various scholars have suggested different identifications, most notably Shaaraim and Netaim. However Khirbet Qeiyafa is not a city, but rather a fortified military installation. This paper refutes previous suggestions while proposing that this site be identified with the ma‘agal, Saul’s fortified camp at which David leaves his pack according to verse 20, or at least the site that the author of the story, who obviously knew the area well, identified as Saul’s camp. However the real value of the site is not its biblical identity but its position, on both the geographic frontier between Iron-Age Judah and Philistia and the chronological transition from Iron Age I to Iron Age IIa.

Much is known about the economics of the Kingdom of Judah, especially based on its distinctive system of balance weights. Despite the prominence of the Philistines as the enemy par excellence in the Bible and as the intrusive cultural group of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant, little has been done toward illuminating their economies. Instead, relying on problematic Biblical texts such as 1 Samuel 13:21, we have seen gross speculation about Philistine economic dominance over Israel; thankfully, these have generally been debunked. Recently, there has been some work on Philistine commerce by identifying foreign material culture in Philistine contexts. Here, we will explore the use of balance weights to identify units of mass that served as the basis of the economies of the several Philistine cities. Once these are identified, we may discuss and identify their trading partners.

Art has made significant contributions to our knowledge of Jewish history, culture, and religion throughout antiquity, but its importance for Late Antiquity (late fourth to seventh centuries) is second to none. Not only is the sheer quantity of artistic material unmatched in earlier periods, but the range of motifs available is equally unprecedented. Indeed, artistic remains offer a fresh perspective regarding this heretofore marginal dimension of Jewish cultural creativity. Usually, the image of Late Antiquity has been shaped by and large by extant literary sources that focus on the suffering, discrimination, and occasional persecution of the Jews, as well as on ecclesiastical tirades and Imperial edicts aimed at humiliating and delegitimizing them. Consequently, the impression gained is a defensive posture, wherein the Jews tended toward withdrawal and insularity from the surrounding world. However, the archaeological remains from this era, and especially its art, reflect a rather different reality: 1)For the first time, Jews made widespread use of artistic motifs that only on rare occasion beforehand appeared in a Jewish context, i.e., religious symbols (e.g., the menorah) and biblical themes; 2)The material remains from synagogues, particularly mosaic floors and their decorations, exhibit a remarkable similarity to contemporary Christian architectural and artistic models; 3)Artistic and architectural remains, at times of monumental proportions and impressive execution, reflect a community proud of and steadfast in its identity. The synagogues of Sardis, Hammat Tiberias, and Capernaum are particularly representative of this phenomenon; 4)Archaeological remains from synagogues are strikingly multifaceted in their art no less so than in their architecture and epigraphy. The half-dozen synagogues in the sixth-century Bet Shean region clearly reflect this diversity; 5)The primary reason for the extraordinarily diverse expressions in Jewish art seems to be rooted in the fact that each community was essentially autonomous and each determined how its central institution would look and function; this apparently applied to the liturgical realm as well. It is this last-noted feature that accords the archaeological evidence, and particularly the artistic remains, a singular importance in the construction of Jewish life in Late Antiquity, providing a corrective to the bleak picture presented by the literary remains. It is only when all the evidence of this period is taken into consideration, the artistic and archaeological no less than the literary, that one can gain the fullest possible understanding of the Jewish past, affording an appreciation of the religious and cultural preferences among wide swaths of society, i.e., the vox populi or, more accurately, voces populi, of contemporary Jewry.

The historical-critical method that characterizes academic biblical studies remains often separate from approaches that stress the history of interpretation, which are employed most frequently in the area of Second Temple or Dead Sea Scrolls research. This paper examines a test-case where the two methods mutually reinforce one another. The law of vows in Deuteronomy 23:22-24 is difficult both in its syntax and in its legal content. The difficulty is resolved once it is recognized that the law contains a previously unrecognized interpolation that disrupts the original coherence of the law. However, once that interpolation was added and became accepted as part of the textual tradition, it created a “ripple effect” whereby Second Temple readers were forced to resolve the disruption in order to make sense of the text’s content and syntax. The divergent reformulations of the law by Qoheleth 5:4–7, on the one hand, and 11QTemple 53:11–14, on the other, suggest that each of these independent witnesses sensed the textual disruption and sought to compensate for it. The fact that each did so in a different way, while seeming to respond to the same textual “trigger,” appears to confirm the hypothesis of the interpolation. In that way, the history of interpretation offers a window into the composition history of Deuteronomy’s law of vows.

This paper will examine the instrumental role of material objects in the ritualized environment of Israelite warfare. Attention will be given to the construction and destruction of memorial stelae, and to the way these and other cultural products (including cult images, the ark of the covenant, temples, weapons and armor) were ritually imbued with social agency in contexts of military conflict. The paper will discuss the ritualized social roles of these objects as they are depicted in biblical conquest narratives and related textual and iconographic artifacts from the Northwest and East Semitic cultural spheres.

Early in the dialogues of the book of Job, Job's friend Bildad the Shuhite responds to Job by calling Job's words a mighty wind (ruah kabir) (8:1) and suggesting that Job's children paid the penalty for their sins. (8:4) He also posits the theory that if Job seeks God and is pure and upright (yashar) God will restore Job's fortunes, (8:6) for God does not reject the blameless (tam). (8:20) Close readers of the book of Job will notice that Bildad uses some of the same vocabulary as the narrator of the prologue. Job's children died from a mighty wind (ruah gedolah), for instance. Also consider that God will eventually speak from a tempest, offering words from a mighty wind. On top of all of this, the reader will recall that the narrator has already described Job as a blameless and upright (tam weyashar) man (1:1). This paper will explore irony in the speeches of Bildad, viewing it as double-voiced discourse on the part of the narrator. Bildad, while presenting a coherent theology, gives voice to the narrator's very different worldview by pointing back to earlier comments that problematize Bildad's speech. Job's children die from a mighty wind, not because of their sins but because of Job's uprightness and blamelessness. Bildad also clearly does not believe that Job speaks in a way that God will reward with restoration of his fortunes. Yet the book ends with Job continuing with his rhetoric and God restoring his fortunes. Also in the epilogue, Bildad becomes like one of Job's deceased children, for God requires of him a sacrifice and a prayer from Job, mirroring Job's sacrifices and prayers for his children in 1:5. Bildad's words, therefore, reflect his own intentions and highlight the competing intentions of the narrator of the book of Job.

Among the Greek Papyri in the John Rylands Library, is a small fragment of papyrus, inscribed on both sides with a series of scriptural texts. Most of these are drawn from the Psalms, but one quotation comes from the Gospels. Arthur S. Hunt, who catalogued this portion of the collection, dated the item to the fifth century and described it as a “liturgical fragment” designed for “private devotional purposes.” The papyrus, however, shows signs that it was folded. In this paper, I suggest that it is, in fact, an amulet. More specifically, I argue on the basis of the scriptural verses that it was an amulet designed to be worn by children. In order to substantiate this claim, I adduce contemporary evidence for the Christian use of amulets. Theodoret, for example, describes women tying amulets on children to ward off sickness and John Chrysostom specifically mentions the practice of women and children wearing scripture (euangelia) around their necks. This paper thus contributes to our understanding of one of the ways in which texts functioned as material objects in Late Antiquity. The fact that this textual amulet was specifically designed for use on children heightens its interest. Because children were especially vulnerable to sickness and death, homilists faced enhanced resistance when preaching against traditional apotropaic measures. A rich catalogue of these contested measures may be found in the writings of Chrysostom. Thus the manufacture and use of specifically Christian amulets, such as this one, may represent a compromise position. In any case, an analysis of the social context of this intriguing fragment promises to shed further light on domestic ritual practices.

Two passages (scholars would commonly recognize as excerpts) from the Jewish pseudepigraphon, 2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch, are attested in three West Syrian lectionary manuscripts dating from the 13th and the 15th centuries. These lectionary manuscripts show that 2 Bar. 44:9-15 and 72:1-73:2 have probably been read at Easter Sunday and at the Sunday of the Departed. Hence, these manuscripts illustrate how assumedly unorthodox texts have been applied in orthodox textual practices. Does this mean that 2 Baruch has been regarded an authoritative text, or is scriptural authority rather to be seen as a ritually produced and situated phenomenon, limited to a few Sundays of the church year?

In attempting to shed light on the patterns of rhetoric in the New Testament, students of early Christian literature have long looked to normative rhetorical patterns of the Greco-Roman world as a context for, and source of influence on, early Christian authors. More recently in the Rhetoric of the NT Section of the SBL’s annual meetings, interest has arisen in looking to Ancient Judaisms and their literatures, including that of the early Rabbinic movement, as another, complementary source for understanding the formal patterns of argumentation in use in the New Testament. In service of this interest, this paper proffers an indicative sampling of the dominant rhetorical patterns in evidence in principal corpora of early rabbinic literature from the late 2nd and the subsequent several centuries CE, specifically in Mishnah, Tosefta, the Halakic Midrashim, and Palestinian Talmud. While scholars have identified in early Rabbinic texts patterns comparable to the formal canons of Greco-Roman rhetoric, the purpose of this paper is to present early Rabbinic literature’s rhetorical patterns in their own right. While we do not have evidence that would permit us confidently to date the formal literary traits that characterize the early rabbinic corpus to the period of the New Testament authors, early Rabbinic literature’s dominant rhetorical traits provide another comparator for understanding the particular rhetorical patterns of the New Testament in context.

This study explores the sensory imagery of Jesus in Gethsemane (Mt 26:36-46) in comparison with Isaac on Moriah (Gen 22:1-14) through the lens of rhetography. I claim that rhetographical similarities and differences between Gethsemane and the Akedah stimulate the reader to discover the tension between life and death, between hope and despair. That is to say, rhetography as a literary device serves to culminate in the dramatic tension between Jesus’ life and death rightly before his crucifixion, while comparing him with Isaac. The reader discovers the despair in the Gethsemane story in sharp contrast to the hope in the Akedah. At the same time, the reader anticipates that the Passion narrative ultimately ends with hope with the Akedah story in mind. In doing so, I will make use of the notion of rhetography coined by Vernon Robbins. He notes: “Rhetography refers to the graphic images people create in their minds as a result of the visual texture of a text.” According to Robbins, spoken and written words intentionally or unintentionally compose a means of communication with a view to evoking visual images in the mind of the hearer and reader such that they in turn conjure up meanings in connection with mental imagery. Greg Carey, however, redefines rhetography as the “rhetoric of the senses,” or more precisely, of the “imagery of senses-sight, sound, taste, texture, and smell.” Alongside Carey, my paper focuses on the ways the words evoke sensory images to the mind of the reader or hearer. Evidently, rhetography, namely, sensory rhetoric is a new way of reading the text with our eyes, with our ears, with our mouth, with our hands, and with our nose.

Although a great deal of interesting and important work has been done on biblical Hebrew poetry in recent decades, there remains a need for a comprehensive statement on its defining elements. We believe that one can only come to such a statement via an-depth comparison with biblical Hebrew prose. Such a comparison yields the following list of distinctive elements of Hebrew verse style, over against prose: (1) Line structure: Two or, occasionally, three matched lines, often though not invariably set in a relation traditionally known as “parallelism.” Where parallelism is present, the first line is often heightened, intensified, or made more concrete by the second or third line. (2) Concision: Hebrew verse is much more concise than prose, with a sort of collapsed syntax that tends to drop particles, etc., in order to shorten the clauses and sentences, allowing not only for the articulation of line structure but also the semantic saturation more generally associated with poetry. (3) More “verbally inventive” (to use Eagleton’s description of poetry in general). That is, verse is more likely to use rare words, metaphors and figures of speech, heightened diction, etc. Also refers more readily to mythological contexts and explicit divine action. (4) Non-narrative: Biblical poetry is virtually never used for narratives, though we do find what might be called “pseudo-narrative,” that is, the employing of narrative-like elements for more traditionally lyric ends, e.g., Song of Songs 3:1-5 and 5:2-8. (5) Direct discourse: Poetry seems to be always presented as direct discourse, or the words of a speaking self as opposed to a narrator. This aspect is grammatically marked by first- and second-person pronouns, expressive constructions that call attention to the presence of a speaker (“indeed,” “look,” “just,” “surely”), and spatial and temporal deictics (“now,” “here,” “there”). (6) Access to inner lives: Poetry is much more likely to provide access to the thoughts and feelings of the speaker, typically left unstated or understated in prose narrative. Attention to, and disagreement over, the nature of the line has tended to eclipse other considerations in recent scholarship. We propose here to not only nail down questions of the line, but also to make the case for the importance of these other characteristics, both formal and functional, as defining elements of biblical poetic style. Recognizing this array of characteristics allows one to not only more properly distinguish verse from prose, but also to take interpretive advantage of the distinctive literary resources of biblical poetry, which are very different from biblical prose.

The Song of Songs is a dialogic hymn that extols the simple sweetness and grandeur of love through an abundance of metaphors. The primary speakers of the poem revel in lovemaking, which they compare to the sensual pleasures of luxurious liquids such as wine, milk, honey, oils, and juices. The fluidity of love is also expressed throughout the poem in images of water, which are often associated with the beloved female, the Shulammite. After a detailed description of his darling’s many charms in chapter 4, the male lover praises the Shulammite by referring to her as ma‘yan hatum, “a fountain sealed” (4:12) and be‘er mayim hayyim, a “well of living water” (4:15). In order to fully appreciate the significance of the metaphors, it is useful to consider the symbolic and concrete value of these water sources within their literary and historical context. In the arid climate of the Eastern Mediterranean, potable water was a precious commodity. Securing a sufficient water supply represented a constant concern for ancient Near Eastern civilizations and often required the manipulation of limited natural resources. Water from a spring, called “living water” in the Hebrew Bible, was most highly prized, as it was the cleanest and most constant, as opposed to the stagnant water collected in cisterns, for example (cf. Jer 2:13). For a woman to be like a “well of living water,” then, was to be a source of pleasure and sustenance, ripe with the promise of fertility. In contrast, Proverbs warns about the prostitute, who is not a well of life, but rather a “deep pit” who “destroys the unfaithful among men” (23:27-8). A pit and a well are both holes in the ground; however, wells were generally covered to prevent passersby from falling in whereas open dry pits invited destruction. This paper explores what these water-related metaphors reveal about the vital and sometimes threatening role of female sexuality as conceived in the Bible and ancient Near East.

Joseph and Aseneth tells in often extravagantly figurative language how the beautiful but arrogant virgin, Aseneth, came to be the God-venerating, virtuous, radiant wife of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph. Virginity in this narrative has distinct symbolic resonance, as its instability and liminal status suggest the mutability of piety and cultural identity. Aseneth is likened to heavenly Metanoia—a pure virgin, image of divinely mediated transformation. Aseneth as bride and wife, then, becomes a walled city of refuge, stabilizing conflict by resisting anger and refusing retaliatory violence, yet still suggesting the ongoing malleability of cultural difference. The ancient literary critic, Longinus, provides a critical lexicon and a literary-rhetorical exploration of sublimity, threat, mimesis, and cultural transformation that may be placed alongside Joseph and Aseneth to generate reciprocal insights.

This paper challenges the assumption, found in feminist theology's relationship to literature, that self-identifying post-Christian women who have rejected Christianity, have also rejected the Bible as a spiritual resource. Across debates arguing for biblical rejection or reform (Lancaster, 2002; Osiek, 1985), literature has been called upon as an imaginative counter-point to scripture (Christ, 1995; Ostricker, 1993). Feminist theologians seeking to derive new narratives that speak of the sacred in ways that resonate with women's lives have turned to women's literatures. However, feminist literary theology has too readily presumed an either/or distinction between sacred and secular. This has not only set the Bible and women's writing apart, but opposes women's sacred and secular reading practices and processes. Furthermore, it takes for granted that a new textual based must evolve by refusing scripture (Ruether, 1985) in order to find alternative 'sacred texts' for a new spiritual perception (Goldenberg, 1979). The textual focus on women writers to substitute and/or supplement the canon has dominated feminist theology's relationship to literature to the extent that feminist theologians have interpreted on behalf of 'implied' rather than actual woman readers. As a result, 'it is highly likely that we know more about the concerns of researchers than we do about the actual practices' (Hermes, 1995:19) of readers who comprise the greater part of users of reading. Therefore feminist theology and literature has been unaware that post-Christian women's actual spiritual reading practices cross the boundaries of sacred and secular literatures. However, by using a reader-centred qualitative methodology to dramatise the meaning of the activity of reading for women's religious involvement, and to listen to actual readers' experiences, biblical reading emerges as a spiritual practice amongst women identifying against the Christian tradition. Post-Christian readers are critical of the Bible's hierarchy and authority, but continue to engage with it as a sacred text and spiritual resource. In particular, this paper will explore how post-Christian women, from a range of spiritual identities, engage in “filtering” strategies that “screen in” and “screen out” elements of the Bible. Rather than read according to feminist theology's literary spiritual canon, the embodied practices of women's spiritual reading form “reader-centred-canons” in relation to their post-Christian identities. This approach comprises filtering through rejecting, and resisting and reading the biblical texts. These are choices that are made in accord with what best fits women's individual spiritual journeys, rather than an adherence to a particular kind of sacred or secular text.

I Cor 15:29 remains one of the most controversial verses in the Pauline letters. Since its earliest extant interpretation by Tertullian until today, it has confounded exegetes. While Catholics have rejected vicarious baptism as an herectic practice since the second century A.D., Protestants are vehemently opposed to it because of the radical effectiveness it betokens for baptism in general. The most difficult interpretation of this verse lies on the understanding of the phrase: "baptized for the dead". Most of the Bible translations translate the phrase "baptized for the dead" as vicarious baptism (RSV, NEB, JB, NRSV; except KJV & NIV). This translation is unacceptable, for it does not only suggesting Paul endorsing herectic practice, but also overlooks the significance of this phrase. If we study carefully in the context of this verse (vv. 1-32), we could find that important issues of resurrection, baptism, dead, persecution into death (martyrdom) are raised. The belief of resurrection of the dead is the essence of the gospel (vv. 1-19). For Paul, baptism is directly related to the belief of resurrection (Rm 6: 3-4) and those who died are just fallen asleep (vv. 18, 20; I Thess 4: 13-16). Death is the last enemy to be destroyed by Christ's resurrection from the dead as the first fruits of those who have died (vv. 20-28). Paul endangered himself of death every hour and fought wild beast in Ephesus, because he believed the resurrection of the dead (vv. 30-32). According to this belief and Paul's courage to facing death as a martyr, "baptized for the dead" in v. 29 should be understood as ordinary baptism for those who died as martyrs before they got chance to be baptized alive. "Baptized for the dead" would be a very strong symbol to show their belief in resurrection of the dead in the early Christianity. For those who were killed as martyrs, "baptized for the dead (martyr)" would be a strong assurance and comfort to those survived. For Paul, those who died are just fallen asleep, so the one slept still alive. Thus, "baptized for the dead" is not a vicarious baptism, but rather a strong identity marker among the early Christians to indicate their essence of belief that these martyrs had expressed their belief of resurrection of the dead by their willingness to facing death. Baptized of the dead is a confirmation of their faith and also to show to the survived that Church accept these martyrs’ death by baptizing them as ordinary baptism. Thus, "baptized for the dead" was an identity marker of early Christians to express their essence of belief in facing a hostile environment which may bring death to all believers.

At the death of a prominent political leader, commentators often remark that history will be the ultimate judge of a leader’s stature—and quite understandably, historiographical texts often play a pivotal role in this shaping of cultural memory. The life of one of Israel’s best-known rulers, King Solomon, provides an interesting case study of this phenomenon as his reputation unfolds in subsequent biblical literature and other religious and historical texts. While Solomon’s initial portrait in the Deuteronomic tradition is ambivalent: he is on one hand hailed as a material and intellectual success and on the other as a religious failure; Solomon becomes the ultimate cultic leader and perfect ruler in the subsequent Book of Chronicles. And even though this reshaping of the Solomonic tradition has at times been dismissively dubbed a “whitewash” by some biblical commentators, the rehabilitation of Solomon’s reputation is actually a fairly sophisticated reworking of the Chronicler’s source materials found in the Deuteronomistic History. This recycling of a malleable historiographical tradition specifically addressed a time when the temple cult was being re-established in Jerusalem after a period of destruction, neglect, and active competition from other cultic centers. As one aspect of the Chronicler’s broader project of re-formulating his received tradition for a new audience, this paper will specifically focus on Solomon’s accumulation of horses, a royal act explicitly condemned in Deuteronomy (Dt. 17:16). Through astute editing and a re-ordering of the source materials, I will argue that the Chronicler successfully undermines the earlier Deuteronomic condemnation of Solomon by providing cultic justification for Solomon’s trade in horses.

Among the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library is BL Add. 12138, a unique handbook to the pronunciation and accentuation of readings from the Syriac bible. Writing in 899 CE, the compiler of BL Add. 12138 claimed to have preserved the traditions of the maqryane, or “teachers of reading,” which were passed down in the East Syriac schools beginning from the time of Narsai. This manuscript, therefore, is a valuable witness to the transmission of East Syriac school reading traditions. It is also one of the earliest examples for the systematic use of Syriac vowels and diacritics. The compiler of BL Add. 12138, however, did more than just pass down the reading traditions found in the “books of the maqryane.” By means of systematic, color-coded signs and letters he simultaneously presents the reader with a critique and commentary on these traditional readings by the later East Syriac scribe Rabban Ramišo‘. Thus, by means of this highly-creative system, two types of biblical readings can be distinguished in this manuscript – the traditional readings of the maqryane and the readings from Ramišo‘. Moreover, from abundant glosses, erasures, and liturgical markings it is clear that this manuscript functioned over its lifetime as a type of “school textbook,” helping students to read and comment on the East Syriac exegetical traditions. The changes and additions brought about by years of use present distinct challenges to the modern reader who aims to reconstruct the original reading traditions passed down uniquely in this manuscript. This presentation will introduce students and scholars alike to the challenges involved in working with a highly-complex, pedagogical manuscript such as BL Add. 12138. It is not without reason that the compiler of BL Add. 12138 labeled his diacritically-marked and vocalized text “a net of points.” The presentation will include a number of high-quality, color images of the manuscript.

What does Paul's portrayal of himself, Timothy, and Titus as "ambassadors" reveal about the missional workings of his soteriology and the character of the deity for whom they claimed to speak, and how does this self-portrayal reflect Paul's understanding of the strategic role of the ekklesia vis-a-vis rival theopolitical powers? This proposed paper opens in critical engagement with recent perspectives on Paul's use of ambassadorial imagery in 2 Corinthians 5, notably Anthony Bash's emphasis (in Ambassadors for Christ, 1997) on the scandalous implications of presenting God, Christ, and the "ambassadors" themselves as suppliants, and Michael Knowles' attention (in We Preach Not Ourselves, 2008) to Paul's mission of reconciliation as sanctioned by a peacemaking God, despite the murder of God’s messianic emissary. The paper then turns to the question of how the apostolic self-portrayal functioned concerning the early church and its relationship to Rome and other nations. Paul and his fellow envoys were deliberately casting themselves and the deity they represented as occupying a position of weakness, as plenipotentiaries without apparent potens. Insofar as it invited the Corinthians to join a similarly powerless community, this depiction was not merely scandalous; it undermined the very nature and structure of imperial power and patronage upon which Corinth's society was based. Finally, the paper considers the problem of reading Paul's ambassadorial language in North America today. Postmodern theopolitics pose significant difficulties for Christ-followers who would attempt to "ambassador" on Christ's behalf as the Pauline envoys claimed to do. Here the paper enlists the help of Yoder, whose call (in The Politics of Jesus, 1972, 1994) to "respect and be subject" not just to those in power but "to the historical process in which the sword continues to be wielded" offers a challenging path forward for the hermeneutics and praxis of Paul’s ambassadorial metaphor.

Reflecting about gendered genealogies in response to trauma in the German context necessarily includes reflecting on Holocaust and Nazi regime. One example is the documentary film 'My Life Part 2' by Berlin filmmaker Angelika Levi. Levi documents the life story of her mother in Nazi Germany and beyond. In the center of the film emerges the lineage of Levi women as a Jewish 'gynealogy'. The film stems from a context both similar and contrary to my own. I share with the filmmaker the same German urban, lesbian-feminist culture and a bourgeois background. Still, the difference in family history is significant: Levi is from a Jewish background, while I come from a Christian family, actively involved in the Nazi regime. I am used to think this difference as a criterion of absolute difference. And indeed, how similar actual contexts may be, different genealogies can lead to quite different awarenesses of life. Nevertheless, setting the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish descent in Germany as absolute also provides a lens that brings about an extreme form of othering and easily represses complexity and ambiguity. The latter thoughts arise from working in a second context, the Netherlands. I feel them to bring me on grounds that are slippery but productive. These observations will serve as starting point for investigating processes of othering in the gendered genealogies of Judah (1 Chronicles 2:3-4:23). Othering here refers to establishing ethnic, social, geographical, and cultural difference. References to women are central to the process. E.g., segmentation through wives—as opposed to sons and brothers—regularly affiliates distinct ethnic groups and territories to Judah; sisters such as Zeruiah and Shelomith appear at the centre of the Davidic lineage; and a references to Tamar inserts ambiguity to the memory of the ancestors. Central questions will be, How do historical events and discourses, which serve as lenses for forging postexilic identities function in the process of othering (e.g. exile and return, the Davidic monarchy, the memory of the ancestral period)? How does the ethnic, social, and gendered complexity typical for 1 Chronicles 2:3-4:23 interact with hierarchies and repression of complexity? Which functions do references to women have in enacting power related to segmentation, depth, and fluidity? Finally, how can differences (and similarities?) in performing genealogies in response to the post-state/post-exilic context on the one hand, and in response to the Holocaust and its recall in the German post-war society on the other, inform each other?

Although Porter’s objections to Hays’s seven criteria for discerning metalepsis have been repeated in three publications (1997, 2006, 2008), they have been either insufficiently addressed (Wagner 2003; Merz 2004) or ignored entirely (Beetham 2008) by advocates of Hays’s criteria. This paper assesses Porter’s objections through a comparative application of Hays’s criteria to the use of Job 13:16 in Phil 1:19 (a use on which both Hays and Porter agree) and my own claim that Deut 9:1–10:22 is evoked throughout Rom 2:5–11. This comparative application illustrates the qualitative nature of metaleptic determination, since the particular blend of criteria, including the strength of each one, that coalesce to justify metaleptic judgment varies. Fundamentally, Porter’s objections fail to account for this qualitative aspect of applying the criteria. More particularly, neglecting the diachronic function of “Availability,” Porter improperly associates this criterion with the audience-centered approach of Stanley, an association that is valid for echoes but not for allusions; Porter’s charge that “Volume” tries to define one metaphor (echo) with another (volume) ignores Hays’s 1998 elaboration in which he identifies “Volume” with the more or less concrete factors of verbal/syntactical repetition, prominence, and rhetorical stress; and Porter’s claim that “Recurrence” seems capable of determining the frequency of echoes/allusions, but not the presence of a particular instance, is countered by the importance of this criterion to the Deut 9:1–10:22—Rom 2:5–11 evocation. Positively, however, Porter’s concern with definition exposes the weakness of Hay’s failure to distinguish systematically between “echoes” and “allusions.” This paper concludes by differentiating between echoes, allusions, and quotations, suggesting, for example, that echoes and allusions are divided by authorial intention but united by the broader scope of their referentiality (i.e. to a particular passage/place/person/theme/action/event) in comparison to quotations, which can only refer to a text, whether oral or written.

Scholars have puzzled over the apparent yet enigmatic connections yielded by the Markan intercalation of the commissioning of the disciples and the death of John the Baptist (6:6b-30). This paper argues that the narrative complex juxtaposes itinerant discipleship with death in order to define apostolic identity in light of the Crucifixion. A connection between itinerancy and the deaths of John and Jesus (seemingly evoked by John’s death) brings into focus the suffering nature of apostleship, while the political situation under which John and Jesus are executed emphasizes the counter-cultural nature of the Jesus movement’s mission. If itinerancy is associated with the Crucifixion, the apostolic lifestyle becomes defined as an alternative to cultural regimes of domination. The narrative sequence of the Gospel sequentially reinforces the link. Just as Jesus’ preaching picks up from John’s upon his arrest, the mission of the disciples in Mark 6 occurs apart from Jesus. The literary phenomenon of disciples preaching in place of Jesus also allows Mark’s Gospel—famous for its abrupt ending—to foreshadow apostolic activity after the empty tomb, resulting in a narrative pattern of presence replacing absence. The post-resurrection disciples fill in not just for the risen Jesus but also for the heraldic function of John-as-Elijah—in this case, preparing the way for the second coming of the Messiah. Moreover, evocations of Elijah cast a scriptural background for the wanderings of Jesus and his followers in a situation of political oppression. Reinforcing the identity of itinerant apostleship is a crucial project around 70 C.E., as Mark seeks to extend the intermediate eschatological period beyond the deaths of the disciples; tying itinerancy to death paradoxically helps sustain second-generation leaders of the alternative society of Christ-believers.

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In his Political Grace: The Revolutionary Theology of John Calvin (2009), Roland Boer contemplates Calvin’s struggle with the “radical and reactionary elements of the Bible and his theological system” and asks “what if…?” This paper pursues that question by examining one concrete example, Calvin’s treatment of Jer. 48.10 (“Cursed be he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that holds back his sword from bloodshed”). The careful closed historical exegesis provided for Jeremiah’s “Chaldeans” is contrasted with what happened when Calvin introduced that text into his discussion of the “Persians” of Psalm 137.9 (“Happy is he who takes and dashes your little ones upon the stones”). Calvin’s publications were freely available in England by 1600, and his juxtaposition of the two texts was echoed by the puritan Presbyterian minister Stephen Marshall in his fast sermon, “Cursed be Meroz (Jud. 5)”, delivered to Parliament on February 23rd 1642 and intended to encourage the Parliamentarians to execute the Earl of Strafford, counsellor to King Charles I, without delay. Marshall’s sermon illustrates both how such texts supported radical, even revolutionary, activities, and how, after it had failed to achieve its task, they also provided rallying points for further expositions; here, that of Achan (Josh. 7) in Samuel Fairclough’s sermon, “A Call for Blood”, delivered on April 4th and the final nail in Stafford’s coffin. Little wonder then that Robert South’s sermon on the martyrdom of Charles 1, delivered after the Restoration of 1660, did not hesitate to link the seditious nature of the Civil War’s “Meroz” sermons with the “Let princes hear and be afraid” of Calvin’s Institutes (Bk 4, Ch. 20, Sect. 31), and to ignore its immediate continuation: “let us at the same time guard most carefully against spurning or violating the venerable and majestic authority of rulers…”

Proverbs 30:1-9 provides an intriguing challenge for interpreters as both the confession of ignorance (30:1-3) and the prayer for modesty (30:7-9) find no close parallel in wisdom literature, either biblical or extra-biblical. Thus in its current canonical locus the words of Agur is often regarded as an appendix to the main collection of Proverbs either in the sense of an afterthought (an unintended result of its editorial process) or in the sense of a corrective (an intended touch by the editorial hand). Interpreting the text is also complicated by the wide disagreements among scholars in demarcating the boundaries of subunits that constitute Prov 30. In this paper I will first argue that Prov 30:1-9 is best handled as a literary unit separate from other miscellaneous sayings, and that it offers a unique data for the construal of a theology of Proverbs. Agur’s confession and prayer demonstrate both humility and piety rooted in the tradition of exalting divine revelation over human erudition. Moreover, Agur’s prayer, the only specimen of actual prayer found in the book of Proverbs, is indispensible for the outlook of a theology of wealth and poverty. Agur’s piety reverberates with several wisdom psalms, notably Ps 73, and to a less extent with the revelatory theology found throughout the HB/OT. Far from being marginal to the wisdom theology, the words of Agur is very valuable for a richer and more balanced wisdom theology of Proverbs.

This paper will examine the significance of the New Testament's portrayal of the church as eschatological temple to the ethics developed therein. This covenant image, when properly informed by relevant backgrounds, emphasises the real presence of God with and in his people, a presence centered on the person of Jesus and actualised by the Holy Spirit. The image heightens the significance of the widespread language of holiness in the New Testament and informs this with themes of restored creation. It plays a key role, then, in the integration of ethics, ecclesiology, eschatology and cosmology.

This paper investigates John 6:1-21 (the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on water) and argues that its parallels with Nestor's feast in Odyssey 3 and Hermes' walking on water in Iliad 24 are mediated through a redaction of Mark (or Matthew's redaction of Mark). The implications of this history of tradition are enormous both for understanding the connection between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics, but also for how the Johannine evangelist inherited tale types from classical Greek literature.

This paper will reconsider the relationship between Ezek 44 and Isa 56. The scholarly consensus (Schaper, Fishbane, Tuell) is that Isa 56 is a polemical response to Ezek 44. This argument has sometimes been made on broad assumptions about the relative dating of Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah. There are good grounds for thinking that both Isa 56.1-8 and Ezek 44.6-31 are relatively late inclusions in their relative textual contexts. Consequently, it is necessary to examine the relationship between these two passages on the basis of internal textual data, and not on other grounds. Such an analysis shows that the consensus is quite mistaken and that it is Ezek 44 that is a response to a particular (and probably erroneous) reading of Isa 56. The possible implications this has for understanding Levites and Zadokites in the post-exilic period will be considered.

If we mean by historiography the self-conscious recording of the past as past, with or without consideration of its impact on the present and future, then Mesopotamia furnishes us with a large quantity and wide variety of evidence in texts and art. Already early in the modern recovery and publication of this material, its relevance for the understanding of the Hebrew Bible and the history of ancient Israel became clear. So among the first scholarly editions of cuneiform texts, at the beginning of the 1870's, were those of the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, and they were quickly put to use, among others by none other than Julius Wellhausen, to explain in tandem or in opposition to the Hebrew Bible the chronology and events of the Divided Monarchy period in Israel. Subsequent scholarship has continued this line, and among the notable practitioners have been such names as Albrecht Alt, William Foxwell Albright, Manfred Weippert, and Hayim Tadmor. But as these and other scholars have recognized, the materials of Mesopotamian historiography have value for Biblical studies not only as sources on the events and institutions of ancient Israelite history. They have also served, and continue to serve, as models or counter-models for the Biblical texts in regard to the style and genre of history-writing and to the ways of understanding of the past and its relevance to the present and future. The present paper will review and extend some of the scholarship done on the comparison of Mesopotamian and Biblical historiography in these two directions: as historical sources and as historiographical art and perspective.

As is well known, Philo of Alexandria has a fairly negative view of women; he has even been accused, perhaps not unjustly, of espousing a “virulent misogyny.” His negative attitude is especially evident in his recurring feminine characterization of sense perception. According to Philo’s reasoning, the senses resemble women in a number of ways: they are passive, prone to deception, and the source of debilitating passions and sinful pleasures (Opif. 165–166; Leg. 2.6, 50; QG 1.46). And just as the masculine mind must control the feminine senses for a person to function properly, so also women, if they wish to advance in virtue and wisdom, must be controlled and led by men into a figurative transformation of their femininity, one involving the suppression of the feminine senses and the acquisition of masculine “reasoning power” (Ebr. 59–60; Legat. 319–320). A notable exception to this thoroughgoing androcentrism is found in Philo’s allegorical interpretation of the biblical account of Hannah’s prayer for a son, in Ebr. 145–152. In this text Hannah almost entirely escapes the grasp of Philo’s presuppositions; only momentarily does he reign in her femininity, as he attributes her life-long sobriety to the use of “reasoning power . . . which no passion inebriates.” Throughout the remainder of the text, however, she remains wholly a woman. Firmly standing outside the control of male figures she assertively rebuffs the servant of Eli’s erroneous interpretation of her actions. Even more striking is the fact that Philo not only accords her his two most profound spiritual experiences, “sober intoxication” and the vision of God, but in the process he deliberately portrays her as an impassioned and adept female mystic. And while a vision of “the Existent One” typically results in the impartation of divine stability (i.e., freedom from the “wild horses” of the passions), in Hannah’s case we encounter an uncharacteristic approval and embrace of a fully embodied and passionate mystical experience. Nearly the whole sensorium finds employment as the “spirit of grace” enters Hannah, leading her to “rejoice, smile, and dance.” “Possessed, inspired and ecstatic,” her “sober inebriation” ultimately issues in an ascent into the noetic realm, where she “touches the bounds of the All, and presses on towards that most beautiful and illustrious of visions: the vision of the Uncreated.” This exceptional text therefore affords us a rare opportunity to mitigate, and perhaps even rehabilitate Philo’s misogyny, and along with it his largely negative attitude towards the senses, emotions, and embodied existence.

An increased interest in the heavenly world and angelic activity marks Second Temple Judaism. One particular angelic being, known as the angelus interpres, becomes a prominent feature of Jewish and Christian apocalypses. This angel’s main role is to interpret the meaning of the visionaries’ symbolic dreams and to provide a correct understanding of it. The angelus interpres first appears in the visions of Zechariah 1-8 but it is unclear what prompts the creation and subsequent reuse of this angelic being in later Jewish and Christian texts. This paper proposes that the trauma of the Babylonian exile creates a situation in the post-exilic period in which the ability to access divine revelation is reconceived. The traditional pre-exilic offices of prophet and priest become insufficient in providing visionaries a sense of legitimacy for their visions especially those centered on the reestablishment of Israel following the exile. The need for a legitimate and authoritative interpretation of scripture in the post-exilic period is imperative for a community recovering from displacement and seeking to reestablish themselves and their institutions. Thus, the angelus interpres, fills this need by acting as an intermediary between the heavenly and earthly worlds in mediating divine revelation. This paper will examine the role of the angelus interpres in Zechariah 1 and Daniel 9 in reinterpreting Jeremiah’s older seventy-year prophecy of domination by Babylon. Jeremiah’s earlier prophecy concerning the Babylonian exile is reapplied and reinterpreted by the angelic mediators, first in the immediate post-exilic world of Zechariah and later in the Hellenistic milieu of Daniel resulting in the creation of new revelatory texts.

A major scholarly problems arises in situations in which a slave is released from slave status and concurrently oblated. The removal of slave status normally is indicated by the verb zukku. Once the act of “cleansing” is performed the individual is released from slave status. It is noteworthy that, in some cases of dedication, the vocabulary of manumission is employed over and above the use of zukku, by declaring that the person has received mar banuti status. This transaction is usually combined with the obligation on the part of the manumittee to serve his former master until his master’s death, at which point the former slave will become part of the temple’s household. Thus, we find that the slave has been made free and dedicated to the temple, while the condition of future work for his former master has also been somehow imposed. This situation is typified in OIP 122 38. Such a scenario produces the scholarly problem that this paper addresses: How can someone who has received mar banuti status, nevertheless be dedicated to the temple by his or her former owner and forced to work for this same individual? Two primary solutions to the conundrum have been proposed. Roth has argued that mar banuti status may not involve complete freedom (what may be called qualified freedom). Westbrook, followed by Ragen, has maintained that the manumission may not have been full (what may be termed qualified manumission). Westbrook relied upon a Greek concept, the paramone. Unfortunately, the documentary evidence supports neither solution nor do these solutions hold legal muster. This paper argues that a basic facet of ancient contract law, that is, the distinction between conditional and unconditional contracts, assists in the solution of the conundrum and that the use of the concept of paramone is unhelpful.

In any existing commentary on Jeremiah, a reader would first encounter the voice of the scholarly expert who is narrating his (rarely her) interpretation of the ancient texts. The reader expects, however, to hear the voice of the prophet, if only in reconstructed form, and of the many other authors who, according to Jer 36:32, wrote Jeremiah’s words and their own deliberations into the book. This polyphony of voices is usually controlled by the commentator, yet both feminist and postcolonial approaches would dismiss such a master narrative and argue for multi-voiced readings of a given passage. A feminist commentary would not only address issues of gender, but also those of authority, ethnicity, and classism which all intersect. The paper explores the potential effects of a feminist approach to Jeremiah on the genre of commentary and argues that there will be different and even conflicting interpretations of the same passage, which challenge both the authority of the commentator and the confidence of the reader.

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Eusebius records a written account of the origins of the Fourth Gospel (HE 3.24.5-13), which he claims to have derived from a previous record. C. E. Hill and R. Bauckham have argued that the information Eusebius presents originated from Papias. In agreement with these scholars I will argue that Papias lies behind Eusebius’ account of the origins of the Fourth Gospel, but the latter has clearly manipulated his source to answer objections to the Gospel of John raised by Origen. In his Commentary on the Gospel of John (10.2) Origen argues that John’s Gospel is historically unreliable because it omits the story of Jesus’ temptation. Origen demands an explanation for this contradicting evidence in the Fourth Gospel as compared to the Synoptic Gospels. Otherwise, he maintains there are only two options: either do away with John’s Gospel altogether or interpret it spiritually. This paper will demonstrate that Eusebius provides a response to this criticism of Origen (HE 3.24.8b-13), and that he has interwoven his response with the tradition the Papian tradition such that his own opinions appear to be indistinguishable from his source. By looking at the way in which Eusebius handles the testimony of Papias in this passage, and elsewhere (HE 3.39), a clearer view Eusebius’ role as an historian emerges as one that is at times willing to modify and redact earlier sources to serve his own theological purposes.

The paper focusses on repetition, orality and Johnn 18:36. After a short presentation of C.F. Burney's comments on John the presentation will treat three issues: a) repetition. The definition of "repetition" will be discussed, the parallelism in John 18:36 as an example of repetition and Quintilian's comments on repetition and rhetoric; b) orality.The question will be raised which effect the written text of John 18:36 has on a listening audience, by means of the works of W. Ong and Quintilian; c) Orality and memory. Was Jesus remebered as saying something about his own kingdom?

The Epistle to the Ephesians, widely considered pseudonymous in modern scholarship, is attested by some of the earliest witnesses to Paul and played a formative role both in early Christianity and its interpretation of the apostle. The aim of this paper is to examine the role Ephesians played within the early effective-history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the Pauline corpus. In doing so we intend to investigate what light current the debates on the hermeneutical theory of effective-history can shed on our understanding of Pauline pseudonymity. Following a brief discussion of effective-history, both in its philosophical roots and in its application to New Testament studies, we shall use the idea of effective-history as a means of examining the relationship between Ephesians and the undisputed epistles. We shall see whether we can observe an internal effective-history within the Pauline corpus and how particular verses and theological concepts can be seen to have been “effected” or “caused” by Paul’s own letters. Next, we examine how the epistle to the Ephesians continued to influence or be “effective” in the reception of Paul’s letters and the interpretation of his theology. Passages from both the mainstream Christian tradition and other more marginal sources will be examined in order to see how Ephesians shaped the earliest understandings of Paul. The paper will argue against the tendency to excise Ephesians and focus only on the authentic letters of Paul when examining Pauline reception. The aim of examining effective-history is for us to become aware of our own hermeneutical presuppositions, from where they originated and how we have received them. Thus, it would be artificial to disregard a segment of that reception which has been integral. An awareness of the effects of Ephesians, even if our interest lies only in the reception of the undisputed epistles, is still essential for this task. Having observed how Ephesians can be seen as both caused by Paul’s epistles and effective in their reception, we shall conclude by examining what implications this might have for our conception of pseudonymity and the role the disputed Paulines might yet play in our interpretation of the apostle himself.

The demonstrative pronouns HOUTOS and EKEINOS are commonly used in the Greek New Testament as deictic markers for entities and/or situations that are near or remote to the speaker in terms of space or time. As well, one detects their use in textual deixis, that is, to refer to a more recently mentioned referent in the text compared to one mentioned earlier. However, in a number of places in the Greek New Testament one finds the so-called “near demonstrative” HOUTOS used for items that are remote, and the so-called “far demonstrative” EKEINOS for items that are near. In this paper, we will analyze four sections of the book of Acts where the near demonstrative occurs in clusters: 4:10-11 (where the referent of HOUTOS alternates between Jesus and the lame man), 7:35-38 (where the referent of HOUTOS is Moses throughout, but Moses is thematic throughout as well, which situation invites us to ask why HOUTOS is used anaphorically to refer to a participant who is already thematic in the speech), 9:20-22 (where the referent of HOUTOS alternates between Jesus and Paul), and 10:36-43 (where anaphoric references to Jesus alternate between HOUTOS and AUTOS). We will investigate the pragmatic function of the use of HOUTOS to refer to different participants in narrative proximity and attempt to discern what the writer is communicating by using HOUTOS where the personal pronoun AUTOS might have been used.

Our students swim daily in a sea of technology: cell phones, video games, email and social media create alternative communities. As educators, we are challenged in the classroom to be more responsive and proactive to student based learning approaches. Meeting the students “where they live” is essential to fostering active learning and engaging students. Adopting technology as a teaching and learning tool can be a transformational experience for both teacher and student. This presentation will demonstrate some the ways in which technology can be used to change the learning environment, including: 1. bringing cell phones and text messaging into the classroom (if they are doing it anyway, we can re-direct the behavior toward our goals!) by using Poll Everywhere and Twitter feeds for questions and answers both during and outside of class time; 2. using Facebook to foster collaboration and community; 3. using music as a teaching tool; 4. Discussion on what use of technology is working, and not working, in our classrooms.

This is a prepared response to Ronald Stroud's paper, Ancient Magic and Social Context: New Evidence from the Sanctuary of Demeter in Corinth.

This paper presents some reflections resulting from an ecological reading of the prophetic book of Habakkuk. A survey of recent scholarship evidences little interest in the book as a resource in the light of the current global environmental crisis. Yet the Earth (’erets) is a key actor in the book, both as an object of violation (2:17) and a subject offering praise (2:14; 2:20; 3:3). Earth is not the only actor in the drama - other non-human entities speak and act (e.g. stone and rafter in 2:11; Deep and Sun in 3:10). The third chapter of Habakkuk incorporates a theophany in which natural and military imagery is merged in the portrayal of Yahweh as a warrior. The environmental realm is explored to find appropriate descriptors of the presence of Yahweh, utilising such elements as sunlight, thunderstorms, lightning shafts. At times the natural elements can be understood as deities and are best translated as such: Dabar (Pestilence) and Reshef (Plague) in 3:5; N?harim (Rivers) and Yam (Sea) in 3:8; Tahom (Deep) in 3:10; Shemesh (Sun) and Yareach (Moon) in 3:11. These entities are actors on the stage with Yahweh in the poem. Whilst the natural world is especially engaged and active in the third chapter of Habakkuk, the first two chapters also make extensive metaphorical use of natural imagery to describe the crisis within which the prophet finds himself immersed and as it explores responses to the crisis on the part of both Yahweh and the prophet. This paper will explore the use of nature as integral to the message of Habakkuk and the paradox of portraying natural elements as actors alongside the prophet and Yahweh while at the same time subsuming their power to the sovereignty of Yahweh.

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In this paper I subject the published archaeological data from Capernaum to close analysis, with the goal of refuting misleading characterizations of Jesus’ Capernaum that have been put forward by a number of influential New Testament scholars. It is surely self-evident that Capernaum was never in the same league as the major cities of Judea, the Decapolis, and the Galilee. But this does not mean that the 1,000 inhabitants of the village in Jesus’ time enjoyed no prosperity beyond subsistence. First, assertions that no luxury items of any kind appear at the site prior to the Byzantine period are simply mistaken. Second, the Byzantine fine wares recovered at Capernaum do not indicate a sudden increase in the village’s prosperity, but instead reflect an important shift in trade patterns in Palestine at large between the Byzantine and earlier periods. Third, Capernaum’s best preserved and fully excavated houses compared favorably in size to the roughly contemporaneous Upper Galilean Meron “Patrician House,” usually designated as belonging to “modestly wealthy” individuals. All these houses date to well after Jesus’ time, but diachronically the houses of Capernaum seem to have been larger in the early Roman period than in later times. Finally, the evidence from Egyptian Karanis shows how villagers living in houses constructed out of humble local materials could and did take pride in decorating their homes with mud plaster and other perishable items that would not have survived the climate of Capernaum. While this Egyptian evidence cannot be directly applied to Capernaum, it does alert us to keep our historical imaginations alive to the possibility that the extant walls of Capernaum’s houses are merely the bare bones of the homes that once were.

Dr Maxwell will focus on the evangelist portraits of both manuscripts, placing them in their late 9th/early 10th century Byzantine context.

Among the mechanisms by which the eponymous aspirant is said to attain the ultimate apprehension of the Unknowable deity in Allogenes (NHC XI,3), we find mention of the paradoxical act of “un–knowing”; thus, for instance, at 59.30–31: “If you should know him, un–know him” (eshôpe ekshaneime erof ariateime erof), and elsewhere, at 60.10–12, 61.12, 17–18, and 64.11–14. This remarkable expression–– a prime example of what has come to be called “learned ignorance”–– situates Allogenes at a crucial moment in the history of negative–theological discourse. Similar exhortations to a supra–intellectual ‘un–knowing’ may be found among the first generation of Neoplatonists–– e.g., Plotinus (VI.9[9].7.17–21), Porphyry (Sententiae 25), and the Anonymous Turin Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides (2.14–31)–– whence the concept reached later Neoplatonically–influenced Christian authors such as Pseudo–Dionysius. Since the chronology of the extant Platonizing Sethian corpus relative to Plotinus and Porphyry has been the subject of some controversy, the intention of this paper is to demonstrate that the concept of mystical ‘un–knowing’ in Allogenes derives not from Plotinus, Porphyry or their successors, but rather vice versa, i.e., that intellectual priority must be granted to Allogenes. The argument is that Allogenes’ transcendental epistemology must be understood not only in connection with the themes evident in the closely related Platonizing Sethian tractate Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1) and with pre–Plotinian Platonist thought (such as that of Clement of Alexandria and the Chaldaean Oracles), but also must be seen as a development of certain topoi that already had a long history in Gnostic speculation on transcendental ontogenesis. These topoi include [1] the self–apprehension of the absolutely transcendent deity, who is frequently said to be unknowable and yet nevertheless paradoxically to know itself, albeit through some extraordinary reflexive faculty superior to intellection (e.g., Ap. John NHC III,1 6.24–7.4; Eug. NHC III,3 72.6–13, 19–21), and [2] the introduction of principles mediating the transcendent deity to the human intellect, principles which are themselves understood as the reflexive manifestation of the unmanifest deity and described with paradoxical terms that juxtapose positive and negative elements in tension with each other. Thus, for example, according to Hippolytus (Refutatio VI.44.3.3), Marcus’ Tetraktus is “a mouth of taciturn Silence”; the eponymous savior of the Trim. Prot. (NHC XIII,1) is simultaneously hidden and revealed within humans (35.8–10); and the aspirant of the Gos. Eg. (NHC III,2) addresses the indwelling deity, “I see you, you who are invisible before everyone” (66.25–26). In the case of ‘un–knowing knowing’–– just as with other Sethian mechanisms of transcendental apprehension, such as “first thought” (prôtê ennoia or protennoia) and “primary manifestation” (mntshrp ouônh ebol)–– the human aspirant was thought to be able to apprehend the unknowable deity only through the replication of that deity’s own, supra–intellectual self–apprehension. This thesis supports the working hypothesis that a substantial number of apparent innovations in Neoplatonism are in fact tacitly dependent on the profoundly unfettered creativity inherent in contemporaneous Gnostic thought.

Specialists of Mesopotamian culture have disagreed in recent years over the nature of the Sumero-Akkadian kar-kid/harimtu, a category of women exemplified by Shamhat in the Gilgamesh Epic. Following the lead of Julia Assante, gender specialists have maintained that harimtus were independent women rather than common prostitutes. But the tradition of translating kar-kid/harimtu with terms such as “harlot” or “Hure” endures because most Assyriologists remain unconvinced. My paper examines the origins of the “harlot” translation and why this translation has seemed intuitively satisfying. Bringing queer theory to the task, I revisit the encounter between the harimtu and Gilgamesh. Queer theory allows us to study the Mesopotamian texts and visual evidence with possibilities in mind that are foreign to the Western taxonomy of gender. I argue that, although this ancient conceptual category was invested with connotations of sexual impropriety and personal autonomy, kar-kid/harimtu did not designate a prostitute or an independent woman. Within Mesopotamia, kar-kid/harimtu was the official designation of a distinct category of gender, a collective classification of women who were gender variant due to rank, profession, age, and/or behavioral preference.

The unique mythological themes in Psalm 82 have long compelled scholars to consider it apart from the other psalms of the Asaph collection. The interaction with other divine beings, the implied distinction between Yahweh and Elyon, and the affinities with the northern tradition suggest a very early date of composition. This sets the psalm apart from the exilic dating of Pss 74 and 79, which explicitly mention the destruction of the temple. On the other hand, Psalm 82 aligns well with the theme of the collection, and the language of the psalm closely parallels that of the other Asaphite psalms. Building on the work of Erich Zenger, this paper will show that the composition of Psalm 82 is closely tied to the thematic progression of the Psalms of Asaph. In fact, it will be argued that Psalm 82 marks the turning point in the collection’s main narrative arc. Close affinities with the God-laments and petitions of Pss 74, 76, and 79 will also be highlighted. These observations have significant implications for dating the composition of the psalm, and it will be concluded that while the psalm draws upon archaic themes (as do other Asaphite psalms), its composition should be dated to the 6th century BCE.

Despite careful and extensive research on Hebrew Bible sacrificial material, biblical sacrifice is still largely imagined in terms of the violent death of an innocent animal victim. However, biblical sacrifice (as in other rich sacrificial traditions) is a much more complex, nuanced phenomenon, involving multiple activities that collaborate to create rich ritual events that play out on multiple levels. Thus to reduce biblical sacrifice to an animal victim’s death is to transform a complex phenomenon into a flat, one-note theological moment. The proposed paper focuses on discussions of sacrifice in Leviticus as complex literary orientations toward sacred and social space. The description of the manipulation of the offering – which involves several activities, only one of which is killing – orients the text’s reader toward ritual, cosmic, social, and cultural worlds. The ritual play in which the reader participates is dynamic, elastic, and complex, involving sacrificial actors, elements, and the reader herself. Such an approach to the biblical sacrifice from this point of view has implications for sacrificial theory more broadly.