The discovery of the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls raised the problem of their relationship to the scriptural text of the Aaronic blessing (Num 6:24-26). Most scholars assume that the longer biblical text was the source for the shorter text which is contained on the scrolls (esp. KH2). However, an intertextual analysis of the Book of Numbers in its sequentially organized literary relationship to Deuteronomy reveals that the tripartite Aaronic blessing (Num 6:24-26), together with its context (Num 6:23.27), stresses the importance of the name of Yahweh, as Yahweh said to Aaron, thus illustrating the main idea of the structurally corresponding text concerning the importance of the name of Yahweh for the Levites (Deut 18:2). Accordingly, it seems that the shorter traditional apotropaic text, which was witnessed at Ketef Hinnom, was reworked into the elaborate Levitical blessing in Num 6:24-26 under the influence of Deut 18:2. This inference has important consequences for the sources and the dating of the Book of Numbers.

Lk 3:7d-9 is usually regarded as one of the least controversially identified fragments of the so-called Q Source. The level of verbal agreement between Mt 3:7d-10 and Lk 3:7d-9 is extremely high. Consequently, this text seems to be one of the best candidates for the reconstructed, purportedly Galilean ‘Q material’, which was allegedly almost verbatim copied in this fragment by both Matthew and Luke. However, a close intertextual analysis of Lk 3:7d-11 reveals that it contains a number of typically Pauline ideas, which were in an almost consistently sequential way borrowed from the Letter to the Romans. In fact, this letter presented Paul’s Gentile gospel in Jewish terms in the prospect of his travel to Jerusalem. Therefore, Luke sequentially used its main ideas in Lk 3:7d-11 to present narratively Paul’s Gentile gospel as it was referred by the Apostle in Jewish terms to the Jerusalem community. In this way, Luke illustrated the main thought of Gal 2:2bc in his more general allusive reworking thereof in Lk 3:3-11. This observation seriously undermines the hypothesis of the existence of the Q Source. On the other hand, it points to great literary, albeit allusive dependence of the Gospel of Luke upon Paul’s most important letters, especially Galatians and Romans.

GREEK MEDICINE IN NAG HAMMADI TEXTS The Gnostics were not only distinguished connoisseurs of the philosophy of their time, but also of the myths that nurtured Jewish esotericism as well as of the main medical theories about the nature and function of the feminine, especially in what refers to procreation. Heresiologists described the fall of Sophia with sexual vocabulary which permeates the contents of the myth, including terms such as "deficiency" (hystérema), 'matrix' or (hystéra), "uterus". It is about the emanation of a lesser being. In order to explanain this, the Gnostics appeal to current embryological theories of their time, ranging from Hippocrates to Galen, passing through Aristotle. To understand better the plot of the myth which tells the fall of Sophia, it is necessary to take into account the hypothesis on human reproduction sustained by the medicine of the second century. One of the texts of the Nag Hammadi that best reflects the medical knowledge the Gnostics had of the time is that one starting in the Codex VII of the Nag Hammadi collection. This text is known as Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII, 1). As F. García Bazán has proved, the esoteric language of the book reveals an application of deep knowledge of the methodic school of medicine. This knowledge is related to Embryology and Gynecology at the service of Gnostic Anthropology and Soteriology, framed in a broader horizon of their particular cosmology. Other texts from Nag Hammadi and Pistis Sophia contain generous sexual language typical of Greek Gynecology technical vocabulary, as can be seen in the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II, 6), The Apocryphon of John (NHC II, 1) and the treatise On the Origin of the World (NHC II, 5) Key words Gnostics, Nag Hammadi, Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle

Ancient law codes such as those of Ur-Nammu or Hammurapi rarely mention prison (Sumerian en-nu; Akkadian (bit) kišertu) as a form of punishment for crimes committed. Nevertheless, from legal, administrative, and epistolary records, it seems clear that prisons— physical structures to hold wrong-doers against their will— were part of the criminal justice systems of Sargonic, Ur III, and Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. This paper will discuss reasons why prisons receive little attention in these law codes, as well as examine why prison was used instead of more typical punishments such as fines or reciprocal justice.

The Babylonian exile constitutes a central theme in biblical literature, yet biblical accounts do not narrate the history of the Judean people in Babylonia. Only the events leading to the exile and the events related to the return are told. The historical narratives (except for the short glimpse in 2 Kgs 25:27–30) approach the exile from its borders and deal with it in allusion, in prospect, and in retrospect. On a compositional level, the exile is the empty space between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. However, other types of literature, such as diaspora novellas, treat the exile as a setting for actions and events. It seems, therefore, that the telling of the exile eludes certain modes of historiography but is possible in other forms nonetheless. With regard to the Psalter, the exile seems to lie beyond the scope of the historical psalms. Only Ps 137 provides a rare example of a depiction of the Judean people in the Babylonian exile. It is noteworthy that this psalm shows compositional links to the preceding historical psalms 135–136. In this paper, I will analyze how Ps 137 relates to its context and, thereby, to a "mode of historiography" present in the historical psalms. In light of the references to the exile in Ezra-Nehemiah and its function in the historiographical composition of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, I will discuss similarities and differences to the "mode of historiography" in which the exile is told in Ps 137.

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The Bible was the most important source of truth used by priests in the revolutionary context from New Granada to agree or reject the establishment of the Republic. In this paper, we will analyze biblical quotations used by clerics in their sermons to know how they argued favoritism or rejection of the new regime. We will notice that these references are loaded with eschatological content, which led to the belief that historical events experienced were a consequence of divine designs, so creating a new political system was not due to the experienced social situations, but at the same decision of God. Notably realistic clerics - in favor of the monarchy - and patriotic clerics - in favor of the Republic - fought from their pulpits using Scripture to support your cause and discredit the opposing. The odd thing is that in both cases end up using almost the same biblical passages, which shows that beyond the use of the Bible, what existed was the same cultural matrix that emerged in response to the unprecedented events.

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This paper explores a literary pattern of scenes in 1 Samuel in which there is a one-to-one match between a woman and a man. In these scenes the women are portrayed as doing the man’s job better than the man. Thus, the ideological usage of these women is to show these men to be incompetent BECAUSE they have been outdone by a woman. In essence the construction of gender is that men should be more adept than women and if they are shown to not function in this manner, they are discredited and must be removed from the narrative, generally by death, accredited to YHWH. What is most strange in this reversal pattern is that these women in their speeches are endorsers of the Davidic Empire. In this way, having bested the “feminized” men, they are to be believed by the reader, since these women have been “masculinized” by the narrator. Such reversals serve as a caution to feminist strategies of “lifting up women” in the text to be valorized.

The conflict between the proud rich and the humble poor that is the political context for Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1.46-55) is strikingly similar to conflict in Mexico after NAFTA (1994) two millennia later. The original conflict in Greco-Roman cities is described by Dionysuis of Halicarnassus with a cluster of Greek terms that is identical to those used by Mary, e.g. humble, slave, mercy, proud. In both conflicts, the rich keep the price of corn high! In Dionysius’ account of the conflict, the term “humble” is identical with the “poor,” and the “proud” are identical with the “rich.” In that conflict, the proud rich who refuse to live in the same city and negotiate with the humble poor working class are dethroned, exiled and removed from power. “The two classes “inhabit two cities, one … ruled by poverty … the other by satiety and insolence …., exacting justice from one another by force … like wild beasts ….” (Dionysius, Rom. ant. 6.36.1) The poor need their debts forgiven, which the rich promise, but rarely deliver (Rom. ant. 6.41.2; 6.63.3; 6.83.3 and Luke 11.3) The rich rather keep the price of corn high (Rom. ant. 7.18.1; 7.20.4; 7.44.3-4) Mexico is the cradle of corn in the Americas; Mayan peoples were the “children of corn.” But in 2007 the price of corn jumped 50%. Transnational corporations including Cargill purchased corn at a low price, hoarded it in enormous storage facilities, then resold it on the Mexican market for twice the price. While masses starve, money changers who trade commodity futures (betting on price fluctuations) made a killing.

Through a formulaic reference to an altar, a standing pole and a pillar (Exod 34:13, Deut 7:5, and Deut 12:2-3), the Pentateuch describes certain cultic forms that are associated with other cultures outside Israel. In these cases, the description is polemical and punctuates the call for Israelites to separate from the so-called nations by destroying the cultic elements in question. This study approaches Exod 34:13, Deut 7:5, 12:2-3 diachronically and locates the texts in the period of the Second Temple. The polemic against the nations and their practices is applied consistently during this time to suggest the enduring influence of a Deuteronomistic school. The school comprised Dtr scribes and editors comparable to their forebears, who were responsible for Judg 2:1-5 as well as a number of passages in Deuteronomy itself. To place the later generation of Deuteronomists in some context, a fourth text, Deut 16:22-17:1, is adduced. While the short literary unit makes reference to the cultic forms of an altar, a standing pole and a pillar, it is less restrictive than the versions indicated above and, interestingly, it focuses on Yahwistic worship rather than that of the nations. Because Deut 16:22-17:1 demonstrates an interest in aspects of worship outside the strict parameters typically associated with Deuteronomy, it likely bears the influence of other, non-D sources found in the pentateuchal materials. Deut 16:22-17:1, one may conclude, begins to bridge the rhetorical difference between Israel and the nations by offering some new perspective on another culture and its worship.

In 1933, R. Buisson bought two limestone plaques in northern Syria. Since then the so-called Arslan Tash plaques, with their depictions of demonic entities and surrounding text, have been the subject of numerous studies, plaque 1 being the subject of most with its covenantal terminology and mention of a divine assembly. Yet, the second plaque is of great interest as well. Noted by the demonic figure apparently devouring the torso of an individual, the image is surrounded by the incantatory text. The text itself appears to address the presence of the “evil eye,” both in terms of recognizing its presence and providing protection against it. This study will look at the incantation within its ANE context as well as explore the relationship between the image and the inscription itself. Specifically, I suggest that the surrounding of the image with the incantation is not merely in response to available space but sympathetically placed to enhance the incantation itself. In other words, the placement of the text works to entrap the entity similar to other, albeit later, ANE incantation mediums. In so doing, I suggest that the manner that actual placement of text is a significant factor in the understanding of any given text.

We intend to submit in the Congress of SBL, in Buenos Aires, part of our progress on the research we are conducting on the Sense of History in Early Apocalypticism. Long time ago that we have been investigating and specializing about the sense of history in the apocalyptic Jewish Palestine. On the occasion of this Congress, we will expand the points we have found in common between the cycle of 1Enoch, Daniel, and the concepts specifically Greek, which penetrated slowly in Palestine through the dissemination of Hellenism. In addition, we have identified certain influences of sources Greco-Hellenistic circles on the apocalyptic of which emerged from the cycle of 1Henoc and Daniel, during the time of the Second Temple (centuries III-I BC. We are particularly interested in what ideas were used, as it were, which rejected and finally, as the joined the tradition Prophetic-Messianic, the Jewish authors?

Matthew 10:24 offered early Christian theologians a pattern that was applied in different theological contexts: "a disciple is not above his master." This paper will explore some of the uses of this pattern for theological purposes, especially in the area of early Christian eschatology.

Severino Croatto took the hermeneutical circle as point of departure in his “Exodus: A Hermeneutics or Freedom” (1981). The Exodus narrative was interpreted in the light of the concept of “surplus meaning” as used by Ricoeur and of “effective history” as introduced by Gadamer. Thus the exodus became much more than an archetypal historical event but developed the potential to become a source of appropriating existential meaning for today. According to Croatto Moses first had to make the Israelites aware that they were oppressed and only then pronounced his word of freedom. From the Genesis account about creation it became clear that humankind was created for freedom – created in the image of God formed the bedrock of human freedom. The point of departure of this process of appropriating the exodus as the source for meaning started with reading the Bible with the poor of South America, as manifested in the church base communities; thus his biblical hermeneutics became embedded in the current praxis of faith. Without disregarding Croatto’s impressive scholarly erudition that incorporated Semitic languages and cultures, philosophical hermeneutics and semiotic linguistics, one is still concerned about his synthesis between the praxis of the grass-roots poor and the evolving theory of philosophical and theological hermeneutics. The possibility will therefore be raised that recent hermeneutical theory focusing on the aesthetics of reception and reader-response criticism can contribute to a creative and critical conversation with Croatto’s biblical hermeneutics. The hermeneutical appropriations of the exodus are useful examples for establishing this transatlantic conversation.

I am currently writing a commentary on Wisdom of Solomon. In ch. 4 the Sage aims to redefine/reframe two situations that might otherwise be (incorrectly) interpreted as divine punishment. One situation is “childlessness” (ateknia; 4:1). The other is the death of someone young (Wis 4:7-15). One piece of evidence that, to my knowledge, has not been included in considering the Sage’s theological views are the Jewish funerary inscriptions from Greco-Roman Egypt (Horbury and Noy 2009). These inscriptions originated in the eastern necropolis of Alexandria and from the settlement of Leontopolis and are dated generally from mid-2nd century B.C.E. to early 2nd century C.E. Seven inscriptions mention the person died childless (ateknos). The concern over the death of the young is expressed in the inscriptions by the language of “untimely dead” (aoros), which occurs in one-third of the epitaphs. The commentary is part of the Wisdom Commentary Series published by Liturgical Press, which has an explicit feminist hermeneutic, so I am interested in the intersection of the Sage’s world view with those of women in Hellenistic Egypt. We do not know if what is expressed in the epitaphs are conventional views, views of the writer/stone cutter, of the patron, or of the deceased. But in longer epitaphs where the deceased herself speaks, it is as close as we get to actually hearing a woman's voice. This paper will consider the similarities and differences between the Jewish inscriptions and Wisdom of Solomon, particularly concerning the Sage’s concern with theodicy issues. The paper will also explore similarities and differences between the theological expressions associated with women as expressed in the inscriptions and Wisdom of Solomon. This reading of inscriptional evidence with Wisdom of Solomon opens a window to a larger theological conversation among First Century BCE Alexandrean Jews.

Mark 2:1-17 shows the closeness that Jesus has with the sinner and, at the same time, the distance from sin. Indeed, the textual level verifies that in verses where the term 'sinners' appears, even implicitly, the person of Jesus is also present (vv. 15,16,17). We could almost speak of a 'solidarity and releasing company': the noun 'sin' is always under the action of the verb 'forgive' (vv. 5,7,9,10). Note that the word 'forgive' is always in the present tense, both infinitive and indicative. Both aspects reinforce the permanent attitude of Jesus in favor of the sinner and against sin at the beginning of the Gospel. Something different happens to the poor (ptochois). The morpheme appears only five times in the whole Gospel, twice in the narration and three in direct speeches of Jesus (10:21; 12:14; 12:43; 14:5; 14:7). The poor are never recipients of an action or speech of Jesus; neither do they come to Jesus. According to the biblical text, it can be said that, unlike sinners, women, sick and possessed, Jesus does not share (in the fullest sense of the term: 'break bread') with the poor when they become economically needy. In 2.17, Jesus says that he came to call sinners; he says nothing similar regarding the poor in any part of the Gospel. This statement can cause us to reconsider the goal of the coming of Jesus in the Gospel as having more to do with the hamartalois than with the ptochois. In South America this perspective can be deeply liberating: Jesus not only came to care for the poor of this world, but also to save every soul struggling under the bondage of sin.

This paper deals with the similarities and differences between the characteristics and outcome of two religious-political assassinations. One took place in the biblical kingdom of Judah and the other in the modern state of Israel. Queen Athalia's murder (2 Kgs 11: 13-16; 2 Chr. 23: 12-15) was committed by the priestly elite of the time, led by the high priest Jehoiada, allegedly motivated by the political objective of restoring Athalia's grandson Jehoash, the legitimate offspring of King David, to power. I argue that the murder was an attempt to fulfill the religious aspirations of the priestly elite. This is made obvious by the religious reform that took place immediately after Athalia's murder. In the State of Israel the assassination of a political leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was allegedly a political murder, in fact it was a religiously motivated assassination. The murderer, his supporters, objectives and the murder's "moral" justification, all came from the religious sphere. Rabin was perceived as interfering with the mystical, religious, fundamentalist and fanatic beliefs of a religious group. Since Rabin's murder, there has been a strengthening of these religious powers in Israeli Society.

Psalm 17 (16 LXX) presents well-known textual difficulties and several studies have been dedicated to them. This presentation will engage the textual issues behind v.15 and will conclude against the common assumption that the predominant Hebrew reading of v.15b is preferable to the Septuagint’s. However, the primary purpose of this presentation is to review the complex reception history of the Septuagint version of v.15 and the role it played in ancient Jewish mysticism, particularly in the depictions of visions of the divine as theophagy.

I would like to explore some contextual interpretation to 2 Kings 9:30-37. Such a task is crucial because it presents, to the organic exegete, both limits and challenges. According to Gramsci’s tradition, the intellettuale organico is that one that historically acts in favor of the subaltern classes from which he emerges. By subaltern classes we can understand an enlargement of the oppressed/contextual groups. In his contradictory Italian context, Gramsci facilitated an enlargement of the boundaries of the working-class to project the construction of a new hegemony that took in account the social heterogeneity of the subalterns. If that is the case, the intellettuale organico is never the one who speaks from an exclusive context, but on the contrary, is the one who must articulate and channel the history of the subaltern groups that are, frequently, episodic and disaggregated, but still working toward unification. To fight the current postmodern epistemology that, in its celebration of plurality and multiplicity, keeps the subalterns in disaggregation, the concept of “organic exegete” seems to be indispensable, at least considering biblical studies, for enacting projects that allow the subaltern to overcome, in solidarity, his subordinated situation. Hence, we shall see how each oppressed context tends to illuminate important issues in the interpretation of the scene of Jezebel’s assassination, even if they do not achieve – due to the disaggregation – the production of an emancipatory counter-hegemonic reading. The contextual limitation is presented, at last, as a challenge to hegemony.

New Testament research distinguishes different traditions concerning martyrdom in the Gospel of Mark: a) The Deuteronomist tradition of the violent fate of the prophets. The evangelist sees the death of Jesus as the martyr's death of a prophet in Mark 12:-11 and 9:11; b) The passion of the righteous (persecution-exaltation). From G. Nickelsburg (2006:278), who states that the scheme persecution and exaltation appears in the pre-marcan story of the passion of Jesus; c) Historical salvifica or Exhortatio ad martyrium. In the words of G. Theissen, the righteous sufferer "becomes a model for the suffering of Christians...the very death of Christ does not have salvific character in this context" (1991: 145). Finally, d) some hold a sacrificial sense. This pre-Pauline and pre-synoptic meaning is "notoriously weak", evidenced in Mark 10:45, 14, 24, which has its origin in the Greek paradigm of noble death present in texts like 2 Mac 17: 20-22; so, e.g., J. W. Henten argues that "a beneficiary death of Jesus' death is only expressed in Mark 10:45, 14: 24" (2005, 146). In this context our article explains how the evangelist wanted to understand the meaning of Christ's death, elaborating Jewish and Greek traditions of martyrdom, but moving beyond those paradigms. This is achieved by explaining that the martyrdom of the Son of Man is the destiny of the Son of God. Mark follows neither a Jewish nor a Greek paradigm, but is intent on accounting for the death of the Son of Man from his own material. In other words, Mark is original and does not follow traditions like the death of Socrates, the death of the eschatological prophet or the righteous. The conclusion suggests that the scandal of the cross is to identify the crucified as the Son of God.

In this paper, we will study the collective memory as oral tradition formative, as well the orality and textuality relation in Synoptic Gospels narratives and memories. For us, the Gospels narratives are evidenciary of the communities identity that generate them, in the Greek-roman World, that orality and textuality has the same influence. Still nowadays are many indigenous cultures wherein the oral culture is predominant. The our study object is the pericope of the Sabbath in Mk 2.23-28, Mt 12.1-8 and Lk 6.1-5, that read the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, about Plucking of the Grain on the Sabbath.

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The textual base for the Apocalypse of John is the thinnest for any New Testament book. Barely 300 Greek manuscripts are available for consideration and few from the first eight centuries. At four points, the textual evidence of early and significant manuscripts is so thin that the critical text (NA28/UBS5) is based on the reading of a single Greek manuscript. In all four cases, Codex Alexandrinus (A/02) is that witness. Normally in textual criticism, singular readings are not given much weight since they are generally considered to be divergent and independent peculiarities, not the last surviving remnant of the initial text. This paper re-examines the textual evidence for these four singular readings from Alexandrinus to see if alternate readings should be preferred. In one prominent situation (5:9), Alexandrinus omits the pronoun HMAC in a location in the majuscule easily exposed to transcriptional error. In another situation (12:10), Alexandrinus exhibits a spelling variation unattested in all of Greek literature. Another case (13:10) is a complex and confusing variation unit involving multiple phrases and at least eight different possible readings. Finally, the concluding words of the Apocalypse (22:21) are found in their briefest form in Alexandrinus. Beyond the specifics of these examples, the question must also be considered if too much weight has been placed on this single, fifth-century majuscule since all four of these singular readings in the critical text originate from it alone. Without surveying all the singular readings known in early manuscripts, one example of a singular reading from P47 (16:18) will be reconsidered as the best possible explanation for the origin of the known readings in that variation unit. If established, P47 could join Alexandrinus as the sole remaining witness in at least one point for the Ausgangstext of the Apocalypse

By now it is a commonplace among scholars that apocalyptic literature strongly colored the view of many Christians in early colonial Latin America. Such literature has even been seen as a kind of ideological straightjacket which blinded Christians to the reality of the "New World" and led them to impose European culture upon the indigenous population. Without denying that there is truth in this claim, we propose that Christian apocalyptic literature also possessed a natural connection to indigenous culture which, in turn, influenced its interpretation and actualization in the New World. We will demonstrate this point by relating belief in a cosmic apocalypse, common to many pre-Columbian indigenous religions, to the interpretation and use of apocalyptic literature in the writings of three early figures in colonial Latin America, viz., Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), indefatigable defender of the indigenous peoples in Central and South America; Francisco de la Cruz (1528?-1578), Dominican rector of the University of Lima who was executed by the Inquisition; and Quautlatas, leader of the Tepehuán revolt against the Spanish in Western Mexico in 1616.

This paper responds to a challenge posed by Jesse Mugambi to propose a biblical paradigm for the reconstruction process in Africa. It proposes Chronicles as a biblical paradigm for the reconstruction process in Africa vis-à-vis Nehemiah whom Mugambi proposes. To motivate its proposition, the paper examines 2 Chronicles 6:32. However, to justify its conclusion about 2 Chronicles 6:32 the paper needs to establish that this verse purports the Chronistic theology contrary to the theology of the Vorlage. To do this, the paper examines the use of Psalm 132:8-10 in 2 Chronicles 6:40-42.

This paper examines a variety of examples from LXX Psalms in an effort to explain the puzzling choice of words the translator makes when rendering the Hebrew into Greek, and concludes that the translator employs the logical taxonomy found in Aristotle’s Prior Analytic in his translations of Hebrew substantives. Thus before one resorts to a different Vorlage or the translator’s theological tendencies, one should first seek to determine if the translation suggests a logical taxonomy. In this paper, I propose four types of taxonomic relations of terms that the translator suggests when he chooses to deviate from the Hebrew: he translates (1) substantives with predicates, (2) predicates with antecedents, (3) species with genus, (4) genus with species, and (5) the species of a genus with another of the same species. This paper argues that the strange translation of LXX Psalm 58:8-9 follows principle #5.

Refiriéndose al Tratado sobre Exposición del Alma, ha escrito el destacado especialista Francisco García Bazán que: “estos pasajes reúnen diversos elementos que ilustran con transparencia la doctrina gnóstica del alma como psiquis caída y dormida por la dispersión. No es el deseo el que origina la caída, porque él es connatural a la naturaleza anímica, sino su desvío”. De forma magnífica están condensados en esta cita la esencia y las principales características de este texto, que por otra parte presenta notables coincidencias, pero también profundas diferencias con dos de los grandes pensadores alejandrinos del siglo tercero: Orígenes y Plotino. En lo que se refiere a los paralelismos, nos centraremos, por un lado, en el Comentario al Cantar de los Cantares y en el Comentario al Evangelio de Juan XIII de Orígenes. Por otro, en la Enéada VI,9 de Plotino. Para mostrar las diferencias, será necesario profundizar dos cuestiones: la primera estará referida al tipo de platonismo que subyace en estos tres autores y en segundo lugar al valor del cosmos en la experiencia de la caída del alma y en su posterior liberación. Los diversos artículos escritos por L. Roig Lanzillota clarificarán notablemente las dos cuestiones. En Orígenes, estas diferencias se evidenciarán en la afirmación del cosmos como manifestación de la Sabiduría y de la presencia de Dios. Los textos que se utilizarán para esto, serán el Contra Celso y el De Principiis. Plotino, por su parte, también afirma plenamente la belleza y el orden del cosmos, por ejemplo en los tratados enéadicos III,5 y V,1. La concepción cosmológica de ambos autores, remitiría a una interpretación específica del Timeo de Platón y quizás también a la siempre controvertida cuestión de que ambos fueron discípulos del enigmático Amonio Saccas.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the profile of the Deity, as a literary character in the Bible, from the perspective of gender. Following a set of earlier papers in which I explored the masculinity of various biblical figures, I intend here to consider the figure of God under the major categories that indicate masculinity in biblical texts: strength, violence, honour, holiness, etc. It is no secret that the God of the Bible is represented as a male, but the extent to which characteristically male values and language permeate the depiction of the Deity in the Bible is rarely acknowledged. In the case of honour, for example, the traditional translation of kabod and doxa as “glory” rather than “honour” when used of God obscures the fact that the Deity is represented as engaged in the same competitive quest for honour as the typical Mediterranean male. It the case of holiness, which is the quintessential quality of divinity, it is likewise rarely observed that the term is totally gendered, relating solely to the male sphere, from which women are excluded. The paper aims to exemplify the importance of masculinity studies for feminist criticism.

In both popular and academic realms the character of Moses has been mined, analysed, and evaluated for models of leadership and theological significance, among other things. Despite innumerable endeavours to draw conclusions about the character of Moses, even if one eschews his physical existence, a careful reading of the biblical accounts suggests that the Moses figure does not present in a monolithic form. Rather the Moses character ought to be recognized as truly mosaic. When this mosaic character is placed on the blank canvas of the µ?dßä? readers encounter opportunity after opportunity to walk alongside this complex mosaic character who is presented as the key leader of the nascent community of Israelites. Perhaps in contrast to an anticipated brief sojourn, the biblical text presents a community traversing the µ?dßä? and finding itself in a seemingly intractable liminal space between captivity and liberation which refuses to loosen its grasp. My intention in this paper is to consider four features of this µ?dßä? experience, which I view as a liminal space, under the leadership of Moses. Several contrasting images of Mosaic leadership found in the book of Numbers will be presented. These images, emerging at various junctures in the narrative, bear witness to leader and community in a liminal space offering mimetic, parenetic, mythic and parabolic visions. When viewed together these visions create a montage which highlights the enigma of the person Moses and the value of liminal space. In addition I will argue that they also offer a fresh vision of how leaders and communities develop in liminal spaces such as that symbolized by the µ?dßä?.?The result of such a process can be both challenging and transforming for leaders and followers alike.

This paper analyzes the pericope in Luke 13, 1-9, which is Luke´s material in itself, from an exegetical narrative perspective. The first verses of the account refer to catastrophic events described with a deep historical interest. Where does the author of the third gospel get these data? Is it possible to determine the historicity of the events? This account makes reference to the execution of some Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem by Pilate, and to the death of some Jerusalemites because of Siloam tower collapse. These events introduced by the literary device of rumor allow Jesus making a strong questioning to any idea connecting his tragic death with the possible guilt of those involved. Instead, Jesus makes a call to conversion and to consider these events as a challenge and invitation to make a deep change expressed in the parable image of fruition. Therefore, the account is intrinsically articulated with the parable of the barren fig tree that Luke narrates below.

It is well known that where Mark uses mystêrion in his parable discourse, Matthew uses the plural form mystêria. His modification naturally raises the question about how he conceives of the nature and extent of these mysteries. While the mystêrion in Mark seems to centre on Jesus and the inbreaking of the Kingdom, Matthew’s mysteries are arguably to be equated with the tauta panta of 13:52 (cf. 13:34). They would, therefore, include all the parables of Matthew 13:1-52, and their underlying meanings. While these meanings are necessarily varied, their essential character is similar—they all describe essential features of God’s divine economy, culminating in the final judgment.

One of the central questions in Psalms scholarship in the past quarter century has been, what understanding of human kingship prevailed in the latest stages of the Psalter’s development? One view frequently espoused is that the literary structure of the Psalter evinces a repudiation of human monarchy. Another, related idea is that kingship was democratized in the latest stages of psalm writing and editing. There are reasons to question both of these views, at least in their most extreme expressions, and to recognize that the Psalter continues to express hope for the Davidic monarchy and the Davidic covenant. Nevertheless, a discernible shift in attitudes toward human rule is evident as the king is presented as a frail human with limited capacity. This paper explores how this subject appears in the Psalter and the implications of the subject for our understanding of the Israelite view of monarchy in the Persian period. Psalm 89, the final Davidic collection (Pss 138-145) and Psalm 146 are the primary passages to be considered.

Tomando como centro de análisis una serie de pinturas del Antiguo Testamento producidas en la Nueva Granada en el siglo XVII y atribuidas a Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos, la ponencia pretende evidenciar que estas pinturas se configuraron como mecanismos de evangelización a partir de los cuales se buscaba insertar a la Nueva Granada y a su sociedad, dentro del proyecto Imperial Hispánico delineado por los monarcas que se sucedieron entre 1516 y 1598. Dentro del proyecto de monarquía católica diseñado por Carlos V y Felipe II, América se sitúa como la manifestación máxima de lo predicho por los profetas veterotestamentarios. En esta medida la lectura tipológica del Antiguo Testamento (utilizada a lo largo del periodo bajomedieval y fortalecida por lecturas milenaristas como la ejecutada por el monje calabrés Joaquín de Fiore en el siglo) sirvió en los siglos XVI y XVII para entender la existencia del Nuevo Mundo, validando de paso la función salvífica y providencial que sobre las tierras habría de cumplir la Corona Española. Lo que pretendo demostrar aquí es la fuerte influencia veterotestamentaria en el proyecto colonial americano, aspecto olvidado por una historiografía que enmarca la evangelización y la organización colonial dispuesta por la Corona española en el Nuevo Mundo, dentro del marco teológico del Nuevo Testamento.

In 1925, following the court case widely known as “the Scopes Monkey Trial,” the Tennessee legislature rejected evolution because it “denies the story of the Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible.” Almost a century later, there is still a widespread American antipathy toward evolutionary science (and science more broadly), which is seen as undermining a view of a world created by God. In 2004 in Dover, PA, parents whose children had been learning about evolution sued the school district, demanding that an alternative theory of origins also be taught. This theory, Intelligent Design, is understood by scientists to be creationism in a pseudo-scientific packaging. While certain types of fundamentalist Christians and Jews have sought to develop scientific frameworks that accord with the biblical account of creation (young earth creationism, old earth creationism, Intelligent Design), others have taken a rather different tack, trying to show that biblical descriptions of creation are in fact consonant with contemporary scientific understandings of origins. These are called concordist readings. Physicist Gerald Schroeder, himself an Orthodox Jew, reads Genesis 1 through the lens of rabbinic commentary and surmises that Genesis is in fact describing the Big Bang. Similarly, through his Reasons to Believe ministry, Canadian astrophysicist Hugh Ross seeks to demonstrate that the account of creation in the Bible is compatible with the science that indicates the earth is billions of years old. This paper looks closely at attempts to bridge science and scripture, particularly ones that see the stories in Genesis as describing the same origins stories as those posited by modern scientists. It then situates these readings in a broader political consideration of religious discourse in an ostensibly secular US.

Con el marco teórico del imaginario, establece la comparación entre la representación simbólica del rey poderoso y la representación simbólica del rey defensor de la justicia. Analiza las representaciones simbólicas de Dios, que se presentan como un rey lleno de poder, para comprobar su influencia en la imaginación de la gente. Por el contrario, muestra otra representación del rey, defensor de los pobres, los huérfanos, las viudas y los extranjeros, sobre todo en el libro bíblico de Proverbios. ¿Cuál es la crítica de Proverbios a los símbolos como palacio, trono, corona, cetro y la diadema? ¿Cuál es la propuesta de los Proverbios para el rey defensor de la justicia? ¿Cuál es la contribución de esa crítica para el día de hoy? Como los proverbios traducen todo este simbolismo hoy?

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the textual history of the Greek Bible (LXX) and the hermeneutics of Hebrews. Using the Isaiah citations as a test case, we seek to demonstrate that the plurality of textual forms available to the author of Hebrews had a decisive influence on his interpretation of the prophetic scroll. The paper starts with a brief survey of the scriptural citations in Hebrews and the major views regarding their sources. We move on to a closer look at the Isaiah citations and propose an explanation for their form in the Epistle. ?An analysis of the citations will indicate that Hebrews is dependent on a variety of text forms. This is important for two primary reasons. From the standpoint of textual criticism, it shows that Hebrews is a witness to the fluidity of the text of the Greek Bible before its major recensions. From the standpoint of the theological outlook of Hebrews, it shows that the material, social and cultural conditions in which his interpretive activity took place had a decisive influence on his reading. We will briefly establish a link between material culture (that is, the actual texts and tools available for interpretation) and the reading of Scripture in Hebrews. This is done within a theoretical standpoint developed in dialogue with the work of sociologists and cultural theorists such as Peter Berger, Peter Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin and Pierre Bourdieu.

This paper, part of a larger project on Psalm 146, will discuss how Psalm 146 is used in a selection of German, English, Dutch, and Arabic Protestant hymns based on Psalm 146, beginning with Paul Gerhardt's "Du meine Seele, singe." For example, how are the “princes” (v. 3) understood, how “the God of Jacob” (v. 5) and “Zion” (v. 10), how the “making” of both “heaven and earth” (v. 6) and of “justice (v. 7), and how “the oppressed,” “the hungry,” etc. in these hymns? Is there any interplay with the Gospel narratives about Jesus’ deeds and with Christian eschatology? In how far do such hymns (or metrical versions of the Psalm) enrich the understanding of the Psalm? And where do they show loss of meaning that future writers of hymns based on Psalm 146 may seek to overcome?

The point of departure for the present analysis is the idea that landscape—understood as an intersection between a given society and the material environment that surrounds it—can be traced from different cultural manifestations, as in the Hattic-Hittite myths and rites. In these instances, specific areas of the Anatolian environment became places for attention and reflection—such as groves, vineyards, rivers, the under waters, the steppes and cities as well—of which different stories were narrated, and where important acts of the gods were believed to have occurred. The texts under analysis are known as the myths of the “vanishing gods” or “angry gods,” which narrate the actions developed by deities who suddenly became angry and left the Hittite world, as well as the practices carried out by other gods to change his/her state. In this regard, special consideration will be given to the myth of ?anna?anna (CTH 334), a text dedicated to this Mother Goddess, a deity of wisdom, one among other deities of magic, who had the ability and the power to arbitrate in conflicts between the gods. For CTH 334 in particular, a comparative approach to the Anatolian texts will be developed, together with the study of grammatical features in the texts—e.g. the use of the Hitt. verb ?ar- / ?ark- and Hitt. pre-verbs like anda or šara linked to different locations—, etymological observations, and the incorporation of theoretical notions from anthropological studies (mainly the concepts of “ritual symbolism,” “embodiment,” and “symbolic redundancy”). All in all, the objective of the present study is to bring light to how the Hittites incorporated symbolic images of their landscape into their narratives.

The pursuit of the significant convergence between the biblical context and the current context requires a new way of thinking about inspiration. For Latin American Biblical hermeneutics, the fundamental identity of meaning is more important than the analogy between situations. Thus, the "apologetic" approach, which uses the concept of inspiration to prove that Holy Scripture comes from God, has long proven to be inadequate and insufficient. For the Latin American reading, that the Bible is the "Word of God" is an assumption: the problem is not "if" Scripture is the "Word of God," but "how" it is so. The issues raised by the search for identity of sense refer to how (and why) texts of human authors are received and assumed as Word "of God." So, hermeneutical reflection about inspiration should stop thinking about the causality of Scripture, and instead begin thinking about the "adequacy" of the text: How do different literary and language strategies express theological differences of parallel texts or about the same subject? How does each text intend to convince and persuade the reader, and what praxis does it intend to lead? How and why is a text, written to another people, another culture, other historical and social circumstances, assumed to be valid for us? How and why do we see ourselves in the biblical text? Is the biblical text the only inspired text or are there others? What makes the biblical text unique? To answer these and other questions, biblical hermeneutics needs the help of linguistics, semantics, semiology / semiotics and other sciences of literature and communication. Several texts of Mark's Gospel provide good case studies to demonstrate what it means to read the biblical text with a new concept of "inspiration."

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Perspectivas colonialista e imperialistas, legitimadas por las formas religiosas combinadas con el poder del estado, están no sólo en las mediaciones político-histórico que traen la Biblia y el cristianismo a las Américas, pero también están dentro de la Biblia, y en los ambiente donde ella se desarrolló y en las teologías y espiritualidades que contiene. De hecho, en la Biblia hebrea encontramos muchos versículos que estimulan y legitiman las prácticas de dominación y violencia. Estos versículos no sólo fueron utilizados muchas veces a lo largo de la historia del Occidente, pero por desgracia todavía siguen siendo utilizados hoy día como justificación teológica para actos de discriminación, jerarquización, exclusión, dominación y otros tipos de violencia. Este ensayo tiene como objetivo discutir las raíces contextuales de estos textos bíblicos. Propone que sean interpretados como escritos relacionados a las reformas de los reyes Ezequías y Josías, como partes del largo proceso de institución del monoteísmo en Israel. Ciertamente los contextos y proyectos en que se han movido estos reformadores pueden explicar cómo y porque se elaboraron estos versos y estas teologías violentas. También quiere proponer una relectura descolonizada de los textos bíblicos como un paso importante para la fundamentación de espiritualidades y prácticas, que sin abandonar su identidad Judeo-cristiana monoteísta puedan, sin embargo, superar el carácter intolerante, excluyente y homogeneizadores incrustado en muchas de las formas de entender la divinidad y la experiencia de la fe judeo-cristiana hoy.

Research conducted over the past 30 years has illuminated the importance of apocalyptic-millennial literature, art, and social movements to the cultures and nations of South and Central America from the time of the arrival of the Europeans to the present day. ISBL 2015 in Buenos Aires provides an ideal venue for a fresh discussion of the topic in light of this scholarship and in view of new evidence, approaches, and methodologies. the session papers will form the core of an edited volume of essays on the topic that will be composed by scholars from a broad range of disciplines and that will disseminate the results of the investigation to a new audience.

Reading the book of Judges the role of Dalila seems to be clear as an astute seductress. Samson’s fall by a weak woman always provoked debates about its causes. Her role and even her cunnings had been discussed by Church fathers and Rabbis. As there seems to be no discussion about her negative character in the Bible, different hermeneutic methods present a diverse image of her. As to Gottfried of Admont (12th century), abbot in the monastery of Admont, Austria, the sensus allegoricus and moralis allows to apply a different concept of Dalila. Other amazing concepts of Dalila can be found in profane German Literature, presenting a Dalila that arouses sympathy and understanding as shown in the short-novel-like story in the chronicle of Jans Enikel (or Jans of Wien) in the 13th century. The paper will explore different conceptions of Dalila by presenting reflections of this discussion in bible illustrations.

This paper, by a scholar who is writing a commentary on Amos for the Anchor Bible, treats some aspects of the long and rich reception history of the book of Amos. Examples drawn from The Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and Talmud are juxtaposed with readings within contextual theology and trends in the contemporary scholarly discussion on Amos. It will be shown that ancient and modern readers have focused on quite different topics and themes within this prophetic book. It is an intriguing fact that two of the earliest textual attestations of Amos reception and interpretation, the Damascus Document and the Acts of the Apostles, quote the same passage, namely 5:25-27, on wilderness wanderings and exile. Furthermore, parts of Amos 9:11-15, the book’s hopeful epilogue, are quoted both in 4Q174 and in Acts (15:15-17). In contemporary commentaries and monographs on Amos, other passages, dealing with social and cultic critique, tend to be regarded as more central to the book’s message. An attempt will be made to explain these shifts in emphasis, as we move from ancient to modern readings, in terms of both continuity (the impact of interpretive traditions) and context-related innovation.

In Heb 10:22 the writer seems to be leaving typology behind when he exhorts: ‘let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings’. That, however, does not define ‘faith’ but rather states its product. Then, as the chapter goes on, it is almost as though the writer goes on for seventeen more verses before he is ‘tripped up’ as it were by Hab 2:3-4, and concludes (39) ‘But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved’. One knows what perseverance is, and the stories to follow after verse 4 of chapter 11 will make that abundantly clear, but perseverance in faith, not in virtue is the issue of Heb 11. So ‘faith’ has to be defined. Or, what is it to have faith? A provisional conclusion from a first reading of Heb 11:1 might be: ‘the existential momentary disposition that allows perception of future as well as present and past’. The future things are there in v.1a, and possible other invisible things in v.1b, depending on how one takes the parallelism. In v.3, past and present things (creation out of nothing perhaps in a ‘continuous sense’, until the (full) vision of non-phenomenal things) seem to be balanced. The ‘right’ exegesis here is of less interest to this paper than how Catholics exegetes (in the light of the fides quae/fides qua and the explicit/implicit faith) have been, thanks to Vatican II, pioneers of a theologically aware commentary. With attention to the work of Kuss and Backhaus, but also of Grässer and Karrer, the paper will examine the extent to which ‘ecumenical’ discussion on Hebrews 11 has been more a distraction than an enlightening benefit.

Given the colonial practice of de-provincializing and universalizing its practices (Chakrabarty 1992), how can Contextual Bible Study (West 2006), developed in South Africa which seeks to affirm expressions of local liberation against dominating discourses involving the Bible, be re-contextualized in a different postcolonial context without operating in neocolonial modes? The Bik??m people groups in the Northern region of Ghana, have strong local traditions that are under external and internal pressure through religious and secular discourses in which local groups perceive that their traditions are viewed as backward. The “public transcript” of dialogue with outside entities follows a script where local groups affirm what the outside entity is proposing while looking for ways to glean from the interaction, and when the transaction is not favorable, they practice modes of dissimulation rather than engaging in direct dialogue (Scott 1990, 2013). While I affirm the wisdom of practices of dissimulation, nevertheless this paper describes my attempt to circumvent the typical scenario by attempting to create safer spaces or “heterotopias” (West 2009). I do this by working with different “organized” subgroups looking for signals in the “infrapolitics” of our dialogues that may point to an articulation of social pain or resistance.

When Western Christians hear that “one of the fastest growing segments of Pentecostalism is churches that teach the Prosperity Gospel”, they assume that impoverished people are being manipulated and exploited. This is sometimes the case, but local observers in various parts of the world also point out that these preachers give people hope and encourage them to organize their lives and new ways that lead to upward social mobility. (Miller and Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism, pp. 175-176) Although some Western sociologists and missiologists are reevaluating their assumptions about the Prosperity Gospel and its impact on the global poor, Western biblical scholars are practically universal in the condemnation of the prosperity teachers’ interpretation and application of key biblical passages. This paper will look at two key Pauline passages used by nearly every prosperity teacher, Galatians 3:7-14 and 2 Corinthians 9:6-15, and ask whether the hermeneutic that guides Western biblical interpretation is really adequate for evaluating a teaching that has found its primary cultural home outside Europe and North America. It will also look at some of the sociological examples of upward social mobility found in Pentecostal churches, especially in Latin America.

Biblical scholars have long been trying to establish the authenticity and route of the Exodus. This paper does not claim to define the exact route of the ‘mixed company’ that left Egypt, but describes one that is claimed to be the most accurate suggested to date. It also pinpoints the exact mountain where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments and provides corroborative evidence in the form of a newly identified Sinaitic Hebrew inscription; remains of the Tabernacle built at the base of the mountain; an extant copper snake, said to have been used by Moses to ward off poisonous serpents; the remains of an artefact that was once carried in the Ark of the Covenant.

Abstract: "Even those members of the body which seem less important are in fact indispensable. We honor the members we consider less honorable by clothing them with greater care" (1 Cor 12, 22-23). This quote portrays the backbone that supports the entire text of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, i.e., the preferential option for the "weak". In this metaphor of the human body, Paul was speaking of the Christian community of Corinth. When defining the weak as the "less important" and "indispensable”, we are possibly looking at the poor and the slaves of Corinth and the entire Roman Empire. Given the deeply unjust society, the Apostle shows what side he takes: The weak are the most honorable, and the less worthy of honor we surround with greater care. The existential and pastoral option of Paul for the "weak", those below the imperial pyramid, was crystal clear. In this citation, he was sending a message to the "strong" (1 Cor 1,26) in the church of Corinth and a warning to the powerful inhabitants of the Roman Empire. God has made a clear option for the poor and the slaves. The "arrogant" of the Church of Corinth, that is, those that discriminate against the poor, could not subject themselves to the Roman slave mode of production in the small units of the "ekklesia" because the members who seemed to be insignificant in the body were the most needed. This is the embryo of Liberation Theology.

Revelation is a prophetic book that uncovers, or 'reveals', many mechanisms of oppression and death at work in society. The core of the book may well be the narrative of the two beasts, where Revelation expresses poignantly how Empire operates. This paper considers the second beast and its strategies, which aim to establish a social construction that allows and facilitates oppression. Specific attention will be given to the beast’s manipulation of the constructions of history, the market, and symbolic religious power. The presentation will conclude by exposing some of the similarities between the Roman Empire and the current one.

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Pseudo-Aristotle’s Oeconomica is one of the most important yet neglected early economic treatises of the Greek-speaking world. It is a composite work that consists of three books, with each book almost certainly composed by a different author. Book 1, which is heavily dependent on both Aristotle’s Politics and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, distinguishes between politics and economics, and argues that the latter is concerned with both acquisition and usage. Book 2, which contains the first use of the term “political economy,” identifies four kinds of economies (royal, provincial, political, and private) and gives numerous examples of financial and other endeavors, drawing principally upon Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Book 3 is focused on the relationship of husband and wife within the ancient household and thus has particular relevance for the ancient Haustafeln. This paper will offer a basic analysis and indicate its relevance for the study of early Christianity and the ancient economy.

In 1987, Rami Arav declared that the site of Et-Tell on the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee was the site of the ancient city of Bethsaida. Excavations conducted over the next 28 years have yielded much information on a fishing village and city and its iterations. In 2009 Dina Avshalom Gorni, Arfan Najar and Marcela Zapata announced the re-discovery of a city called Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The site of et-Tell was investigated by scores of excavators in the 19th and early 20th century with varying results and the site of Majdal has been investigated since the 1970s by major excavators with varying results. The two sites are today thought of as two of the most important parts of the missing sacred geography that pilgrims sought over the last millennium. We will examine some of the archaeological evidence found at both sites and compare their rediscoveries.

Fragments of three narrative works belonging to the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha were found in the Qumran caves: Tobit (represented by the Septuagint’s Greek text before the discovery of the Qumran Aramaic and Hebrew fragments of the work), 1 Enoch, and Jubilees (both known in shorter Greek and longer Ethiopic translations before the discovery of their Qumran Aramaic and Hebrew texts). The Enochic fragments found in Qumran cover only a part of the work known today as 1 Enoch or Ethiopic Enoch (chs. 37-71 are not represented in Qumran). On the other hand the earliest Aramaic manuscript tradition contains material that is not known from 1 Enoch (the Astronomical Book and the Book of Giants). The narrative on the fall of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6-11) is a seminal part of the early Enochic tradition. The story explains the origin of the evil – which is a recurrent theme in the pericopae of Gen 1-11. The Enochic story shapes the origin of the physical/natural evil in cosmic terms, and attributes evil to the activity of impure demons. Differently from this Genesis 1-11originates evil in human factors. Both traditions are shaped in the terms of Mesopotamian culture that backgrounded exilic Judaism. The authors of Tobit and Jubilees were acknowledged with both Enochic and Genesis traditions. The paper aims at investigating how Enochic themes (intermarriage, demonology) and Genesis tradition were referred to, used and reworked in these works, and how this socio-symbolic construction of traditions served the self-definition of the authors’ communities.

The interpretation of the term “yu?arrifun” in the Qur’an has caught the attention of past and modern scholars alike. The interpretation of the term ranges from the distortion of text (ta?rif al-laf?) to the distortion of meaning (ta?rif al-ma‘na). It is argued that the Qur’anic use of the term “yu?arrifun” neither describes the distortion of text nor meaning, but simply is defined by the root meaning of “yu?arrifun,” which is to turn away or to bend (in?iraf). The Qur’an accuses the Jews of “yu?arrifun” in Q. 5:41, but two verses later in Q. 5:43, it describes how the Jews already have the Torah with God’s laws in it. If the Qur’anic use of the term “yu?arrifun” is an accusation that the Jews distorted the text in Q. 5:41, then it would not have almost immediately after state that they have the Torah with God’s laws. On the contrary, it is argued that within the same chapter, the Qur’an requires the People of the Book to stand upon their scriptures, using the term “tuqimu” (i.e. Q. 5:66, 5:68). The root of the term “tuqimu” means “istiqamah,” which is to straighten. It is contrasted with the Qur’anic use of the term “yu?arrifun,” which means to bend (in?iraf).

Scholarly studies on alcohol consumption and the Bible are not abundant, being restricted mostly to studies of the pericopes where wine or drunkenness is mentioned. Some articles address the debate within certain evangelical churches on this issue. Thus, they are organized in order to prove the Bible’s authorization (or rejection) on alcohol. While I do not find anything wrong with those papers or with their authors’ ethical or ecclessial concern, I bring a different focus. What are the reasons laid out for drinking --if they are made explicit at all-- and its consequences on women? In particular, I will explore any possible blame on women for a man’s drinking abuse. Only four biblical texts directly relate a man’s drinking to women: Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19), Esther’s two banquets (Esth 5:6; 7:2), and Lady Wisdom (Prov 9). In Song of Songs 8:2, the Shulamite dreams of bringing her lover into her mother’s house and there give him “spiced wine to drink, the juice of my pomegranates” (meant to be taken literally or as a reference to her body?). While Lot’s daughters might be blamed for their incest (interpretations vary on that), none of the other texts blames the women involved or is accusatory toward women for drinking. Drunkards may bring unpleasant moments on those around them. The Bible is aware of some of those, including motion sickness, making a fool of oneself, and exposing a woman to a difficult situation. It is part of its wisdom to alert against these disorders. Comparison to some tango letters, in which the man attributes his need to get drunk to lovesickness (which, in traditional tangos, refers always to a heterosexual relationship and therefore, to the woman leaving him) will show different cultural responses to the drive to drink.

This paper explores the use of biblical motifs in Spanish American Colonial historiography. It studies the chapter of the historiographical text Cronica del Perú (1553) in which its author Pedro Cieza de Leon relates the story of the Gigantes de Manta, a native oral tradition fossil based tale about supersized humans that came through the sea and seized the coast of Manta. In his version, the characters appear depicted through Biblical motifs: the oversized invaders are a group of sodomite giants that are slayed and burned to ashes by a Lord’s angel that descends from heaven with a refulgent sword. In the first place, this paper proceeds to enquire the process of narrative reshaping by noting the elements that were present in the Pre-Hispanic story and their adaptation into Christian topics that appear on the Bible. Following this, it studies the implications of this reshaping in the context of the early colonization of the Andes, particularly in relation with the previous presence of the Devil in the New World, one of the principal Spanish arguments to justify the need of Colonization and Christianization.

"You have heard of the patience of Job." What might have James expected his readers to know concerning the tradition of Job when he presents this exemplar in James 5:11? Recent scholarship answers this question by turning to the Testament of Job, which specifically attributes the characteristic of hypomone to the person of Job. With this beginning point, scholars find other thematic material in the Testament easily identifiable in the letter of James as well. With evidence in hand, they conclude that James and his readers know of the person of Job primarily through the tradition as reflected in the Testament of Job. The problem with this approach, however, is that it neglects examining those themes associated most closely with James in the letter of James, namely, blessedness, endurance, and perfection. Yes, the letter of James and the Testament of Job have several themes in common, themes such as hospitality and the dualism between heaven and earth. But an examination of themes most closely related to Job in the letter of James might serve as a better indicator of the potential source for James's understanding of Job. In this study, I will examine the development of one of these themes in the letter of James, LXX Job, and the Testament of Job. The hope is to illuminate one of the two latter texts as a suitable or preferred text for expression of the traditions of Job as understood during the first century. The expected conclusion of this study may provide hesitancy in embracing the Testament of Job as the ideal source for understanding James's employment of Job as an exemplar and give weight to the idea the LXX Job may be sufficient as a source of tradition for James and his readers.

While fraught with difficulties, the dating of the documents of early Christianity is unavoidable and of critical importance both for exegesis and for any attempt to reconstruct the history of early Christianity. There is, however, a very wide range of dates proposed for both canonical and non-canonical documents, primarily because differing criteria are given significantly different weight. In the case of the Gospel of Mark, two recent books have posed radically different solutions to the question of date: i) James Crossley, in The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (2004), argues for a date somewhere between the mid-30s and the mid-40s; ii) Markus Vinzent, in Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014), argues for a date for all of the synoptic gospels between 138 and 144. Both of these proposals differ not only from one another but from the common view that the synoptic gospels should be dated to the decade or two following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. The implications of the dates proposed by Crossley and Vinzent are profound for all discussions of the formation of the gospels and for the development of early Christianity. I propose to use these two books as a case study of the problems of method that arise in the effort to date the documents of early Christianity. The aim is not to advocate a particular date, but to lay bare the issues at hand. This paper would fit best in the session on “Special Themes in the Synoptic Gospels.”

There is both soft (weak) and hard (strong) intertextuality between the texts of Judges 4-5 and the Book of Ruth whose stories both take place in the "time of the judges". In both texts there are allusions to each other. One soft allusion is the word balat which appears only twice in the bible, in Judges 4:21 and Ruth 3:7. Yael approaches Sisera stealthily (balat) before striking a pin through his head and Ruth went over stealthily (balat) to Boaz before lying down next to him. Another soft allusion is the phrase that Barak utters, "If you will go with me, I will go; if not, I will not go." To which Deborah answers, "Very well, I will go with you" (Jud 4:8-9). This phrase alludes to the famous words of Ruth to Naomi after the latter admonishes her to turn back to her home: "for wherever you go, I will go" (Ruth 1:16). Close readings of both texts reveal that there are many more examples of intertextuality. This paper argues that two foreigners (Yael the Kenite and Ruth the Moabite), who are blessed in the tradition (Jud 5:24 and Ruth 4: 11-14), are agents for Israelite women (Deborah and Naomi) and serve as saviors under threatening circumstances (external war and internal famine). In analyzing how the two texts serve as internal commentary on each other, this paper will examine both the similarities and differences in the actions and situations of the four women who are involved in the two biblical tales.

Isaiah 12 concludes the first main section of the written corpus of the Isaianic oracles and expresses the voice of faithful Israel in the idiom of the Psalter as a song of thanksgiving in the singular. It responds to the great deeds of God’s salvation to his people in Zion that were recorded in the first eleven chapters. What is the function of the text where it stands? What does it try to communicate to the reader or hearer in terms of its final position within the book of Isaiah? There are sound arguments for regarding Isaiah 12 as a postexilic text which was deliberately composed as a colophon to chapters 1-11 and as the transition to chapter 13ff. Allusions and quotations in this chapter allow us to draw conclusions regarding the origin of this passage with more confidence than that of many other texts in this book. It presupposes chapter 11, and most likely all of Isaiah 1-10 close to their final form. But it also presupposes texts from Isaiah 40-55, and even parts of Isaiah 56-56. This redaction portrayed a certain understanding and vision of the prophet as well as role of Isaiah ben Amoz and had particular literary procedures and specific vocabulary at their disposal in order to do so. The final redactors used their scribal expertise to construct a sort of watchtower from which one can survey the whole book of Isaiah. Questions regarding the redaction and composition of this text will be dealt with in this paper.

Commentators have frequently noted the apparent Jewish-Christian tensions in ancient Smyrna reflected in three documents from the early Common Era: Revelation, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the Martyrdom of Pionius. These three texts have often been used as evidence of a continuing line of Jewish-inspired persecution that traversed three centuries, as if the situations mirrored in them were roughly parallel (cf. Lightfoot, Lane Fox, Hemer). E. Leigh Gibson rejoinders, “The characterization of Smyrnaean Jews as agents in the persecution of Christians, allegedly built upon the reinforcing testimony of three texts, Rev. 2:8-11, MPoly, and MPion needs reconsideration because circular reasoning has long defended it.” This paper answers the call for reconsideration by contrasting rather than paralleling the depiction of Jewish-Christian relationships in the MartPoly and the MartPion. On the one hand, the MartPion sought to remove Jewish worship as a religious option for those Christian lapsi seeking an alternative. The resultant depiction of Jewish views concerning Jesus resembles Talmudic materials, while acknowledging the Jewish worship of the one creator God and the Jewish refusal to participate in pagan sacrifice and even the consumption of sacrificial food (cf. Gibson). On the other hand, the depiction of the Jews and their “customs” in the MartPoly unites the Jews with the pagans in a manner that emphasizes their unified “otherness” and stretches historical plausibility. Like the pagans of Lucian’s Peregrinus, the Jews in the MartPoly falsely assume that Christians could give up the worship of Jesus for a secondary martyr. In sum, both martyr texts reflect concerns for the socio-communal identity formation and conservation of the Smyrnaean Christians, but their distinctive depictions of Jewish-Christian tension should not be merged in simplistic fashion but rather contrasted in historical context, authorial purpose, and literary construction.

Since the days of Robert Lowth a triad of terms has been used to describe and categorize Biblical Hebrew parallelism. While the rationale for the Lowthian 'synonymous, antithetic, synthetic' terminology has been questioned in the recent past (Kugel), a demonstrable difference may be discerned between examples of parallelism described as synonymous as opposed to those described as antithetic. Using the linguistic categories developed by Adele Berlin, this study examines and evaluates examples of so-called synonymous parallelism from the Royal Psalms, proposing that each may be viewed as a literary 'stereogram' that creates a depth of vision in the mind of the reader as a result of cognitive processing.

According to biblical tradition, Jesus approaches and heals people with illnesses and disabilities despite their perceived impurity and especially during the Sabbath (Luke 5, 12-26; 6, 6-11; 8, 40-56; 13,10-17; Acts 3,1-10; Mark 1-3), mostly through forgiveness of their alleged sins. In so doing, he broke multiple taboos in Ancient Israel: Socializing with people that were considered impure and therefore outcasts of society and, above all, blasphemy, as only God could forgive sins. However, as revolutionary as these acts of healing may have been, they did not necessarily result in an improved treatment of people with disabilities in early Christianity. The stigma of imperfection and alleged sinfulness remained throughout Christianity and were carried through the various schisms. This paper follows up on an earlier paper (Salzburg, 2008) and tries to examine some of those attitudes from the first few centuries C.E. (Augustine, Galen etc.) that may still be subtly prevalent in modern Christianity and looks ahead to a solution taking into consideration recent developments in Ecumenism. Lit.: T. Hentrich, “The Forgiveness of Sins as Healing Method in the New Testament”, Rupert Breitwieser (ed.), Behinderungen und Beeinträchtigungen / Disability and Impairment in Antiquity, Studies in Early Medicine 2 = British Archaeological Reports S2359, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012, 111-117.

This paper is a rigorous, detailed exploration of the literary representation of Assyria in Genesis 2:10-14 and Numbers 24:20–24. Among various details discussed in the first part of this paper are whether the reference to 'assur; in Gen 2:14 is to the city or the empire; identification of the literary function of 'assur; as conveying the fertility, abundance, and central importance of Eden and its waters as well as contributing a ‘naturalizing’ effect on the narrative; discovery and articulation of the basic formula for introducing the rivers in Gen 2:11–14; discussion of why the presentation of the Euphrates is exceptional in this passage; and consideration of the popular rumor that the etymological origin of the English word ‘paradise’ is Mesopotamian and whether there is a direct connection with Assyria in this. In the second part of this paper, I discuss the two brief mentions of Assyria in Numbers, in Balaam’s last presented oracle in 24:20–24. Again, a more exact reference for 'assur; is sought, and in the case of Balaam’s oracle, it is found to be the nation and not the city-state, though Assyria would be in its up-and-coming stage of development and not yet the aggressively expanding empire of the early first millennium that we see later in the historical books. The narratival function of these occurrences of 'assur; is seen as contributing to the expansion of the scope of God’s sovereignty over not only Israel and her fate, but also the nations now and to come. Lastly, this paper concludes with a few broader observations and comments on the anti-imperialist nature of the depiction of Assyria in Genesis and Numbers.

My paper engages the divide between diachronic and synchronic approaches to Biblical Theology, articulated most poignantly by Brevard Childs. What happens, my paper queries, when these two divergent approaches yield identical results? For this is exactly the situation that arises with respect to the theology of the book of Esther, and the point I hope to draw out. A diachronic approach to Esther notes the overwhelming similarities of language, theme, and genre between Esther and the Joseph story. This betrays a meaningful relationship between the two texts, one that was intended by the author of Esther himself. This in turn has large implications for the theology of Esther, where this comparison is still instructive. For just as God was behind the scenes in the Joseph story, controlling the ups and downs of the characters’ most improbable rises and falls and the Israelites’ ultimate deliverance, so is he behind the same series of events in the Esther Scroll. These conclusions are nearly identical to those reached from synchronic analyses, as they also conclude that God’s presence fills the silent gaps. However, from a synchronic perspective, this conclusion is not the result of historical inquiry, but rather the natural outcome of reading Esther in its biblical, canonical context, where Joseph and other texts ring so loudly. How then are we supposed to understand this overlap when these two approaches are so often pitted against each other in such stark terms? This example suggests what Childs himself seemed to understand best: sometimes these approaches are not nearly as antithetical as they are often understood to be. Even though Childs has been taken to task on this point, I think this one example is a strong defense for the sort of intricate reading, one that presses beyond this theoretical impasse, that Childs forwarded.

Religious rituals and magic share much in common. Both often involve specialists who perform ritual activities and make ritual utterances, which are both complex and mysterious. Through a series of mundane words and actions whose effects transcend normal cause-effect relationships, both bring the divine or supernatural to bear on the mundane, achieving what can be accomplished in no other way. The often abstract results of ritual and magic may also be unverifiable. For example, it is difficult to prove that an individual has been forgiven or cursed. Given these and other commonalities, it is difficult to decide whether an activity should be defined as ritual, magic or a combination of both. This presentation will explore this complicated interplay between ritual and magic by comparing select biblical and ancient Near Eastern ritual texts.

The author of Hebrews introduces patrasin (ancestors) as either recipients or anticipators of God‘s promise at different times and stages and as models of faithfulness (Heb 1:1; 3:9; 6:13-15; 8:8-13; 11; 12). They were depicted as those to whom God was covenanted to fulfil promises, and as Calvert-Koyzis (1997:37-44) notes, they were also models of the behaviour to emulate or avoid. They occupy an important place as exemplars and therefore play an important role especially in New Testament writings. In Hebrews 11 and 12, the author focuses attention on the ancestors. By placing toigapoun (therefore) along with nephos martyron (cloud of witnesses) at the beginning of 12:1, the author effectively links the discussion in 12:1 to the previous section with the list of names in chapter 11. This establishes the nephos martyron as referring to the listed ancestors in chapter 11. These passages contribute to an understanding of the place and function of ancestors in very important ways especially within interpretative approaches in African theology. Prevalent understandings in the said approaches have shaped the conceptualisation of ancestor Christology. Ancestor Christology is been identified as a widely accepted paradigm in present day efforts towards contextual Christology in Africa. Arguably, scholars view the concept as the most influential in contemporary African Christian Christological discourse (Vähäkangas, 1998; Ezigbo, 2008; Loba-Mkole; 2011). This paper argues for a redefined understanding of the place and function of ancestors by demonstrating that the nephos martyron in chapter 11 designated as ‘the cloud of witnesses’ in 12:1 are presented by the author to inspire only. This view takes into account preceding scholarly views as well as the theological force of the passage as reflected in the authors’ contemplation succinctly captured in the exordium of the epistle. This new understanding challenges the conceptual basis of ancestor Christology.

There is scant evidence in the Synoptic Gospels of what Jesus said in his prayers. What we find instead is that at pivotal moments in his life Jesus goes away to pray alone. The special material on prayer in Luke may provide us with greater insight about what Jesus prayed and how he used prayer to ignite early followers. This paper will explore Luke’s special material on prayer, specifically the parables at 11.5-8 (A Shameless Friend at Midnight) and 18.1-8 (The Widow and The Judge). The special material in Luke begins with attention to prayer. This is the case as we consider 1.5-25 (The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold) and 2.21-38 (Jesus Named, Presented in the Temple). The promise of John’s birth at 1.11 tells us that Zechariah was in the temple as “the people were praying outside.” Then at 1.13 the angel Gabriel tells Zechariah “your prayer has been heard.” In the next chapter, we find that prayer is mentioned in connection with Anna, a widow and prophet. At 2.37, we are told that Anna “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.” The opening scene in the temple with Zechariah and the next temple scene with Anna help to establish a special interest in positioning prayer as integral to the Gospel of Luke.

Recognizing that there is no definitive or even developed concept of the afterlife represented in the synoptic gospel stories, I have long been interested in how African understandings of death, afterlife, and ancestors shed light on first-century texts in those early gospel communities. This study makes use of synoptic references to dying and death as well as many stories and customs from the African countries of Cameroon, Burundi, Malawi, Botswana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. I have long argued that Africans know more about religious and spiritual matters than we Westerners do because they experience it differently and, therefore, two of my postulations are that (1) humanity began on the African continent where the evolution of the ideas of the supernatural and afterlife originated, and (2) Africans, especially those still living in the rural areas, have remained in closer contact with the earth and all of its creatures. This study is both academic and experiential.

How often do we read the Hebrew Prophets and gloss over the fact that the accused is female? Scholars have been aware of the female Jerusalem and of the female personified nation/city in the Hebrew Bible. Assumptions regarding the metaphor of the female accused and the male accuser may have facilitated reception of the description. Yet to examine the assurer and the accused is but one facet of understanding the female personified nation/city. This paper examines Jeremiah 3-4 as one among many texts that shape and transmit views about gender identity. It examines the relational and behavioral attributes as means of transmitting views about gender roles and proposes that shaping views about identity is achieved through representation of roles, behaviors, and evaluative comments. Accordingly, understanding the dialectical process of identity construction necessitates engaging how the text constructs its views about the male voice, actor, or narrator. The paper also proposes that by using the metaphor of the personified female nation/city, the text perpetuates views about identity and thereby defines interpretative parameters within which the characterization of the female is validated.

The past 28 years of excavations at Bethsaida have shown that the medieval Mamluks saw the site as an attractive location for habitation. While substantial built structures at et-Tell are more commonly associated with the Iron Age, Hellenistic and Early Roman periods, it is becoming increasingly clear that there was a significant presence in the Mamluk period. In this presentation the evidence for a Mamluk settlement at et-Tell will be reviewed, and preliminary comparisons made with Mamluk settlements in nearby Jordan. Key evidence for Mamluk occupation of the site includes coins, pottery and distinctive stone houses.

Studies on the literary relationships between P and Ezekiel have mainly focused on cultic regulations, leaving connections between the Priestly narrative and Ezekiel less attended. Yet, some narrative parts of P, for instance, the Priestly account of Exodus, exhibit noticeable similarities with Ezekiel’s descriptions of the Exodus and Egypt. The Priestly commissioning of Moses (Exod. 6.2ff.) unmistakably resembles the recollection of Exodus in Ezek. 20.5ff. in its motifs and language; furthermore, some of the Priestly wonders in the Plague narratives contain imagery and motifs also found in the prophecies against Pharaoh and Egypt: e.g., Pharaoh in a close relationship with crocodile (????), the Nile and other water sources of Egypt filled with blood, and the darkness in the land of Egypt (Ezek. 28.2ff.; 32.1ff.; Exod. 7; 10.21ff.). Focusing on these literary similarities, as well as differences, this paper will investigate the literary relationships between these two texts, including the possible direction of influence, and such implications for the composition of the Priestly Exodus account in its literary and socio-historical contexts. In addition, the peculiarities of P will be highlightened in comparison with the parallel non-Priestly Commissioning (Exod. 3-4) and Plague narratives (Exod. 7-12). In recent Pentateuch scholarship, the influence of Ezekiel is discussed primarily regarding later literary layers with priestly flavor, such as H(S) or Pentateuch Redaction (PentRed). Against this backdrop, this paper will extend this discussion to the significance and implications of the literary correspondence to Ezekiel in the text classically assigned to PG.

One of the literary characteristics of the book of Ezra and Nehemiah (EN) is that a lot of lists appear in this book, the most remarkable of which are the returnees’ lists from the Babylonian Exile, namely “Gola list,” as repeated in Ezra 2 and Neh 7. Why did the author of EN repeat these lists in the single book? What is their function? Although many scholars showed various opinions for the lists’ function on the basis of the social surroundings, that is insufficient as a means of explaining the lists’ own role. The main role of the lists could be politico-religious function because EN’s author described Ezra’s character as a politician. In this presentation, I will mention the literary role of the lists as a basic function composing EN. Also, I will review the various suggestions for the role of the repetition of the returnees’ lists, and argue for the politico-religious function of the lists.

The “Other” as analytical category has often been taken as a negative characterization, denoting some inferior, silenced or excluded. However, in the Book of Isaiah, foreign nations like Assyria, Egypt, Babylon and Persia are characterized by hybridity in their relation to YHWH and Israel. This paper deals with how in Isaiah 41-48, the figure of Cyrus challenges a dichotomized view of power relations as well as the characterization of the other. These poetic texts depict how YHWH calls the figure of Cyrus by name (44:28, 45:1), as well as labelling him shepherd (44:28) and anointed (45:1). Cyrus, who does not know YHWH (45:5), is assigned to a commission by YHWH: As a tool of the God of Israel he shall restore the deity’s people. Against a dichotomized reading of Cyrus as an unequivocally “other”, a more complex reading will be offered, in which the productive potential of difference appears. In Isa. 41-48, the presentation of Cyrus is interwoven in a discursive process in which the other is neither part of a strategy of exclusion within a system of binary opposition, nor portrayed unambiguously outstanding. The paper shows this complexity by a close reading of relevant texts as well as within the broader context of the Achaemenid Empire.

While acknowledging that, despite the varying proposals of different scholars, “[t]here is no entirely satisfactory theory as to the origins of the Pauline letter collection” (Evans), this paper proposes the view that that “collection” was the outcome, not simply of a process of “collecting” or bringing together existing letters to form a “corpus”, but rather a deliberate project aimed at producing a letter-collection comprising precisely thirteen letters. Pace those scholars who (like Evans) defend the authenticity of all thirteen of the New Testament epistles that claim authorship by Paul, the present study suggests, with Gamble, that “[t]he mere presence within the collection of inauthentic and editorially revised letters shows that its formation was a CREATIVE endeavour, not merely a conservative one” (emphasis added). The paper suggests that notwithstanding theories (or evidence?) of “lost” letters, the fact that the received, canonical “Pauline Corpus” contains exactly thirteen letters, and moreover that, as Trobisch has argued, “[t]here is no manuscript evidence to prove that the letters of Paul ever existed in an edition containing only some of the thirteen letters”, the proposed “creative endeavor” involved in the production of the “collection” might have been inspired by, on the one hand, the existence of the edition, by Thrasyllus, of “Thirteen Letters of Plato” and, on the other hand, Josephus’s claim in Against Apion that, in addition to the five books of Moses and four books that “comprise hymns to God and advice for living among men”, Judeans (Jews) hold dear thirteen books of “the prophets after Moses who wrote up what happened in their times” (cf. Ag. Ap. 1:36-43).

Abstract Exodus is one of Israel´s and Juda’s foundation traditions. However, if Israel as a people emerged in Canaan, how does one understand the liberation from the Egypt tradition? The paper tries to show that the Exodus tradition was formed within Northern Israel, maybe during the Egyptian domination of Sheshong I (945-925), a campaign that is registered in the temple of Karnak, in Egypt, that defeated the fragile rein of Saul. The paper tries to show also, that in the sanctuaries of Betel, Shechem, Dan and Samaria existed a cult to a deity represented by a bull image, to whom was attributed the liberation from Egypt. At the beginning this deity was the God El, but later, it passed to be the God Yahweh, who absorbed the attributes of El, including the bull cult. The wandering through the desert is an independent tradition, and it was attached to the liberation tradition only later. It’s possible that this tradition was form in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, a center for tribute collecting, situated in the desert of Sinai and dominated by Northern Israel, during the reign of Jeroboam II, in the first half of the VIII century a.C.

No individual is mentioned by name in the Qur’an more than Moses. This paper presents an overview of his role in the Islamic text, with particular attention paid to stories that have biblical parallels. A common feature of such shared traditions is that the version in the Qur’an tends to present a portrait of the biblical character that coheres with Islamic beliefs and theology. Examples of the Islamization of Moses/Musa in the Qur’an will be identified and discussed.

The Hebrew Bible does not get much more like an episode of a soap opera than in Genesis 39, the tightly written narrative of Joseph’s temptations by the erotic wiles of Potiphar’s wife. The story had a long and fruitful retelling well into the Middle Ages, but less attention has been paid to earlier retellings of the narrative in the Testament of Joseph and in the works of Philo. This paper explores this narrative of Joseph’s encounter with Potiphar’s wife in Genesis, as well as subsequent versions of the narrative in Second Temple literature, to illuminate notions of gender embodied in the character of eunuchs. It will begin with an exploration of the nature of Potiphar’s character as a saris, arguing that the appropriate interpretation of that word, both in the context of the scriptural version of the story as well as in these later versions, is as a eunuch. It will follow with explorations of the forms of the story in both The Testament of Joseph and in the numerous works of Philo in which the story is mentioned. Finally, it will conclude with a look at the implications of what these retellings of the story have for understanding issues of gender and the body faced by the Hellenized diaspora communities that rewrote them.

In light of the recent move among scholars away from the application of the concept of deponency to explain media tantum verbs in Koine Greek, this paper is presented as part of a broader investigation of the function of middle verbs in the Greek New Testament. In the past, scholars such as A.T. Robertson who were sceptical of the applicability of the term ‘deponent’ to Greek verbs with middle but not active forms, nevertheless conceded that there were many verbs whose middle nuance was difficult to explain. Typically, grammatical descriptions portray the subject as the direct or indirect object of a middle-inflected verb, referring to the self-interest of the subject, while broader linguistic studies refer to the subject being affected in the performance of the verbal action. A description of the middle voice adapted by Philippe Eberhard from the studies of linguist Emile Benveniste sheds new light on traditional explanations of the middle voice that centre on the subject. Although not inconsistent with the notion of subject affectedness, the understanding of middle voice posited by Eberhard refers to a medial process; it places the verb rather than the subject at the conceptual centre in a manner which overcomes the polarity of active and passive. The middle is seen as an internal diathesis, which speaks of the subject acting within a process that encompasses it, as opposed to the active which is external. The potential of this understanding of the middle voice for the interpretation of the New Testament is explored by testing its applicability to a sample of middle verbs in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.

Abstract The 1st Temple, commonly known as Solomon’s Temple, is a relatively simple building with precise dimensions given in the Book of 1st Kings Chapter 6. Since there is no direct archaeological evidence for the existence of this Temple as of today, nobody knows exactly how the first Temple looked. This generation is a visual generation, and without the image of the first Temple, many people may find reading 1st Kings 6 difficult and lose interest before reaching the end of the chapter. This paper will present a collection of images on the 1st Temple from various painters, engravers and architects from the last 500 years, including major contributors Conrad Schick, several Freemasons, Leen Rizmeyer and Karbel Multimedia. Most of these images have flaws and are not consistent with the descriptions found in 1st Kings 6. The images will be judged and the flaws identified based on architectural aesthetics, biblical accuracy and originality. A biblically correct model will be proposed at the end. With the appropriate image in mind, visualization may help readers to better understand the chapter of 1st Kings 6 recognize that the building of the temple was not just a construction project but was also meant to demonstrate some important points of Israelite theology.

Against current views that Gnostic esotericism originate in first-century Judaism, the present paper will claim that when protecting their knowledge and reserving it for a small group of initiates, Gnostics were in fact continuing a long tradition well established in Greco-Roman philosophical schools ever since the Pre-Socratics. Intended to give access to deeper truths underlying ordinary things, Gnostic secret knowledge provided a holistic explanation of the world that helped individuals both to supersede a fragmented reality and, by means of the achieved higher consciousness, to transform their person and life. The tension between secret and revelation tended both to protect this knowledge from outsiders and to endow those possessing it with a higher esteem.

Moses remains one of the history’s most famous adoptions. Israelite slave by birth, Moses spent his formative years as an adopted Egyptian prince whose palace life was far removed from his own people. A further period as a Midianite shepherd added to this physical estrangement from Israel. When God eventually called him to lead the Exodus, Moses became a committed patriarch. At times, however, he demonstrated a reluctant affection for the Hebrew people. From Midian to Mount Nebo, Moses struggled with impatience towards the Israelites and his frustrated attitude eventually cost him the prized entry into Canaan. This paper critically examines the impact of Moses’ adoption on his affections towards Israel. Contemporary analysis on the psychology of adoption (Particularly of secular psychologist David Brodzinsky, 1990, 2010, 2011) sheds new light on the ethnic tension that adoptees experience. While the science of adoption was not formalized in ancient Egypt, Moses would have felt some of the psychological strains experienced by adoptees. Brodzinsky highlights the psychological influences of adoption through different life phases. His focus on self identity ties in well to Moses, whose own wrestle with identity would have profoundly shaped him as a leader. The paper will show that Moses’ was deeply tied to his adopted culture, and that his loyalty in leading the Hebrew people was primarily in service to his God and not out of affection for his struggling people.

This paper proposes to look at the issue of the process of religious and cultural accommodation communities of Judaism and Christianity experienced with the Chinese context of polytheism, syncretism and iconography. Two historical communities will be selected for study from each of the two religions: Kaifeng Jews and Taiping Christian Movement. The specific issue of appropriation of the “you shall not make for yourself a graven image” (Exod. 20:3) and “idols are works of human hands” (Psalms 115) is taken as one of the keys in unlocking the challenges and difficulties of encounter with Chinese culture and religion. Both of the communities have preserved the different interpretations of the aniconism and idolatry they inherited from their own traditions and they re-appropriated them in the Chinese context. In the long history of accommodation to the well elaborate polytheistic religious background, the Jews articulated the biblical teaching of an imageless God in terms of the Chinese philosophical and religious tradition, but were not affected by the religious syncretism of China. As a Christian sect of the Protestant tradition, the Taipings too did strictly practice the biblical teaching of prohibition of idols and foreign gods, but developed it into a wholesale iconoclastic movement of destroying divine images, temples and shrines in China. The biblical text of Exodus 20:3-6 and Psalms 115 will be read with the interpretation and appropriation in the inscriptions and tablets of the synagogue in Kaifeng and in the Book of Heavenly Stipulation of the Taiping Movement.

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The movement of Belo Monte (Canudos), turned into an internationally renowned theme, into the Academy and outside of It, because of works as the ones written by Euclides da Cunha and Mario Vargas Llosa, was most of the times interpreted like an expression of the millenarianism which is a conception with many cases in Brazil since the beginnings of the Portuguese colonization. Such interpretation does not match the available search sources about the religious worldview that instigated the movement of Belo Monte, such as texts signed by It’s leader, Antonio Vicente Mendes Maciel, known as Antonio Conselheiro. But that interpretation fit very well the theoretical models a priori established. In this presentation we come up with a review of this issue, stressing the main biblical matrices which supported the existence of the village until the day that it came to be destroyed by the Brazilian army, in the late XIX century

Contextual Reading of Tamar´s rape narrative in 2Sam 13,1-22 by a group of people living with HIV in Bogotá highlights the importance of stigmatization in modern societies and encourages to fight against sex violence and to promote Human Rights of vulnerable groups.

This paper examines Paul’s use of the phrase “fullness of Gentiles” (pleroma ton ethnon) in Romans 11:25. This phrase is uniquely found in the NT in this one Pauline passage, although similar terms are found in a closely related passage earlier in the chapter (11:12) and in Luke 21:23-24. Besides shedding light on its meaning in this context, this paper will look at LXX parallels to see possible influence on Paul’s use of this phrase. It will then look at the adoption of this phrase among many early Christian writers and how they understood the fullness of the Gentiles applied to their situation. As with most Pauline passages, much work has already been done on Romans 11:25, thus this paper will attempt to further refine these interpretations especially by looking at earlier influences and the later impact of Paul’s statement. Some modern scholars have looked at Romans 11 as evidence of “replacement ecclesiology,” focusing on the eschatological implications of the Gentiles’ role and place in God’s salvation history. Others see “fullness of Gentiles” referring more to a temporal distinction of completion or fulfillment that causes a delay for the salvation of the House of Israel. This paper will explore these interpretations along with the notion that pleroma refers to more than a simple designation for “all” the nations, but to the fullness of presence or spirit, or the full blessings of the gospel, that enable the Gentiles to become God’s instruments to the House of Israel. By so doing, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. What becomes clear is that in Paul’s understanding, the fullness of the Gentiles is a critical turning point in God’s dealings with the House of Israel.

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There have been recent studies about Moses' masculinity within the Pentateuch, and also studies on the stark contrast between the texts' portrayals of Moses within Deuteronomy and the rest of the Torah. Unfortunately, no study has combined the two to account for how all portrayals of Moses relate to each other to give way for the prophetic office in the rest of the Tanach, especially in the book of Judges and in Samuel. Moses, in Exodus, claims to be very little in the way of a public speaker and yet his primary role as prophet in the book of Deuteronomy is that of lengthy discourse. In contrast to this "prophetic" role as God's mouthpiece, Moses is depicted in Exodus - Numbers as a man of action and intrigue. What this research project aims to do is to combine as well as contrast studies of Moses' masculinity within an honor/shame society with his depiction as the orator of Deuteronomic law in order to show how these portrayals set up the role and office of the Prophet-Judge in the books of the Deuteronomic history.

Most scholars agree that the Qumran sect did not participate in the sacrificial cult in the Jerusalem temple, nor did they offer animal sacrifices at Qumran. In this paper, I challenge scholarly consensus in light of a reconsideration of the animal bone deposits at Qumran. Parallels from ancient sanctuaries indicate that the animal bone deposits at Qumran represent sacrificial refuse and consumption debris. There is also possible evidence of an altar in L130 at Qumran, an open-air space on the northwest side of the site. The possibility that animal sacrifices were offered at Qumran is supported by legislation in sectarian works and in non-sectarian works that were considered authoritative by the sect. This evidence suggests that the sect observed the laws of the desert camp with the tabernacle in its midst

Most of the studies devoted to the Masorah (i. e., the the system of notes and signs used to preserve the text of the Hebrew Bible, and the way it was written) in ornamental or figured patterns are from the field of Jewish Art. Those works don’t use to pay attention to the content but to the form. The biblical Hebrew manuscript 118-2-41 (M1) -kept at the Library of Complutense University of Madrid - has a huge number of masorot in figured patterns. The existence of these masorot has been already mentioned; however, they have not been described and studied in relation to their content. This paper focuses on those masorot, their location, shape and content.

That marriage, and in particular heterosexual marriage, needs to happen to all human beings, seems to be the underlying norm within all cultures, not excluding African cultures. In the latter cultures (cf in particular, the indigenous cultures of South Africa), several types of marriage (including levirate marriage) were put in place to rectify any deviation from the status quo. Many, if not all such marriage types have become almost obsolete particularly among African (Pentecostal) Christians in the face of missionary Christianity and its elevation of the imperial western culture. Notwithstanding the preceding obsession with marriage though, the remarkable spread of Christianity, accompanied mostly by fundamentalist readings of its sacred texts, the phenomenon of single life by many an African Christian woman has become a "harsh" reality, not only in South Africa, but also elsewhere on the African continent. In the book of Ruth, two single women exploit the institution almost akin to levirate marriage to secure a place in a world which did not seem to take kindly to unmarried people (read: women). The main question addressed in this paper is: In a marriage-obsessed context where sex is to happen within the confines of marriage only, a context typified by what may be regarded as “sexual starvation” for the faithful and the self-controlled singles, could some of the "unconventional" types of marriage be found to be viable options for those who choose to deviate from the status quo?

The visual traditions of two nude female figures, a figure who cups her breasts with assurance and a child-killing goddess depicted on amulets, offer valuable data sets for tracking gender norms over time in the ancient Near East. New depictions of worship are helping to resolve an old controversy, indicating that the nude female who holds her breasts is a goddess, most probably the goddess Ishtar or her Western counterpart Astarte. The pose and sex of the nude female figure remained stable over millennia at localities ranging from the Levant to Iran, but in Hellenistic Mesopotamia she suddenly changed, maintaining her female shape but acquiring a penis. The body of the lamashtu demoness follows the same progression, female over thousands of years with a partial sex change in the Hellenistic period. The lamashtu and Ishtar have another significant gender irregularity in common. Both are regularly referenced in Mesopotamian texts with masculine pronouns and verbal forms. This paper argues that the hermaphrodic images of the Hellenistic period reflect a sticking point in the transmittal of a non-Western concept of gender variance.

Goffman’s ‘personal front’ is composed of: facial expressions, body language, attitudinal positions and movements, clothing, cosmetics, hairstyles, adornments and the assumption—or not—of accouterments. Hence, humans assume clothes that mark their gender, status and, often, a particular assumed role. People can also change their mood by a change of clothes; they can disguise their feelings, intentions—even themselves—and for a variety of reasons and purposes, ranging from benign to nefarious. In this paper I plan to show that biblical authors often say more than is immediately apparent when they refer to clothing, adornments and accouterments: first, because the role of these items often indicates more subtle features of the plot and of the characters, and secondly, because by repeatedly referring to these items they show where their deeper interests lie. Those items that touch the skin of human beings, whether for hours on end, such as their clothes, or are briefly held in the hands—ornaments, tools or weapons—become extensions of that person, of their desires, aims and goals. Noticing the role/s played by them helps readers to notice the human characters in a more cognizant and understanding way. Such careful attention also helps readers to see something of the aims and desires of the writers for although the stories are in fact just stories that could be told in different ways—as may be witnessed in the Chronicler’s retelling of stories from the earlier Histories, the meaning for the readers will always be in ‘the way they tell them’.

In September 1585 the first four Japanese Christians to visit Europe were greeted by a choir singing the Epiphany offertory Reges Tharsis et insula offerent (Let the kings of Tarshish and the Isles bring gifts), making them clearly subordinate to the imperial and even messianic claims of Philip II, the Spanish king. This paper will explore the cultural and exegetical context that allowed key biblical texts about distant lands and islands (notably Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60) to play a significant role in the ideological underpinning of Iberian imperialism during the age of exploration.

The Bible interested the brazilian author and translator Haroldo de Campos in many ways, especially as an archive of narratives and themes and as one of the great code of literature. The aim of this paper is to show how Haroldo de Campos offers a very creative and postcolonial perspective of translation of the Bible and others classics of world literature, specially highlight the translation which Haroldo de Campos published of Ecclesiastes Book. The translation of Haroldo de Campos has a continuous critical interpretation of the idea of original and adopts the role of translation as cultural interposition and intervention. Reflections about the role of translation in the intercultural e interreligious dialogue as well as the relation between Bible and Literature and the influence of the Bible in the latinamerican literature are in the central perspective of this paper.

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Scholars have often claimed that demons engage in irrational destruction, whereas gods inflict violence on humans for the more rational purposes of discipline or punishment. I challenge this claim by discussing examples of supernatural rage within the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern texts. I begin by categorizing ways in which destructive anger may be called irrational: It may be irrational in cause (the reasons for agitation are unclear), in effect (its results are contrary to the perpetrator’s expressed interests), in action (strikes indiscriminately), and in abating (stops for reasons that are unclear or by sensory engagement). Both gods and demons perform destructive acts that appear to be irrational in cause, and both may be appeased by non-rational means. I assert that the primary difference between demons and gods lies not in the degree to which they may be said to act rationally, but rather in their social orientation: demons are quintessentially antisocial beings, whereas gods tend to value social relationships. Because gods are concerned with maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with humans, they attempt to control their anger and engage in violence only when it results in benefits for themselves or the ones they love. On the other hand, demons have nothing at stake in relationships and enjoy inflicting suffering. When it comes to destructive behavior, then, demons cannot be charged with acting irrationally against their best interests, since their sole interest is destruction. When suffering extreme agitation, however, gods can channel “demonic” energy and enact indiscriminate destruction. In so doing, these beings may be charged with acting irrationally, since in such a state they are likely to injure persons whom they would otherwise seek to protect. Demons are not less rational than gods in their destruction, then; they simply operate according to different interests.

The second generation of the Pauline communities had to confront new challenges. As the first impulse of conversion and the particular leadership of Paul passed, and the communities became more complex, new ways of life had to be found. Among other things, the relationship with the surrounding world had to develop under new standards, including the economy. How to organize the economy of the communities, both in the inside and in the relationships to the Empire? In the so-called “pastoral letters” we find various paragraphs concerning both questions. To what degree do they continue with the Pauline understanding of economy and what changes are products of the new situation? This paper will explore the economy in the pastoral (specially 1 Timothy), its relationship with Paul’s letters, and its hermeneutical value for understanding the economy of today.

The Christological claim and confession by John the Baptist (John 1:15, 30) presents an interesting enigma and challenge in exegesis. The confession in the primitive Christianity is composed of three simple and distinctive prepositional phrases in an intriguing manner, presenting the mystery and supremacy of Jesus Christ who was preexisting even before the creation. By borrowing from "computational studies," this paper explores and presents a new paradigm in exegesis and interpretive framework to understand and analyze various frameworks of "circular rhetoric," Christological mystery, and biblical interpretation in early Christianity. The two proof-methods of the divine “I am” saying in John 8:12–20 are investigated to establish a new exegetical ground and justification of the framework. The allusion of John 8:12–20 to Exodus 3:14–15 is further explored to enhance the exegetical basis of this study. Further we investigate a few landmark-examples including the lordship of Christ over David in Matthew 22:41–46, Melchizedek and Christ in Hebrews 7, and the two-stage coming of the Kingdom of God in Luke 17:20–30 (in the rhetorical framework of “already” and “not yet” in tension). The current study, by using computational literary criticism, provides a promising new paradigm with many groundbreaking results affecting the study of Christological mystery in "circular rhetoric" and Christological paradoxes within early Christian literature.

This paper explores and presents a new paradigm in exegesis and interpretive framework to understand and analyze circular rhetoric and its exegetical challenges in Romans. The critical method applied in this study is an extension of the exegetical and interpretive framework for circular rhetoric and logic of paradox by Min, applied primarily to the Gospels, 1 John, and Hebrews. Selected passages in Romans are explored and analyzed including “from faith to faith” in Romans 1:17, the Liar paradox in Titus 1:12 with Romans 3:4, “in Christ” and “Christ in you” in Romans 8:10, the tension of “already” and “not yet” in Romans 8:29–30 in the light of the two-stage coming of the Kingdom of God in Luke 17:20–30, and the tautological assertions in Romans 9:15–18 in the light of Matthew 21:22. The two proof-methods of the divine “I am” saying in John 8:12–20 are explored to establish the exegetical ground and justification of the framework. The allusion of John 8:12–20 to Exodus 3:14–15 is further explored to enhance the exegetical basis. The proposed framework provides a promising new prospective and paradigm toward the study in Romans.

This paper evaluates different approaches to the concept of power that gradually develops and widens within the Gospel of Thomas. Sayings like 35 or 98 best illustrate this type of power-related discourse. Are such sayings intended to enhance the reader’s feeling of power? Are they really intended to enact violence towards the other? Or, do they actually express the inner conflict between the spirit and the body? Closer analysis of the aggressive language and images of destruction (both of the world and of one’s enemies) allows the reader to distinguish various circles of power emanating from the individual. However, could such sayings help one, for example, to discover oneself? My approach aims at investigating the multi-layered structure of the concept of power that one can trace within the logia of the Gospel of Thomas as well as placing it within the broader context of Late Antiquity.

This paper explores Jesus’ portrayal of a peace-giver in the Gospel according to John in light of Philo of Alexandria’s concept of “Melchizedek.” C. H. Dodd (1968, 298) observed that Philo’s depiction of Melchizedek as the one who “shall bring forth wine instead of water” shows some similarities with the Johannine description of Jesus as a wine-provider in John 2:1-11. Nevertheless, Dodd did not develop this issue into the discussion of the theme of peace in Philo and John, which this paper attempts to discuss. During the Julio-Claudian dynasty of the Pax Romana, Philo was keenly conscious of the limit of the imperial peace. He challenged the Roman peace by allegorizing the “king of Salem” in Gen 14:18-20 as the Platonic “kingly mind” that advocates peace and stands against the “tyrannical mind” in Leg. 3:79-81. The Coming of Melchizedek (11Q13) already associates Melchizedek with peace, although the peace in this text has less to do with Plato than with the passage in Isa 52:7. A similar interpretation of Melchizedek as the king of peace occurs in Heb 7:1-2. The Fourth Gospel does not directly mention Melchizedek, Salem, or kingly mind, but indirectly signifies Jesus as a king of peace by employing many elements which Philo uses in describing Melchizedek.

The word tešûqah appears only three times in the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis 3:16 and 4:7 and in Song of Songs 7:10. The paucity of occurrences of tešûqah leaves enough ambiguity of meaning to mire the word in lingering contemporary debates in church communities over gender roles. Following Susan Foh, gender complementarians tend to cast a thirst for power as the basic meaning of tešûqah. In contrast, following feminist scholars such as Phyllis Trible, egalitarians have viewed tešûqah as sexual desire, divorced from any connotations of power. I think that the bifurcation of desire and power in the interpretation of tešûqah is unwarranted, and therefore, that a new scholarly treatment of tešûqah is needed. In my paper, I will show that in Genesis and the Song of Songs, tesûqah connotes power as a medium of sexual desire. In Genesis, tešûqah references desire that is exploitative in its deployment of power. However, the Song’s usage of tešûqah displays possibilities for power’s role in sexuality that are not static and domineering but instead playful and fluid. Neither males nor females permanently command tešûqah. In my effort to produce an original feminist reading of tešûqah that combines the meanings of desire and power suggested above, I will begin by studying the etymological and textual issues surrounding tešûqah. I will then conduct a close reading of each of the contexts where tešûqah occurs, Gen. 3:16 and 4:7 and Song 7:10. Finally, I will perform an intertextual study to construct an understanding of tešûqah that takes into account its appearance in each of its three contexts.

Recent statistics in South Africa shows that women mostly experience poverty as compared to their male counterpart. In the context of the experience of poverty by women in South Africa, several Old Testament scholars have convincingly explored the theme of poverty in the Hebrew Bible. In her contextual re-reading of the Naomi-Ruth Story, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele) links the issue of poverty to the theme of land. Also, from the historical-critical and partly, the contextual approach to ancient texts, Esias E. Meyer argues that Leviticus 25:8-55 holds liberative possibilities for women who are invisible in such a text. Based on the argument made by the preceding scholars, first, this paper argues that in the context from which the texts of Leviticus 25:8-55 and Ruth 4 emerged, some women were both landless and poor. Second, it is argued here in this paper that the context of these texts carries a striking resemblance to the situation of women in post-apartheid South Africa, as many women do not own productive land and are poor. Third, this paper poses the question: What implications do the ideologies of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the hermeneutical approach of Fernando Segovia to ancient texts bear on the reading of Leviticus 25:8-55 and Ruth 4 in South Africa?

In this paper, I will review the structures of power displayed in the book of Acts of the Apostles, making a brief historical review between the views on charisma and office, to later explain the terms of elders-presbuteros and bishops-episkopos in their social context as foundation for a postcolonial reading of Acts 15 and 21. I argue that both in Acts and the rest of the NT, the hierarchical understanding of bishops-elders-deacons as office is non-existent. Furthermore, structures of power seen in the second century functions as mimicry of their understanding of the Roman Empire. As a South American protestant minister educated and working in the North, I identify issues of empire, supremacy, and mimicry from the historical established religion as consequences of the long lasting effects of the Iberian empires. Throughout our society and congregations, especially in the south, we experience an accentuated Catholicized Protestantism.

Traditional approaches (Johnson, Pervo) to Luke’s Pentecost narrative focus upon the fulfillment of the meaning of the Spirit’s outpouring in Peter’s discourse. Even feminist readings (Gaventa, O’Day) focus on Peter’s attempt to isolate the “true meaning” of the Spirit’s work through exegesis of Jesus’ ministry, failing to note the femininity inscribed by the Spirit. Drawing upon literary critical scholarship, and especially upon l’écriture féminine of French feminism and lo cotidiano of mujerista theologians, this paper attends to the ways in which Act 2:1-36 bears witness to a theological signification bursting with semantic difference and producing a superabundance I am labeling voluptuous discourse. The problem with historical-critical modes of interpretation, and even more recent ideological and socio-rhetorical approaches, is their underlying impetus to arrive at textual meaning. Feminist and mujerista hermeneuts reveal the underlying androcentrism at work in such an approach. Unfortunately, the full benefits of feminist/mujerista modes of reading fall short of their potential by cherry-picking those few texts that deal explicitly with women (Women’s Bible Commentary) or attempt to resurrect female marginalization through attention to broader themes and imagery at work in the text in spite of its patriarchal assumptions (Schussler-Fiorenza, Tribble). This paper participates in neither approach. Rather, by attending to the literary contours of the text, this paper exposes a way beyond textual meaning and metaphoricity. This paper unfolds in three sections. First, I introduce l’écriture féminine and lo cotidiano as literary-theological approaches aimed at exploding the sign rather than interpreting the sign, attending more to the manner than the matter of what is written, and to what is expressed and repressed in language. Next, I showcase the fruitfulness of such methods on the Pentecost narrative and Peter’s subsequent speech in Acts 2. Lastly, I discuss the broader implications of these frameworks for New Testament studies.

The acrostics in Lamentations 1-4 exhibit varying degrees of control over the shape of the poems. The acrostic poems in chapters 1, 2, and 4 display a successive letter of the alphabet every fourth verse. The acrostic poem in chapter 3 repeats the acrostic letter for four successive verses, thus exhibiting the most tightly structured acrostic in the Hebrew Bible. Another poetic strategy in Lamentations involves the use of word order within the poetic line and across poetic couplets. Although word order in poetry is more flexible than it is in narrative, it nonetheless plays a role in information structuring within the poem (see e.g. Rosenbaum 1997, Lunn 2006) as well as in poetic ornamentation across couplets (e.g. chiastic order). In this paper, we examine the ways in which these two potentially competing poetic strategies (alphabetic acrostic structuring and word order) serve to structure the poems of Lamentations 1-4. We are interested in determining to what extent the acrostic structure takes precedence in the structuring of the poems.

In this paper I examine the purpose, function and implications of the twofold warning in Rev.22:18-19. I survey suggestions by critics about the function and purpose of the passage, e.g. preserving the textual integrity of the manuscript, emphasizing its message against idolatry, claiming canonical equality or appealing for integrity in interpretation. In this discussion I refer to other texts often compared to this passage, principally in Deuteronomy and 1 Enoch. I then turn to the theological implications found by commentators in this passage, e.g. about a closed canon, the possibility of forfeiting salvation, ongoing Christian prophecy and rejection of non-Christian religion. Finally I argue that this passage disallows certain readings of Revelation (futurist and historicist) while opening the door to others, especially a spiritual reading.

In Christian poetry, it is only at the end of late antiquity that we have a refrain in works produced in Syria / Palestine and in the wider Greek- and Latin-speaking realm. Its origin seems to go back to the hemistic structure of Psalm 136, which in its second half always offers as a response ‘For his mercy lasts forever.’ Syro-Aramaic poetry knows a range of different forms for the refrain. Qanone offer the Christian interpretation and follow each verse of the psalm. Eniane offer comment on a group of psalm verses. One may observe, however, that in Ephraem’s poetry oniatha serve in particular to integrate the audience into the performance of a given poem. The refrain regulates the dialogic interplay between variable and stable texts, between the soloist and the choir. This paper argues that in Syro-Aramaic poetry the refrain is not merely a response to a verse or strophe, but that it is a means to express various interpretations of a given poem.

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Recent studies have demonstrated the influence of wisdom speculation upon Jewish and early Christian traditions. In the 1970’s feminist biblical scholars began to conduct research on the biblical traditions of wisdom and the manifestation of female images of God, named Sophialogy. There are different focus areas within Sophialogy, but the formulation of Wisdom/Sophia goals for liberation and equality were inter alia the focus area of feminist biblical interpretation. According to this approach, Jesus as the prophetic messenger of Wisdom/Sophia activates the Sophia tradition through his works or deeds of compassion for the poor, outcasts and those who are suffering from injustice. Women in Africa interpret these deeds as communal ‘wise living’ and the custodians of justice. This culminates in a motherhood agenda, namely making peace for life; ensure mutual respect, honour and care for life; look for fairness; reciprocity; wholeness and inclusiveness. The aim of this paper is to discuss mutual-mothering in the African context as ethos for living wisely and justly. Having instincts to care and to protect are not exclusive female attributes, but include also males. Therefore as an outcome of the paper the ethos of mutual-mothering as an attribute for masculinity will also be discussed.

This paper challenges the consensus that the tsalme zakar in Ezekiel 16:17 are divine images. Not only does such an interpretation rest on problematic assumptions about Judean religious practice, it also generates incoherence in the interpretation of the chapter as a whole, since it remains difficult to explain why the catalog of religious infidelities, including child sacrifice (vv. 21-22), does not figure more prominently in the announcement of judgment (16:34-43). As an alternative, I interpret the reference to tsalme zakar in light of the Assyrian practice of setting up royal images (salmu), which typically represented kingship iconographically with masculine traits (zikru). The expression tsalme zakar suggests that the images persisted in the exilic imagination as visual memories associated with the landscape of Jerusalem. Ezek 16:15-22 creatively appropriates the memory of the Judean veneration of tsalme zakar in order to launch an extended theo-political critique. The roots of Ezekiel’s polemic against idolatry are therefore political, and the vignette of 16:15-22 presents in starkest possible terms the alternatives of service to YHWH on one hand and subjection to the political powers on the other. Where YHWH had invested Jerusalem with abundance, progeny, and renown, the empires would not be satisfied until they had denuded Jerusalem of its riches and exacted sacrifices of the worst kind. Although Ezekiel does speak of the practice of child sacrifice elsewhere, the reference to child sacrifice in vv. 21-22 is better understood as a symbol of Jerusalem’s active participation in its own destruction. In other exilic literature, the trope of mother and children symbolizes Jerusalem and its inhabitants; here it indicates that the city, in its betrayal of its deity and indeed its own identity (16:15), has actively colluded with its overlords to drain its resources and immolate its population.

Liberation is the major theme in the book of Exodus where Moses emerges as the central human character and the “saviour of Israel” from bondage. However, a number of feminist biblical interpreters have argued that the main female characters in the book such as Jochebed, Miriam, the midwives Shua and Phua, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Zipporah and her six sisters played the critical role of saviours in the life of Moses. The question is, as Israel’s quintessential leader, what was Moses’ attitude towards the women of Exodus? Does he also “save” the women? In other words, does Moses’ own salvation lead to liberation for all the women of Exodus? In this paper, a textual analysis of his stance towards the women of Exodus shows ambivalence on the part of Moses: sensitivity towards women which was often countered by subtle indifference to their presence in “his laws”.

This paper aims to examine how Jesus is presented as a moral exemplar to be imitated in the Johannine Farewell Discourse (John 13-17). At first glance, John’s Jesus does not appear primarily as a moral teacher, compared with his portraits in the Synoptic Gospels. Clearly, John’s Gospel is not written in the literary genre of ethical treaties. Yet, it is noted that in the writings from the Greco-Roman world the representation of exemplars often serve as a literary device to instruct readers for their moral formation, and the notion of “imitation” or “mimesis” addresses how this goal can be achieved and realized. This paper focuses on a direct connection between the construction of moral exemplars and the writing of biographies in antiquity, as seen most vividly in Plutarch’s Moralia and Parallel Lives: the moral virtues that are rendered analytically with many small examples in these essays are displayed narratively in Plutarch’s biographies of eminent figures. This is also the case of the biographical parts in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This paper presents a comparative study of the Johannine Farewell Discourse, with a particular attention to John 13, in light of selective ancient biographical writings. I argue that, in contrast to common scholarly view that this Gospel does not give concrete examples of what the idea of “love” actually involves, Jesus’s symbolic footwashing activity and his paradigmatic death serve as moral examples to imitate.

That art goes hand in hand with Catholicism is widely recognized; churches and museums throughout the world bear witness to the role and place of art within the faith. With the Spanish conquest of Latin America, Christian art turned from encapsulating and reflecting the faith of adherents to bringing and proclaiming the faith to the un-evangelized. The medium for this evangelization was the santo. Literally translated as, saint, the Spanish colonial santo, was a wooden or lacquered statue of Mary, the crucified Christ, or other a saintly personage that was sometimes displayed in churches, homes, convents, or public places, but also often carried by Spanish missionaries as they sought to evangelize the native peoples of Latin America. Questions arise. What parts of the Bible formed the subject matter for the santos? What relationship to the faith did the santeros or makers of the santos have? How did the indigenous peoples, whose own culture and religion the Spanish destroyed, view and receive the santos? This paper will investigate the origins of the santos, their biblical background, their effectiveness in telling the biblical story, and their role today.

In Romans 1:18, Paul avers the unrighteous suppress the truth of God in their unrighteousness. What is this “unrighteousness” that is being discussed. A social scientific evaluation would look to cognitive dissonance theory to offer some suggestions. First, cognitive dissonance is a process by which psychological discomfort is resolved. In the case of discrepant cognitions, one can add consonant cognitions, change dissonant cognitions, or change one’s behavior to resolve the psychological discomfort. In the case of Romans 1:18, cognitive dissonance is an ontological entity in which an unrighteous person is able to self-justify their own behavior to acquit themselves of blame and responsibility. The cognitive process occurs with two conflicting cognitions – a knowledge of what is expected and a knowledge of one’s own desire. The two cognitions are at odds and in order to justify one’s worldview, one must either add consonant cognitions or change dissonant cognitions. The aim of this paper will explore instances throughout the Hebrew bible whereby the Israelites engaged in dissonant reduction processes to self-acquit themselves of blame and “exchange the truth for a lie.” More importantly, this paper will discuss the mental processes by which individuals religious and spiritual individuals engage in behaviors which marginalize oppressed and stigmatized individuals through self-justifying cognitive means.

The story of Job is particularly interesting when evaluated from a social psychological lens. Deuteronomy 28 sets the backdrop of a retribution theology through which Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz engage Job in and throughout his suffering. From their perspective, Job must have sinned because their theological schema could not sustain the idea of a righteous man suffering. Looking to the field of social psychology, this is typical of a defensive attribution. A defensive attribution suggests that individuals will engage in meaning-making attributions to avoid vulnerability and mortality. The story of Job directly implicates vulnerability and mortality vicariously through the story of Job. There are two cognitions that are at odds which produce a natural and logical conclusion that produces an unbearable vulnerability – a righteous wo/man can and does suffer! To defend against the psychological discomfort produced by this awareness, Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz engage in a defensive attribution called a belief in a just world – which perfectly mirrors the theology of Deuteronomy 28. A belief in a just world presupposes good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Theologically, defensive attributions are particularly salient because they reveal the way in which individuals who have a religious or spiritual background make sense of theodicy. This knowledge and awareness is particularly useful in cultivating hermeneutics, teaching, and preaching that avoids a blame-the-victim mentality by successfully accounting for defensive attributions.

Ezekiel remains a challenge in various respects. Historical person or literary figure? Priest or Prophet or both? Sirach already counts him among the prophets and his position among the canonical prophets is unambiguous. Within the Book of Ezekiel, prophesying is obviously the main occupation of the book’s eponymous character, more than 30 times expressed by use of the verb nb'. At the same time the book calls Ezekiel a nabi only indirectly, the noun primarily being reserved to label false prophets. Ezekiel’s awareness or even dependence on other prophets (especially Jeremiah) is uncontested, but he never refers to any of them by name. What is the significance of this silence given that Ezekiel is portrayed as the faithful prophet? This paper examines Ezekiel’s perception of prophets and prophecy and the book’s strategy to portray Ezekiel as the ideal prophet among Israel.

The paper analyzes the two textual forms in which the short narrative on Jezebel’s murder has been transmitted: 2 Kgs 9:30-37 MT and LXX. The analysis focuses on the most meaningful differences between both textual traditions, like Jehu’s question “Who is with me, who?” according to MT or “Who are you?” in LXX. The kaige textual form transmitted by the Greek majority B text is compared with that attested by the Antioquene texts, paying attention to the differences of vocabulary and, especially, to the expression which closes the narrative: “Nobody will be able to say “that was Jezebel” (LXXB following MT) / “nobody will mourn with alas” (?a? ??? esta? ? ?e??? ??µµ?? LXXL.) The final aim of the work is to establish the Old Greek text and to identify its Hebrew Vorlage.

Psalm 56 is one of 13 psalms with an extended bibliographical note about the life of David. It implies that the psalm should be read as a prayer of David “when the Philistines seized him in Gath.” This note is generally regarded as being secondary and of little value in interpreting the psalm, especially since David was never really “seized” by the Philistines. In terms of the editing of the Psalter, it nevertheless serves as a witness to the way in which the editors of the Psalter interpreted the history of David and how they understood the psalm. This paper investigates the connections the editors of the Psalter probably saw between Psalm 56 and 1 Samuel 21 as well as 27, 29-31 in order to determine what they thought the theological message of 1st Samuel was and how the psalm reflected the ideology of the Deuteronomistic history.

Acts 8,26-40 witness the missionary expansion of the primitive church. Africa was not excluded neither subdued; on the contrary, the Ethiopian eunuch expands fraternal bonds between different ethnicities, equaled in faith experience framed in new forms of reading New Testament. The text shows interesting alternatives and significant challenges to critical analyses of colonial process, above all to the African horizon, and suggest alternatives for the overcoming of unjust and cruel relationships resulting from this process.

The recognition of social location as heuristic device in biblical hermeneutics does not necessarily equate to producing radical and alternative knowledge. Biblical hermeneutics from our own social location (Africa) has to deal with the dynamics of coloniality. (South) Africa as a social location is still burdened by coloniality. African Biblical Hermeneutics has to be decolonial in its orientation in order to overcome the persistence of coloniality by privileging African knowledge systems and African thinkers, and unmasking the structures of coloniality, which continue to destabilise the African imagination. The concept of African biblical hermeneutics does not imply that the colonial systems have been overcome—coloniality is able to survive and thrive even under the tag “African.”

This paper examines imperial and economic forces of colonization surrounding post-exilic Israel, specifically the late Persian period (334-330 BCE) transitioning into the Hellenistic era (332-64 BCE), to do a suspicious reading against Daniel 1 as a text of imperial resistance. Using a paradigm constructed from elements of James Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts from Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Daniel 1 becomes a Hellenistic text capable of placating and appeasing as much as (or perhaps more) than it opposes and resists empire. The paper consults previous scholarly work that emphasizes suspicious tensions in order to examine socio-economic class structures in and around Daniel’s composition to interpret Daniel 1 through a hermeneutic of suspicion with a focus toward postcolonial theory. The paper is in two sections. The first expands on the paper’s use of Scott’s hidden transcript theory then examines Israelite and Hellenistic histories through a Marxist economic lens. It then uses a socio-economic problematic to define the boundaries of economics and empire through which Daniel 1 may be read. The second section analyzes and reads Daniel 1 to trace possible threads of compromise and accommodation underlying the tale, which, in turn, offers a renewed reading of Daniel 1 as a faux-hidden transcript. Conclusions present implications for further interpretation.

Moses is considered a formidable leader. The most common title adjunct to his name is: Avi Ha’ne’viim, which means the prophet of all prophets. The fact that he was the only human being who saw the Divine “face to face and lived” put him in a league of his own, even amongst people of God. This unique status is a metaphor of his life: the Pentateuchal Moses is depicted as a vessel of God’s message to the people. He punishes Pharaoh on God’s behalf, he leads the people out of slavery on God’s decree, he gives them God’s laws; and dies when God pronounces that his duties are fulfilled. Very rarely, he disagreed with God, and on the occasion that he lost his composure and hit the rock in order to produce water, we have a rare glimpse of the more human side of Moses’ personality. This lack of personal insight into Moses the ‘person’ is particularly critical when we consider his attitude toward women. His life narrative is propped up by strong women-- some of whom were responsible for his survival, while others helped forge the course of his life. Yet, he fails to see women as equals. The paper examines cases where Moses displays particularly androcentric attitudes: not in line with God’s teachings and unbefitting Avi Ha’ne’viim.

It has recently been argued that ‘Modern reconstructions of the Byzantine political sphere focus on only one of its two legitimizing ideologies, the theocratic one’, and neglect the identity encompassed by the Roman polity (politeia) or republic. This argument asserts that it was ‘in terms of the politeia that the basileia was defined and justified, not the reverse.’ However, the vaunted institutional stability of the Byzantine state (or republic, if one prefers) arose not from an inherited notion of Roman polity, but from the cultural ballast offered by institutional Christianity. It is easy to get these two inverted, especially if one sees patronage and relationships as determinative of political decision-making in the Byzantine polity. However, the idea of the Roman res publica is visible chiefly in Constantinople’s extensive and largely effective bureaucracy. Since the Byzantines were following the OT model of the chosen people, whose politeia was the theocratic community of Israel, it can be shown that the basileia, as the ruling framework of the politeia is not only prior, it forms in the Byzantine example an entirely new idea that combines empire and theocracy. Byzantine Christian polity relies, therefore, on the scriptural and religious model as primary, with the Roman bureaucratic structures providing support, but not leadership. Leo VI’s Taktika provides the most explicit use of biblical models and worldview in the middle Byzantine empire. This paper will assess the biblical language and ideals summarized in the Epilogue to the Taktika to redefine Christian identity, and demonstrate the uniquely Byzantine formulation by which citizens of the [eastern Roman, voire Byzantine] empire were Christians first, and Romans second.

As part of the preparation of the doctoral thesis (Université de Genève) on the poetics of cento ???st?? ??s??? (Christus Patiens), attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus, we have found that one of the least studied aspects of this work is the influence of the New Testament Apocrypha and the ways of the intertextual appropriation modes that the author has continued to amalgamate the classic text on which it is based (Euripides, Aeschylus) with the Christian matter about the passion of Christ. While some scholars have put on the table for discussion the question concerning the various sources (Starowieyski: 1994; Swart: 1994), so far there is still no a thorough and systematic analysis that accounts for the use of the Apocrypha and Canonical texts and composition techniques that form the Christian matter. From previous communications (Rivas 2012), where we have already studied the presence and use of the Apocrypha in the cento; our purpose here is to present a progress of research around this problem, and to go deep in the techniques and the use of the New Testament Apocrypha about the Resurrection that the author had utilized in the construction of the third part of the cento.

The end of Mark’s Gospel leaves its hearers with an empty tomb and a promise to see Jesus in Galilee. Eschatology erupts geographically. Resurrection does not reside in the end of the narrative where the women fear that Jesus has become one more of the desaparecidos. Resurrection occupies another terrain, occurring throughout the whole narrative wherever those hidden in the margins erupt into view as agents of God’s reign. This paper brings Brazilian theologian Vítor Westhelle’s “latitudinal eschatological perspective” into conversation with Mark’s narrative construction showing how Mark’s marginal characters (Simon’s mother-in-law, the man with the withered hand, the paralyzed man, the bleeding woman) become the threshold through which God’s reign “takes place” (Westhelle). While these characters may be passed over quickly when the narrative is limited to a printed page, in performance they rise to the center and take on flesh as dramatic exemplars of God’s transforming work. In a critical performance of their “dangerous memory” (Metz), the narrative is raised off of the two-dimensional page and takes up space. In performance, more is discovered than an additional dimension to add to the other two dimensions. Rather, dimensionality itself is restored to the narrative! It occupies space. When storytellers from the margins of our world perform the narrative, their enactment becomes a “rehearsal of revolution” (Augosto Boal) or, as the evangelist might say, a rehearsal of God’s reign. They occupy a place of precarious potentiality, the “margins in which possibilities can be born but where the tragic, the terrible lurks, and annihilation impends (Westhelle).” Raising up these hidden bodies opens up a way for the community to move in new directions. Their telling “takes place” and we find ourselves in Galilee where the risen Jesus promises to be found.

Psalm 139 is rife with ambivalent feelings about God’s surveillance, yet frequently it is read as positive political affirmation. For instance, religion writer David Van Biema points out in an opinion piece in USA Today, Psalm 139 has been used both by pro-lifers and by gay rights activists to affirm their points of view (March 28, 2012). This paper explores why this might be so. The Psalmist speaks of God’s surveillance from the womb, but why is God’s surveillance so valued by interpreters, rather than dreaded (as the book of Job suggests)? What is the affect that circulates around this Psalm? How is it produced both by the Psalm and in interpretation? These questions are related to another more basic question which is: How do language and text relate to affect, given that many affect theorists consider affect to be a kind of precognitive intensity or motion in the body that is prior to emotion? These questions are explored via a citation of the Psalm 139 by Spinoza, the progenitor of both biblical studies and affect theory. Spinoza offers us a way to think about how bodily intensity relates to language, in this case biblical poetry, and he helps us to see that the power of Psalm 139 comes through the bodily sensations of threat and removal of threat in a way that also creates a particularly shaped sense of political agency.

La traducción de la Biblia en América Latina empezó poco tiempo después del establecimiento de asentamientos humanos europeos--principalmente españoles--como parte del proyecto evangelizador entre las naciones originarias. Salmos y textos de los Evangelios fueron los primeros en ser traducidos, por ejemplo, al nautl para la evangelización y catequización de las poblaciones indígenas. La traducción de textos más amplios--Evangelios completos--se empezó a dar a partir de la visita de Thompson, representante de la Sociedad Bíblica Británica. Ya en pleno siglo XX, organizaciones como SIL y UBS se lanzaron a la tarea de hacer traducciones más extensas, sobre del NT. Pues bien, a partir de ese momento, junto con la traducción propiamente hablando, se desarrolló todo un modelo de traducción que llamo "traducción misionera de la Biblia". En ese periodo, el foco o centro de atención fue el texto fuente, trabajado y "traducido" por el experto misionero, cargado de su ideología, doctrina y concepto de evangelización. Los nativos no fueron traductores, sino "informantes". A partir del surgimiento de la lingüística moderna y la participación no de traductores, sino de asesores con doctorados en Biblia, antropología y lingüística, digamos, a partir de la década de los 60´s, se inicia lo que llamo la traducción "posmisionera de la Biblia". El foco de atención se mueve hacia el idioma receptor, hacia el hablante nativo de la lengua. Si al inicio la preocupación era la de tener a un extrajero bien entrenado para realizar un trabajo excelente, ahora se intenta formar al traductor nativo para que sea el principal responsable de la traducción. ¿Cuáles han sido los logros? ¿Cuáles los fracosos y logros a medias? ¿Cómo nos desefió el desarrollo de teologías latinoamericanas de liberación y las relecturas de la Biblia desde grupos traducionalmente marginados y vulnerabilizados? The translation of the Bible in Latin America began shortly after the establishment of European settlements, mainly Spanish, which was a part of the evangelizing project among the original nations. Among the first texts to be translated, for example into Nahuatl, were Psalms and Gospel texts used for the evangelization and catechesis of indigenous peoples. The translation of larger texts—complete Gospels—began with the visit from Thompson, a representative of the British Bible Society. It was not until the twentieth century, however, that organizations like SIL and UBS took to the task of making more extensive translations of the NT. From that moment onward, alongside with the translation, a model of translation was developed that I call "missionary translation of the Bible." In that period, the focus of attention was the source text, worked and "translated" by the missionary expert, full of ideology, doctrine and a concept of evangelization. The Natives were not translators but "informants." From the emergence of modern linguistics and the participation not of translators, but advisers with doctorates in Bible, anthropology and linguistics, around the early 60s begins what I call "post-missionary Bible" translation. The focus of attention has moved to the receiving language and the native speaker of the language. If initially the concern was to have a well-trained foreigner who could do an excellent job, now there’s a concern to train the native translator to be primarily responsible for translation. What have been some of the achievements? What have been some of the failures and half-achievements? How have we been challenged by Latin American liberation theologies and the rereading of the Bible from groups traditionally marginalized and vulnerable?

In its quest for a non-medical, pro-health approach to psychotherapy, positive psychology focuses on concepts that are also biblical and specifically present in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. In this paper, the concept of “humility” in the teaching of Jesus as represented in the synoptic tradition will be compared to recent positive psychological approaches (e g Tangney). Attention will be given to (1) a definition of humility, (2) empirical psychological research on humility, (3) humility in the Old Testament, Jewish and other religious and philosophical traditions, (4) Jesus of Nazareth’s special focus on humility, (5) the (dis)advantages of humility in the quest for a better world, and (6) interventions to promote humility.

The Egyptian God Bes makes a notable appearance in the Iron Age southern Levant. Apotropaic Bes is well documented in both image and text and on object and form indicating that more than mere coincidence connected international trade and production with local religious belief and practice. The dissemination of Bes amulets in the southern Levant and the Bes-like drawings at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai suggest a special set of developments regarding the “export economics of Bes.” Submitted for the Panel Sessions: Expressions of Religion in Ancient Israel

Whatever the 21st century present may be, we understand it in terms of our past where we were and are coming from, as a waystation in our progress towards whatever goals, destinations, and destinies we find ourselves working, walking moving towards, or trying to. Both in our individual and collective lives, and their material realities, we justify our actions by the stories we tell ourselves and their place within them. There are at least four stories current about Moses, those recorded in and derived from the Jewish Tanach, the Christian New Testament, the Moslem Koran being the most prominent. All three propose expression in humanly comprehensible terms of aspects of Gd’s revelation of Moses’ life, thoughts, deeds, intents, successes, failures, and ends. The fourth ‘story’ works off some combination of these 3, to secularize, reduce or expand the significations of the three ‘divine revelations’. This talk proposes to examine briefly the depictions of Moses in the revelation books, separately and as they reflect on each other, qualifying adding subtracting elements to achieve their individual textual emphases. The purpose shall not be to choose among them, let alone to examine how each tradition later develops the Moses figure via talmud, patriarchal writings, or hadiths or such subsequent equivalents. But rather to assemble what one might call a minimal ‘paradigmatic’ list of elements the presence of which would make a description recognizably ‘mosaic’, the absence of which might not. As part of this definitional essay, the elements of leader, lawgiver, prophet, and messiah shall be considered in connection with such trial experiences as resistances to oppressions, flights, escapes from slaveries, military activity, revelations, and passage thru tribulations to promised ease, land, condition, freedom. A general estimation will be attempted of the Moses Paradigm attempted, partially achieved, [ABSTRACT TRUNCATED]

The use of ingots and scrap metal, as forms of “payments”, was taking place in the Amarna Period (14th century BCE) according to four different contexts: the Tomb Inscriptions, the Amarna Letters, the "hoard" found at Amarna, and the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck. Throughout the 15-14th centuries BCE in Egypt, ingots are generally listed as "tribute" from foreign countries (peripheries, enclaves, and centers), however they may instead have been commodities used in "trade" or "gift-exchange" networks. Textual and archaeological evidence indicates that the changes underwent by the systems and means of exchange extended to all of the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age, while evidence provided by maritime archaeology suggests the coexistence of royal imports of metals and prestige goods from palaces and small enterprises by independent merchants. The royal merchants, who exchanged metals in talent-sized bulk, were slowly displaced by independent merchants, who traded small scraps of metal for other goods and increased their profits. Additional discoveries show that the modes of storage and transport by merchants or wealthy individuals of "scrap metals" were in vessels and sacks, indicating a clash between a price-based system and an older, state-run and tribute-based one. The ingot fragments were used as "small change" during metal-weighing transactions. The expansion of the circulation of scrap metal, which was a natural consequence of the widening range of sub-elite consumers, had dangerous consequences for the palace monopolies and their elites. Scrap metal became a reasonable commodity for independent merchants from at least ca. 1350–1300 BCE.

The story of Ruth tells us of a great bond between Ruth as the protagonist and the people she meets along her way. It shows us a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space. This is the basis of attachment theory. Attachment is often characterized by specific behaviors, such as seeking proximity with the attachment figure when upset or threatened. It does not have to be reciprocal and one person may have an attachment with an individual which is not shared. In this paper I wish to look at the relationships depicted in the book of Ruth through the lens of attachment theory.

This paper attends to the reception of the apostle Paul’s thought on the fate of the Jewish people in early Syriac Christianity. After an overview of the interpretive issues that attend Paul's hope for Israel expressed in Romans 9-11, this study turns to the dogmatic interpretation of these chapters and of their central concerns in several early Syriac writers. Close attention is given to Aphrahat, whose complex articulation of the relationship between Christ, the church, and the Jewish people is probed in detail. By giving careful consideration to the contingent circumstances of Paul’s letter to the Romans and Aphrahat’s Demonstrations, particularly as these works have in view the relationships among Jewish, Christian, and Jewish-Christian communities, this paper situates the theological formulations of these authors in their context of their social histories. This relationship between dogmatic formulation and social location is explored in connection to the common aim of each author to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures. In this latter connection, this study argues that Aphrahat preserves, in modulated form, an important Pauline conceptualization of the fate of Isarel, a conceptualization which was often eclipsed by the systematizing thought of later Western theologians.

Discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery in 1975 (among many others), Gregory-Aland manuscript (MS) 0278 has earned a spot in the apparatus of NA28 but not UBS5. The textual character of 0278 is largely unknown, though. Based on preliminary research, the readings in MS 0278 tend to group most closely with MSS 04, 025, and 81. The question is, then, how exactly should the readings of 0278 be evaluated in a critical apparatus? Also, should 0278 be represented in the apparatus of the UBS Greek New Testament? In this paper, I argue that 0278 belongs in the Alands’ Category II and should thus be included in the apparatus of UBS. The overall textual character of 0278 will be evaluated through a full collation and comparison to other major witnesses of Paul’s letters in order to determine how much weight the witness should be given in determining the initial text. Textual groupings will be identified through percentages of agreement. Also, scribal habits will be outlined, and unique readings will be discussed.

There are several references to violence in the New Testament. Jesus told his disciples that should anyone slap them on the right cheek, they should let the person slap their left cheek too (Mt. 5:39). We also read in Acts 23:1 that the High Priest (of all people) ordered those who were standing close to Paul, to strike him on the mouth. We can interpret some of the New Testament verses metaphorically, but the reality is that violence was quite common in the ancient world. Peter Brown describes late antiquity as “a world characterized by a chilling absence of legal restraints on violence in the exercise of power.” Many studies on structural and institutional violence in the ancient world have been published. In this paper, however, I will focus only on one-on-one violence in public and private space in Chrysostom’s community. I will look at spousal violence, and other forms of violence within the family. In one specific case the neighbours were running to the house because of the cries and wailing of a wife who was beaten by her husband (Hom. 1 Cor 26.7). But acts of violence were also committed in public space. Chrysostom advises his congregation, for example, that should they hear “any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God, they should go up to him, rebuke him, and should it be necessary to inflict blows, they should not spare not to do so” (De stat 1.32). Pauline Allen, Wendy Mayer and others have shown that Chrysostom’s writings can serve as a window to provide us a glimpse into fourth- and fifth-century social life. One has to be aware, of course, of the fact that Chrysostom also made some very radical comments merely for rhetorical effect.

Deuteronomy, the last of the Five Books of Moses consists in the final addresses, teachings, and testimonies of Moses to the children of Israel. Shortly before his death, the Lawgiver crystallizes his message in a visionary epilogue, Ha’azinu or Song of Moses, a poetic addition to earlier prose orations, reviewing the people’s history and destiny, and giving lyricism full reign, Give Ear O Ye Heavens, and I will speak; And let the earth hear the words of my mouth (Deut. 32:1). Conceived as a cantata for contrabass and orchestra, Ha'azinu by Max Stern is an instrumental characterization of Moses’ farewell song to the children of Israel. It foretells the history and prophetic mission of the Jewish people, and contrasts God’s promise of loving-kindness and faithfulness with Israel's ingratitude and faithlessness. Slow of speech and heavy of tongue, the contrabass, as Moses is purported to be in the Bible, takes on the part of the Lawgiver: exhorting, reproving, and justifying the ways of God to man.

One question that has occupied historians of Judaism in late antiquity in recent decades has been the relationship between the “House of Study” (bet midrash) and the synagogue (bet kenesset). Historians such as Dan Urman, Steven Fine, Seth Schwartz, and others have debated the extent to which the goals of both institutions coincided, overlapped, or diverged. This paper will be a comparison of the role of ritual objects in rabbinic literature and the iconography of the ancient synagogue, using traditions from the Tosefta and Palestinian Talmud, especially tractates Yoma and Sota, in comparison with Palestinian synagogue mosaic floors. It will be argued that in these rabbinic sources, the legendary historiography of the Second Temple emphasizes the social dimension of the ritual implements, especially the role of the individuals and families who made and used them, both to stratify and de-stratify the hierarchies of priests, sages, and ritual specialists. In contrast, the iconography, of necessity, presents ritual objects as separate entities in relation to symbols of the ancient Temple, and yet relates them directly to the synagogue community. At the same time, it will be argued that both sources highlight the efficacy of those objects in attaining sacrificial goals.

One of the main objectives of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the National Library of Israel is to compile a complete collection of all extant manuscripts written in Hebrew characters. The present paper focuses on the collection of Jewish-Greek biblical translations found in manuscripts scattered through the world and examined at the Institute. These medieval and modern Greek translations were written throughout the period spanning the Middle Ages up until the 20th century; originating in many different countries and communities. The vocabulary is mainly that of medieval and modern Greek, and includes Hebrew and Turkish loan words. This collection includes books or book fragments as well as glossaries arranged according to the 'parashot' divisions. The most important publication of these translations is the Constantinople Pentateuch 1547 printed in three columns: Hebrew, Ladino and Jewish-Greek, followed by the Aramaic (Onqelos) translation and the Rashi commentary. The last two items support evidence of the rabbinical origin of these translations. At the Ljubljana meeting of the Congress of Septuagint and Cognate Studies (2007), Nicholas de Lange and his team presented the important project of the Byzantine Greek Bible corpus in a digital format. This project (GBBJ) is devoted to the witnesses of these translations mainly from the Cairo Genizah collection and their links with the Septuagint and other Greek versions, chiefly Aquila. The aim of my presentation is to present these translations as found in manuscripts in the National Library of Israel and other libraries and important collections around the world. The second goal of this paper is to show the influence of ancient and medieval rabbinic commentaries on these translations. The presence of these commentaries will serve to provide a proper chronological context and to illustrate the social background in which they were created.

Mark was written in a time of war. In this presentation, I wish to highlight similar aspects that occur in armed conflict situations and wars today, where silence is imposed, persecution is inflicted, and uncertainty results. As a starting point, I look at the situation in Colombia. I will use the work of Flavio Josefo and UN documents on the conflict in Colombia as key sources for the analysis of the situation in Colombia and the context of the gospel of Mark. I will also analyze what could have been Jesus’ attitude toward war and armed conflict, with the intention of obtaining some criteria from Mark regarding dialogues of peace that are happening right now in Havana, Cuba, between the guerrillas and the current Government of Colombia.

Struggles for Power in Early Christianity: The Case of 1 Timothy

Drawing on recent ethical and moral work on the Psalms, this paper will examine a sampling of readings in the Psalms from the Christian exegetical tradition as ethically formative. As the interpreting community of faith performed the psalms in worship through singing and praying (active) and their exposition (passive), the Psalms were likewise forming their comportment and behavior, as well as their attitudes toward God, one another, creation, and history. This can be seen in numerous places. One example is Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos at Ps 69 where he highlights the role of the psalm in the believer’s participation in the passage of discipleship as a part of Christ’s passion. We will also look at Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Rogerson’s works on the Psalter’s ethic and morally transformative intention. This moral thrust of the Psalter is operative via its final, canonical form. As such, the message in its present canonical shape demands something of the reader or performer who comes into contact with it, either privately or publically, passively or actively. This paper will selectively show how various reading strategies were up and running–however incompletely–throughout the tradition’s ethical readings of the psalms. For example, how the fruitful application of speech-act theory to the ethical question of the Psalter (cf. D. Evans inter alia) was adumbrated quite early in the Christian interpretive tradition (i.e., Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus). Perhaps, while lacking the vocabulary or methodology to express it in the same manner or with modern precision, early readings of the Psalms were in fact cognizant of the ethically formative nature of the liturgical and expositional use of the Psalter. The absence of an application of a psalm to the lived experiences of those who heard/read/prayed it constituted a failure to reach a given psalm’s Sache.

This paper explores the reception history of the fish in Jonah 2, with focus on its gender(s) and its kind(s). First, its sex/gender is ambiguous. As is relatively well-known among biblical scholars, the fish in Jonah changes biological sex – or at least grammatical gender – within the narrative. While Jonah 2:1, 11 speak of a m.sg. fish, Jonah 2:2 refers to a f.sg. fish. This intricate textual situation has generated a wide range of more or less fanciful interpretations, ranging from text-historical solutions, via narratological suggestions, to the appearance of multiple fish. Second, its biological classification is unclear. While the Hebrew text and the Latin Vulgate imply that it is a fish, the LXX, as well as the reference in Matt 12:40, suggests that it is some kind of sea mammal. In even later textual and pictorial renderings, the fish metamorphoses into a mythological monster, on par with the Leviathan and the Tannin. The present paper surveys and evaluates these and many other depictions of Jonah’s fish. Although many of these interpretations are far-fetched and almost whimsical, they nevertheless highlight important aspects of Jonah 2, a text that for many readers has become dulled by familiarity, and generate new readings.

Deslocamentos e surpresas marcam a experiência fundante feita por Moisés no Horeb diante da sarça ardente (Ex 3,1-6). Esta perícope oferece chaves de leitura para uma possível leitura bíblica a partir do jovem? O que seria ler este mesmo texto tendo as juventudes como sujeito hermenêutico e mais precisamente os jovens da Pastoral da Juventude (PJ)? Este processo nos oferece fundamentação para falar de uma hermenêutica juvenil? Inquietações acadêmicas e pastorais nos impelem a investigar o caminho metodológico de uma leitura bíblica a partir dos jovens. Seguimos este caminho buscando construir um diálogo entre a exegese do texto e a literatura do CEBI, especialmente Carlos Mesters, Severino Croatto e da PJ.

Ancient conceptions of the cosmos and the natural world have been represented iconographically by the elaboration of maps and cartography. The intellectual creations of Anaximander, Hecataeus and Strabo are examples of these representations of the earthly universe. However, the biblical chapter about the Table of Nations (Genesis 10. 1-32 ) allow us to find an interesting development about the representation of the biblical human universe. Although it has been considered merely as a representation of the different peoples according to their geographic location and their languages, the biblical authors seem to have wanted actually to represent the new order imposed by the Neo-Assyrian empire during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. In fact, the geography of the known world, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, became an organizational principle of the Assyrian art of this period, which was also the inspiration for the order and distribution of peoples elaborated by later biblical authors.

La interacción de Jeroboam con Sisac (1 Reyes 11,40) permite situarnos al final del siglo X A.C., alrededor del año 926, una vez que este se identificó como el faraón Sheshonq, cuyo récord de la campaña militar en Canaán se encuentra en las paredes del templo Amon en Karnak, Egipto. La lista de las ciudades conquistadas corresponde, en los textos bíblicos, a los territorios asignados a Saúl, de Gabaón-Bethel a la zona del río Jabok (1 Samuel 11; 2 Samuel 2,4-7.12). Es decir que Saúl representa una amenaza para Sheshonq a punto de convertirse en el objetivo de la intervención militar egipcia en Canaán (Finkelstein, 2013, p. 41). De esto surge la pregunta de si la narrativa en torno a Jeroboam no habrá conservado, entre líneas, un antiguo recuerdo de los orígenes de Israel del Norte, que relaciona el éxodo, por un lado, con la experiencia traumática de la derrota de Saúl en su confrontación con Sheshonq en la región de Gabaón-Bethel y Gilead, y por el otro, con la experiencia de liberación representada por Jeroboam, fundador del reino del norte, desde Bethel, Dan, Siquem y Penuel, de acuerdo con la narración bíblica. Después de todo, en un corto período de tiempo entre el final del siglo X y el principio del siglo IX, se dio la derrota de Saúl y la emancipación del norte de Israel como reino independiente, sobre todo con la consolidación de dinastía Omrida. Y "reino independiente" a menudo significa pasar de oprimidos a opresores. En nuestros días, cómo el recuerdo del éxodo puede contribuir a revelar los nuevos mecanismos imperialistas en América Latina y en el mundo.

Historical-critical scholarship has established a longstanding consensus that most of the letters included in the New Testament are not authentic. The phenomenon of spurious letters is usually referred to in exegetical literature as pseudepigraphy. This term is derived from the Greek word for forgeries (pse?dep???apfa), and it suggests that these writings were disseminated under an assumed authoritative name in order to promote a specific theological view and push a certain agenda. It is assumed that although some of the material is very likely traditional, some of it is almost certainly fictional. The paper will take this observation seriously and with a focus on Paul interpret the New Testament letters with narrative critical tools, determining the story by describing the conflict, characters, settings, and plot, and disregarding the question of historical authorship. This will allow an appreciation of the underlying creative effort and demonstrate the form critical insight that letter collections are a narrative genre.

Porphyry described, in Vita Plotini 23, the experiences of unio mystica achieved by his teacher, Plotinus: "So, to this god-like man above all, who often raised himself in thought […] to the first and transcendent God. […] for his end and goal was to be united to, to approach the God who is over all things. Four times while I was with him he attained that goal, in an unspeakable (????t??) actuality and not in potency only." The uniqueness of such experiences is reflected by Plotinus in the Treatise 38 (VI, 7): "What it (i.e. the soul) speaks, then, is that, and it speaks it afterwards, and speaks it in silence, and in its happiness is not cheated in thinking that it is happy, and it does say it is happy when the body tickles it, but when it has become that which it was before, when it is fortunate”. Gnostics opponents of Plotinus describe similar experiences in their writings. In Zostrianos (NH VIII, 1) 1, 30-2,8 it says: "When I had set straight my sinless soul, then I strengthened the intellectual [...] I having done [...] grow strong in a holy spirit higher than god." Similar expressions are found in Allogenes (NH XI, 3) 50, 10-16: "And I was capable, although flesh was upon me. I heard from him (i.e. Youel) about these things and about the doctrine that is in them, since the thought which is in me distinguished the things that are beyond measure as well as the unknowable." Hence, this essay proposes to compare the mystical experiences related to Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) described whether by Plotinus or by the Gnostic authors. This analysis will highlight the common aspirations that drove both schools of thought in their search for the transcendence.

This paper investigates paragraph divisions in the Acts of the Apostles of Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus. The paper will analyse and compare the grounds for paragraph division in Acts in these three manuscripts. The motivations behind paragraph divisions will be deduced from an analysis of the start of each paragraph and categorised (into categories such as narrative shift of time, introduction to direct speech, etc.). The paper will also pay attention to the possible role of key terms in the text in eliciting paragraph divisions. The results of this investigation will be compared to previous results of a similar inquiry on paragraph division in the Acts of Codices Sinaiticus and Bezae. The paper will demonstrate that the three manuscripts under investigation shows a degree of consistency in their system of paragraph division similar to that of Codices Sinaiticus and Bezae.

The 2009 film, Shirley Adams, directed by the South African director, Oliver Hermanus, depicts Shirley as the lone caregiver to her son, a victim of gang violence on the Cape Flats (South Africa) that rendered him physically disabled and emotionally scared. The film is used as a lens to explore the intersectionality of poverty, violence, gender, class, race and disability within the South African society. The films intimate portrayal of Shirley in her efforts to care for her son leaves the viewer without any illusion of the problems facing caregivers. Shirley’s solitary effort to embody hope in a stark situation of despair is contrasted with the life giving possibilities contained within so called ‘communities of care’. The community in Exodus 1-3 that forms around Moses as identified by Feminist Biblical Scholars is used as an illuminating example. The paper explores the intertextual dialogue between two seemingly distant texts as Shirley Adams enters into creative conversation with a imaginative group of women creating a community of care around one who is helpless and vulnerable.

The story of Daniel in the lion’s den (Daniel 6) is still one of the most well-known stories in the Hebrew Bible. Both the way in which the story was visualized by the ‘Old Masters’ and contemporary depictions in thereof children’s bibles indicate how it has captivated the imagination. Also in scholarly circles the story has received considerable attention; mostly related to issues of historical and/or literary nature. Thus, it has been proposed that the story in the Hebrew Bible may be the result of a purposeful or mistaken ‘literalization’ of a Babylonian literary motif. The present paper seeks to address the issue of such a symbolic understanding of the lions in the story. However, instead of looking at a Babylonian context for a literary antecedent, it is proposed that Israel’s own literary traditions may shine some light into the dark den. A study of the often used metaphor 'teeth' especially in the Psalter, may point to a literary connection between the malicious accusations of the 'presidents and princes' (in Daniel 6) and Daniel's eventual fate of being thrown to the lions.

The Gospel of Matthew has 10 quotations from the Old Testament introduced by a formula containing the verb p??????. This paper will explore the rendering of these 10 quotations in three Syriac versions of the New Testament, namely the Peshitta and the two versions of the Old Syriac Gospels (Sinaiticus and Curetonianus). The question to be answered is the relationship between the Syriac versions to the Peshitta of the Old Testament and the Greek Gospel. In the case of the Greek, its relationship to the Hebrew and the Septuagint is also important. Matters that are important for this issue are word order, the choice of lexical items and the verbal forms employed. Not all the examples will be presented in all the detail. Matthew 2:23 will not be discussed, as the Old Testament reference is very brief and not easy to determine the exact passage.

I will first foreground my own social location as an Argentine scholar in the diaspora, a member of the Post-Global South in the Post-Global North. From this specific social location I will take a look at how the Global system has exercised violence against children. My specific focus for this presentation will be the appeal to and deployment of an early Christian text, the Gospel of Mark, and its assumed context in first century Palestine during the time of the Jewish-Roman war (66-71 CE), by means of a cultural-artistic tool, the poetry of Palestinian, Jewish and Argentine children, as a catalyst of two global systemic manifestations of violence against children: one, war and occupation; the other, marginalization and homelessness. The poems will provide the children’s experience of these manifestations. The Gospel of Mark will provide an example of how imperial and wartime violence may have affected the children of the Markan community and how this is inscribed in the story being told by the evangelist.

Should Proverbs be read as prose or poetry? Several Biblical scholars perceive the necessity of the question as to the kind of language craft one encounters in a text for the heuristic process. Since the identification of parallelism as a stereotypical communication pattern in the Biblical text by Lowth and the subsequent questioning by Kugel of the equation of poetry and parallelism and his reservations about the differentiation between prose and poetry in Biblical literature, the question as to the formal elements of Scriptural writings were brought to consideration again. Though there is a huge lack of consensus among scholars on this issue, most scholars nevertheless seem to recognise that Biblical proverbs epitomize language in an extremely condensed form. The presupposition that Proverbs may be read as poetry is supported by five suppositions that will be illustrated: 1. Parallelism as constructive device 2. The sign of the poetic function 3. Poetry: a text convention 4. A special way of imagining the world 5. Metaphoric play Being conscious of the five suppositions proposed to support the presupposition that the wise sayings in Proverbs are best read as poetry may aid the reader to savour more of the richness of the proverbs, and to delight in their wisdom.

Working within the field of environmental psychology, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan developed their Attention Restoration Theory to address the problem of directed attention fatigue. ‘Involuntary’ attention can put the voluntary or directed attention mechanism at rest. This happens markedly (but not solely) within natural settings that are both wild (e.g. reserves) and domesticated (e.g. gardens). Cognitive depletion becomes substituted with cognitive restoration and leads to a replenished state of mind so as to function effectively. Notions such as ‘being away,’ ‘“soft” fascination,’ ‘extent’ and ‘compatibility’ aptly describe the human:nature relationship, and function as descriptive properties that natural settings require to enhance the restorative experience. Shining the light of these insights onto the Song of Songs, it will be determined if this ancient book had an (intuitive) appreciation for nature’s healing/restorative powers. The focus will especially be on the natural retreats that the two young lovers more than often avail themselves of (e.g. 1:15-17; 2:8 ff.; 6:2; 6:11-12; 7:11-13; 8:5; 8:13-14). Do these retreats (unknowingly) comply with the requirements of restoration? Do the wild places, open and cultivated fields, gardens, etc., pictured in the Song, meet the properties of being away, fascination, extent and compatibility?

Several scholars have explored what amounts to a narrative approach to the analysis of variants in specific New Testament manuscripts. This paper continues that development by using a narrative approach to analyze two manuscripts, Codex Bezae (05) and Codex Petropolitanus Purpureus (022), in selected sections of text. These two test cases provide initial examples of how this approach can help explain the pattern of readings among the variants in ways that might be helpful both for evaluating a manuscript as a textual witness and for understanding the choice of variant readings as a group rather than just within individual variation units.

While the Bible is known for its positive view toward aging (Lev. 19:32): “Rise up before the white haired and honor the face of the old,” the trials and illnesses of old age are also well recorded. The most important instance of this is found in the twelfth chapter of Koheleth. There, in a series of metaphors, the author describes a variety of geriatric ailments. Since they are metaphors, though, exactly what is meant is not readily apparent. We shall examine the interpretation of these metaphors in three rabbinic texts: Koheleth Rabba, Vayikra Rabba, and the Tractate of Shabbat in the Babylonian Talmud. As a result we see not only what may be the meaning of the metaphors in Koheleth, but more certainly we see notions of geriatric decline and illness in one part of the Greco-Roman world. The second Biblical source to examine will be Leviticus 27:1-8. This somewhat innocuous source describes the financial commitment to the Sacred Precincts which accompany a person’s recitation of a formula that declares his (or her) wish to contribute a gift equal to his value. Numbers become metaphors for human worth. But the numbers are gender specific and we shall look at the way in which such values change during the life cycle according to gender. Finally, we shall discuss the rabbinic use of another metaphor, the metaphor derived from the description of Moses’ breaking of the tablets of the law in Exodus 32:19. The broken tablets become a metaphor for dementia and we shall see the significance of the fact that they, together with the unbroken tablets, were understood to be placed in the Holy Ark.

Spieckermann rightly notes that the ideas of divine absence and presence are “so comprehensive and at the same time so essential to religious perception in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East that it may provide the framework for various analyses/or models.“ Wanke’s study of the Book of Job (Praesentia Dei. Die Vorstellung von der Gegenwart Gottes im Buch Hiob, 2013) confirms this observation and exhibits the fruitfulness of exploring the theology of this book along these lines. In light of distinguishing divine absence from divine hiddenness Wanke concludes that the dialectic presentation of divine presence in the book comprises of experiencing divine hiddenness and of encountering the divine. This paper engages Wanke’s analysis in light of Terrien’s three levels of a theology of presence in the book of Job (presence beyond grasp, presence beyond time and presence beyond honor; Elusive Presence, 361-73). By taking a closer look at Job 13:13-28 in conjunction with Job 42:1-6 these approaches will be discussed. This discussion leads to the hermeneutical question whether Terrien’s thematic distinctions or Wanke’s systematic category of divine hiddenness prove helpful for tracing the ongoing dialogue on the idea of divine presence in the book of Job. By rephrasing and developing Terrien’s levels the paper asserts the need for a thematic distinction. It contributes to this discussion by testing the thesis of Job 1:6-12 as a guideline for reading the book and for framing this dialogue.

At the 20th International Aids Conference (2014) in Melbourne, Australia, young African women were identified as one of the four most vulnerable key populations to HIV. In a paper presented by South African bio-medical researchers it was argued that this key population’s vulnerability to HIV is directly related to sex with older men. ‘Sugar daddies’, older men who offer economic resources to younger women in exchange for sex, are a common feature of the South African landscape. Daily newspapers include the personal advertisements of self-designated ‘sugar daddies’ looking for young women, as well as young women looking for ‘sugar daddies’. The Provincial Minister for Health in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the epicentre of HIV in the world, has conceptualised the Sugar Daddy Campaign and has put-up more than 89 billboards across the Province warning against the dangers of cross-generational sex. This paper outlines this context and then considers how the Ujamaa Centre’s Contextual Bible Study methodology has begun to work with the book of Ruth within this context. Contextual Bible Study (CBS) intersects the critical ‘exegetical’ resources of biblical scholarship and local community-based modes of interpretation, offering a collaborative resource with which to engage contextually relevant issues. The paper reflects on initial CBS work with Ruth, drawing largely on narrative methodology, and how this work has created a safe and sacred space to talk about ‘sugar daddies’.

The origin of the enigmatic citation in 1 Corinthians 2:9 is one of the more perplexing issues in Corinthian scholarship. Countless suggestions have been made through the centuries with little certainty or agreement. The presence of the introductory formula “as it is written” has led scholars to the seemingly logical assumption that it has its origin in scripture; but as we will see, there is no passage in the LXX that directly corresponds. This absence of a clear OT source has led other scholars to suggest its origin in extra-biblical Jewish sources; but again, there is nothing that clearly corresponds. In all of this discussion, however, almost no case has been made for the possibility that Paul is citing an almost identical statement in Empedocles—one that is cited by numerous authors up to and beyond Paul’s time. In fact, the only explicit argument made regarding this (as far as I am aware) is by Conzelmann, who said that the similarity between these two passages is “of no consequence.” I disagree. In this paper, it will be shown that (1) the OT or extra-biblical Jewish sources do not provide an adequate solution to the origin of the citation in 1 Cor 2:9. It will then be argued that (2) the introductory formula “as it is written” does not a priori imply a biblical source. It will then be suggested that (3) a very similar passage in Empedocles fits very well with the immediate context of 1 Cor 2:9.

Despite the cultural critique declaring the spiritual decline in America and throughout the world, the Bible continues to exert enormous influence in the realm of film, art, and literature, and most of all popular music. Even within theological and religious environs there is a prevailing notion of a growing spiritual gap between contemporary Christianity and popular culture as it relates to interpreting the Bible. In recent years, however, the lines between Christian orthodoxy and popular culture are blurred due to the creation of a sophisticated musical movement that sees no dichotomy between sacred and secular. The emergence of sacred and secular is certainly not a new phenomenon in the study of culture, but the way in which popular music explicates complicated biblical themes or explores elaborate theological tenets such as sin, points to the reshaping of religious expression and spiritual formation in the twenty-first century. Ultimately, given the range and scope of popular music, interpreting biblical stories or elucidating theological underpinnings of sin is indeed revolutionary. As intuitive yet biblically-centered writers, musicians, and artists hone their craft in the realm of religious expression, popular music will have far reaching effects within and beyond the horizons of Christianity. Popular music, unlike other forms of music, is global in scope but personal in nature. In this paper, I will delineate the influence of the Bible in the performance of popular music. In examining, for example, such works as Carlos Santana’s aptly titled album, Supernatural, Ella Henderson’s hit single “Ghost,” Imagine Dragons “Demons,” Sting’s “If I Ever Lost My Faith in You,” Bruno Mars, “Locked out of Heaven,” and Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” I will demonstrate the overall influence the Bible exerts in popular music.

This paper will analyze the figures of Ahab and Jezebel in 1 Kings 21 through the cultural Asian stereotypes of Fu Manchu and Dragon Lady. It will demonstrate that the stereotypical depictions of the notorious royal dual of the “Naboth Vineyard affair” and of Asian American men and women were ideological constructs formed and reformed in varying ways to respond to the socio-political contexts to which they were applied. In the Persian period redaction of the story, Jezebel became the cruel mastermind behind the murder of Naboth and the confiscation of his vineyard to compensate for her husband’s impotence in obtaining it. Ahab who first offered Naboth a just and fair price for his vineyard became the whimpering child who did not get his own way in his post-exilic incarnation. Their relationship in 1 Kgs 21:1-16 became a cautionary tale, warning the returnees from Persia against marital couplings with the “peoples of the land.”

As is commonly recognized, three recurring themes stand out in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch: the call for unity within the Christian community, christologically-oriented polemic against opponents, and Ignatius’ embracing of his impending death. This paper explores these three themes in light of insights drawn from studies of narrative identity, social identity theory, and (to a lesser extent) social memory. Narratives are powerful in their potential to shape human lives, both at the individual and the group levels. To the extent that a person adopts a narrative to provide meaning to their past, present and future, it can become central to that person’s identity, so that one may speak of such a person having a “narrative identity.” Similarly, if a narrative is essential to a group’s understanding of its own existence, one may speak of such a group having a “narrative social identity.” This paper argues that Ignatius adopted the narrative of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus as the master narrative for his own personal identity. In addition, through his letters Ignatius sought by the same narrative to shape the social identity of the communities to which he wrote. The narrative of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus has the power to explain the origins of the communities to which Ignatius writes, to articulate their destiny, and to explain the current circumstances they face, including the present spectacle of the bishop of their sister churches in Asia being led in chains to Rome. Viewing the above-mentioned three themes (call for unity, christologically-oriented polemic, Ignatius’ embracing of his death) in light of these considerations, this paper shows that they can be understood as interrelated building blocks in the formation and maintenance of individual and social identity.

In Part III of The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides interprets the Job within the context of his treatment of divine providence. Maimonides' statements that Job suffers because of lack of wisdom (Guide III 22, 487), while divine providence “watches over everyone endowed with intellect proportionately to the measure of his intellect” (Guide III 51, 624), and that the highest human perfection is intellectual perfection (III 27, 511; III 54, 635), are striking. Both Job and Maimonides’s reading of it seem to suggest that there's no strict retributive justice based on human actions or moral virtues, which runs counter to ordinary or vulgar understanding of suffering and justice; in both Job and Maimonides’ interpretation, divine providence, the key for understanding human suffering, needs to be understood against the whole natural world. Such an understanding of suffering and human perfection is not alien to the Chinese intellectual tradition. Hence, Maimonides’ interpretation will be read through the lens of the texts of Zhuangzi: Master Zhuang’s detached attitude to his wife’s death, and his elaboration of the perfect human being as “he who knows the works of Heaven [nature] and the works of human” in “The Great and Venerable Teacher.”