Intertextual readings are common to Biblical interpretation. Usually, literature contemporary to the Biblical times is used to interpret the Scripture. In this paper the interpreter is trying to do a comparative critical reading on the friendship of the Disciples with Jesus in comparison to Aristotle concept of friendship. Comparative critical reading is an interpretative method which consciously compares literature with the Scripture so that the uniqueness and similarities of the Scripture are highlighted. For Aristotle the friendship is the greatest virtue and absolutely necessary in everyone's life (Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, Book VIII, 143). Aristotle believes that there are three different kinds of friendship; friendship of utility, friendship of pleasure, and perfect friendship. To a certain extent these kinds of friendships are depicted in Jesus’ disciples even after they were called to be His perfect friends. Mathew portrays disciples’ friendship with Jesus was a kind of utility which was looking for some utility and pleasure. Some were aspiring to have a better position in the Kingdom of God through Him (Matt 20:21). Others were looking for a comfortable life through him. There was at least one who was expecting to have a financial enhancement (Matt 26:15). Aristotle argues about the highest form of friendship that is a perfect friendship or complete friendship. This type of friendship is based on a person who wishes for good in him without the mind of utility and pleasure. Jesus was the true friend who wished goodness in His disciples and shown the highest virtue of love.

The Israelite (northern) origin of Deuteronomy has already been advocated by several scholars. Likewise, the Israelite (northern) origin of Genesis, with Joseph (and not Judah) presented as its ultimate positive eponymous hero, is rather evident. The question of the tribal-political origin of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers is more complicated. This paper will demonstrate that the differing images of the tribes of Ephraim and Judah in their relationships to the worship of Yahweh, as they are presented in Exodus and Numbers, strongly favour the hypothesis of the Israelite (northern) origin of Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers as well.

This paper examines the biblical and historical roots of the theology of liberation in purposively selected Pentecostal Churches (Deliverance Ministries) in contemporary Nigeria. The origin, growth, and phenomenon of liberation theology are investigated while its impact on Nigerians is evaluated. The methodology adopted consists of the critical historical analysis as well as exegesis of Luke 4:18-19, using Reader Response hermeneutical principle to investigate the contextual understanding of the passage. In addition, the participant-observation method is used in gathering first-hand information about doctrinal emphases and practices. Questionnaires are administered to elicit information on six hundred and twenty-five Pentecostals who are members of deliverance churches, at one hundred and twenty five per church. In each church fifty male adults, fifty female adults and twenty-five youths are purposively selected. In the selected Churches, twenty five of the men and twenty five of the women are educated to allow for comparison, while all the youths are regular church attendants. Furthermore, four Pastors and leaders of each of the selected Pentecostal churches are interviewed. Secondary data is gathered from relevant books, church bulletin, magazines commentaries, dictionaries, learned journals and the internet. The data obtained are analysed, using hermeneutical theory. The result shows that the Old Testament focused on the political liberation of the Israeli nation, the New Testament is more interested in the liberation from sin. It reveals that the leaders of the selected Nigerian Pentecostal Churches had abandoned the holistic interpretation of the New Testament meaning of liberation in relation to the Old Testament messianic prophecies. The paper concludes that the leaders of the Nigerian Pentecostal Churches placed greater emphasis on the problems of their members more than biblical injunctions.

The Laws of Ur-Nammu, Laws of Eshnunna, Code of Hammurapi, Middle Assyrian Laws, and Hittite Laws all have some reference to the prohibition against adultery. These laws are generally casuistic and cover a wide range of socio-legal matters. Weinfeld has pointed out that the ‘negative confessions’ in chapter 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mesopotamian incantation “Šurpu” both include adultery (among murder, robbery, false oaths, talebearing, hypocrisy, wrongful acquisition, counterfeit weights and measures, boundary encroachment and failure to clothe the naked). The Hebrew Bible is no exception. This paper examines the prohibition against adultery in the prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea over against the prohibitive or vetative negative commandment in the Decalogue. In Jer 29: 23, adultery is tied to political insurrection and marital infidelity. In Ezek 23:37 adultery is used as judgment against those who offered up their children and thus shed blood. Especially problematic is Hosea 3 (c.f. Jer 5:7-8) if the woman that Hosea is commissioned to go and love is a married woman (not Gomer). Hosea 4:2 echoes the phrase that blood shed or some form of sacrifice is affixed to adultery. Bosman, Philips, McKeating, and others have done careful studies but the prohibition goes beyond religious infidelity against Yahweh. A careful rereading and re-analysis suggest that in prophetic literature, there is often a coupling of adultery with some other infraction. Indeed in the Decalogue, the prohibition against adultery is set between murder and theft, suggesting that family law is of importance and value. But perhaps, even the ordering may suggest that adultery leads to other crimes like bloodshed, perhaps echoing David’s adultery, murder, and theft.

1 Kings 8:41-43 describes the nokrî as one who is “not of your people Israel”; “comes from a distant land” (cf. Josh 9:6,9); to “pray toward this house”. They are non-Israelites who travel occasionally or reside abroad. Many scholars have long suggested that this mentioning of nokrî is so unusual within Deuteronomistic literature that this passage may possibly be part of a later redaction during the post-exilic period. But how could this favourable view of non-Israelites sit comfortably within Deuteronomistic theology? I argue that the changing role of the temple in the post-exilic context may have been a factor in the inclusion of this nokrî text. I want to test the hypothesis that the association of King Solomon’s prayer and a temple open to “all” mirrors a strong political movement supporting the inclusion of “others” despite the Deuteronomistic History’s restricted boundaries. As a Samoan, I will conclude this paper with an interpretation of how the coming of Christianity as a foreign tradition to Samoa has over the years redefined the role of the matai (chief) system in Samoan society.

Visual perception is one of the main themes of Genesis, particularly in characterisations of the deity, divine messengers and humanity. The problematic nature of mediated, interpreted visual perception is illustrated by Genesis 18.16-19.38; the story of Abraham, Lot, Lot’s wife and her people of Sodom. The representation of others in this text can lead to interpretations which essentialize persons and landscapes. The pursuit of security through seeing and demand for knowledge is a feature of cultural ideology in the text which legitimises violence, much like Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV’s) use visual technology, particularly within West and Central Asia, controlled by human agency, to determine enemies or excuse ‘collateral damage’. In such texts of violence, how can the desire for security determine guilt and innocence, and the fate of the earth? Lot’s wife is the cipher which calls bible reading communities to stand in solidarity with suffering in the human and earth community caused by the fantasy of ultimate security. The remembrance of Abraham and hospitality causes the deity to express tumult and regret for the general pursuit of epistemological certainty at the cost of the earth and human life. The unspoken sin of Sodom and their outcry are invitations for the reader to wrestle with justice, empathy and the representation of others.

The ritual regulations for a wife suspected of adultery (Num 5:11-31) and the Hittite Instructions for Priests and Temple Officials (CTH 264) are notable in that both texts mention trial by ordeal as a means to resolve an “unknown” case involving an accused suspect. Regrettably, biblical scholarship since Milgrom’s treatise on the Hittite sacrilege has not paid much attention to the nature of the Hittite legal proceedings in CTH 264 in view of the priestly laws. In this paper, I argue that the ritual prescriptions in CTH 264 illuminate a significant aspect of the legal assumptions underlying the case of the Sotah in Numbers 5:11-31, the only full-fledged account of trial by ordeal in the OT. In both the biblical and the Hittite texts, the conceptual overlap of the stated conditions concerning the accuser and the suspect, of the notion of the concealment, and of the priestly mediation through a potion ordeal are noteworthy. On the other hand, the divergence between the Hittite and the biblical instructions may unveil something distinctive about the priestly legal outlook. In particular, I submit that in Numbers 5:31 the phrase “bearing one’s punishment” (tissa’ ’et-‘awônah) is a theologically/ideologically significant term that betrays the priestly legislator’s legal rationale. No mortal will be able to evade the legal liability under the jurisprudence of YHWH. In the Hittite case, by contrast, a suspect who deliberately concealed the case could technically emerge from the ordeal without injury. In the priestly perspective, such a legal outlet conceivable in the polytheistic world is inadmissible: YHWH, the only God, will assure that the culprit be accountable for having perpetrated the divine injunction. Finally, a comparison of the trial by ordeal in both traditions reveals a rather coherent ritual logic in the legal case which entails binary outcomes.

Direct references to baptism in First Corinthians should not be underestimated. Paul uses the word ßapt??? (baptizõ) eleven times alone in first Corinthians, which included references to the literal rite of baptism and its metaphorical uses (e.g., 1 Cor 6:11). Paul’s use of baptism reflects the importance of the rite among the first Christians in Corinth whose members include Jews and Greeks (also Romans), from different ethnic groups and various religious background, and also slaves and free (rich and poor) from different social levels. With this background, Apostle Paul radically instructs, “we were all baptized into one body.” Hence, this work first of all, attempts to explain why and how a right understanding of baptism was important among the first Christians in Corinth. To accomplish this, I will briefly trace the social significance of washing-initiations/baptism in the Greco-Roman world. Secondly, I will identify the similarities and divergences between washing-initiations/baptism and Christian baptism in Corinth, and briefly discuss baptism in selected passages from First Corinthians. Finally, I will explore the social significance of baptism in 1 Corinthians 12:13 in its first century CE context and today.

Myanmar is a multi-religious country and its citizens are wrestling for decades on religious conflict and rivalry across the nation. Different religions claim that they are “pure” and antipathize others. Religion-based social institutions generally target to look after the same religious person or who likely to convert. Yet, there are unending abuses and human rights violation among women (widows), children (orphans), handicapped and minorities (religions and ethnics). They are in need of care without partiality. Within the context of James 1:27, the first readers were living in religious, pluralistic, and multicultural society in the Mediterranean world. In this text, James encourages the diaspora Jewish Christians to maintain their identity as “pure” by looking after the marginalized in their society especially widows and orphans. Interestingly, James did not limit looking after these marginalized only to Christians; hence, they were responsible to look after insiders and outsiders in the context. He additionally warned not to be stained from the world. In this passage, orphans and widows are the most marginalized and vulnerable group in the society. In particular, the act of ?p?s??pt?µa? (to look upon in order to help or to benefit, have a care for, provide for) to the marginalized is considered as pure and undefiled piety. First, this work will serve to understand the act of looking after orphans and widows in the socio-religious context of the Mediterranean world. Secondly, I will explore ministering to the widows and orphans in the light of the diaspora Jewish context. Finally, I will deal with why James considers looking after the marginalized as an act of pure spirituality, precisely help interpret this text in context and apply this in Myanmar context. Especially, this paper will suggest when and how to minister to the marginalized in our multi-religious contexts.

When the Spaniards entered the so-called New World, they made use of the law collections of the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the Deuteronomic Code (Dt 12-26), the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20-23), and the Holiness Code (Lev 17-27). Interpreting these collections through a European lens, the Spanish conquistadores and colonizers employed them as a major source for the evaluation and extirpation of those indigenous customs they regarded as evil and the re-organization of post-conquest indigenous societies. In effect, these collections functioned as important tools for conquest and colonization. However, there were other Spaniards who assumed solidarity with the indigenous whom they regarded as oppressed by European conquest and colonization. Influenced by their commitment to the indigenous and by their exposure to pre-Columbian indigenous law (such as the oral and written law of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas) these Spaniards --- including the lawyer and bishop Vasco de Quiroga (1470? - 1565); the defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566); the chronicler and ethnographer Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590); and others --- adopted a different view of the law collections of the Hebrew Scriptures. In our paper we will explain this different view and its implications for categorizing these laws into types, understanding the knowledge and observance of the laws by the ancient Jewish people, and above all their liberative potential.

In many cases, first names in the Bible appear with a theophoric suffix (Nehemiah and Ishmael, for instance). Biblical names with no theophoric suffix, such as Yaakov and Yitzhak, can be found in Mari (Tell Hariri) scripts, with a theophoric suffix (Yaakovel, Yitzhakel). We can assume that in the Bible they had the theophoric suffix at first, and throughout time the suffix has fallen. There are also names with a social meaning (such as Avraham – "the father of many peoples" ab hamon goyiim[according to the Bible itself], or Zebulun –"This time my husband will treat me with honor yizbeleni, because I have borne him six sons. So she named him Zebulun), and there are names that demonstrate the character of the person (such as Yaakov the Lier – Esau said, "Isn't he rightly named Jacob Ya'aqob? He has deceived me yaaqbeni these two times") or explain a certain act ("After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel eqeb so he was named Jacob Ya'aqob"). The Biblical names, which are often names that were common around the ancient east, went through changes and adaptations into a different culture and a different language in the New Testament and the Quran, but basically remained the same names. This lecture will explore the changes of the Biblical names in the Jewish society that lived under Islamic influences in the Middle-Ages, according to the Genizah Letters.

Digital guides and resources abound for manuscript studies, especially regarding the canonical texts. But this is far less the case with non-canonical texts. Regarding Christian or so-called New Testament apocrypha, a digital rebirth of Geerard’s Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamentum would go a long way to bring awareness to texts and traditions whose popularity in earlier generations has often faded into neglect in modern scholarship. This paper will describe the initial planning and prototyping of such a resource, an e-Clavis for Christian Apocrpha conceived and designed by Mark Bilby, Tony Burke, and Bradley Rice. This resource is now sponsored and hosted on the NASSCAL (North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature) website: http://www.nasscal.com/. The presentation will also explore and explain the structure and maintenance of the eClavis, and also invite session participants to sign up as contributors.

Recent fictional treatments of David reflect the desire (often manifest in scholarly David-biographies) to invoke the true King obscured by the biblical text. Two twentieth-century fictional David “autobiographies,” in particular, present themselves as revelatory tell-alls willing to move beyond the traditional account to present a new,‘real’ David. Yet though Carlo Coccioli’s Mémoires du Roi David (1976) and Joseph Heller’s God Knows (1984) rewrite the story from David’s highly idiosyncratic and blasphemous first-person perspective, they do not attempt to solve the puzzle by taking David out of his text, but rather by actively and productively reinscribing him in the biblical narrative. This paper will explore the ways these novels draw on the biblical material to produce a philological fictional style and to thematize David’s status as a figure caught in his text. Coccioli and Heller’s works balance updated treatments of David’s character (as a mémoirist like Coccioli himself searching for dialogue with his God, and as a parodic version of a post-war Jewish-American writer) with strange, unceasing attention to the ‘original’ text in its Masoretic and KJV manifestations. In both novels, David’s self-exploration is enacted through his own detailed attention to the canonical text that has constituted him: David rewrites David, but he does so with intense philological care. Here, David is at once a palimpsestic body marked by centuries of rewriting and a fraught participant in the activity of adaption. For these novelists, the biblical king and his text provide an opportunity to figure—in a single character--a tense juxtaposition of older models of authorial authority and historical unveiling with postmodern intertextual proliferation and pastiche.

How do we translate Ho Amnos tou Theou in a context where there is no concept of a sheep, lamb, or goat? How do we communicate the Christology of the Lamb of God? Is Christianity or christology translatable? If so, has it been translated according to the intention of the writer of the gospel of John? Decisions in translation related to the concept of the Lamb of God have impacted the christological understanding of the Gospel of John and the nature of Jesus over several decades of contextualization and translation in Indonesia. Indonesia is a nation of many people groups, many languages, and many cultures, some of which are very different from others. How the essence of the original Greek is translated demonstrates much about the missiological motives and principles of the translator as well as the christological assumptions understood in the Gospel of John, particularly John 1:29. Should the concept of the Lamb, and all the Old Testament background assumed with that identity, be lost in translation simply because there is no such animal as a lamb in the receiving context? This author thinks not, based on a proper understanding of the Yohannine conception of that term, and his conception of the identity of Jesus as the Ho Amnos tou Theou. Therefore translators must be wary of allowing the context dictate the translation to the detriment of the essential meaning while also seeking to properly contextualize so that the essential meaning is still communicated.

This paper will articulate the possibilities of Derridean deconstruction in relating Theology and Scripture. Christology as a case study will be used. This project is twofold. First, we will consider the affective and performative function of onto-theological messianic predictions and fulfillment announcements of scripture, looking for possibilities and gaps in the text where a (Kristevan) symbolic referentiality may no longer be useful. This involves looking at interpretations of messianisms from 'traditional' theologies and recent Narrative Theologies (Green, Rowe). Second, we will use Derrida's concept of a messianism-to-come to consider meaning production within narrative of Luke-Acts, as a microcosm of the New Testament. The main thrust of this project will show that the failure and absence of a messiah is the location for understanding Luke’s ‘Christ.’ As such, the failure of the Christ, part of the point of Luke-Acts, is to create a negative space where the kerygma can be preached. While this may be counter-intuitive, it is precisely this negative space that allows diaspora communities to continue to proclaim Jesus of Nazareth as Christ.

Two strands are followed in this presentation: feminist interpretations, for instance by Nancy Lee, Mandolfo and Li Zhe; and a seminar session with graduate students at Tel Aviv University (2013-14). Feminist scholars have found a distinct female voice in Lamentations that is in dialogue with the narrator's voice. In our class, we found that the Scroll can be read as if it contained more than two voices and a silent god. The question that arises is, therefore, can speaking roles within it can be assigned to multiple speakers, reading it as a polyphony rather as a dialogue, or even as a cultic performance, much like some psalms? I believe this is a possibility at least for chapters 1-4, although this would present new problems for defining the place of chapter 5 in the Scroll.

Banquets are cross-culture social, ritualistic and religious events. In written and iconographic records of ancient Near East cultures, we find descriptions of banquets as feasting celebrations and religious ceremonies relating mainly to the male sphere. Women were typically excluded from these events. There are, however, descriptions of women participating in public events, such as victory celebrations and mourning ceremonies. There is only scarce evidence of banquets designated only for women, such as the ceremonies portrayed on metal belts from Urartu. The description of Vashti’s women’s banquet in the Book of Esther is a rare account of an organized women’s ceremonial activity. This is a solitary story in the Bible recounting an event intended only for, and celebrated by, women. During the course of Jewish history, no such women’s celebrations are noted with the exception of the “Henna engagement” ceremony celebrated in North African and Yemenite Jewish communities. Over past generations, Jewish women have looked for new ways to create for themselves ceremonies and rituals of religious nature in an answer to the orthodox tendency to exclude and segregate women from a large part of religious ceremonies. The purpose of this paper is to present a totally new contemporary phenomenon of the women’s banquet: the “dough offering ceremony.” This banquet, which has become very popular in recent years, includes communal dough preparation, praying, blessings, eating, singing and dancing. Although very little is known about Vashti’s banquet and other ancient Near Eastern women’s banquets, there are some parallel themes between these banquets and the newly come “dough offering ceremony.” This paper will include a comparative analysis examining these parallel themes.

Right in the middle of the intensive comic action of Ghostbusters (1984), we encounter a relaxed scene, which associate producer Joe Medjuck described as one that “didn’t have any big laughs in it but … offered a possible explanation as to why the city was suddenly plagued by ghosts.” Here, a theological discussion is provoked by Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore asking whether his fellow Ray Stantz believes in God. Zeddemore then proceeds and asks Stantz what the Bible says about the last days. Stantz replies with a rather convincing recitation of Revelation 6:12, but then tries to recap to his “scientist” position by noting that every religion has a myth about the end times. Zeddemore, notably offended by the word “myth,” retorts by asking Stantz “has it ever occurred to you that maybe the reason we‘ve been so busy lately is because the dead have been rising from the graves?” Later in the plot, when NYC mayor has to decide whether to trust the Ghostbusters, the latter quickly understand that they have the support of the New York Archbishop and continue warning the mayor from a catastrophe of “biblical proportion.” It then only takes a discreet nod from the archbishop for the mayor to order that Walter Peck, the hated Environmental Protection Agency’s representative, will be removed immediately from his office, and to offer his full support to the Ghostbusters. This paper will trace the ways the bible is used in this film to create an all too familiar – yet surprising in this context – alliance between the (Republican) private sector and the church vis a vis “big government,” especially when the latter is fueled by environmental concerns. On this reading, the Reaganite movie can be seen as partly prefiguring the climate change debate and its religious implications in 21st century U.S.A.

Natural disasters often visit the Philippines and their impact is staggering and traumatic. Disasters bring destruction, displacement, death, pain, and prolonged suffering. Like all other countries hit by disasters, Philippines groans and yet hopes for her deliverance. Reflecting from a socio-psychological perspective, V. Villaroman-Bautista writes, “like all other kinds of extreme human experiences, even disasters have their silver linings. While they bring suffering, they also become catalyst for marshaling the resources and altruistic instincts of Filipinos.” From the perspective of doing ‘everyday theology’, K. J. Vanhoozer rightly remarks that theology and understanding (a grasp of what is going on in ordinary situations and why) are short-circuited if we fail to discern “how our faith is affected by the world we live in” and “how we are to embody our faith in shapes of everyday life.” Indeed, a responsible theology is attained mainly when the Christian faith is interpreted in conscious relationship to the fundamental “groanings” of human life and the rest of creation. Hence, the theological and interpretive task in the Philippine setting lies in the direction of interpreting the human meaning (without ignoring the divine) and social content of the Christian faith. With the series of “groanings” in Romans 8 reconnecting earth, humanity, and the Spirit, Paul constructs a vision of hope that awaits the emergence of a liberator who would conquer the ultimate enemy. The significance of this account will be seen against the background of the Filipinos’ expectation of hope and deliverance which offers the need to embrace certain transcendence over the worst of circumstances. The message of hope is no less essential for communities than it is for individuals and the rest of creation, and it does not ignore the reality of pain and suffering, but confronts them in the light of the … [TRUNCATED]

Biblical and systematic theology stand in tension as fields of study that are constructively related in theory but strictly segregated in practice. In the first place, the nature of biblical theology seems to mandate that the concerns of systematic theology exert no conscious influence upon the work of biblical theologians. Furthermore, as a rule, biblical theologies—especially those firmly grounded in the Old Testament—only tangentially influence the work of systematicians. Thus endures a stubborn, seemingly intractable impasse in academic theology. Those who nonetheless seek a voice for biblical theology in the broader world of theological reflection have an unlikely ally in Paul van Imschoot, a nearly-forgotten pre-Vatican II Catholic biblical theologian. Van Imschoot's productive labors transgress received assumptions regarding the relationship of biblical and systematic theology and beckon present theologians to return to the grounding of Scripture for the formation of doctrine.

In the so-called appendices to the book of Judges (ch. 17–18; 19–21), the monarchic refrain (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) situates the two stories within the domain of the monarchy: "In those days, when there was no king in Israel, every man did what was right in his own eyes." With the addition of this refrain, the stories become stylized histories meant to illustrate to the audience the necessity of a king. I argue, however, that this refrain was not original, but rather an attempt on the part of an editor to reframe the appendices to serve as political propaganda. When we read the stories without the refrain, their primary purposes become clear: the first serves as a foundational story recounting the migration of the Danites, while the second depicts the success of the Israelite society to overcome social problems without the regulating influence of the king. Thus, the monarchic refrain changes both the function and meaning of the narratives, influencing how both lay-readers and scholars have interpreted these unique tales throughout the centuries.

This paper focuses on a theological significance of Paul’s ministry of remembering the poor in Jerusalem and how that is related to the pursuit of justice in the Torah. The first part of this paper traces how remembering the poor was at the center of Paul’s ministry from the beginning to the end of his career and highlights its theological significance as a means to foster the unity between his Gentile converts and Jewish Christians because the latter would consider remembering the poor as the best proof of the Gentile Christians’ covenant faithfulness. The rest of the paper traces the pursuit of justice in the Torah in its cultural, historical milieu and the importance of remembering the poor in the pursuit, and establishes how Paul’s ministry of remembering the poor functioned as the litmus test of covenant faithfulness of his Gentile converts. In so doing, how Deuteronomy’s theological and structural emphasis falls on the “poor tithe” or remembering the poor in Deuteronomy 26:12-15 as Moses’s last instruction and the litmus test of covenant faithfulness will be highlighted.

The session will introduce the aims and objectives of the British Academy funded project (2013-16) which explored the development of ethnographic techniques for researching the role of context for interpretation of the Bible by ordinary readers in various settings in India. Chalcraft (who was the Principal Investigator) will provide an introduction to the project, and also, at the close, draw some generalisations re method and substantive findings. Two members of the team (there were 5 case studies in all) will report on their experiences and findings. One case study concerns the role of the Bible for the identity of auto-rickshaw drivers in Chennai; the other case study reports on Dalit (Madiga) encounters with the Bible in a rural village in Andhra Pradesh, where there are low levels of literacy. The first is presented by Arren Bennet Lawrence (Chennai) and the second by Jeeva Kumar Ravela (UTC Bangalore), who are both members of SABS (and not SBL)

Violent clashes, or the so-called "Fishball Revolution", broke out between police and protestors on the streets of Mong Kok, the shopping heart of Hong Kong, at the start (i.e. Feb 8) of Chinese Lunar New Year 2016. Multitudinous young localists went to the wall for unlicensed food stalls, which sold fishballs on skewers. However, the Hong Kong government condemned the ferocious events that unfolded in Mong Kok as "riots" and thus those young activists were further marginalized. Afterwards, there are numerous debates on youth "violence" among Hongkongers. Many Hong Kong churches condemned youth violence uncritically. Was "violence" a taboo in the Urchristentum? This paper is to illuminate different social voices dialoguing with each other within the Apocalypse of John. The approach adopted is a postcolonial contextual interpretation.

The concept of the ?erem, the total destruction described mostly in Deuteronomy, was never carried out, and this law seems to be a wishful thinking. It has been widely discussed among scholars focusing on the ethical aspect (Hoffman, 1999), on the historical development (Weinfeld, 1993), on 1 Kings 20:42 (Stern, 1990), or on the just war (Good, 1985). In Dtn 7:2, we find a typical ?erem command, “and when YHWH your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.” According to Hoffman, “the ?erem is a concept typical only of some passages in Deuteronomy and Joshua; it is not a presupposition of the entire Deuteronomistic work” (201). I would like to pursue the concept of the ?erem in the Book of Judges. Although it does not appear literally in Judges, the Dtr shows in Judges why Israel failed to accomplish the law of the ?erem. More precisely, Israel could not expel all the Canaanites from the land and she had to live with them in the land. This coexistence was the beginning of all the evildoing of Israel, that is, worshipping other gods and forsaking YHWH. The reason why Judges 1 records the Canaanites whom Israel did not expel from the land, is to indicate that those remained Canaanites caused Israel to follow other gods. The weakened ?erem command would be removing the people from the land. In my opinion, removing of the people from one place is removing of their gods from there. In other words, if there are some people in a city, there are gods. Getting rid of the indigenous people in Canaan was indispensable for worshipping YHWH alone. [TRUNCATED]

It is true that intercultural biblical exegesis has not received due recognition by traditional biblical scholarship, mainly because of its non-theoretical approach to biblical studies. The accusation of certain western scholars, that intercultural interpretations are “creative, but not scientific”, shows how ‘western’ New Testament scholarship, with all its newer approaches, is still reluctant to go beyond the historical-critical method. As a result, biblical hermeneutics remains till this day a domain of European and US-American biblical academy. This paper intends to spearhead the search for a theoretical basis for intercultural biblical hermeneutics in the field of reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte). In the first section, I seek to examine how postcolonial/postmodern thought has influenced studies on reception history. Here, I seek to conceptualize reception history by defining and determining its trajectories, taking into account, the works of relevant postmodern scientists, like, for instance, Derrida, Bhaba, Chakraborty and Spivak, and enquire whether or not their theoretical patterns entail intercultural biblical hermeneutics. Secondly, I wish to engage with a critical analysis of some of the known contextual approaches of the Bible, such as that of Ched Myers, Sugirtharajah, Rensberger, Bonino, Schreiter, etc. Here, I wish to evaluate how these authors perceived ‘western’ scholarship and what alternative hermeneutical models they proposed. Simultaneously, I wish to examine, why these attempts could not succeed in putting an end to “western” monopoly in the field of biblical hermeneutics. Is it because there are not sufficient alternative approaches? Or, are concrete local contexts different from what gets portrayed? Why does the general proclivity of contextual interpretations continue to serve to satisfy the intellectual appetite of the “western” audience? Finally, I wish to conceptualize de facto Asian hermeneutics along with contemporary “western” biblical scholarship. [TRUNCATED]

This paper summarizes my contribution to The Textual History of the Bible (eds. Emmanuel Tov, Matthias Henze, and Russell Fuller; 3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, in progress). As area editor for the section on the Prayer of Manasseh in vol. 2, Deutero-Canonical Scriptures (ed. Matthias Henze), I have assembled an international team of nine experts to compile and assess the manuscript witnesses for all extant versions of this ancient penitential psalm. In this paper I synthesize the results of this comprehensive assemblage of textual data. After surveying the current state of scholarly opinion on the origins and affinities of the Prayer, I report on the Greek, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Armenian, Slavonic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and Arabic textual traditions, with attention to the sources, character, and text-critical value of each. I conclude by identifying some lingering issues and avenues for further research on the Prayer of Manasseh.

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Flavius Josephus records the speeches by four Jewish leaders given in the height of the Jewish revolt against Rome: Agrippa II, the Roman client king of Jewish descent, spoke before the agitated crowd in Jerusalem on the eve of the war (JW 2.345-401). His long speech contours around the theme of political theology, examining whether the Roman dominance should be taken to show the divine favor toward Rome and the Jewish resistance to it could amount to rebellion against God. The speech given by Ananus the High Priest (JW 4.162-92) is full of rhetorical drum-beating for standing up against “the impious” Romans. Josephus, now a translator for the Roman army, himself offers a word of counsel to his compatriots who were sieged for a long time (JW 5.362-419). Representing the Roman interests at the moment, Josephus plays the role of appeaser. The rebel leaders Eleazar put the final speech into the ears of the rebels at Masada (JW 7.323-881). Facing a complete loss and submission to the Romans, Eleazar advises the entire community of Jews to die free instead of living in slavery. These four speeches dramatize the various sentiments among Jews at a catastrophic demise of their nation. I will also touch on issue of political theology in the Korean church with a particular attention to the Christian reactions and responses to the incident of Ferry Sewol, a major disaster that ripped the hearts of Koreans in April 16, 2014. After analyzing and comparing both formal and thematic features of them, we will explore the issue of the literary convention of speech in the Hellenistic Jewish historiography.

This study deals with Pauline themes of ‘the strong’ and ‘the weak’ regarding the eating of food sacrificed to idols. The strong were those who insisted that they were free to eat idol-meat. The weak were those who were afraid of eating idol meat because they imagined that this food retained the harmful influence of pagan deities. The claim of the strong was, “We know that we all possess knowledge” (1 Cor 8:1). Paul’s counter-claim was, however, “but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Cor 10:20). My project will argue that, contrary to most interpretations, Paul’s intention in 1 Cor 8-10 is for the strong and the weak not to participate in any kind of activities within an idolatrous temple and not to eat any food sacrificed to idols. Even more strikingly, I will also argue that this ‘idolatrous food’ behavior should be read against the backdrop of popular Greco-Roman practices of the cult of the dead. Surprisingly, while 1 Cor 8-10 have been much explored, virtually no one has yet to link the cult of the dead with the concept of pagan sacrifices in 1 Corinthians. By linking the interpretation of this passage to cutting edge research on the cult of the dead in Classics, Anthropology, and Religious Studies, this project will constitute an important step forward in our understanding of the social and religious locations of early Christianity.

The canonical shape of the Book of Job moves from abundant life to abundant life. Prose narratives of Job's blessed life frame the book at the beginning and the end. Death, however, and deep reflection on death occupy the poetic core of the book. Thus the structure of the Book of Job suggests that death somehow functions as a pathway to life. Figuring out exactly how, taking into account the other great binary of piety and sin, is one of the great interpretative challenges of Job. In this presentation, I will examine Job's dialectical relationship with death, focusing primarily on his first (chap. 3) and final (chap. 31) speeches in the poetic core, and argue that, while Job initially wants to have always already been dead, he ultimate articulates a willingness to die as a means of affirming his life—and the possibility of human integrity. He wills, wants to die at the beginning but at the end is willing to die (he places himself under a solemn curse in declaring his innocence) that he might, vindicated before God in a legal encounter, live more fully as a righteous man. In short, Job matures from a potential suicide to a ready martyr. The thesis of the presentation, therefore, disagrees with D. Mathewson's thorough and insightful treatment of "death" in Job (Death and Survival in the Book of Job, 2006), in which Mathewson argues that the movement from chaps. 1 to 31 is one of symbolic centering to decentering and back again. Job does not move toward death, then away, but through it toward life.

This paper describes and presents the findings of a Contextual Bible Study (CBS) conducted within a residential rehabilitation unit for American military veterans struggling with addiction. Participants of an existing resident-led bible study were invited to engage in a two-day Contextual Bible Study where they would interpret a biblical text without their usual help from devotional guides or commentaries. The primary purpose of this project was to develop a commentary on John 2:1-12 out of the life experiences and perspectives of recovering addicts, free from scholarly imposition. The resulting project both challenges and builds upon the theories and methods of Gerald O. West, as well as those conversant with West's framework for studying the bible with 'ordinary readers.' Particular attention is placed on how a shift towards a lectio divina form of reading (away from the traditional CBS mode of asking guiding questions and providing a text’s socio-historical background in order to assist the ‘untrained readers’) allowed the veterans to overcome an impasse in trying to understand the difficult passage. This paper not only unpacks the veterans’ readings of the Wedding at Cana, but it reflects on how the practice of lectio divina was able to serve as a useful tool for helping these ‘ordinary readers’ connect with the text, while still achieving West’s aim of empowering and giving voice to the marginalized.

This paper seeks to clarify the significance of Paul’s personal stories in 1:13-2:16. Following the rubrics in the rhetorical manuals of Quintilian, Han Dieter Betz identified in his monumental commentary this story section as a narratio in a forensic letter. But since the publication of his commentary, this theory has come under heavy attack from various quarters, and it is no longer tenable to see 1:13-2:15 as a narratio. But, setting aside Betz’s theory, there is currently no viable explanation why there is such a long biographical section in the letter. This paper locates the meaning of the biographical section in the inclusio of 1:12 and 2:16. In a narratio proper, 1:12 would have served as the causa for 1:13-2:15, a section that provides the necessary factual proofs for the claim. This paper argues that this approach does not tell the complete story. Forming an inclusio around the story section, Gal 1:12 and 2:16 provide clues on how to understand the stories. Accordingly, Gal 2:16 is not simply a propositio that identifies the causa for the probatio that follows. It serves as the conclusion to the story section, shedding light on its meaning. The intent of this paper is to re-examine 1:13-2:15 in the light of the inclusio of 1:12-2:16 and argue that the stories are illustrations from Paul’s personal experience that clarify the difficult phrases “by faith” and “by the works of the law.”

Over the past several decades, there emerges an obvious gap in the field of biblical interpretation: entrenched in the legacy of Enlightenment and Rationalism, the hermeneutical enterprise in Euro-American biblical scholarship of historical criticism in particular has become over obsessed with such concepts as objectivity, neutrality, and universality, which results in an elusive discipline isolated from everyday life; on the other pole, under the influence of poststructuralism, postcolonialism and liberation theories, there arise new hermeneutical trends as vernacular criticism or marginal interpretation mainly from the formerly colonized in the Third World or the marginalized communities in the cosmopolis as resistant counterparts against traditional mainstream hegemonic agendas. The vernacular or marginal trends are largely context-specific, cultural-bound, identity-oriented, which emphasize the reclamation of subjectivity and self-determination. This paper attempts to clarify that contrapuntal reading can be an effective strategy and a first step for both sides in order to bridge the gap and build connections and create mutual enrichment. The first part describe the gap mainly created by historical criticism, liberation hermeneutics and vernacular hermeneutics;t he second part highlights R. S. Sugirtharajah’s contribution in introducing postcolonialism and contrapuntal reading from Said into biblical interpretation, which is followed by the third part with a very brief description of Said’s main points on this reading strategy and a very rough sketch of Sugirtharajah’s application of this new reading method to the birth stories of two religious founders,Siddhartha the Buddha, and Jesus Christ. The paper ends with further emphasis on the constructive traits of this creative hermeneutical approach.

This paper will read the story of the sinful woman in Luke 7:36–50 from a postcolonial feminist perspective showing the imperial and androcentric aspects embedded in previous interpretations of the story. On the basis of the two-source theory, we notice that the author of Luke used the story of the woman in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 14:3–9) for the purpose of Lukan Jesus’s soteriological lesson, without fully following the direction given by Jesus in Mark 14:9. Both the historical audience including the disciples and the Gospel writers delivered and used her story for their own purpose without deeply understanding her being and doing. Furthermore, the original purpose of her deeds has never been taken into the consideration of readers throughout the history of interpretation, consciously or unconsciously. The stories of the sinful woman in the Gospels commonly reflect the fact that she crossed borders, which challenges the imperial value given a woman. Her crossing borders made the woman nameless, and Luke named her a sinner. In comparison with the versions of Mark and John, the Lukan version more explicitly reflects the context that women were interpreted and remembered only from the androcentric perspective. Such a historical phenomenon also appeared in the globalized context such as Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, where many marriage migrants crossed borders but did not have their own voice. They were objectified, living in countries as a solution in support of government policies regarding population. While not attempting to understand their true identity and the meaning of their tears, we interpret marriage migrants from the perspective imposed by governments and androcentric interest. Marriage migrants need to function as subjects in order to do remembrance of themselves, by standing against every effort to objectify them.

My aim is to try to answer this basic question: in what way does Numbers 35:9-34 contribute to the law governing the “cities of refuge”, already present in the pentateuchal traditions of Exodus 21:12-14, Deuteronomy 19:1-13, and Joshua 20:1-9? Is it a mere repetition of the same legislation, perhaps an expansion and enhancement with new details, or rather, is it a reformulation of the previous legislative tradition, marking a real advancement in biblical law? I will try to approach these questions starting from the interpretation of one of the key terms of the pericope – "bishgagah" – and its specific function within the passage, in order to develop some hypotheses concerning the composition of the law in Numbers 35:9-34.

One day the LORD and two angels call with Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Who are the two angels? In the Old Testament Michael has a special responsibility for the nation of Israel (see Daniel 10. 21, Daniel 12. 1), while in the New Testament Gabriel is the angel who announces miraculous births (see Luke 1. 13, Luke 1. 35). Are the two angels of Genesis 18 and Genesis 19 Michael and Gabriel? Anyone who wants to answer that question in a scholarly manner will eschew pious presumption, and engage in the most meticulous possible study of the Hebrew text. If you mean to attend this presentation, please allow me to commit an outrage by setting you two pieces of homework in advance. First, consider the use of pronouns (rather than proper nouns) in Genesis 18. 1-15. Secondly, consider the rôle of the word resh-gimel-lamedh-yodh-kaph-mem ( = your feet) in Genesis 18. 4 and Genesis 19. 2. When the Hebrew alphabet is written out on a single line, and when the six letters resh, gimel, lamedh, yodh, kaph, and mem are highlighted, a palindromic 2-1-6-4-6-1-2 pattern emerges (two letters, GIMEL, six letters, YODH KAPH LAMEDH MEM, six letters, RESH, two letters). Does that pattern represent more than a mere accident? I’ll be very grateful if you help me to explicate the pertinent pieces of text in Seoul.

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the problem of religious experience in ancient sources and examine the possibilities and challenges of studying them, with special attention to the use of cognitive science approaches and theories of embodiment. After a brief discussion of the phenomenology of subjective experience, I will introduce a model of religious experience in the context of cognitive, cultural, and social factors. The second part of the paper will deal with theories of embodied cognition and their potential to shed new light on religious expirences in ancient sources. In the final part of the paper, some aspects of such experiences will be addressed against the backdrop of neuroscientific evidence and embodied cognition.

This paper investigates the functions of "lego (say) melding" and "lego coordination" in the New Testament and concludes with a proposal concerning their possible historical contribution to the development of Greek verbs of communication. The introductory discussions establish the characteristics of lego melding and coordination and the licensing properties of New Testament verbs of communication. The discussion then resolves the various functions of lego melding and coordination in the New Testament. The concluding discussion uses comparisons to the Septuagint to propose the possible contributions of ???? melding and coordination to the development of Greek verbs of communication.

The Qur’an and the Book of Mormon are the foundational texts of Islam and Mormonism, respectively. Because they emerged in radically different contexts—the Qur’an in 7th century Arabia, the Book of Mormon in 19th century New England—it is no surprise that they are very different kinds of texts in terms of genre (one is narrative, the other is not), language, and theology. And yet beneath these very significant differences, I will argue, lies a deep commonality that warrants comparative examination. It is that both texts see themselves as extensions of and correctives to the Judeo-Christian tradition and are each self-consciously in dialogue with the Bible. It is this explicit tie that each makes for itself to the biblical tradition that allows us to discern categories that can anchor meaningful comparisons between them. In my paper, I will demonstrate how two such categories—eschatology and the nature and role of Jesus/Isa?— might be investigated comparatively with these two books of scripture. While proper framing is crucial, I will observe that identifying and deploying shared categories is not enough by itself to protect the comparison from becoming hegemonic on one side or the other. With care, however, it is possible to engage in some kinds of comparison that draw challenging and meaningful insights into both traditions without doing violence to either.

When Empire constructs roads into other countries to steal, by brute force if necessary, raw materials and cheap labor, why should we be surprised that natives take those same roads following everything that has been stolen from them. To prevent this migration, walls are built to keep them out. Some resist creating borders, calling for the biblical concept of hospitality instead. But hospitality ignores the causes of migration. This paper, using Central America as a case study, will explore how territorial conquest and the expansion of neoliberalism makes the biblical call for hospitality a misguiding approach to the current U.S. immigration crises.

Jesus may be desirable, but not all Jesuses are beneficial. This paper unapologetically rejects the Eurocentric biblical Jesus for the Hispanic Jesús constructed when the Bible is read with Latino/a eyes. The paper argues that there is no one true Jesus that can be objectively known; there only exists subjective biblical interpretations of Jesus. The social, cultural, political, and global economic power of Euroamericans allows them to impose their subjective interpretation of Jesus as the objective Truth (with a capital “T”) for everyone else, including Latino/as. What would happen if rather than denying that we do indeed create Jesus in our own image, we embrace this methodology? What if we radically employ a hermeneutical suspicion to Christology – not simply to debunk the normative Eurocentric understanding of Jesus, but to construct a new Jesús? All too often, remembering Jesus as articulated within traditional Eurocentric Christian institutions tend to justify, legitimize, and normalize oppression. Hispanics need to be careful about uncritically adopting a Eurocentric biblical understanding of Jesus that might be detrimental to their marginalized social location. For those in power to remain in power, a constructed Jesus is needed that either explicitly or implicitly maintains the status quo. Rejecting Jesus for Jesús requires rooting him within the Hispanic culture, specifically moving away from the concept of hope and embracing what I’m calling a theology of hopelessness. The paper argues hope is a middle-class privilege that prevents radical praxis that could lead toward a more just society. The paper will focus on a forsaken and betrayed Jesús who exists in solidarity with the disenfranchised who live in the midst of Holy Saturday, knowing only the brutality of Good Friday with faint anticipation of a resurrection Sunday. To stand in solidarity with the hopeless creates a critique of salvation history.

The phrase “itching ears” occurs in the great majority of modern translations of 2 Tim 4:3 and dates back at least as far as the Vulgate. According to this interpretation of the Greek text, (Pseudo-)Paul claims that “the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears (?????µe??? t?? ?????), will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires” (NRSV). In its article on ?????, the lexicon BDAG mentions that another possible translation is “to have one’s ear tickled,” but offers no grounds to adjudicate between these two possible translations. In the same article, BDAG claims that the Greek phrase is a “fig[ure] of curiosity,” a suggestion repeated by many commentators. The present paper demonstrates that “tickling the ears” is an idiom that occurs quite frequently in first- and second-century literature (Seneca, Plutarch, Lucian, etc.). These authors’ use of the idiom suggests, first, that the translation “to have one’s ear tickled” is to be preferred in the case of 2 Tim 4:3, and, second, that the idiom primarily refers to the experience of pleasure rather than curiosity. The paper concludes by arguing that this translation and understanding of ?????µe??? t?? ????? fits the context of Second Timothy better than the alternatives commonly proposed in commentaries and lexicons.

Major dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew (BDB, HALOT, Qaddari) use the book of Ben Sira as supporting evidence for their interpretations of the two verbs mistolel (Exod. 9:17) and terassedun (Ps. 68:17), and of the form leshikhno (Deut. 12:5). In my paper, I shall reexamine the evidence cited from Ben Sira, in order to determine whether or not the book of Ben Sira it does indeed support the interpretation offered for those biblical words. As for the first verb, mistolel, which appears twice in Ben Sira (39:24; 40:28), the meaning of this verb in Ben Sira does indeed support the suggested meaning of this verb in Biblical Hebrew. This comparison also teaches that the diverse nuances of Heb. s-l-l apparently derive from homonymy rather than polysemy as asserted in most dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew. As for the second verb, terassedun, which appears once in Ben Sira (14:22), it seems that the meaning of this verb in Ben Sira does not support the suggested meaning of the word in Biblical Hebrew. Concerning the third form, leshikhno, which the dictionaries analyze either as an infinitive construct of the Qal conjugation with a third person masculine singular pronominal suffix, or as a segholate noun – shekhen it is, maybe, possible to find supporting evidence in Ben Sira for the second suggestion. Indeed, the noun sheken appears once in Ben Sira.

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 allow to apply a different concept of Dalila. Other amazing views 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 focuses on Latin, High German and Early New High German literature and will explore different conceptions of Dalila by presenting reflections of this discussion in bible or chronicle illuminations of medieval and early modern times.

Among ancient Christian writers, perhaps no figure was as prolific, or as influential, as Evagrius of Pontus on the topic of the inner struggle of the Christian against sinful thoughts. While earlier Christians had already written of the demonic sources of lust, gluttony, greed, and other sinful thoughts, Evagrius both expanded and elaborated this account, describing the dangers of listlessness, anger, and even grief – all of which he linked to demonic forces. Evagrius was deeply concerned with how the Christian, especially the monk, could combat these forces by employing a psychological approach that at once externalized the sources of evil thoughts and used Scripture as a tool to combat them. This paper focuses on Evagrius’ description of grief and its remedies. I read Evagrius’ advice regarding the treatment of grief alongside modern theories of clinical psychology, especially in the area of narrative therapy pioneered by Michael White and David Epston. I argue that Evagrius’ techniques, which help the Christian overcome grief by situating him or her within triumphal biblical narratives, function as a specifically Christian application of narrative therapy, and as such are still valuable today as a way to find healing in biblical texts.

Building on my previous work concerning Paul’s witness to formative early Christian instruction in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians and Romans (in my Paul’s Witness to Formative Early Christian Instruction [WUNT II/365]), in this paper I examine Galatians for the information it yields about Paul’s initial instruction among the Galatian believers. Methodologically, the investigation proceeds by attending to three types of appeal to presumed knowledge among his readers: (1) Explicit reminders about his teaching, (2) direct appeals to knowledge, and (3) implicit appeals to knowledge. This typology provides a firm framework with explicit references that can be then filled out by the other appeals to knowledge, constituting a reconstruction of Paul’s teaching (insofar as the information of Galatians permits it) which can be correlated with my previous work. It includes information on the identity of God and his relation to other gods, the person of Jesus, the activity of the Spirit, angels and a concern for moral transformation (among other things). Moreover, the analysis of Galatians pushes beyond reconstructing Paul’s initial teaching and engages the question of how his teaching related to that of other early Christian missionaries.

A study on Daniel 7 - 10, I Enoch 37-71, the Synoptics in the light of John, 11Q13Mel, and Qur'an 2:97-8 and 66:4. J. J. Collins telescopes into each other Michael and the Son of Man in Daniel. John’s Gospel critiques the Synoptics as wrong about the Son of Man, and the Qur’anic memory has an innovative perspective. The DSS do not name the Son of Man but allude to a Virtual Son of Man. This concept has a long and crucial role in the Judaism, culminating in Messianic ideations in Second Temple Judaism. Thus, as is true of so many other aspects of the Hebrew Bible narrative, it echoes in Qur’an. This paper intends to demonstrate the unity and diversity of the concept, and its role in the three traditions.

The story in 1 Kings 13 tells us about a man of God who criticises King Jeroboam I but is later punished himself with death for disobeying God’s orders on instigation of a lying prophet. This lying prophet is the only person, beside the man of God, who’s grave is not desecrated much later by the pious king Josiah, as we are told in the report of that king’s cultic reform in 2 Kings 23,15-17. When I study these two chapters with my students they are stupefied: how can such a story be part of the Bible, a story that rewards lying, that goes so far that it even causes death to a very respected man of God? This paper will explore the dynamics in these chapters focusing on who has authority and who has not, and who looses his authority as the story develops, and why that is (necessary) so? Finally, the paper will try to identify who the true leader (if any) there is in the story of 1 Kings 13; 2 Kings 23,15-17.

Luke’s dependency on 1 Samuel 1-3 for its opening annunciation episodes has long been observed. Noted, too, is the gospel’s general thrust to portray the early Christian movement as divinely initiated and driven and as compatible with the values of the Roman Empire. What is the affect/effect, however, when the story of women and men overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit is patterned upon a story of determined human initiative and revolutionary political vision? How is meaning produced when readers and listeners (ancient and modern) are called upon to hold two stories in their heads simultaneously—a dominant narrative in which characters are caught up in events beyond their control and an underlying “sub-version” in which human agency and defiant insight are paramount? How does such double-scoped narrative function to form, bolster, protect, question, and open up the social identity of the listening community?

Bryson was a Neopythagorean philosopher who wrote a work in Greek on household management titled Oikonomikos Logos (Management of the Estate). Stobaeus preserves two extracts of this treatise, which was used by Musonius Rufus and probably also by both Dio Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria. Although H. Thesleff dated Bryson to the early Hellenistic period (third century BCE), S. Swain has argued convincingly that Bryson was much more likely active in the mid first century CE. The treatise remains almost entirely unknown to both classicists and New Testament scholars because it survives chiefly in an Arabic translation, though there are also a Hebrew version and a Latin epitome. The work, which focuses on the economy and the family, has four main parts: property, slaves, the wife, and children. Attention in the paper will be given to all four parts, but especially to the first part (property and its preservation). (For Project 1: The Ancient Economy)

Earliest pieces of the Aramaic part of the book of Daniel (chs. 2, 4, and 5) as well as Qumran Enochic writings – Aramaic fragments of the Ethiopic book of Enoch (1 Enoch) and further Aramaic fragments containing traditions related with this book - reflect a familiarity of the authors with Mesopotamian lore, religious beliefs, literary themes, and scientific methods. However, hermeneutics of these texts are different from their Mesopotamian examples, and reflect a deep thought of Mesopotamian culture. The paper aims at presenting selected examples of motifs with a Mesopotamian background (e.g. the figures of the Watchers, revelatory forms and techniques), and scrutinizing the means of cultural transfer, and the role of Aramaic as a vehicle of transmission.

In this paper, I will look into the meaning of “nafs” (self) linguistically comparing its usage between the Bible and the Qur’an. I will also look at the meaning of death and life in Sufi exegesis of the Qur’an. I argue that a Sufi interpretation does not necessarily reflect a symbolic or metaphoric understanding of death and life, but can also be understood literally, if the “nafs” is understood as a soul and not necessarily as a joined single entity of soul and body. When discussing death, the Qur’an specifically states that every “nafs” (soul) tastes death. Nonetheless, the term “nafs” is sometimes understood physically. This is not unique to the Qur’an, as the same term “nephesh” is also used in the Hebrew Bible. James Barr, in The Semantics of Biblical Language, compares the difference of the Greek usage of diverse words for person, body, and soul, while Hebrew uses a single word to describe them all as “nephesh.” Barr suggests that the Hebrews did not always consider “nephesh” as a soul separate from the body, but as both together acting as a joined living being. The Qur’an sometimes refers to a metaphoric understanding of spiritual death (e.g. Q. 16:21, 35:22). In Q. 35:22, the Qur’an refers to those who do not accept its message as dead in their graves. The interpretation of Q. 16:21 is disputed as whether the Qur’an is describing idols as dead and would be resurrected, or the unbelievers are “spiritually” dead and would be resurrected. The Qur’an refers to martyrs as living (Q. 2:154, 3:169), though obviously cannot be bodily alive. Hence, one must infer that the “life” the Qur’an is describing is spiritual in nature, and perhaps also death is, therefore, understood spiritually.

Jerome cultivated a complex relationship with the Septuagint. He strove to move the Church away from the LXX, attacking the traditional arguments establishing the authority of the Greek text, such as its use by the apostles. Jerome insisted that the apostles rather used the Hebrew text. However, Jerome continued to make use of the LXX until the end of his life, citing it even in his very last biblical commentaries and sometimes siding with its text against the Hebrew. Though he insisted that his translation iuxta Hebraeos revealed the Christian sense of the Old Testament better than did the LXX, because, unlike the Seventy, he lived after Christ and thus saw the fulfillment of the prophecies, nevertheless he often based his spiritual interpretation of the Hebrew prophets on the Greek translation. He also frequently equivocated on his contention that the apostles did not use the LXX. Scholars have often been concerned with understanding Jerome’s magnification of the Hebraica veritas and the uniqueness of this position within the fourth-century church. The present paper turns the tables, seeking to understand how the LXX features in Jerome’s developing thoughts about the best text of the Old Testament. We will find that Jerome argued forcefully for the primacy of the Hebrew text for Christians, but he allowed the LXX an important role in God’s economy of salvation and sometimes found in it a preferable text.

This paper provides a synthetic overview of the main conclusions of my current research project on giants in ancient Jewish literature. I am preparing to write the final chapter of a book on this topic. Writing this paper will help me do that. The paper will examine the problem of defining a giant and it will identify major motifs of the giants tradition, such as antediluvian violence, exegesis of Genesis 6, and the destruction of the giants in the flood. The essay will also explore the diversity of accounts regarding the giants. Some texts, for example, assert that at least some giants survived the flood (e.g., Pseudo-Eupolemus). The Qumran Book of Giants, a text that remains relatively unexplored, offers an account of the giants that develops that of the Book of the Watchers while being nevertheless quite different from it. The Book of Giants, for example, focuses much more on the giants’ receiving visions than their violent activities in comparison to Watchers. The paper will also speculate on reasons for the popularity of stories involving the giants in the late Second Temple period. This is a complex issue that involves topics such as an increased interest in primordial history during the Hellenistic age, the ability of the giants to serve as a historical example of God’s punishment of the wicked, and the cross-cultural ability of ‘monsters’ to help establish cultural norms by providing shocking portraits of creatures who transgress these boundaries. I have not submitted this proposal to any other group.

This paper takes a new look at 4Q339, the “List of False Prophets”, as an example of a compilation list: a list created by gathering information from various places in scripture on a specific subject. The “List of False Prophets” will serve as a starting point for re-examining the issue of compilation by lists and the function of compilation as a form of Biblical exegesis. Building upon studies of lists and anthologies of Biblical scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g. Shaye J.D. Cohen [2000; 2001], Armin Lange [2010] and Shani Tzoref [2012]), this paper will compare and contrast examples from the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with other selected texts contemporary to them. Thus 4Q339 will be investigated and placed within its immediate context and the larger literary world of Jewish writing of the Hellenistic era.

The major challenge that the world encounters today is the increasing amount of refugees. As per the recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, released in 2014 there are almost 60 million refugees around the globe. That is to say one in every 122 people has become a refugee in one way or the other (www.theatlantic.com). Nations across the globe have witnessed a sudden increase in the number of refugees – some are welcomed while some are despised, some are forced to move out while some move away with the hope of better opportunities, safety and security. The increase in the number of refugees in recent times has been an area of huge debate that requires serious consideration and deliberation. A search for biblical context and perspective on the issue of refugees points out to the prominence it secured in the entirety of the Old and New Testaments as the journey of refugees appears to be a never ending phenomena. The Deuteronomic creed is one such example in which the Israelites affirmed their identity as aliens, elaborately illustrating the harsh, demanding and depriving experiences that were an integral part of refugees. A. P. Nirmal while explaining the Deuteronomic Creed from dalit perspectives elucidates a parallel to the Dalits where a people who were “no people” were called out and made “God’s people.” This essay deals with a comparative study that attempts to point out to the similarities that are innate in the biblical context and the contemporary refugee crisis surging across the nations. A contextual interpretation will be brought in which the Dalit interpretative method has added great significance and relevance to the study. This is a reader response method in which the meaning emerges in the process of a dialogue between the text and the reader. TRUNCATED

Funerary rituals were incredibly significant to various well-defined cultures and religions. They are very important to Pre-Islamic Arabians, to Christians, as well as to the Muslims. Related to this, Egyptian Christian/Muslim (ECM) burial rituals are notably unique. The questions need to be asked: What are the beliefs regarding death and burial can be traced from these societies, (Pre-Islamic Arabia, the Qur?anic time, and ECM)? To what extent has the burial ceremony of the Pre-Islamic period impacted that of the Qur?anic eon? Also, to what level has the Qur?an especially the Life of Muhammad or to the period instantaneously after his death have had a great significant on the ECM burial rituals? Do contemporary Egyptian burial rites trace its roots to ancient Egyptian and Pre-Islamic burial customs or to Qur’anic and Hadithic sources?

Angel Gabriel (Jibril) is a highly significant figure in Islam. He is mentioned three times in the Qur’an, and is identified in the tradition as the agent through whom the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad. Gabriel is also mentioned as taking an active role in other events in the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the emerging Muslim community, such as the opening of Muhammad’s breast, the first revelation, the night journey and ascent to heaven, and the battle of Badr. He is also mentioned as interacting with other prophetic figures, such as Eve and Adam; and also as defeating Satan on a number of occasions. It is thus interesting to note the form of interaction that Gabriel has with prophetic figures, according to the Muslim tradition, is some times rather similar to his interactions with Satan. He is often described as being quite violent (e.g., kicking Muhammad or shaking him to point of suffocation). Thus, while being God’s emissary to humans, and prophets in particular, Gabriel is also portrayed as a figure to be afraid of — not just by God’s enemy, but also by God’s chosen ones. This paper will examine Gabriel’s interactions with humans and spiritual beings, and will ponder upon the reasoning of his portrayal in such a complex manner.

Psalms 93-100 (as well as Ps 47) represent a web of ritual texts announcing Yhwh’s universal kingship. These psalms expatiate on two themes that seem contradictory, the commemoration of key events of Israel’s past (in both “mythic” and “real” time) as touchstones for future events, and the expectation of universal human praise of Yhwh’s wondrous deeds. That is, both the particulars of Israel’s culture of memory and the attitudes of those outside that culture concern the psalmists as they construct a liturgical world in which Yhwh’s kingship is enacted. This essay moves from a philological analysis of the psalms to interaction with Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of memory and forgetting as habits. Divine kingship is a performative act on the part of both Yhwh and Yhwh’s human and nonhuman subjects. The simultaneous cultivation of memory and imagination (fueled by “forgetting” counter-narratives of the nations’ hostility) in these liturgical texts contributes to their meaning in a liturgical setting and in the literary one of the Psalter itself.

To tell a story well, storytellers in the ancient Mediterranean employed rhetorical features to enhance its oral performance and its impact upon the intended audience. Those who wrote stories often structured the written form of the narrative so that it could be delivered orally more effectively. As Joanna Dewey has put it, ancient rhetors “wrote for the ears”. If it is accurate to say that many stories were composed during this period for an oral performance, did the author of Luke’s Gospel adopt this strategy when he wrote parables? It is frequently recognized that speeches attributed to Peter, Stephen, and Paul in Luke-Acts are presented as rhetorically sophisticated. But are Jesus’s parables in Luke’s Gospel employing common rhetorical devices which Luke intended to assist in their effective oral delivery within the church? In other words, do Lukan parables show that the author was attuned to the potential for Jesus’ stories to be heard, remembered, and repeated as an effective oral experience? Several recent works on Jesus’s parables have challenged readers to hear Jesus’s parables as a first century audience would have, but few commentaries address whether these parables contain rhetorical patterning or features that would have directed their subsequent oral performance. This paper will argue that parables in Luke do have commonly expected rhetorical patterns and show the effect Christian rhetors would have had while performing those parables for ancient ears.

1 Clement repeatedly associates the Spirit with the “scriptures,” which are true and holy, since they are given through the Holy Spirit (13.4; 45.2; 56.3). Nevertheless, in 1 Clement, the Spirit’s confluence with sacred texts is more variegated than simply the divine origination of the Hebrew Scriptures. First, the Spirit’s association extends beyond the point of writing, since he continues to speak and work through “that which is written” (13.1; 22.1; 42.3). Second, the Spirit’s ministry is also associated with texts beyond the Hebrew Scriptures, as similar language and formulae are used of 1 Corinthians, unknown texts, and 1 Clement itself (47.1-3; 59.1; 63.2; cf. 42.4-5). Third, the Spirit’s ministry is associated with nascent trinitarian language that contextually leads into an elevation of "the words of our Lord Jesus" (46.6-8; 58.2; cf. 22.1). The proper responses to the words of God include diligent study, remembrance, and obedience (13.1; 19.1; 45.2; 46.7; 53.1; 62.3). These relevant data provide a new framework for gleaning exegetical and theological insights from 1 Clement 13.1-14.1, which merges together “this commandment” from the Hebrew Scriptures with “these precepts” remembered from the Lord Jesus, describing them all as “holy words” to be followed in “obedience to God.” This functional equivalence is important for investigations of early Christian theology, particularly for understanding the trajectories of authoritative texts.

What does the celebration of “toil/labor” entail for people under occupation? and for people facing climate injustice? This presentation offers a reading of Eccl. 3:9-13 in response to Genesis 3 and in the interest of West Papua, located at the meeting point of the Asia-Pasifika.

Among various stories narrated in the book of Acts, hekatontarchas appears most in the story of the voyage in Acts 27 (vv.1, 6, 11, 31, 43). It characterizes the identity of Julius the Augustan Cohort. In this paper, I will argue that Luke intends to delineate the changes of the identity of hekatontarchas throughout the voyage. The changes of the space and time in each incident whenever hekatontarchas is mentioned will be thoroughly studied, with the comparison of the changes of the identity hekatontarchas in relation to Paul and the whole people group in the crew. As a result, it is shown that space, place and character change simultaneously so that the social identity of the hekatontarchas moves from outsiders of “we” towards this group in the narrative. In addition to the consideration of the social network and values of the first readers of the book of Acts, it is argued that Luke intends to teach the readers, who are properly social superiors, how to witness Christ to the Roman officials. This is not a story telling the end of the world has been reached by the gospel. On the contrary, it is a demonstration which teaches the first readers to take up the baton of being Christ’s witness and continue this mission. While the ending of the Gospel of Luke is Jesus’ commission to the disciples, the voyage is Luke’s commission of preaching the gospel to the first readers.

Jeremiah is a troubling figure for Koreans. His call for submission to Babylon, regardless of its theological orientation, reminds a strikingly familiar rhetoric in the time of Japanese colonial era. Several Christian leaders found their ways to take the side of the empire. Frequently featuring in pro-Japanese propaganda, they seduced people in the name of God, and one of the dominant rhetoric was that to submit to Japan is the will of God. Against this backdrop, a distressing question is inevitable: was Jeremiah among traitors? The pro-Japanese collaborators, or traitors, posed a major internal obstacle to Korean resistance against Japanese colonialism, and the failure to purge them in the post-colonial era left serious grudge in Korean people. Many of the pro-Japanese collaborators are believed to return to power or retain their status and possession. The trauma continues even today, as Koreans take extremely emotional stance to the suspected pro-Japanese collaborators and their descendants. To be accused as such borders a societal death sentence. Biblical scholars have frequently noted Jeremiah’s “pro-Babylonian” attitudes. However, they failed to reckon with the serious implications such notion may entail. What does it really mean for God’s prophet to be bear such a stigma? How did Jeremiah overcome it? This paper attempts to clarify the complex nature of Jeremiah’s mission by rereading it in the context of Korean colonial experience. It will also discuss broader issues of how to read a religious text when it conflicts with national interests.

The widespread misuse of the term intertextuality in “the banal sense of ‘study of sources’” has led Julia Kristeva to disfavor the very term she had coined. Given the overwhelming misuse of it in biblical studies despite the repeated cautions and criticisms since the 1990s (Semeia 69/70; Philips; Snyman; Hatina), another plea to stop the misuse is required. This study’s criticisms highlight, first, the violent grafting of the postmodern concept of intertextuality onto the modern conception of exegesis (cf. Moore and Sherwood); second, the mistreatment of intertextuality as a prescriptive concept rather than descriptive; and third, the limited conception of text as written material. This paper further critiques the attempts to appropriate the concept of intertextuality by modernizing it (Moyise; Alkier; Gheorghita). The present study then explores the benefits of employing Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality: it expands the scope of intertextual inquiry; it facilitates a more nuanced and holistic approach to a term within a work and between works; by extension, it enables to map out a term’s non-linear history in relation to other terms, overcoming the binary conception of texts as either connected or disconnected to one another. As a test case, the title “the King of the Jews” in the Gospel of Mark and its transpositions in other Gospels and modern scholarly commentaries are examined. Although there is no exact “intertext” of that title in the pre-Markan Jewish writings, Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality bids us consider history and society as part of the title’s intertextuality. It is precisely its socio-political context that constitutes the unique semantic space of the title in Mark. The transpositions of the title in other Gospels are clearly observable. For example, the Fourth Gospel’s infamous condemnation of “the Jews” can affect the semantic space of the title in this Gospel.

In order to discern the development of the reception history of ideas about the apostle Peter in the Eastern Mediterranean world, this paper examines several Syriac, Arabic, Georgian, and Armenian apocryphal texts as well as apocryphal traditions embedded in manuscripts that support canonical and more traditional ecclesial interests. While some of the material has been edited, but is accessible only with difficulty, other parts of the dossier that is being assembled for this study consist of heretofore unedited texts in ancient manuscripts. In these witnesses, the head of Jesus’ apostles emerges as having been endowed with ascetic and priestly authority, the power to lead, as well as superior spiritual power in the service of society and family life.

Since a long time theologians have interpreted the maternity law from a viewpoint of discriminatory against women. The purpose of my paper is to change this point of view. Lev. 12:1-8 is the maternity law about woman's bleeding after childbirth. I will interpret this law from a feminist perspective. In the maternity law, we can find the love of God to protect a woman in childbirth. Lev. 12:2-5: 2 "A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. In Lev. 12:1-8, despite using the term "unclean", the "maternity law" has consideration for a woman in childbirth to recover her condition from childbirth so that she can return to everyday life with a healthy body. The fact that a woman giving birth to a daughter is designated as unclean for a longer time 80 days than 40 days after giving birth to a son does not come from a discriminatory viewpoint, but from God"s love to give her longer time to recover her health. Because a woman giving birth to a daughter in a patriarchal society has more stress than giving birth to a son and needs more time to recover her health as v.5 says.

Philippians is one of the important Pauline letters that reveal Paul’s understanding of and practices for Christian formation. In this letter Paul presents God as the one who initiates and continues to work for the Christian formation process of Christ-believers in Philippi (1:6; 2:13) and Jesus Christ as the paradigm of their Christian formation (2:6-11; cf. also 3:10, 20-21). Paul mentions the Spirit three times in the letter (1:19; 2:1; 3:3). It is, however, not so clear what the Spirit does for Christian formation. This paper will examine Paul’s references to the Spirit in Philippians and attempt to explicate the role of the Spirit in the Christian formation process as Paul understands.

Considering that the original meaning of Shalom is “wholeness,” the peace of Shalom comes from this “wholeness.” In this paper, I will investigate the Chronicler’s post-exilic period in light of Shalom. That is, I will explore the wholeness of the Chronicler’s post-exilic era. For this purpose, I will first examine the twelve occurrences of Shalom to see if they shed some light on the wholeness of the time period. Then I will investigate the composition of Chronicles, because the Chronicler’s composition reflects the post-exilic atmosphere. The two major subjects in the composition of Chronicles are the temple and the Davidic kingdom. It is revealed in Chronicles that post-exilic Israel was a temple-centered community through the following factors: the central place and the detailed genealogy of Levi; the description of David and Solomon as the preparer and the completer of the temple construction respectively; and the emphasis on the temple in the Chronicler’s own record (Sondergut). However, the Davidic kingdom was not re-established in the Chronicler’s time. It will be shown that the Chronicler’s aspiration for the restoration of the Davidic kingdom is betrayed through the following elements: the place and the length of Judah’s genealogy; the Chronicler’s jumping into the David narrative via a short Saul narrative omitting the important subjects such as the Exodus, the Sinai Covenant and the Conquest; and the unfolding of the history of Israel through the kingdom of Judah. If the temple is prominent because of the temple-centered Israelite society, then the Davidic kingdom is emphasized because of its absence in the post-exilic Israel. In this vein, the post-exilic Israelite community, which fulfilled the first half of shalom by rebuilding the temple, longed for the fulfilling of the other half of shalom by a restoration of the Davidic dynasty.

The Philistines boasted a reputation as being “soothsayers” in antiquity, at least according to the Bible. But what meaning is embedded in the word “soothsayers” and what can we understand, if anything, about Philistine religion that they warranted such an epithet? In 2002, a repository pit consisting of thousands of vestiges of ritual objects, namely cultic stands, was unearthed from Yavneh, Israel. Abundant scholarly conjecture has focused on the possible functions of these cultic stands, but the exact function continues to remain nebulous. This paper proposes the hypotheses that: 1) Yavneh was a pilgrimage site dedicated to a goddess (Ptgyh or Asherah) where supplicants journeyed to seek her prophetic guidance via an incense-burning ritual. The burning of intoxicating incense likely facilitated prophesying methods, meriting the Philistine’s sobriquet as “soothsayers.” The Hebrew word utilized for “soothsayers” derives from the word for clouds, possibly reflecting the incense clouds that developed during the divinatory process; 2) The iconography, materiality, and ritual uses of the cultic stands were influenced by a myriad of cultures. Conversely, the Philistines also impacted surrounding nationalities. Particularly relevant, is the passage in Chapter 44 of The Book of Jeremiah that rebukes the Israelites for burning incense to a foreign goddess, possibly the Philistine's goddess, who was revered through incense burning; and 3) The cultic stands were interred as votive offerings to the goddess subsequent to their span of service. The research focuses on contextualization of the geographical, historical, and orthographic orientation of Yavneh; interpreting the symbolism of the stands’ iconography; delineating the rationales behind the stands’ posited functions; and exploring the significance of the ceremonial burial of ritual items. This research concludes that the stands likely contributed to the “soothsayer” appellation of the Philistines.

Rashbam's Commentary on the Torah is crammed with quotations of verses, helping to explain one text on the basis of others. When Rashbam explains a certain verse, he quotes other biblical verses which, to his view, offer an exegetical contribution to our understanding of it. The enlistment of verses from the entire Bible for the purposes of his commentary reflects Rashbam's view that the biblical text must be understood on his own terms, without recourse to external references. Not all of his references and quotations are of the same type. At the beginning of the lecture, the instances where Rashbam quotes verses in the course of his (Torah) commentary are divided into four main groups. One interesting category includes instances where the verse that is cited adds some new factual datum that was not previously known to us. The additional information sheds new light on the events or the details described in the verse being studied. To Rashbam's view, without the contribution of the verse that is quoted, it would be impossible to understand the text in question. Citations of this sort are referred to as "retrospection", and the crux of my lecture is devoted to a review of examples of this phenomenon. The principle of "retrospection" is one of the literary devises utilized by the biblical narrative. At the end of the lecture we discuss weather Rashbam employs this device out of literary awareness, or weather he was altogether unaware of the existence of this principle. My conclusion is that the exposure of this of this aspect of Rashbam's commentary on the Torah contributes to our understanding of this overall approach, mentioned above, and indicates sensitivity towards a literary principle that was developed extensively only in later generations

In the Bible Michael appears as intermediary between the divine and human realms four times, all late. In Dan 10:13,21 and 12:1, identified as a prince, Michael assists Daniel against the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and is the protector of Daniel’s people. In the New Testament Jude 9 recalls an older tradition in which archangel Michael contends with the devil and disputes over Moses’ body. In Rev 12:7 Michael and his angels fight and defeat the dragon and his angels. These accounts find roots in Israel’s long and complex theological evolution. Remnants within Israel’s scriptures reflect the ancient Levant’s pantheistic worldview in which elyon had been father of all the gods, including Israel’s God (Ps 82:1,6). When elyon apportioned the lands and peoples among his divine sons and daughters Jacob’s descendants were allotted to yhwh (Deut 32:8). As Israel’s experiential interpretations of the heavenly realm evolved to seeing their God as superior to all other gods (see for example, Exod 18:10), and then to their God as the one and only God (for example, Isa 44:6) yhwh’s nature become increasingly understood as transcendent, confined to the heavenly realm. Accompanying this evolving monotheism and understanding of yhwh’s otherness in Israel’s scriptures there is a growing compulsion to posit intermediate beings as yhwh’s messengers for communicating in the human realm, and as yhwh’s agents executing his will in that realm. In narrative texts scattered throughout Israel’s scriptures an intermediary, usually an “angel” (ml’k) functions as an independent agent but with yhwh’s power inacting yhwh’s will on earth. Such agent references include the death of Egypt’s firstborn (Exod 12:23), Israel’s exodus from Egypt (Num 20:16), the promised conquest of the land (Exod 23:20-28; 33:2), Balaam’s encounter with an armed angel (Num 22:22-35), Joshua’s encounter with the commander of [ABSTRACT TRUNCATED]

Many scholars assert that the plagues narrative in the book of Exodus has a distinct literary pattern, like 3+3+3+1. They divide the plagues into three groups and consider the final one, the death of the first-born, as a ‘climax.’ However, they ignore the function of Exod 7:8-13 in the plagues narrative, namely the incident that Aaron’s rod became a serpent. In the Hebrew Bible, there are so many words mentioning snakes or serpents. Among these words, we can find two words in the book of Exodus, tannîn and na?aš. Unlike other passages, the author uses the word, tannîn, in Exod 7:8-13. I think it is the author’s intention for emphasizing this as the first plague of the narrative, because tannîn has more powerful meaning than na?aš. Also, if the serpent is considered as the first plague, we can find the new way of interpreting the plagues narrative. Why does the author use the word, tannîn, for the term of the serpent in Exod 7:8-13? What is the author’s intention in positioning the serpent as the first plague? In answering these questions, I will first search tannîn’s meaning in the Hebrew Bible, and search other words which mean snakes or serpents. Secondly, I will look for a similar or paralleled story to the incident of the serpent in the Hebrew Bible for supporting my interpretation about this incident in Exod 7. Thirdly, I will explain the reason why the plague of the serpent must be considered as the first plague in the narrative.

The cosmology reflected in Genesis 1 reflects the Priestly authors’ particular view in the socio-political context of the late Babylonian exile and early Persian rule. How did the Priestly authors reconsider the interrelation between the ritual and the world in the exilic and post-exilic period? This paper discusses it in relation to the accounts including the notion of cosmology in Zuo Zhuan (e.g., Duke Zhao, Twenty-ninth year; Twenty-fifth year; Twenty-sixth year; Duke Wen, Fifth year). Zuo Zhuan is usually dated to around 5th century BCE in China, and has many accounts including the notion of cosmology. While there are historical records about the astronomic phenomena, the interest of the authors was also not in the pure knowledge of the cosmos. What the authors concerned about is the interrelation between the ritual and the world from the view of the cosmos. I shall read Genesis 1 through their similarities and differences, describing how the ritual and the world were interrelated in Genesis 1 while Jerusalem and the Temple were lost.

This paper traces out some of the ways in which masculinity is constituted and performed in the discourse of 1 Corinthians. With the use of SRI as an interpretive analytics combined with a gender-critical hermeneutical optic and using rhetography and rhetology as important analytical tools as articulated by SRI, this paper demonstrates that a large component of the argumentation in 1 Corinthians creates a primarily masculine picture and discursive practice. This type of normative and normalising masculine engendering is operative in the text and the discourse replicates hegemonic gendered structurings and machinations from the broader social and cultural environment of that milieu. As a result Christian bodies are scripted to perform according to the dominant cultural protocols and engendering praxes. In this regard the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians may be viewed as a text that functions as discourse in the making and sustaining of gendered and ideological normativities that continue to structure gendered bodies and bodiliness. It should be kept in mind that the structuredness of habitus came into being as the product of reiteration and sedimenting, and its dismantling similarly will come about as a result of reiteration.

Most every Bible and most New Testament textbooks have maps of Paul’s journeys that visualize the growth of Christianity as following the footsteps of a heroic Paul founding communities across the Mediterranean. But as Jonathan Z. Smith insisted decades ago: map is not territory. This paper examines the ideological and epistemological power of map-making with specific attention to ancient maps and their connection to empire building. I consider the ways that Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians constructs a mental map of the eastern Mediterranean and places himself and the community on it, representing himself as a heroic traveler and connecting the community to other in-Christ groups, such as the ones in Judea. Given the ways that maps are selective, boundary-setting, and often politically regressive, and drawing on feminist critical geography and network theory, I propose an ethically attuned and politically pro- and transgressive approach to visualizing the networks of ekklesiai in ways that are multi-scale and multi-media, and that depict a wider range of actors (human and nonhuman) and a variety of intersubjective and contested relations.

Scholars have divided the book of Exodus in different ways using the criteria of contents and literary genres (e.g., 1:1-15:21 and 15:22-40:38, and chs. 1-18 and chs. 19-40). Additionally, some recent scholars view Exodus 19-40 as part of a coherent macro narrative (Exod 19 to Num 10:10) within the larger context of the Pentateuch. Those divisions of Exodus, however, viewing Exodus 12-18 as “floating texts” which interrupt the surrounding larger narrative flow, tend not to pay much attention to the canonical relationship between 1:1-15:21 and 15:22-40:38, or between chapters 1-18 and 19-40. If we take into consideration the literary features of the inextricably intermingled mix of law and narrative, found not only in the Sinai Pericope in 19:1-24:11 but also in 12:1-13:16, 15:22-18:22, and 32:1-34:35, the canonical shape of Exodus can be understood more precisely. Although many critics regard the tangled mix of law and narrative as one of the textual irregularities, some recent studies using both diachronic and synchronic methods have presented a variety of new ideas about the shape of Exodus. In my paper, I will argue that the composite literary features found in 19:1-24:11 involving the mix of law and narrative, as well as Moses’ mediating role between Yahweh and Israel can be viewed as a canonical marker of Exodus in terms of Yahweh’s lawgiving and theophany that impact our understanding of the shape of Exodus. To this end, I will deal briefly with major diachronic issues of the “loosely related sections” (the final section of the plague narratives in 11:1-13:22, the wilderness wandering narratives in 15:22-18:27, and the golden calf narratives in 32:1-34:35) and show that the major literary features found in 19:1-24:11 and its canonical relationship with other literary units in the larger context of Exodus.

Various themes and topics have been researched in 2 Maccabees 3. The epiphany, the role of Jerusalem, the Temple and its officials all count among the fields of interest. Daniel Schwartz sees the function of this chapter as portraying the ideal situation - the so called "status quo ante". However, newer developments in literary science have not been applied to this chapter. In this respect the role of sacred space combined with suffering bodies and subsequent deliverance poses an interesting field of research. This paper claims that space, suffering bodies and deliverance emerges the first time in chapter 3 as well as again in later chapters. This paper also shows that there is always a reversal of roles in terms of terms of space and suffering bodies after an epiphany.

This paper aims to explore how the concept of Roman imperial oikoumene influenced on Luke’s worldview and with a particular focus on Acts 17. It will demonstrate that Luke attempts to highlight the world of God against the imperial world, thus illustrating one facet of Luke’s counter-imperial perspective on Rome. Luke basically understands the oikoumene as the Roman Empire, which is turned upside down by “another king named Jesus” (Acts 17:3-7). In contrast to the Roman oikoumene, Luke describes the world made by God through Paul’s Areopagus Speech (vv. 24-26). Luke explains that the world derives from one ancestor (v.26). Every nation in the world shares a common history, having the same root and enjoying kinship as God’s genos (v.29). In this, Luke refutes a Roman conception of universal ethnic and the related geographical understandings on oikoumene which appears in the Roman texts (e.g. Res Gestae). Moreover, Luke presents Jesus as a consummator of the world. Jesus was born under the decree of census on oikoumene by Augustus (Lk 2:1) but appears again as a message contrary to the decree of the emperor by subverting the imperial oikoumene (Ac 17:6). Consequently, Luke emphasizes Jesus’ reign over oikoumene (Ac 17:31) of which all the kingdoms belonged to the devil (Lk 4:5). Luke thus communicates to his readers that they are residing in Roman oikoumene which will be supplanted by the world of God through Jesus (Ac 17:31). Likewise, Luke exploits Roman oikoumene as a way to foster among his readers a clear sense of his own world. In this sense, for Luke, the oikoumene functions as a vital thread connective diverse discourses across the entire narrative of Luke-Acts, though Acts 17 is the epitome all of these discussions.

Most scholars understand that the parable of Matthew 18:12-13 finds its language of Ezekiel 34 and Jeremiah 23: e.g., the metaphor of good shepherd seeking and gathering his flock (vv. 12-13; Ezek 34; Jer 23); the word “p?a???” (“go astray”: v. 23; Ezek 34:4, 16; cf. Jer 23:13, 32). It should be kept in mind, however, that the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is also alluded to in Matthew 18:12-13 for some reasons. First, since Matthew 18:4 and vv. 12-13 are direct and indirect answers to the disciples’ question (v. 1) respectively, the fact that the shepherd in vv. 12-13 refers to the one who makes oneself humiliate (tape???se?) in v. 4 implies that the shepherd will be humiliated in carrying out the Father’s will (cf. the servant’s obedience in the heavenly court in Isa 42) and be related to Isaiah’s suffering servant who faces oppression (tape???s??) for “the transgression of my people” (Isa 53:8 LXX). In a paradoxical way just as the suffering servant becomes like a sheep in order to restore the straying sheep in Isaiah 53:7, so the shepherd becomes like a child to find one of the little ones in Matthew 18:4, 12-13. Second, the sheep have gone astray in Matthew 18:12 (p?a????) and Isaiah 53:6 LXX (?p?a????µe?). Third, the pattern that the scatted sheep will be restored by the shepherd appears in the destiny of the suffering-stricken shepherd in Matthew 26:31 which quotes Zechariah 13:7 in connection with Isaiah 53:4, 6. Finally, the pattern that the shepherd restores the straying sheep through his suffering reflects the early Christian tradition found in 1 Peter 2:24-25. Hence the idea of Jesus as suffering-shepherd (Isa 53) rather than as the good shepherd (Ezek 34:11-16; cf. John 10:11-15) plays a more important role in interpreting Matthew 18:12-13.

It is, by now, well known that the "Korean Talmud" is a bestseller in South Korea. It has been printed in numerous editions since the 1970s, is studied in schools and taught at home to children, promoted by Korean ambassadors and other officials, and continues to be read by those abroad, who can conveniently purchase several different versions in bookstores in Manhattan and Los Angeles. What is less clear, however, is what the Korean Talmud actually is. This paper, a joint collaboration between a Talmudist and a student of Korean literature and history, consists of three parts. The first part tells the story of the Talmud's translation into Korean, which begins with an English manuscript written by an American rabbi in Japan and ends in a robust inventory of dozens of widely-varying editions of the Korean Talmud published in the subsequent decades. The second part closely analyzes a number of editions of the Korean Talmud: identifying the stories and sayings that are included in each version, the organization of passages into chapters and subunits, the accompanying illustrations, cover art, and explanatory material on the back and side flaps. Particular attention is paid to the content of each volume, identifying sections that originate in rabbinic literature (the Mishnah, Yerushalmi, Bavli, Midrash) and later Jewish sources as well as in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese sources. In other words, how much of the Korean Talmud is actually Talmudic? The third part of the paper contextualizes the Korean Talmud both within Korean society (e.g. its role in mothering and parenting, its use within the educational system and specifically its place among other forms of religious education, the self-help genre, Jewish studies at the university level) and within the long reception of rabbinic sources (e.g. other translations of the Talmud into German, … [TRUNCATED]

This paper begins with a discussion on a rendering issue in Habakkuk 2:4b in the Korean Protestant Church. Most Korean and English bibles translate a Hebrew word in 2:4b,’emûnatô, as “faith” or “his/their faith” whereas the lexical/literal meaning of the word is “its/his faithfulness/fidelity.” Furthermore, inasmuch as many Christian readers understand that the word connotes “faith in Jesus,” one can argue that the initial meaning of ’emûnatô in Habakkuk’s text has a received evangelical implication. It is not surprising that preachers and Christian leaders develop and reproduce theological and moral motifs out of Hab 2:4b such as faith as pure grace, justification by faith, and endurance for the promised future. As concerns the modification of the original Hebrew word, this paper pays special attention to both the reception history of the verse and its impact on Korean churches. This project demonstrates that the Western Christian reception of the verse has influenced the Korean reception; particularly, Paul’s reading of Habakkuk and the Reformers’ interpretation of Paul were highly determinative in the Korean Protestant Church. Then, this paper argues that (1) two significant socio-political factors from the 1950s to 1980s, the sentiment of anticommunism and the symbiotic relationship between evangelicalism and the autocratic government, bolstered the evangelical reception not only of the verse but also of many other biblical texts; and (2) the proclivity to evangelical and pious interpretation of the Bible was one of the factors that resulted in conservative approaches to social activism in the majority of Korean Protestant churches. Following these arguments, this paper underlines the significance of the reexamination of the history of interpretation of a biblical text in Korean religious culture.

This paper aims at elucidating one of the primary messages embedded in the story of Saul and the woman in En Dor (1 Sam 28:3-25), which has not been adequately discussed in previous studies. The woman’s identity as described is somewhat ambiguous in the story, as she alternately speaks to Saul as both herself and as the dead Samuel. In addition, a detailed lexical comparison between the story and the other narratives in the Book of Samuel illuminates surprising similarities between the two characters in terms of behavior toward Saul, blurring even the character of Saul as the king, when he speaks to the woman/Samuel. A thorough survey of leitmotivs in the Book of Samuel shows a stark contrast between Saul who does not fear/listen to God but instead to the people, and the person who indeed fears and listens to God. The story is deliberately designed as a fine piece of the entire Book of Samuel, indicating the fall of Saul in a dramatic way whilst drawing attention to the authenticity of the true king who actually never appears in the story itself. The formation of the story can be dated to the Persian Period, by an intellectual group which both wished to degrade prophecies and required to observe the Torah.

The expression “Being filled with (or full of) the Spirit” is peculiar to Luke in the New Testament. Except for one time in Ephesians 5:18, the expression appears solely in Luke-Acts. Luke uses the expression to describe the works of the Spirit. In Greek two kinds of verbs or related adverbs are used. One is pimplemi; the others are pleroo and pleres. I would like to argue that Luke deliberately uses the words for describing two different kinds of fullness of the Spirit. One the one hand through introducing the verb pimplemi, Luke wants to describe the external work of the Spirit, which continues for short time(Luke 1:15, 41, 67; Acts 2:4; 4:8; 9:17). One the other through using the words pleroo and pleres, he wants to express the inner work of the Spirit, which continues for long time(Luke 4:1; Acts 6:3, 5; 11:24; 13:52). I want to show that Luke intended to distinguish one from the other with regard to the fullness of the Spirit. This paper can contribute to solving the problem of whether the fullness of the Spirit refers to the sanctification or evangelism. I will argue that Luke deliberately uses the vocabularies to refer to the two distinctive works of the Spirit.

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Biblical interpretation is valuable not only for rarified scholarly discussions but also for contemporary public discourse. It informs the open-ended and irrepressible dialogue between the collective memories—biblical story in the past and ongoing stories in current time. In this paper, through an ethic of interpretation, I create the dialogue to examine the “ethos and morality” of the Matthean community in order to construct the “meaning-making” in current issue of Korea. Recently, various Korean Christianities were dichotomized how they handled the Sewol ferry issue and parents’ protest to the government who lost their children: while the president’s conservative supporters and some Christian group began a campaign that publicly accused the families of holding the country hostage and said that Korea had already shared enough in the grief, the liberal side of Christianity in Korea have fought against conservative groups and have tried to weep with those who weep and mourn by participating in hunger strikes with parents. These conflicts among Korean Christianities are similar the Matthean community’s conflicts, both among its own members and with Jewish contemporaries. If we metaphorically reflect on the rhetoric of Matthew 18 around the Matthean community’s communal discourse and their vision—becoming children and establishing an inclusive basileia—, then the Matthean community’s memory and their politic offer a rational solution to the current conflict among Korean Christianities, which is to propose common ground for the solidarity way and how to live as children of God. In response to Matthean community’s politic, I offer my own vision of the basileia as a tensive symbol by reflecting on Korean ethno-racial ideology, the so-called “hong-ik-in-gan” (“to work and live for better others around the world deeply and widely”). I hope this vision will help Korean Christians to resolve the conflicts and to function as children of God.

This paper will look at the ways that the Bible is used to support colonial discourse (theological enslaving) as well as to raise postcolonial concerns (liberative struggles). I will argue that the Bible, though a global script, is well interpreted and enriched by postcolonial, identity-specific (diasporic) reading practices. This research has a bipartite goal of analyzing Postcolonial Biblical Criticism (PBC) through the work of Sugirtharajah and implementing his theoretical practice. On the analytical level, this research will demonstrate three developmental stages of criticism: reading, a hermeneutic of resistance, and theoretical practice. Then, I will implement PBC through a subjective perspective by re-reading the Book of Ruth with my own subject position within a diasporic community. At its primitive stage, PBC was a way of reading with the marginalized reader’s social location as part of the canonized texts. In finding the hybridity of diasporic personality as the postcolonial identity, Sugirtharajah suggests a Hermeneutics of the Diaspora (HD) as a valid theoretical practice of PBC. By taking readers’ own social location of in-betweenness into the act of interpretation, Segovia profoundly recognizes that the fundamental purpose of HD is “to read the biblical text as an other—not to be overwhelmed or overridden, but acknowledged, respected, and engaged in its very otherness.” Attending to otherness (liminal social location) as the hermeneutical framework, HD opposes any hermeneutic attempt to overwhelm the other, to turn the other into an other. Postcolonial reading of Ruth with Korean goose moms’ (As geese travel thousands of miles to reunite separated families, some Korean families encounter similar situations. Accompanied by their mothers, Korean families send their child to attend educational institutions in the States, while their fathers remain in Korea to support them) subjectivity, similar diasporic natures become obvious: social margin, resident alien, and widowhood.

In view of Deuteronomistic legal material forbidding divinatory practices, it is very odd that the Deuteronomist has preserved a tale about necromancy rather than suppressing it. What is even more surprising is that he does not attempt to discredit the efficacy of the practice. This paper is an attempt to answer the question why. Although some scholars (e.g. B. Schmidt) attributes biblical traces of the necromantic practice to late Mesopotamian influence, many others including the present writer believe it to be essentially Canaanite. If necromancy was already known in pre-exilic Israel, T. Lewis’s proposal appears plausible: “the tale of Saul’s encounter was so well known that the Deuteronomist could not possibly suppress it.” But a closer examination of the literary structure of the text will show that the Deuteronomist responsible for the final composition of 1 Sam 28 does criticize the divinatory practice itself by denying its efficacy. The whole point of the story, I will argue, is not that Samuel was successfully invoked by the necromancer, but that necromancy resorted to by Saul defeats the very purpose of divination by contributing to the inquirer’s final destruction.

Just as the wisdom and apocalyptic literature represents the understanding of history through the heavenly journey toward the other world and the earthly journey in this world of suffering, the Fourth Gospel can be understood as a historical journey drama in which Jesus Christ, incarnated in time, reveals heavenly things, and shows his faithful followers the way to eternal life. In a broad sense, the journey motif in the Old Testament is maintained in the Johannine Literature, but it has been transformed into a historic revelation in the true meaning of the word. In this study, I will examine the journey motif from a 'biblical theological' perspective and its christological transformation process in the Johannine Literature.

In the Hebrew Bible, where the terminological expression ‘sanctuary’ occurs first is not in Exodus 25:8, as many thinks, but in Exodus 15:17. It describes that “the sanctuary, Lord, which thy hands have established (RSV).” But on the identity of this sanctuary (miqedaš) the scholarly opinions have been divergent. The first and traditional opinion is to regard this passage as the reference to the heavenly sanctuary. This understanding has been argued by Jewish rabbinic literature on the grounds that the miqedaš is said to be established by God’s own hands. The second is to look upon the miqedaš here as same to the miqedaš in Exod. 25:88, which was erected in the Sinai wilderness. And the third is to see the miqedaš as the Jerusalem Temple on the Mt. Zion. I examined these three arguments within the immediate context using the literary analysis of its final form. According to the this analysis, it comes out that vv. 13-17 has its own self-contained interior unity as a literary unit. The ‘holy habitation’ in v. 13 and ‘the mountain of inheritance’, ‘Your own dwelling place’ and ‘the sanctuary’ in v. 17 should be interpreted within this unity. By this analysis, it appears that the second option is most plausible and reasonable.

A 3rd person addresser? One may doubt her eyes when she reads my proposal title, asking “Isn’t it a 3rd person narrator?” But the title is correct, as this study seeks the identity of a 3rd person speaker in the divine speech in Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 51:1-3 fits well in this aim since the text shows two instances of personal reference change in the short self-contained unit. This discrepancy between the semantic context of the speaker (i.e., semantically, the context states the speaker is YHWH not a messenger) and the 3rd person reference (i.e., syntactically, the text makes readers assume that someone who is not YHWH speaks about YHWH) has led scholars in at least two directions: the search for possible redactional layers whenever the actant apparently has been changed (C. C. Torrey); or emphasis on the indistinguishable boundary between YHWH and his messenger in the divine speech (Carol Newsom). This proposal pays attention to the LXX’s constant application of the dynamic rendition principle from which we see only the 1st person addresser “I” in 53:1-3. With Newsom’s model, it is hard to get the satisfied solution with this phenomenon, but insight from the relation-oriented Asian languages gives a new perspective with which we can keep reading the one addresser in this case, since illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the 3rd person instead of 1st person, is particularly popular among Asian language users. If this is the case, the LXX text shows its understanding of the constant actant in Isiah 51:1-3 as YHWH himself, as the authors applied their semantic understanding to the translation. The implication of this observation and serious consideration on this literary device would be influential in both LXX and MT studies through form critical analysis, redaction criticism, and translation theory studies.

A large crowd of angry Israelites confronts Aaron, demanding that he make gods for them. What to do? Aaron’s response, namely for them to tear out their nitzmey (rings) from their ears, is overshadowed in most exegesis by what he makes with them: the golden calf. But what did these rings represent for the Israelites prior to turning them over to Aaron to melt into the calf? According to the narrative, we must presume that they brought them from Egypt as part of their plundering of the country in Exod 12:36. They were not important enough to the narrative to mention prior to the golden calf episode, and not only were they were not proscribed prior to the events of chapter 32, they were not proscribed after the events of chapter 32, as the ones they still had were turned over to fabricate the tabernacle in chapter 35. They must have been in some sense neutral objects, but at the same time had enough presumed value and cultural symbolism to be mentioned singularly as the only object from which the calf was made. This paper will explore the nature of these rings as a way to illuminate broader aspects of the golden calf narrative. It will begin with an exegetical look at the larger passage of the making of the calf using a consideration of the broader use of the word netzem in all other passages in the Hebrew Bible. It will then explore such objects in the archeological and artistic record of the Ancient Near East, and their connections with bull and calf imagery. Finally, it will conclude with a brief look at the implications of such research on the larger context of the passage as a whole.

This lecture is based on a comprehensive catalogue of more than 70 Late Bronze and Iron Age shrine models (naoi/cubiculae) from the Southern Levant, published recently in Yavneh II. I would discuss the typology of shrine models (five types are defined); their chronology and regional distribution from the Late Bronze Age in Lebanon to the late Iron Age/Archaic Period in Phoenicia/Cyprus; and the figures that adorn some of them - whether inside or on the facade. Though details and scholarly interpretations vary, it seems that all shrine models represent temples/shrines, though the nature of this representation is different from type to type. They were not intended to serve as architectural models (exact "miniatures" or replicas for didactic or architectural uses). They have religious meanings and their art shows a religious scene. The inner space - the holy of holies - is their raison d'etre; other elements are secondary, often "telescoped". Were images of Yahweh and Ashera placed inside some shrine models? Was the biblical Ark of covenant a shrine model? Archaeology gives certain answers and adds more questions.

Text-critics study the wordings of the various textual representatives of the writings included in the Hebrew Bible. In addition to examining, explaining and evaluating variant readings in these textual representatives and establishing their effects on how the Hebrew Bible compositions communicate their contents, text-critics also analyse and attempt to elucidate textual difficulties. With regard to the numerous textual difficulties in the book of Lamentations, scholars usually suggest emendations to eliminate the cruces interpretum, offer philological explanations of the problematic passages, or struggle to squeeze some sense from the wording of the textus receptus. In the case of Lamentations 5:5, however, emendations, comparative philology and interpretations of the Masoretic text have largely failed to produce convincing clarifications of the bicolon’s wording. Accordingly, scholars continue to debate the meaning of the verse. In order to bring a different perspective to this discussion of the text and to suggest a fresh understanding of it, this study turns to iconography and draws on interpretations of “prisoner transport scenes” in Iron Age southern Levantine visual sources. The motivation to use the results of such interpretations of visual sources in a text-critical analysis of Lamentations 5:5 springs from the assumption that the historical and cultural contexts in which a composition was committed to writing and transmitted in written versions had an impact on its wordings and content. Text-critics therefore cannot ignore the available sources of potential knowledge about these contexts when they determine the most cogent explanations of variant readings and problematic passages. Pictorial materials from the ancient Near East undeniably count amongst the most important of such sources. This study on Lamentations 5:5 shows that iconography can contribute to an understanding of the verse’s content that surpasses speculative emendations, sketchy philological suggestions and superficial interpretations of the Masoretic text.

The case of the relationship between the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans is a matter of discussion since the XIX c. There are many points of contact which for many seem evident, as well as some that are accepted as actual by only a few scholars. The goal of the paper is to look closer at this relationship, which can be described in terms of hypertextuality. The paper puts this hypothesis to the test by focusing on several fragments of both works, as well as on their selected theological thoughts. The ideas and motifs from the Book of Wisdom are traced in the text of the Letter to the Romans and interpreted as Paul’s reworking of earlier thoughts in the latter writing.

Meals abound in the first book of Samuel. Most of these meals served an ulterior function and involved ritual. This paper explores the function of meals in the first book of Samuel and how this function was time and again frustrated. Meals at the sanctuary were meant to promote shalom among the participants, but were also occasions of misuse and discord (1 Sa 2:12ff). Some meals, such as sacrificial meals, were used as a pretext for political manoeuvring, obscuring their real ritual meaning (1 Sa 9:22-24; 16:3ff; 20:5f, 28f). Even lack of food for sustenance plays a major role in the first book of Samuel (1 Sa 14:24ff; 17:17-18; 21:3-6; 25:5ff; 30:11-12). The book closes with an attempt by the woman of Endor to use a meal as a ritual of appeasement and support (1 Sam 28:22-24). Even this last meal fails dismally to fulfil its goal.

The paper re/constructs a systematic theological framework providing terminologies and theories by reviewing the use of the bible and the hermeneutical tools applied in contextual theological discourses since the early 1970s till the present day.

The concept of friendship was a distinguished matter and of contemplative idea in ancient times. This theme is reflected in many of the writings of Greek philosophers, including Plato and Cicero. But the most remarkable study of friendship could be found in the Pythagorean writings. Pythagoreans dedicates more space to friendship which presents it as doctrines of one for another, doctrines of sharing or communal living, equality, gratitude towards one another, men for another , self- control, self- sufficiency, loyalty, trust and tolerance…etc. The teachings of Pythagoras on friendship meticulously show that there is a striking resemblance in Luke- Acts.This paper explores how the Pythagoreans concept of friendship could help shape Acts’ description of the Christian community as friends.

The appearance of the stranger (ger) in Lev. 19, 34 has caused an intensive discussion. Scholars have argued that the ger in this passage is characterised as a full member of the post- exilic Judean society. Others have pointed out that the ger is presented here as a person outside of the cultic community. The presented paper will look at the problem from a different perspective. Lev. 19 shows some similarities to the concept of the Noachite laws. Rabbinical and early Christian sources contain various lists of prohibitions which are valid for Jews and Non-Jews alike. Lev. 19 discusses issues like illegitimate worship, protection of the poor, false oaths, exploitation, the legal principle of fair and equal treatment, prohibition of bloodshed, certain kinds of mixtures, sorcery and divination, questions of sexual ethics and implementation of a justice legal system. The close relationship between Lev. 19 and the Noachite-law will allow to draw a conclusion about the status of the ger in this text.

The textual features of 1 Esdras 5:53-62 distinguished from Ezra 3:7-13 imply that 1 Esdras may be not a translated work of Ezra and one of the fragment parts of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Rather 1 Esdras is re-written work by keeping the lens of Chronicler.

This paper will explore an intercultural and inter-faith reading of 1 Corinthians 8.4-6 from the political and ideological context of North Korea (or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) today. The Pauline passage (1 Cor 8.4-6) indicates Roman imperialism and the Imperial cults that had a heavy impact upon the life of people (including Christ-believers) in Roman Corinth of the first century CE. In Roman Imperial cults the Roman emperors were worshipped as divine, and people in the Roman Empire were compelled (at least by social pressure) to honour them as gods. This notion is, to some extent, reflected in the Pauline language –“ there may be so-called gods…on earth…there are many gods and many lords” (1 Cor 8.5). The Roman emperors would be seen as amongst these many gods and these many lords in the Pauline description. North Korea’s culture and society is primarily shaped on the foundation of Juche ideology. The Juche literarily means ‘self-reliance’ and emphasizes North Korea’s independence from other countries in terms of its political, ideological and economic systems. Furthermore, in this Juche ideology Kim Il Sung the founder of North Korea’s communism is claimed as a divine figure, and North Koreans are compelled to venerate him. The discovery of such social, cultural and religious similarities in the two polarizing contexts encourages me to attempt inter-faith and intercultural dialogues between the Christ-believers in first century Corinth and the people of North Korea today, who appear to see the Juche ideology as a religion in their country today. This attempt makes a contribution to recent Asian Biblical scholarship that would acknowledge and encourage Asian Christians and scholars to read Christian Scriptures from Asian cultural, social, religious and political contexts.

Many New Testament scholars feel rather uncomfortable when they encounter Paul’s way of interpreting Scripture. This is particularly the case for those instances where Paul reads Scripture allegorically, i.e. where he suggests a meaning that contradicts the plain sense of a text. One example for this is 1 Cor. 9:8-12a where Paul claims that the prohibition of muzzling a threshing ox (cf. Deut. 25:4) does not actually refer to oxen but indicates the obligation of supporting apostles. An adequate understanding of this passage is only possible if it is read within a framework of ancient and not of modern hermeneutics. The paper thus tries to contextualize Paul’s exegetical argumentation by comparing it to the allegorical practice of other interpreters such as Philo, Aristeas, and Plutarch. Special attention is given to the formal aspects of Paul’s exegetical strategy. A pragmatic analysis of the text shows that there is a difference between Paul’s motivation why to use allegory and the reason he provides for it in his letter – a characteristic feature that can likewise be observed in Philo’s works. Drawing upon this and other observations, the paper concludes that Paul is well acquainted with the concept of allegory and deliberately applies it in his letter in order to strengthen his argument in an elegant style.

Body imagery as a literary device requires interpretation. However, the perception of the body imagery is shaped by readers’ culture. Although the dichotomy of body and mind plays a significant role in the western world, the perspective of body in the Asia offers another important view. Both the Chinese medicine and philosophy emphasize the holistic of the form and spirit of human beings. The Japanese’s view of the human body is also a holistic one. Similarly, the Hebrew Bible undeniably has a holistic view of the body. This provides us a new interpretation of the book of Job. Like the lament psalms, Job describes his suffering explicitly through the extensive use of body images. Job’s flesh is clothed with worms; his skin hardens and breaks out again (7:5); the desires of his heart are cut off (17:11); his heart is being weaken (23:16) and shaken (37:1). Based on the holistic view of the body, I would argue that Job’s integrity is tightly coupled with the perfection of his body. While Job struggles to maintain his integrity, he could no longer certain whether he is still perfect (9:21). What Job mourning over is not the loss of his family members and wealth, but the death of his perfection. From Job’s view, his dismembered body serves as the witness of violence suffered by his whole being. From the view of his society, Job’s body is a malfunctioning and disabled body. Job is being stigmatized and marginalized. His illness is not life-threatening, but it is harmful for his religious life, as well as the order of his society as a whole. In brief, the perfection of Job’s body is afflicted and de-valued by his community and his God.

Intertextual readings are common to Biblical interpretation. Usually, literature contemporary to the Biblical times is used to interpret the Scripture. Post-colonial readings of the text brought forth the importance of reading the Scripture in comparison with the indigenous literature. This provides fascinating opportunities to use this principle to read the Scripture in comparison with any literature. Therefore, comparative critical reading is an interpretative method which consciously compares another literature with the Scripture so that the uniqueness and similarities of the Scripture are highlighted. While Biblical interpretations have used ancient literature to interpret the Scripture, and while post-colonial readings have used post-colonial literature to interpret the Scripture, comparative critical reading provides room for any literature to be used to interpret the Scripture. Any literature, ancient or modern could be used by the choice of the interpreter so that a portion of the Scripture could be interpreted in light of the content of that literature. This would provide fascinating kaleidoscopic readings of the Scripture. In this paper, I propose to read Markan portrayal of Peter’s friendship with Jesus in comparison with the definitions of friendship in Plutarch’s HOW ONE MAY DISCERN A FLATTERER FROM A FRIEND, and Thiruvalluvar’s THIRUKKURAL. Plutarch defines a friend as the one who stays with him in his need, while he defines a flatterer as the one who deserts that friend in his need (II). In this light Peter seems to be portrayed as a flatterer who denied Jesus when he was in need. Similarly, Thiruvalluvar, the ancient Tamil poet says, “There is a benefit even in misfortune, for it is the rod with which a man can measure the loyalty of friends” (796). Even in the light of Thirukkural Peter seems to lack the essential qualities to be the friend of Jesus. Was he His friend then?

The ending of Lamentations has puzzled many a reader of the book as to whether the female voices are being answered or sufferers are being utterly rejected (5:21-22). It seems that at least some ambiguities persist, with no divine assurance to the female voices in the first few chapters in questing for divine response (“See/Look”, Lam 1:20; 2:20). This paper intends to look at the issue again from the perspective of the Chinese story of Lady Meng’s Tears, which narrates the power of the cries of a widow for her husband who died of forced labor in the course of the imperial building project of the Great Wall. Her tears moved heaven and earth and as a result cities collapsed and the Wall tumbled. Discussion will focus on the meaning of female cries of protest being answered, or gone unheeded. Both the female voices of Lady Meng’s Tears and the personified Daughter Zion will be read cross-textually. The story of the former has gone through a long history of development in the past 2,500 years (from 549 B.C.E. on) in China, adding different dimensions of lament from subsequent contexts in a great varietiy of literary and ritual compositions (narration, poetry, folklore, opera, performance, etc.). It helps to unpack some of the complications (e.g. the tension between human mourning and divine theodicy) in the present work of Lamentations.

In Heb 3:7-4:13, the author exhorts his readers to enter God’s rest, first by drawing on the idea of Israel’s failure to enter into the promised land in Ps 95 and then, in light of Gen 2:2, redefining entrance into the promised land as participation in God’s own Sabbath rest after creation. One major interpretative view argues that the author links Ps 95 and Gen 2:2 in order to emphasize that the real promised land, the true place for “rest,” is located in heaven, being inaccessible through early existence. For these interpreters, the author cites Ps 95 together with Gen 2:2 solely on the basis of their shared word “rest (?at?pa?s??)” for the purpose of highlighting the heavenly nature of this “rest.” I argue instead that the recognition of protological themes evident in the eschatological hopes of some Second Temple texts, especially themes related to Adam, is influencing the author’s collocation of Ps 95 and Gen 2. More specifically, by joining Ps 95 and Gen 2:2, the author makes the point that the eschatological inheritance of God’s people is nothing less than the restored protological state that Adam was enjoying in Eden. This eschatological rest is God’s own Sabbath rest, that is, the state God originally intended for Adam to enjoy as part of God’s creational intentions. I support this argument by adducing several Second Temple Jewish texts that exhibit this protologically conceived eschatology, and then by reading Heb 3:7-4:13 in light of this eschatological configuration.

It has been suggested that the phrase hos men peina hos de methuei in 1 Cor 11:21 is without a doubt Paul’s summary of the schismata (v. 18) at the Corinthians’ Lord’s Supper. This resulted from improper sharing of food by wealthier members who could bring more and better food than poorer members who could not even bring anything to the Supper. One of the presumptions of this understanding is that the menu involved at table fellowship was quite diverse in terms of both quality and quantity. Arguing from banqueting practice in Greco-Roman voluntary associations, however, this paper interrogates the conventional reading of the phrase. An alternative reading of the phrase will be pondered in thinking of the menu and functionality of banquets in associations in general.

The most extensive descriptions of Gog and Magog in the Hebrew Bible appear in Ezek 38-39. At various stages of their political career, both Reagan and Bush have linked Gog and Magog to the diplomatic and military enemies of the USA, identifying them either as the “communistic and atheistic” Russia or the “evil” Iraq (Halsell 1986, 45; Eichenwald 2012, 459). Biblical scholars, however, seek to contextualize Gog of Magog in the historical literary setting of the ancient Israelites. Galambush identifies Gog in Ezekiel as a cipher for Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian king, who acted as Judah’s oppressor in the sixth century BCE (Galambush 2006, 259-260). More generally, Klein concludes that Gog, along with its companions, is “eine Personifikation aller Feinde, die Israel im Buch Ezechiel gegenüberstehen” (Klein 2008, 131). Despite their differences in detail, these scholars, like Reagan and Bush, still work under a mindset of animosity, considering only the features of Judah’s enemies incorporated into the characteristics of Gog. This paper argues that Gog and his entourage display literary attributes previously assigned to not only Judah’s enemies, but also Judah’s political allies, especially Egypt. Internal evidence suggests that the Gog oracles are a much later insertion into the book of Ezekiel (Tooman 2011, 72-83). Therefore, Ezek 38-39 apparently draws from omnifarious biblical elements and themes, so that all foreign historical nations, whether friends or foes, are all combined and transformed into a metahistorical symbol of chaos or evil, standing in opposition to YHWH and the restored Israel in the eschatological era. Brief remarks will also be made as to how the literary process within Ezek 38-39 that relegates all foreign elements to one eschatological symbol of evil is mirrored in the Septuagint (Num 24:7; Deut 3:1, 13; 4:47; Esth 3:1; 9:24) and continues to evolve in early Jewish and Christian traditions.

John’s Gospel presents its readers a puzzle as to the relation of Jesus and the Paraclete. In 15:15 Jesus calls his disciples friends, not slaves any longer, because he has let them know everything he heard from God. The status of Jesus’ friends depends on that complete transition of knowledge from the teacher. The Paraclete, during Jesus’ absence, is to teach and remind the disciples of everything Jesus already taught (cf. 14:26). The Paraclete’s teaching authority is restricted with the tradition of Jesus’ teaching. Meanwhile, in 16:12-13, Jesus still has many more to tell the disciples, which they cannot bear at the moment. The Paraclete will disclose to the disciples those reserved. It seems that the Paraclete teaches the disciples more than what Jesus did. If so, the disciples are not friends but slaves of Jesus. This research suggests that the aforementioned texts reflect a competition for authority between two groups: Jesus’ friends and Jesus’ slaves. Our evangelist supports the former and accentuates the reliability and authority of Jesus’ tradition through the Beloved Disciple (or BD below) written in the Gospel. If Jesus taught everything to the disciples, that teaching is certainly transmitted through BD and the possibility of the Paraclete’s new teachings is denied. Nevertheless, Jesus’ slaves rely upon the authority and continuing activities of the Paraclete and claim their authority within the community. While clear charismatic phenomena as in 1 Corinthians 12 are not observed in the Johannine literature, we still find a clue of prophetic activities (cf. 1 John 4:1, 4). The Johannine community likely experiences conflicts over authority between the written tradition of Jesus’ friends and prophetic teachings of Jesus’ slaves. The evangelist incorporates the latter’s claim in his Gospel and places the Paraclete’s prophetic teachings under Jesus’s teaching authority (cf. Jn 16:13).

On April 16th 2014, a South Korean ferry called “Sewol” sank, leaving 294 passengers dead. It was run by a sectarian group called “Christian Gospel Baptist” (aka “Salvation Sect”). What is unique about this sectarian group is their soteriology—one is saved by one’s mental recognition of one’s sins having been forgiven by the saving work of Christ. Their distinctive boundary marker is whether or not one can recall the exact date of salvation. CGB missionaries would initially welcome someone’s exposure to Christianity but eventually argue that only they are saved, being God’s “true” eschatological people. It cannot be just faith in Christ but their particular teaching and life in the sectarian community that guarantee salvation. Sanders criticized the previous scholarship’s stereotypical portrait of Second Temple Judaism as a works-based legalistic religion, proposing that it can be typically described as “covenantal nomism”—one “gets in” the covenant by God’s gracious election and “stays in” the covenant by obedience to the law. However, this does not accurately describe the Qumran sect who required the works of the law and their particular halakhoth not only to “stay in” but also “get in” the sectarian covenant. Sanders and his followers incorrectly suppose that Paul’s problem with his opponents was not their legalism but only their ethnocentrism. Comparison between 4QMMT and Galatians, and a close mirror reading of Galatians, however, suggest that Paul’s opponents persuaded the Galatians to do the works of the law not only to “stay in” but also “get in” the true covenant of God—to become full members of God’s covenant people—arguing that one is justified by the works of the law, in addition to faith in Christ. Paul’s problem with his opponents most likely included both their legalism and ethnocentrism, what Michael F. Bird calls, “ethnocentric nomism.”

This study identifies the neglected literary and theological connection in Revelation between the phrase “double the double” (18:6) and the millennial kingdom (20:4–6), and highlights its functions. First, the millennial kingdom (20:4–6) is the fulfillment of the pronouncement of double judgment (18:6). A voice from heaven pleads with God to pay back to Babylon the Great and demands him to “double the double according to her deeds.” Many commentators take d?p??sate t? d?p?? simply as a metaphor for full recompense rather than for twice the penalty. However, we must consider its larger literary context. The voice most likely belongs to the angel who offers a great quantity of incense with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God (6:9–10) and comes with a golden censer (8:3–5). The angel’s plea for double repayment (18:6) pronounces the double judgment of the evil thrown into the lake of fire in 19:20 and 20:10. This motif of an angelic figure’s pronouncement of God’s judgment and its fulfillment is attested throughout the book. The millennial kingdom (20:4–6) separates the first judgment (19:11–21) and the second judgment (20:7–10). Second, the connection resolves the tension between messianism and monotheism in the book. While most descriptions of God and Christ in Revelation are straightforward, there are a number of expressions used both for God and Christ, whose referent can be decided only by their contexts. The author maintains the framework of Jewish monotheism, by contrasting Christ’s temporary earthly kingdom with God’s eternal heavenly kingdom. Third, the connection illuminates human depravity. Fourth, the connection highlights God’s sovereignty. These literary and theological observations remind us of the fact that Revelation is an intricately woven piece of apocalyptic literature.

Scholars do not agree about the meaning of what “fulfill all righteousness” in Matthew 3:15 means. Four main explanations are used to explain this passage: Jesus identifying Himself with sinners, Jesus’ example for sinners, Jesus’ redemptive earthly mission, or a combination of Jesus’ example and mission. Unfortunately, no consensus has been reached. The paper proposes an analysis of the historical background of John’s baptism, unveiling its Jewish proselyte nature and John’s unique innovation. The key word d??a??s??? in Matthew is interpreted from the light of Greek, Jewish, and Christian perspectives. A comparison of the words “righteousness,” “fulfill,” and “baptism” is examined within this baptismal context. The vital point is found in the twofold textual structure from three different levels, which present sharp contrasts between salvation and judgment among the Jewish people, both within John’s and Jesus’ baptism, and between the two different kinds of baptism. This special twofold structure exists in a triplex framework composed of a chiastic structure in Matthew 3:1-12 based upon which John’s baptism and Jesus’ encounter each other in 3:13-17. The central thesis of this paper is that this textual structure sheds special light upon the meaning of “fulfill all righteousness.” It bears rich theological significance for understanding John’s and Jesus’ ministry. It furthermore proclaims the end of an old era and inaugurates a new one by pointing the “righteousness” to Jesus ministry, which culminates in his crucifixion. The nature of contrast exposed by this twofold structure echoes throughout the book of Matthew that the significance of the phrase to “fulfill all righteousness” constitutes an important aspect of Matthean theology.

Minoritized groups coming to the Bible to claim their place and their particular perspectives of reading are indebted to the path first opened up by African American readers. As it is well known, one of the early reading strategies employed by African American Bible scholars was to argue for black presence within the Bible that had previously been erased or covered over. We have learned from African American experiences, however, that both hypervisibility and invisibility can be problematic in struggles against minoritization and marginalization. In this paper, I aim to consider how Asian American biblical interpretation may play with the dynamics of presence and absence to negotiate what I call a “crisis of (in)visibility.”

Paul uses the metaphor of the body extensively in 1 Corinthians 12:12-30. While there are several possible backgrounds for the body metaphor, the political and philosophical images of the body drawn from Hellenistic sources have received the most support partly due to the close parallels of the use of the various parts of the body. However, these sources often place emphasis on the reinforcement of existing social hierarchy where honour and respect are given to the strong and the ruling elites, whereas Paul’s use of the body metaphor focuses on the reversal of social status where the weaker, the unpresentable and less honourable parts of the body are given special honour and attention. This paper examines another possible background that has been largely dismissed by commentators where the total well being of the body is emphasised – the medical sources. This paper also considers how this reading of body metaphor functions in the social identity formation of the Christ-community in Corinth and offers implication of this reading for an Asian context.

One key question in reading Daniel 6 is whether the central thrust of the narrative is about living a faithful, quietist religious life in the face of empire or actively resisting its totalizing rule. This is a particularly acute issue in many parts of Asia emerging out of colonial rule as they experience re-colonisation by local elites. One such clash of ideologies between Christians and the state happened during the alleged Marxist conspiracy in the 1980s in Singapore (otherwise popularly known as the Lion City). Using a postcolonial strategy of contrapuntal reading, I read the story of Daniel in the lion’s den (Daniel 6) with the autobiographical accounts of two political prisoners at that time, Teo Soh Lung in Beyond the Blue Gate: Recollections of a Political Prisoner (2011) and Vincent Cheng in Persecuted for Justice's sake (2012) which could be considered as texts from the peripheries. Taking their experiences as a heuristic lens, I conclude that on the one hand piety and politics are not mutually exclusive. In fact, questions pertaining to which ought to be prioritized lack an empathy towards real life struggles against the incursions of empire into everyday living. On the other hand, their experiences could re-sensitise Asian readers by filling in the gaps in the narrative with their ordeals in captivity. That said, their experiences as Christians with the state also problematises the apparent success of Daniel by exposing the underlying triumphalistic innuendoes which tends to eclipse their struggles especially since they did not enjoy success in the manner that Daniel did. Thus, by drawing together similar experiences of Daniel and political prisoners in Singapore in the face of empire, I show how postcolonial criticism is able to give some resolution to and more importantly move beyond the current polemics of piety and politics.

This paper explores whether Yahweh functions as a Divine Kinsman-Redeemer in Gen 9:6 where he is described as requiring the lifeblood of any creature that sheds the blood of the descendants of sons of Noah. A linguistic framework is used to indicate a kinship meaning for the phrase “image of God” [???? ?????] in Gen 9:6 that has been identified by McDowell (2015) and in my dissertation. It illustrates how the text extends the limited lexical meaning of the word “image” [???] to refer to kinship and how this referential meaning then coheres with the pericope of Gen 6:9—9:29. This interpretation is significant because kinship in the ancient Near East provides the foundation for some of the most compelling laws in the OT, including the “family law” of the kinsman-redeemer. This law was based, in part, on the belief that kindred conceived of themselves as members of one living body sharing the same flesh and bone (Gen 2:23). This understanding of kinship obligation may be graphically illustrated in Gen 9:6 where Yahweh promises to “redeem” blood spilled of one family member because it is understood as a loss of lifeblood to the whole kindred group. Yahweh is also said to function as a kinsman-redeemer when Yahweh declares that he will redeem (Exod 6:6) and restore sons of Israel enslaved in Egypt. This declaration of redemption is seen as an expression of kindred obligation, originating from the covenant that God made with Israel’s patriarchs. Through this covenant, Yahweh identifies himself as the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He becomes, in effect, the Divine Patriarch (Exod 4:22) over the children of Israel, obligating Him to redeem them. This paper explores whether the biblical writer depicts God as a kinsman not only based on covenant but also on creation.

Jesus’ identity is a fascinating narrative element in the Synoptic Gospels ––while the evangelists are convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, they portray the revelation of Jesus’ identity as a gradual development within their respective narratives, punctuated by Peter’s confession and Jesus’ own confession before the high priest. In contrast, Jesus’ identity in GJohn’s narrative is fully disclosed from the start, and the revelation of Jesus as Messiah/Son of God in GJohn is frequent and widespread. Does such a different picture in GJohn prove that it is independent of the Synoptic accounts about the identity of Jesus? This paper will argue that in regard to Jesus’ identity, both GJohn and the Synoptics share a similar understanding of Jesus that can be observed by comparing texts in which a constellation of Christological titles is employed to refer to Jesus. There are texts in both GJohn and the Synoptics that use the titles Messiah and the Son of God in tandem (John 11:27; 20:31; Mark 1:1; Matt 16:16; Luke 4:41); as well as those that combine Messiah with the Son of God as well as the Son of Man (John 1:49–51; Mark 14:61; Matt 26:63; Luke 22:67–70). The resonance between the four gospels observed through such a study of the interplay of Christological titles shows that the differences in the gospels’ portrayal of the way Jesus’ identity is revealed need not exclude the possibility of interdependence. In fact, such a study may provide insights for understanding the intertextual relations between GJohn in the Synoptics by using alternative treatments of the identity of Jesus as an example to illustrate how seeming discrepancies between the gospels might be resolved by investing greater significance to similarities of a more fundamental nature.

This paper examines the way in which the greetings and exordiums of Ignatius’s letters anticipate christological emphases that are developed in the letter bodies. In order to narrow the paper’s focus, Ign. Rom. will be the primary letter studied and will serve as an example of how Ignatius’s rhetoric intertwines with his understanding of Jesus. The introduction of the paper concisely discusses two matters in preparation for the larger study. First, it notes that the introductions of Ignatius’s letters are written as part of a larger letter and function within that context. Second, it holds that the letters are individual compositions addressed to particular churches. The paper next investigates Ignatius’s presentation of Jesus by paying attention to titular designations and to Jesus’s implicit actions in the greeting and exordium of Ign. Rom. Ignatius highlights Jesus’s relation to the Father, identity as God, role as law-giver, and place alongside Ignatius as he is bound for Rome as a prisoner. The paper then explores the way in which the body of the letter expands this material and integrates it smoothly into Ignatius’s instructions to the Romans. Ignatius’s statements about Jesus are incorporated into his larger epistolary purposes. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief look at Jesus in the greetings of two related literary collections: the greetings of other Ignatian letters and other letters with Roman connections. Ign. Rom. is similar to these letters in that his christological emphases throughout the letter are foreshadowed from the start. Yet his description of Jesus remains unique to the rhetorical needs of Ign. Rom.

Ephesians and apocalyptic might appeared to be a square peg and a round hold at first glance. However, the apocalyptic elements in the book has not escaped the notice of some such as Gombis and Lioy. While others concentrate on picking out more prominent features such as the powers and principalities(A. Clinton) and the ethnic issues (Yee TL). However, there has not been a way of string these diverse discoveries and features within Ephesians together. This paper suggest that Ephesians is very similar to the Community Rule and War Scroll found in the DSS. A comparison with these makes Ephesians as a possible “Community Rule” for Paul’s community. The ‘apocalyptic' of the title is to be understood as a worldview and not a literary genre. As defined by J.J. Colins, an apocalyptic worldview is “characterised by eschatological expectation and the prominence of supernatural agents … dualism and determinism … and the use of mythological symbols (The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, IX).’ These elements are easily identifiable in Ephesians from the beginning of the letter starting with 1:9-10. tHe division of time into “this age” and “the age to come” is characteristic of an apocalyptic worldview (the ’then’ and ’now’ in Chap. 2 as well). The characterisation of the present age as “the evil age” and the apocalyptic warfare motif in 6:10-20 reflect the characteristics of an apocalyptic worldview as well. With these elements in consideration and a comparison with the DSS, this paper believe that there is a high possibility of success to establish Ephesians as a kind of “Community Rule” for Paul’s apocalyptic community.

In John 20:16, Mary Magdalene called Jesus “Rabbouni,” and the author explains that she said it “in Hebrew.” This expression is rare in the New Testament: it is found five times in the Gospel of John and twice in the book of Apocalypse. In John’s Gospel, it is used thrice as a translation of the name of place in Hebrew, once in the inscription above the Cross, and only once as an utterance. There are some instances where the translation of Hebrew/Aramaic words is written in the Gospel, though there is no case where “in Hebrew” is added. This shows that the word “Rabbouni” has some importance for the author or the readers of the Gospel. Hence, why was this phrase added in John 20:16? Here is our hypothesis: “Rabbouni” was one of the expressions that the early Christians used for Jesus from beginning. The earliest Christians use the expression “Rabbouni” in Hebrew (actually it is Aramaic), for Hebrew/Aramaic was their language. This expression had been still used in Johannine community when the Gospel of John was written, but they had lost the information where it came from: the meaning of this expression had become unclear. Therefore, the author added “in Hebrew” so that it is clear to his readers that this is from Jesus’ time. Some scholars say that this is Mary’s confession to Jesus; we, however, suppose that we need not regard it as her personal confession. “Rabbouni” is a kind of fixed expression used by early Christian communities; it has been handed down from a very early period. This study shows that research on tiny expressions can still be informative of the history of early Christianity.

Scholars claim that the Bible has always been subversive to Empire. Ezekiel's "Two Sisters" rant is evidence of a Judean social memory of constant subjection to imperial powers - and constant subaltern resistance. (Ez 23) Against this claim is the social memory of the empire of King David. David is remembered as having employed the tools of imperial domination to establish an empire incorporating the entirety of Hattu-Land, a territory essentially coterminous with territory in the Levant which was constantly being exchanged among rival Near Eastern Empires. Surely, the social memory of King David's empire demonstrates an admiration for modes of imperial power inconsistent with a thorough going subaltern context for the evolution of Biblical texts. However, recent archaeological discoveries at the site of ancient Philistine Gath by Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv has rendered improbable any factual basis for social memory of King David as an imperial overlord. If, in fact, it is impossible that King David could have been an empire builder in view of the power of Gath, then the social memory of King David's empire must have been a late subaltern "thought experiment" enabling the oppressed to imagine a "once and future" kingdom in which oppressed Israel might take its place among the imperial powers. The Taiping Rebellion could be seen as a similar subaltern event in which Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, in order to provide an ideological basis for resisting empire, "put together his own religion, borrowing chiefly the militant teachings of the [Hebrew] Bible." (John King Fairbanks, 1965) From late Judean social memory of King David, to modern subaltern uses, ancient Hebrew and Christian scriptures are reworked to support visions of a future free of foreign domination. These scriptures are inherently subversive to any imperial power at any time and place.

Notions of what constitute worthy womanhood are shaped to a large extent, by the cultural contexts in which they are constructed.In the global village though, shaped as it does mainly by Eurocentric cultures, it would be presumptuous to assume that one can, with certainty, pinpoint what may be termed, “purely traditional African notions of womanhood”. At the same time, it will be an exaggeration to argue that Africa does not have its own notions about ideal womanhood. Particularly in Christian African contexts, notions about womanhood are still shaped, to a large extent,both by the traditional African worldviews and the received interpretations of womanhood from the Christian Scriptures. In the author’s attempt to unravel notions of womanhood from both the post-exilic context of Yehud, and the (traditional) African(South African)context, this article will engage the following main question: If images of women in Yehud, particularly as they are revealed in the book of Proverbs and in some African proverbs are brought together, what kind of reading may emerge from such an exercise?

In Ad Autolycum 2.26, Theophilus of Antioch claimed that the death of the body imposed by God after the first human sins was a gift: through bodily death, sin ends and the person, like a damaged vessel that has been melted down, is ready to be reshaped into a perfect vessel in the resurrection. Irenaeus of Lyons drew on Theophilus to make the same point (Against Heresies 3.23.6). If taken seriously, this notion has important implications for a host of theological loci, such as hamartiology (what view of sin is implied by the idea that it can be ended through bodily death and dissolution?) and christology (if simple bodily death puts an end to sin, what is the role of Christ’s death in ending sin?). The latter question becomes even more pressing in light of the fact that Irenaeus draws on the Pauline language of “living to God” to describe what follows upon the cessation of sin caused by bodily death, yet he fails to tie that death to the crucifixion of Christ. I trace these questions not only through Theophilus and Irenaeus but also to Methodius of Olympus, who drew on Irenaeus. Methodius, I argue, took this claim seriously and used it as a starting point for his understanding of sin, death, and resurrection. In this respect, Methodius’ theology represents the full flowering of a view that existed only in nuce in his predecessors.

The relationship between land ownership and non-indigenous residents in the host community provides crucial information about the latter’s economic and legal status in society. Admittedly, few laws in law collections in the Hebrew Bible directly pertain to land purchase or ownership by a non-indigenous resident, usually called a “ger”, a “tôša?” or the juxtaposition of both terms. Nevertheless, supplementary evidence can be gathered from other biblical texts that involve legal issues regarding land and non-indigenous residents, on the one hand, and analogous non-biblical sources from other regions, e.g. Elephantine, Mesopotamia and Syria etc., on the other. In the present essay, we will focus on three biblical passages containing the terms “ger”, “tôša?” or the verb “to sojourn” (gwr), in which a term for “inheritance” or “possession”, e.g. ?a?uzza(h) and na?ala(h), also occurs. The passages in question belong to different genres: narrative (Gen. 23), hymn (Ps. 105:11, 12-15) and prophetic proclamation (Ezek. 47:22-23), which deal with, respectively, land sale to a non-indigenous resident, grant of land on sojourning outsiders and the allotment of hereditary land to non-indigenous residents as a sign of full integration. These three biblical passages will illuminate several issues: the acquisition of land by non-indigenous residents, the nature and limits of their right over land, possible inner-biblical development of the attitude towards land ownership and non-indigenous residents and, finally, how access to land influences their economic and social status. In sum, this essay seeks to offer a systematic analysis of the way in which access to land figures in the definition of the identity and status of non-indigenous residents according to different biblical texts, in comparison with relevant historical cases from the broader ancient Near East.

Primogeniture was widely practiced in ancient Near East and also serves as the principle of succession in biblical laws. However, in biblical narrative it is usually the younger son that succeeds the family or the monarchy and the authors or redactors seldom criticize this phenomenon. On the contrary, the younger sons, no matter the patriarchs or the great kings, are often depicted as heroes with great abilities or favorable factors that they have the right or even are expected to be the successors. Similar tensions between custom and practice also exist in ancient China. Confucianism has a long tradition of choosing the most virtuous person to be the successor of the monarch, which seems to be contradictory to the system of primogeniture. However, it is also Confucianism that advocated primogeniture after it was established in China at the beginning of Western Zhou Dynasty (11th Century - 771 BCE). The Confucianists emphasized and developed primogeniture in later periods while ironically, more than half of ancient Chinese emperors are actually not the eldest sons of their fathers’ wives. By analyzing and cross-reading the cases in ancient Israel and China, one may notice that both biblical and Confucian authors choose to ignore the traditions of succession in order to defend more important thoughts in their respective ideological systems and the main purpose is to ensure the prosperity of the nation.

Rabbi Ya'akov Khuli published his Ladino commentary known as: Me'am Lo'ez on the Book of Genesis and the first half of the Book of Exodus in Istanbul (Constantinople; Kushta - from Kushtandina - in Hebrew and Ladino) in the year 1730. In its time this was a revolutionary step: offering the Ladino reading Sephardi public a learned commentary not in Hebrew, but rather in Ladino - its language of culture. After the demise of Rabbi Khuli, various authors continued his work and all together commented on eleven books of the Hebrew Bible. Ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sephardim - descendants of the Jews expelled from the lands of the Iberian Peninsula (Sepharad in Hebrew) in the years 1492-1499 - adopted modern European languages instead of Ladino. With the advent of Zionism, Hebrew became both the everyday spoken language and the language of culture common among the Jews living in the Land of Israel, including the Sephardim. The Jerusalemite scholar, Rabbi Shemuel Yerushalmi-Kreuzer (1922-1997), a disciple of Lithuanian Yeshivot, took it upon himself to render the Me'am Lo'ez accessible to the Israeli Hebrew reading public. For thirty years: 1966-1996, Yerushalmi-Kreuzer translated into Hebrew the volumes of Me'am Lo'ez written in Ladino by various authors until 1899. More than that, Kreuzer added his own commentaries on other books of the Hebrew Bible, not commented upon by the Ladino authors. As an example, let me mention the description of the angles according to Rabbi Khuli's Ladino commentary and Rabbi Kreuzer's Hebrew commentary. A. The angles and the Divine Creation: On what day were the angles created? B. The angels are forms without bodies. C. Angels have no names: each one is named according to his mission: Refael is ordained by God to cure the sick. [ABSTRACT TRUNCATED]

One distinctive narrative-feature in John is the abundant usage of the first person pronoun "I" and the "I am" phrase narrated by Jesus. For example, two metaphorical "I am" sayings are found in John 10:1–18. The discourse begins with a figure of speech or "paroimia" (parable, proverb, or riddle) in John 10:1–5. A few distinctive features of the Johannine parable in John 10:1–5 with its interpretation in John 10:7–18 should be noted in contrast with the synoptic parables. For example, the parable of the seed-sower in Matthew 13:3–9 (in a fixed and static content) with its complete interpretation in Matthew 13:18–23 provides an exemplary case to be compared with the parable and its interpretation in John 10:1–18. The parable in John 10:1–5 is explained (or interpreted) with the first-person key of "I am" to reveal the hidden or intended meaning. In contrast, the figures in the synoptic parables and their interpretations are mostly in third-person and rarely are in second-person (Matthew 5:13–16). Second, the parable in John 10:1–18 is interpreted partially to the general audience. In contrast, the parable in Matthew 13:3–9 is interpreted completely and to the disciples only in Matthew 13:18–23. Third, the parable in John 10:1–18 is unfolding as it is being interpreted with the keys, by expanding or adding to the story of the parable with further parabolic materials (blended with the intended message), in a continuous and dynamic narrative-frame. In contrast to John 10:1–18, the two stages of presentation and interpretation of a parable are usually clearly marked and distinguishable.

It is clear that the Yehudite community at Elephantine was not exclusively Yahwist. The question of inclusive vs. exclusive Yahwism at Elephantine has to this point depended on two evidentiary factors: the oaths sworn by members of the Yehudite community; and the mention of Anat-Bethel and Eshem-Bethel alongside YHW as beneficiaries of the collection taken by the community (TAD C3.15). However, the cultic practices of Elephantine Yahwism, as practiced in the Yehudite temple, may have left further traces in the textual record. In this paper I review the scholarship on the so-called "Passover Letter" (TAD A4.1) and the aforementioned collection list before turning to lesser-known texts. Most important is a fragmentary donor list (TAD C3.13); but I also discuss the mentions of priests and servitors in various documents. Finally, I make suggestions about the function of the textual collection within the cultic practice. With the growing recognition in religious studies that a belief-centered definition of religion in the Protestant mode is not adequate or even appropriate for the study of (ancient) religions, I seek to orient this study to practices and forbear to discuss what members of the Yehudite community may have believed about their deities. I thereby follow the theoretical approaches of Bruce Lincoln and David Chidester.

1 John utilizes various types of rhetorical devices in the Epistle. While the Epistle is too elusive to pin down the logical and linear progress of the argument, the arrangement of the formulaic rhetorical devices well articulates the main points of the themes, which spirally and repeatedly come back. Recently, the proponents of the non-polemical reading of 1 John featured the Christological/polemical texts (1 Jn 1:1-4; 2:18-19; 4:1-6) and “if we say” statements/ “whoever says” statements (1 Jn 1:6, 8, 19; 2:4, 6, 9; 4:20) to downplay their polemical tone and thus to argue for the “non-polemical” reading. The present author takes up the three other formulaic statements in 1 John as rhetorical devices: 1) pas formula (1 Jn 2:23, 29; 3:3, 4, 6 [x2], 7, 8, 9, 10[x2], 15; 4:7; 5:1 [x2], 4), 2) en touto formula (1 Jn 2:3, 4, 5, 6; 3:16, 19, 24; 4:2, (6,) 9, 10, 13, 17; 5:2), and 3) haute estin formula (1 Jn 2:25; 3:11, 23; 5:3, 4, 9, 11, 14). The mapping of these formulaic rhetorical devices demonstrates 1 John’s intentional arrangement in the unfolding of its characteristically spiral argument. The repetitive usage of these formulas in 1 John evinces a unique rhetorical technique, creating the performative effects and the theological focus as well. Thus, the present author aims to show 1 John’s rhetorical strategies of the formulas and to postulate a “less-polemical” reading of 1 John.

1 Kings 8:41-43 describes the nakrî as one who is “not of your people Israel”; “comes from a distant land”; to “pray toward this house”. They are non-Israelites who travel occasionally or reside abroad. Many scholars have long suggested that this mentioning of nakrî is unusual to sink into the common Deuteronomist’s pool hence they conclude that this passage may possibly be part of a later layer injected into the Deuteronomistic History (=DH) during the post-exilic period. But how could this favourable view of non-Israelites sit comfortably among the Deuteronomistic theology? I argue that the changing role of the temple in the post-exilic context and its possible allusion to the national blessing of Abram in Gen 12:1-3 may have had a major contribution to the inclusion of this nakrî text. I want to test the hypothesis that the association of King Solomon’s prayer and a temple open to “all” mirrors a strong political movement for the inclusion of “others” despite of the Deuteronomistic History’s restricted boundaries. As a Samoan, I will conclude this paper with an interpretation of how the coming of Christianity as a foreign universal tradition to Samoa, has over the years redefined the role of the matai (chief) system in Samoan society.

The Johannine Jesus is not, or not solely, a human being, but not only for the reasons ordinarily adduced. The god-man is also a nonhuman animal (“Behold the lamb”—1:36; cf. 1:29; also 3:14), a vegetable (“I am the vine”—15:5; cf. 15:1), a vegetable by-product (“I am the bread”—6:35; cf. 6:41, 48, 51; “I am the door [he thyra]”—10:9; cf. 10:7), and inorganic energy, namely, electromagnetic radiation (“I am the light”—8:12; cf. 9:5)—all epithets no more or no less metaphoric than the epithet “Son of God.” Of course, it is Son christology that has commanded center stage since at least the fourth century. The Fourth Gospel has been a prop for dominant ontologies of the human no less than of the divine—paradoxically so, as this paper will argue. The posthumanist challenge, elicited in no small part by the global ecological crisis, impels a shift of attention from Son christology to animal christology, vegetal christology, and inorganic christology. In this paper, I plan to make a (mainly vegetarian) meal out of the leftovers from the centuries-long feast of Johannine christology as conducted in the traditional anthropocentric style. That the Johannine Jesus is a consummate hybrid has long been recognized. But his hybridity has been diminished through being conceived simply as divine-human hybridity. The current challenge, occasioned by the escalating planetary ecocrisis, is to reconceive the Johannine Jesus as a divine-human-nonhuman composite. The Johannine god-man is also and always a god-man-animal, and the god-man-animal is also and always a god-man-animal-plant, and the god-man-animal-plant is also and always a god-man-animal-plant-thing.

The history of historical Jesus research has been a history of (mis)understandings punctuated by moments of clarity. Or at least that is one way to summarize Albert Schweitzer’s Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. After a century since its publication I will argue for the enduring relevance of Schweitzer’s descriptive account and proscriptive wisdom regarding perennial scholarly (and ecclesial) attempts to understand Jesus. One of the lessons from Schweitzer’s critical review of modern “lives of Jesus” (Leben Jesu) is that the various portraits of Jesus reflected the persons doing the research and narrating their “findings.” As we reflect on recent attempts to understand Jesus and to relexicalize Jesus’ deeds and words into the vernacular of today’s scholarship and theologies, it is worth remembering Schweitzer’s sage insights. Perhaps surprisingly, what Schweitzer found in his research seems to have been repeated despite hermeneutical insights gained and used by scholars since Schweitzer. To illustrate this observation and to issue again a call to remember Schweitzer’s hermeneutical lessons, I will use John Dominic Crossan’s synthetic portrait in his 1994 book Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography. In it Crossan claims that Jesus’ worldview (culled from his deeds and words preserved by texts) consists of a “radical egalitarian ethos.” I will argue that this ideologically reconstructed portrait (relexicalization) reveals more about Crossan than Jesus, at least in the case of what we find in Luke’s own worldview found in his Gospel. Despite Crossan’s exegetical efforts, Jesus seems again, as Schweitzer noted, returns to his time and place, leaving us with our historical reconstructions rather than a Jesus that can be known outside his own world.

The history of historical Jesus research has been a history of (mis)understandings punctuated by moments of clarity. Or at least that is one way to summarize Albert Schweitzer’s Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. After a century since its publication I will argue for the enduring relevance of Schweitzer’s descriptive account and proscriptive wisdom regarding perennial scholarly (and ecclesial) attempts to understand Jesus. One of the lessons from Schweitzer’s critical review of modern “lives of Jesus” (Leben Jesu) is that the various portraits of Jesus reflected the persons doing the research and narrating their “findings.” As we reflect on recent attempts to understand Jesus and to relexicalize Jesus’ deeds and words into the vernacular of today’s scholarship and theologies, it is worth remembering Schweitzer’s sage insights. Perhaps surprisingly, what Schweitzer found in his research seems to have been repeated despite hermeneutical insights gained and used by scholars since Schweitzer. To illustrate this observation and to issue again a call to remember Schweitzer’s hermeneutical lessons, I will use John Dominic Crossan’s synthetic portrait in his 1994 book Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography. In it Crossan claims that Jesus’ worldview (culled from his deeds and words preserved by texts) consists of a “radical egalitarian ethos.” I will argue that this ideologically reconstructed portrait (relexicalization) reveals more about Crossan than Jesus, at least in the case of what we find in Luke’s own worldview found in his Gospel. Despite Crossan’s exegetical efforts, Jesus seems again to return to his own time and place, as Schweitzer noted, leaving us with our historical reconstructions rather than a Jesus that can be known outside his own world.

Traditional interpretation posits a complex compositional history to explain the transitions in Ezra between Hebrew and Aramaic languages (Ezra 4:8; 6:19; 7:12; 7:27). But the sociolinguistic phenomenon of code-switching suggests an additional explanation (cf. Arnold, Portier-Young, Rendsburg). Code-switching has long been identified as a distinct linguistic practice by multilinguals to adapt to varying social situations (Gemperz, Blom). The code-switching reveals a complex articulation of self-identity for repatriates, as the true “children of Israel,” to negotiate their own identity within the orbit of the Persian Empire. The mandate to speak in Hebrew demonstrates the primacy of language as a cultivated boundary to safeguard the repatriate community from assimilation. The paper then reflects on code-switching as an identity marker for diaspora Koreans. Parallel to the Judean returnees, intentional usage of language signals strategic responses of community solidarity and resistance against empire within hybridized spaces (S.H.Lee).

This paper investigates the role of leadership and authority in the Matthean atonement rituals. While the transformative power of rituals has been noted in the past (cf. Alexander) the power of rituals in Matthew to atone for sin and to enact reconciliation have not been analysed. Nor has the authority granted to those who oversee them. A general definition of a ritual, as well as of atonement, will be given before possible atonement rituals in the Gospel of Matthew will be analysed. Atonement will be defined in terms of the related concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation and in terms of interpersonal relationships and the relationship between God and humans. In order to identify rituals of atonement the criteria outlined by George Strecker will be utilised to investigate the following text: (a) the healing of lepers by Jesus (8:1-4); (b) the meals of Jesus (9:9-13); (c) Jesus’ guidelines for restoring Christian relationships (18:15-22); (d) the Lord’s Supper (26:17-30); (e) Judas’ suicide (27:3-10); (f) the hand washing by Pilate (27:24-26a) and (g) the crucifixion of Jesus (27:32-56) and (h) the commission of the disciples by Jesus (28:16-20). These rituals in Matthew, of which some are deemed to be unsuccessful will be analysed further in order to determine to whom they grant the authority to pronounce atonement and how this authority was possibly ritualised in the Matthean community. This analysis will be done by utilising the work of Richard DeMaris and Jason Lemoreaux. A concluding remark will be made on the relationship between ritual, power and authority for present day faith communities.

In classic antiquity women acted as prophetesses’, oracles, seers, mediums, rulers etc., but wisdom or being wise was not easily associated with the mortal female. This has mainly to do with the way wisdom is perceived and the location of females in ancient and contemporary society. In ancient Greek philosophy it was assumed that the search for wisdom was a male dominated profession even less likely to include women since its practice often involved the discussion of theories in male groups or schools. Women were able to contribute to the search for wisdom, but they had virtually no political rights or influence in the male dominated society. Women did receive some education, but their place was in the house, supervising the daily running of the household with no or limited possibilities to pursue a profession. Respectable women were not talked about in public, not even their names were mentioned. Therefore, proof of female literary production is almost non-existent. Virtues defined as essential to practical wisdom are not limited to a particular context, but virtues develop within different cultures and traditions. Therefore, the ancient philosophers described the virtues recognised in their society; but these are the virtues of the privileged élite, mainly free adult Greek males and have doubtful relevance beyond their context. For that reason, these virtues have also not the potential to enhance contemporary global social improvements. From a decolonial feminist perspective the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 will be reread in searching for the female sage.

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When we compare the synoptic accounts of the woman who married seven brothers, we notice that while Matthew follows the Markan text, Luke, especially in the words of Jesus, changes it. The first important change is that Lk 20:34-36 omits Mk 12:24 and adds the contrast between “the sons of this age” and “those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead.” The second significant change occurs in v.38, where Luke adds the expression “for all live [/are living], belonging to Him.” Previously, these Lukan textual changes have been discussed from the perspective of Lukan eschatology. We will consider why Luke accepted the concept of spiritual immortality from the tradition. Luke seems to have received this idea from the multifaceted concept of resurrection in Early Judaism. Since the concept of the final resurrection still remains, Luke’s interest would not be primarily in the eschatological points. A clue to Luke’s intention is in dative of the expression of zen tini in v.38. By tracing the tradition of zen tini especially with the usages of Philo and Paul, we can see that this expression originally related to a marriage relationship, where it referred to the possessor of a woman. Philo and Paul use this expression with a distinction between “to live to/for oneself” and “to live to/for God” to question who is the true master of one’s life. This study suggests that Luke, in using this dative to indicate the possessor, focuses on the concept that a woman who lived as the possession of men became the possession of God. With these textual changes, Luke, while retaining the concept of resurrection, focuses on the importance of living as a possession of God, that is, the true master of one’s life.

In the Johannine presentation of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples Judas Iscariot is depicted as the one who offends their intimate fellowship over the meal. Interestingly, in ancient symposiastic literatures it is not uncommon to have this type of figure, who causes discord and confusion by disturbing the dinner gathering. In this paper I argue that a literary character of Judas in John 13 is more properly understood only when the Johannine farewell discourse is read in light of the ancient literary symposia. Plutarch of Chaeronea’s Quaestiones convivales, a literary symposium written contemporaneous with the New Testament writings including the Gospel of John, serves as a fruitful comparative case for this study. For Plutarch, “friendship” was one of the indispensable footings of society, and the dinner table was an essential tool for its construction. Likewise, in the Fourth Gospel Jesus’s last meal provides a literary setting to present a formation of his disciples’ community, as defined by the term “friendship” (John 15:13-15). Then, a careful examination of Plutarch’s dialogues regarding the proper decorum for a social meal gathering will lead us to better understand the activity of Judas as hostile to the formation of the Johannine “friendship” community.

The book of Job shows considerable similarity to Near Eastern literature because Biblical literature was inevitably international. This paper will firstly explore those relationships between the book of Job and the wisdom literature of ancient Near East, seeking key aspects of Ancient Israel wisdom tradition. This research will explore how the Israelite wisdom tradition is different from other traditions, seeking its own meaning. Two unique vehicles of the book of Job that could be contrastable to the ANE works are the strong characterization and feminine images of personified Wisdom. As a Korean female seminarian, I will focus on feminine characters in detail from Asian feminist theological perspective: personified Wisdom, Job’s wife, and three daughters. Wisdom itself is feminine, also feminine perspectives are abundant in the narratives and illustrations. Moreover, the essential question that serves as the crucial turning point in Job comes from a woman, Job’s wife. Feminine voices as exemplified by Job’s wife that present philosophical arguments are features of this text, making it distinctive from any other ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature. Furthermore, these dramatic characterizations open the possibility that women sages were deeply engaged in Israel’s wisdom tradition. In comparing it with other ancient Near Eastern literature, readers find not only important intertextuality but also discover that Job has made use of fascinating literary devices from gender equity perspective. Its diverse characterizations and the metaphors of feminine Wisdom confirm the vast creativity and beauty of the wisdom tradition of ancient Israel.

Numbers 25 is a problematic text that shows a zealous priest conducting violence on behalf of jealous God, who rewards the act. Here, the divine emotion of jealousy and human zeal are denoted by the same Hebrew word qn’. Numbers 25 stands out as one of the four occasions where qn’ is translated as zeal. This zeal is strongly connected to the monotheistic exclusivity God demands of Israel as the appropriate human response to divine jealousy. Within such monotheistic relational context, extreme violence performed out of zeal was permissible and celebrated. Such permissibility of, or even the demand for, monotheistic violence in Numbers 25 stems from a very particular political, interreligious, relational, emotional context, which resembles that of the margin of the empires, a space postcolonially conceptualized as interstitial, hybrid or third space. When a strong identify formation is at the core of the dynamic in this postcolonial boundary space, demand for such monotheistic violence increases. This paper examines several power dynamics operating within the context of Numbers 25 and conceptualize the psychological dynamic of qn’ as a possible indicator of identify formation process on the postcolonial boundary space. The passage will be interpreted through a dialogical correlation of postcolonial theories and analysis from Heinz Kohut’s Self Psychology perspective and brought to conversation with narratives from contemporary postcolonial Christian experiences. This paper argues that the complex overlap of political, interreligious, relational and emotional dynamic found in Numbers 25 is controlled through the emotional pairing of divine jealousy and human zeal that provided a center to the center-less boundary experience of the Israelites. Such control is often mirrored in contemporary religious experience on the postcolonial margin.

“Are you ignoring us?” Yong-Soo Lee, a former comfort woman, repeatedly said during the conversation with vice-minister for foreign affairs of South Korea. South Korea and Japan reached an agreement on comfort women, December 28th 2015. The voice of victims, however, was never heard, while the powerful spoke and made a decision for the comfort women. The history of the comfort women is in danger of vanishing away. Similarly, in the story of David’s ten concubines the victims never speak. The powerful make decisions for them. David orders them to look after his house. Ahithophel advises and Absalom violates them. David shuts them up until their death. In these sporadically inserted scenes (2 Sam. 15:16, 16:22, 20:3) their existence finally vanishes. Their cry is never heard in the midst of David’s victory over his enemies. One wonders, “Is God also ignoring the suffering of ten concubines? Who can speak for these marginalized women?” I argue that the Samuel narrative neither ignores the suffering of ten concubines nor praises the victory of David, but by speaking for them articulates their faithfulness against unfaithfulness of David and his men. To demonstrate my thesis, first I introduce the concept of unifying plot and episodic plot in narrative and the practice of speaking for the other from Edward Said’s Orientalism. Second, I show how major characters of the story abuse power and ignore the suffering of the marginalized in 2 Sam. 16:20-23 and 20:3. Third, I show how the narrator speaks for the faithful ten concubines and reveals David not as a victor but an unfaithful betrayer like his men in 2 Sam. 15:1-20:26. Finally, I discuss the danger of the abuse of power and speaking for the other, and the need for paying attention to the sufferings and stories of comfort women.

My paper aims to investigate how the norms of Judaism are operative in Paul’s understanding of his Jewish identity. I examine the continuities and discontinuities in Paul’s relationship to Judaism in two autobiographical narratives. The first is found in Gal 1:13-2:14 where Paul details his transition from being an emulator of Judaism to an apostle for the uncircumcised, we find the second in Phil 3:4-6 where Paul introduces his circumcision and racial and tribal ancestries. Focusing on Paul’s ambivalent embrace of Judaism, I ask: how does Paul variously “cite” the concept of Judaism vis-à-vis his identity before and after his call to apostleship? How is Paul’s understanding of subjectivity defined according to his citation of Jewish norms? Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, which connects citationality to subjectivity and performance, frames this paper. In Phil 3:4-6 and Gal 1:13-2:14 where Paul narrates his pre-call identity, the Jewish norms cited to describe his life prior to the call demonstrate his inheritance of Jewishness. Consequently, Paul’s citation of Judaism serves to mark his Jewishness as given and predetermined, and there was no space for subjectivity to function. But Paul’s call from God fissures his passive Jewishness. It is the shift in Paul’s interpretation of subjectivity and identity after the call that allowed him to define the revelation as the commission to the gentiles. Post-call Paul cites the Jewish norms in the process of identifying himself as an apostle to the gentiles. For the former Paul citationality plays a significant role in proving his genuine Jewishness, whereas for the apostle Paul citationality functions as a counter-thesis to explicate subjectivity’s performance in constructing the believer’s identity. All in all, through the performativity of citation, Paul’s Jewishness is troubled and so opened to new constructions of subjectivity.

Who is main character of resuscitation story in 2Kings 4:8-37? Is it Elisha or the son of the Shunammite? The story is taken into account as one of Elisha’s miracles that has been inserted into the Deuteronomistic history. Furthermore, this woman who is called just ‘Shunammite’; her name is not even mentioned. But paradoxically, I insist that the story is focused on an active mother and her miraculous son. This is the content that could be known by Burke. O. Long, Mary Sheilds and J. F. Parker. According to Long, it is possible to detect that attitude of the Shunammite has changed along the temporal flow. Her unconditional awe, had changed to suspicion and sadness in the story. It was Elisha who could not give confidence to Shunammite about overcoming the crisis. She protests his annunciation from the beginning that even she doesn’t wish at all. It was just the prophet’s own determination. Mary Sheilds also argued that the man of God and the Shunammite changed their initiative in the text. In other words, she reveal the Shunammite as main character in this narrative. Moreover, J. F. Parker insisted that Shunammite’s son changed her attitude. She was shaken by maternity and it provoked prophet’s miracle. While the boy has secondary role, it is hard to find Elisha’s leadership in this text. Elisha promised the son without revelation of God, so he was led by the Shunammite throughout the story. In conclusion, the tale of resuscitation in 2 Kings 4:8-37 focuses on an unusual mother-son relationship. Instead of taking advantage of the foresight of Elisha, they played a leading role and changed the story.

Doing theology as a woman in Korea is not simple task. It is long journey to identify myself in the context of the twenty first century patriarchal society behind bars of Confucianism and various folk customs. Moreover, throughout the long history of misogyny in patriarchal order, women have still cried out as victims of unequality and injustice in Korea. This research is based on personal feminist criticism, in which one of women theologians in Korea has struggled with her professional biblical scholarship in academic circles, that had been neglected by most of theologians, pastors, and ministers in Korean Christianity. The focal point of this study reflects theological understanding of personal lament in Psalm 94, reading the text on the personalized view and experience. Within one of Christian seminaries a neglected woman theologian has struggled with faithfulness and loyalty in the presence of God, adopting the confession of the author in this poem. The psalmist in the text shows lonely life journey to understand the attributes of God and personal troubles in the corruption of his/her time. The divine justice and righteousness in the individual life of humanity become one’s hope in difficulty to cause one to rejoice and to sustain one’s life. Out of sorrow and agony God in the divine steadfast love leads an individual in the ways of the divine care. The interpretation of the text in the eyes of a woman tries to cope with misogyny in patriarchal order, in which women in ministry are rejected.

This article focuses on the dualistic symbols of light and darkness to examine the rhetorical function and meaning of the word “night” in John 3:2 and 19:39 in the Bible. The word “night” can be interpreted according to three different arguments. The first group argues that “night” does not have symbolic meaning and that it is just a historical description. The second group claims that “night” has positive connotations in the plot. The third group claims that Nicodemus’s visit at night metaphorically describes spiritual darkness. The second and third groups seem to have opposite ideological understandings, but both share one point. In this paper, I will demonstrate that Jesus is the Light of the world, and “night” -one of the symbols of darkness- portrays Nicodemus in a manner that represents those who approach Jesus from the darkness to the light by emphasizing Johannine dualism. In section 1, I will explore the origin of “night” and the similar patterns of the light and darkness symbolism seen in Jewish dualism and Johannine dualism. To analyze the rhetorical function of “night”, this study will concentrate on the three types of dualism: epistemological, psychological, and religious. In section 2, we will study how “night” plays a role in illustrating Nicodemus as a deficient believer. According to the three types of Johannine dualism, Nicodemus is the person who is in darkness. In section 3, we will study how the evangelist emphasizes that Nicodemus becomes a true believer by reemploying “night” as a symbolic expression. In light of the three types of dualism, Nicodemus is the person who overcomes the darkness.

"And Jacob went out from Beersheba and went to Haran […] He had a dream" (Gen. 12:10, 12). In his dream he sees a ladder (v. 12), on which "angels of God" are ascending and descending. Why, according to the Sages, do the angels first ascend then descend? Why do God's angels first ascend and then descend according to my research? I plan to show that the vision of the act (ascending and descending on the ladder) of the angels of God may represent – in a symbolic matter (as a symbolic dream) - the way Abraham and Jacob figured traveling to and from the land. The combination: "Angels of God" appears only twice in the M. Bible. "Angels of God" mal?akhei ?elohim is a key word as M. Buber calls it, "a rare guiding word". The angels of God appear in Jacob's Dream (Gen. 28:12) and at Mahanaim (Gen. 32:2). Both are in the Jacob Cycle calls attention to the similarity and the connection between the two stories where "angels of God" appears. As we read twice Jacob encounters "the angels of God", one may ask: "what are the similarities between the two and the Differences between the two". "What can the comparison between the two teach?" I plan to show that the connection between the two stories where "angels of God" appear focuses attention on the theme of the discussion: Jacob's departure (in Gen. 28:12) from and entry into the Land (in Gen 32:2).

Psalms using the language of enmity present a challenge for Christians who wish to use these psalms as prayer. The image in Psalm 137 of “shattering little ones against the rock” is arguably one of the most severe representations of violent language in the Bible. Psalm 137 is also notable, though, because unlike most psalms, it refers to explicit historical enemies, Edom and Babylon, and to the historically identifiable “day of Jerusalem’s fall.” This study begins with an exegesis of Psalm 137 and seeks to determine the perceived suffering portrayed in the Psalm at the hands of these enemies and the meaning of the responses to these adversaries. It then moves to a limited historical survey of how commentators up until the Reformation have perceived the suffering and responses in this Psalm. The historical perspective provides a basis to understand the use of the violent images in verse nine as metaphorical. More specifically, the rhetorical device of synecdoche is most helpful in explaining how the ostensibly violent texts function. The historical perspective also allows for this psalm to be commented upon as canonical, normative prayer by understanding the use of the harsh images in the psalm in context of memory and God’s engagement with egregious moral evil.

It is generally agreed (e.g. Younger 2007, Zadok 2012) that the Assyrians conquered Jazira at the fall of Mitanni and Assyrianised the area through settlement. Subsequently, there was a demographic slump, with extant Assyrian documents indicating that the Assyrians were also fighting against the Arameans in the area in the late 12th century and in the 11th century. An Assyrian reconquista in the area took place from the 10th century on. Middle Assyrian Chronicles directly suggest that the Assyrians desired additional land. Settling the areas both in LB and IA by the Assyrians clearly indicates migration and would fit with the idea that the lands were seen as part of Assyria. Such postulated actions of the Assyrians fit with patterns for comparable societies elsewhere in world history. The actions can also be considered as colonialism as they cause moves towards an Assyrianisation of the area, with changes in material culture discernible from archaeological data. The Arameans seem to have gotten in the area in the 13th-12th centuries through infiltration, which by definition is also migration. Such migration of a group that distinguishes itself from the Assyrians would again at least potentially suggest colonialism of some type, with the result that the areas became Aramean, at least partially so. This paper will look at what can be surmised about the putative migration and settlement of the Arameans in the Jazira area based on interacting with related scholarship together with settler colonial and conquest studies. I will also specifically interact with often suggested theories of indigenous origins of Arameans in the ANE as part of the paper. In conclusion to the paper, if possible based on an examination of the area, potential implications will also be drawn for the study of the origins and spread of Arameans in the broader ANE context.

In the terminology of sociolinguistics, “style-switching” is a common practice in spoken and written language by which a speaker or writer purposefully alters his/her normal linguistic usage, in relation to contextual factors such as audience and discourse topic. Within biblical studies, and especially the work of Gary Rendsburg, style-switching has been closely associated with biblical authors’ use of strange-sounding language to represent the foreign speech of non-Israelites. This paper analyses two potential cases of such style-switching in the Pentateuch: Gen 31, the final encounter between Jacob and Laban the Aramaean; and Exod 18, Jethro the Midianite’s judicial instructions to Moses. Peculiar lexical and morphological features in these texts have led Jonas Greenfield and Mordechay Mishor respectively to propose that style-switching is operative in representing foreignness here. In Gen 31:47, Laban’s Aramaic phrase «yegar sahadutha», “heap of witness,” has seemed especially probative. This paper uses a robust methodology, developed from the work of Brian Bompiani, to examine the strength of these proposals. This methodology addresses the difficulties involved in detecting the use of style-switching to represent foreignness in the Pentateuch and broader Hebrew Bible—difficulties including identifying a “standard” Hebrew narrative style, isolating foreign linguistic features, and recognizing discursive indicators of style-switching. I find that, although it is harder than has been acknowledged to demonstrate the presence of style-switching in the Hebrew Bible, an especially strong case can be made in certain instances. The paper concludes by situating these Pentateuchal uses of style-switching within a broader phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible—the recognition of the linguistic multiplicity that characterizes human existence. This recognition is particularly acute in the book of Genesis, as in the tower of Babel episode, Gen 11:1¬–9. The use of style-switching to highlight linguistic difference offers a distinctive and valuable perspective on this universal experience.

The welcome growth of interest in children in Ancient Israelite literature and life prompts the question as to what life was like for the elderly in that society. In some ways, the roles of pre-pubertal children and of the elderly who are passed the age of reproduction have similarities, but there are also clear differences. Children are a potential resource for the community; what is it that the elderly can offer? The association between age and wisdom in the Hebrew Bible suggests that memory and experience are the main social capital of the elderly. Long life can lead to wisdom, but it can also rob us of our mental capacities. This paper seeks to show that this tension can be seen in the treatment of the elderly in the Hebrew Bible, not least in its characterisation of Yahweh.

The Book of Lamentations contains five poems which convey the devastation which occurred during the destruction which took place in Israel in 587BCE. Voices, characterisation and personification are used to convey the theological and physical agony of their situation. These voices witness the crisis and respond to it in an immediate and powerful way. The imagery used is stark and confronting. The voices do not always interact with each other directly and so a number of strands of witness and response emerge. These poems provided a transitional space for lament and complaint to assist individuals move from orientation to disorientation to reorientation. During the conflict in Gaza and Israel in July 2014 there were many reponses of lament on social media. Three have been chosen for this paper. The themes of witness, weeping and destruction drew parallels between the ancient and contemporary situations. I will present a cross-textual reading between these three pieces (one from a journalist, one from an Israeli mother and one from a Gazan poet) and the Book of Lamentations. Similar work has been undertaken by Todd Linafelt in his work 'Surviving Lamentations' and the compilation 'Lamentations in Ancient and Contemporary Cultural Context' edited by Nancy C. Lee and Carleen Mandolfo. My argument is that our worship and ability to understand and respond to global and local crisis can be enhanced by the theological tool of lament. Social media and the platform that it offers can be a place where witnesses can also give their testimony and be heard and as such may also have a role to play in liturgy. In a fusion of Scripture, liturgy and testimony we validate the voices of those who are suffering and may be more compelled to respond with compassion.

The motif of knowledge hidden and revealed is a motif easily considered a topoi of so-called apocalyptic literature. In this paper, I intend to study this theme in a text which precisely does not belong a priori to apocalyptic but rather to wisdom literature, the book of Ben Sira. The study will examine the relationships and transformations of this motif through wisdom and apocalyptic texts. This analysis follows in the footsteps of two major studies by James K. Aitken, “Apocalyptic, Revelation and Early Jewish Wisdom Literature,” and Benjamin G. Wright, “Conflicted Boundaries: Ben Sira, Sage and Seer.” Both consider the complex relationships of the book of Ben Sira and its motif of revelation with Apocalyptic literature. I will limit the analysis of three significant texts: wisdom’s discourse in Sir 4:11-19, the praise of the scribe in Sir 39:1-3 and the revelation of wisdom to the humble in Sir 3:17-24. Through a philological analysis of each passages, I will question how in these texts the idea of hidden and revealed knowledge is presented and what are the conditions for revelation of knowledge and the means of obtaining it.

This paper aims to examine Mark 10:35~45 according to three feminist interpretations, including critical-liberationist, Asian feminist, and postcolonial, and to evaluate critically those interpretations in terms of Dance of Interpretation Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza suggests in Wisdom Ways and the South Korean women’s experiences, with the goal of empowerment of women leaders in the South Korean church. This text reflects the contradictory position in which women leaders in the South Korean churches are situated, in that, in church, an egalitarian message of Jesus is shared, but women still are silenced and forced to be marginalized. In this passage, we can find the contradictory coexistence of both oppressive and liberative factors. The androcentric and colonial structure of domination presupposed in the text are parallel to those in the South Korean church. Jesus’ liberative redefinition of “service” in this text, as well, could function as a transformative tool, since it has functioned as rhetoric towards legitimizing oppression of women. In this reconstructive survey, first, I’d like to discern oppressive and transformative potentialities for South Korean women church leaders in the way of discipleship described in this text, by critically examining three feminist interpretations. I’ll read Joanna Dewey’s “The Gospel of Mark,” from Searching the Scriptures, Hisako Kinukawa’s Women and Jesus in Mark, and Tat-siong Benny Liew’s “Mark,” from A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament. In the second part of this paper, in connection with Dance of Interpretation, I will evaluate critically three different readings, based on the experiences of the South Korean women leaders. I hope these interpretations, in complementary interaction, could give a deeper and diverse discernment of the multiplex structure of domination based on an androcentric and colonial ideology affecting South Korean women’s lives, and of empowering potentialities such as the transformative redefinition of service and suffering in this text.

In Biblical Studies, it is common to hear assertions such as that ‘Paul had both Greek and Jewish influences’, or that ‘the Gospel of Matthew was more influenced by Judaism than Hellenism’, or that ‘early Christianity was influenced by Roman collegia’. Sometimes, this influence is demonstrable at the level of specific textual borrowing (e.g., Paul’s use of ‘gentle as a nurse’ language from Cynicism) or at the level of conceptual overlap (the Gospel of Matthew’s use of Stoic ethics). Mostly, however, assertions of influence stem from generalized understandings and assertions of how various social, conceptual, and literary strata interacted with one another, as well as a fundamental lack of clarity behind the very word “influence”. In this paper, I argue that the digital humanities provide an antidote for the lack of clarity behind vague assertions of influence that are common in the field, particularly in literary studies. Analyzing and coding a text using the tools of the digital humanities allows for textual comparisons that are quantitative, transparent, and testable. These methods productively supplement existing qualitative approaches for a fuller picture of the nature of Biblical literature and the ancient Mediterranean literary environment more broadly. Fundamental emphasis will be on conceptual methods, namely classifying and coding literature, specifically Paul’s letters. Additionally, I will demonstrate and apply tools from the digital humanities that involve mapping comparisons between texts (e.g., two of Paul’s letters) using basic tools on Excel and Word. Particular focus will be on visualizing comparative literary data in graphical form, and the use of cluster analysis to understand and demonstrate comparison.

It is said that Paul’s epistle to the I Corinthians is a friendship letter. As a good friend of the Corinthian community, Paul exhorts and admonishes his Corinthian friends to remain in their friendship. For Paul, the norm that underlines the friendship is love. In the context of exercising their freedom in the matter of eating the food offered to the idols (I Cor 8-10) and the use of spiritual gifts (I Cor 12-14), Paul says it is not the knowledge or the spiritual gifts that underlines one’s friendship within the ekklesia but love. Similar idea is found in the writings of Cicero, the Roman philosopher. For Cicero, friendship is an agreement with goodwill and affection on all things divine and human (Cic. Amic.20). The source of goodwill is love (amor). Friendship is formed to manage a common advantage through mutual service. But, the Corinthian friends did not work out for the common advantage of their friends. They exercised their freedom for their own advantage. As Cicero, Paul also exhorts his Corinthian friends to do all things for the common good which is the edification or building up of their friends. It can happen only if their friendship is grounded on the basis of love which is the source of goodwill. Therefore, it is assumed that the comparison of 1 Corinthians with Cicero’s concept of friendship will bring out Paul’s exhortation of Love as the source of Friendship in community.

The aim of this paper is to critically analyze the uniqueness and similarities between Paul’s friendly appeal to Philemon from the Epistle of Paul to Philemon and Krishna’s friendly appeal to Arjuna from Bhagavad gita. This comparative critical reading mainly deals with the appeal of Paul and Krishna with their friends in a particular context. They both made an appeal to their friends to fight against evil. Paul asked Philemon to fight against the social evil of slavery, whereas Krishna asked Arjuna to fight against the existing evil, against his family that is Duryodhana (Arjuna’s brother) who is considered as an embodiment of evil source. They both have their own principles to bring their appeal to their friends. Krishna’s appeal to Arjuna was that he should evacuate the evil through war. But Paul’s appeal to Philemon was that he should evacuate the evil by acceptance. This critical reading will provide stand to read Paul’s friendly appeal to Philemon in the light of Krishna’s friendly appeal to Arjuna, so that the element of Paul’s friendly appeal could be brought to light

Isaiah 40-48 efficiently employs satire in the anti-idol polemics to subvert the dominant narrative of empire. Sarcasm, irony, and mockery are poetic devices used to undermine the political economic centre, and reinforce counter views of living. This paper explores the satirical function of the anti-idol polemics in Deutero-Isaiah and compares these with contemporary forms of satire, comics and cartoons aimed at destabilizing various dominant ideologies provoking modern day forms of terrorism, warfare or government; humour succeeding where other forms of persuasion may have failed. The implied audience of the anti-idol polemics may include both those who buy into dominant ideologies - the provocateurs, as well as those who seek to oppose these but may require alternative ways of thinking. Beneath the layers of humour lie a carefully constructed and scathing case against powerful and sometimes dangerous worldviews.

Religious traditions in the Near East and the recitation of the Qur'an, which is performed both privately and in public spaces, are characterized by cultic practice. The recitation of the Qur´an points to the relevance of Syriac Church music as one of its contexts. Both, the Qur´an and the Syriac recitation, are recited with a cantilena and are based on a similar set of rules, i.e. music, grammar, and rhetoric. The recitation of the Qur´an follows exact rules of pronunciation, which are defined in the principles of tajwid. Similar to the recitation of the Bible, it is necessary to ensure that the meaning of the text reaches the listener. Because of this, the vocal practice of the recitation of the Qur´an needs to be studied with regard to its historical development and with a view to the developments in Christian Oriental Church music.

Lev. 15:1-15 discusses in detail the ways in which a man who had an irregular penile discharge, a zab, transmits his impurity. Direct contact with a zab, touching or carrying his seat or bed can all conduct this impurity. In verses 16-18 however, Leviticus only briefly discusses the impurity of regular seminal discharges, and goes into less detail. This discrepancy encourages interpretive efforts, one of which can be found at Qumran. A Qumran scroll, 4QTohoraa (4Q274), offers a sectarian reading of this biblical passage. Fragment 2 particularly discusses the laws of semen impurity using the terminology used in Leviticus concerning zab. This paper offers a new reading of fragment 2 and reconstructs the fundamental principles behind the creation of these laws.

The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the Bible’s impact in shaping the negative viewpoint of Korean Christians towards nature. Today, the mainline protestant churches in Korea have an indifferent attitude toward ecological problems. This paper’s assumption is that the tremendous influence of certain brands of Western theology brought by the early Western missionaries from their home countries are in part the ultimate root of this apathetic stance of South Korean Christians, especially Western theologies associated with biblical literalism and Premillennial Dispensationalism. The majority of Western missionaries to Korea saw the eschatological texts of the N.T through the lens of Premillennial Dispensationalism, which teaches that the natural world is destined to be totally destroyed by God’s judgment and that devoted believers will be caught up in a new, transformed and eternal existence. The early leaders of Korean protestant churches accepted this viewpoint and the inherited understanding of the biblical texts through this view concerning nature has shaped the indifferent attitude of the majority of contemporary Korean Christians towards current environmental issues. This doctrinal perspective (with certain doctrinal constructs) not only functioned as the central key in reading and interpreting the N.T.’s eschatological texts, but it also treated certain eschatological texts as central (Mk 13:24-27; 1Thess 4:13-5:11; Heb 12:25-29; 2 Pet 3:1-13; Rev 6:12-27; 8:1-13) and marginalized others (Mk 1:12-13; Rom 8:19-23; and Rev 21:1-7, 22:1-5). To illustrate the interpretive history of the eschatological texts of the N.T. and its influence on perceptions of nature among Korean protestant churches, this paper deals with a brief history of the dissemination of premillennial dispensationalism among Korean Christians, and also illustrates various views on N.T. eschatology.

This paper’s approach to the topic of the “authority” of David and Davidic kingship invites a rereading from the perspective of an “internally persuasive” word, and thus provides a dialogic way of understanding the interrelations of character, speaker, and audience in the Samuel prose. This paper examines how the authority of David is accepted, challenged, rejected, reclaimed or reinterpreted in terms of his complex interrelationships with supporting characters in the books of Samuel, and investigates how and why the character of David can be represented as the kind of hero who is not determined and finalized by “monologic” authoritative conclusion. In so doing, this paper attempts to make the stylistic (and ideological) distinction between “authoritative word” and “internally dialogized word” from the perspective of the theories of dialogue: if the authoritative word is “located in a distanced zone” that is considered to be hierarchically higher, internally persuasive discourse enters into a struggle with other internally persuasive discourses among various available ideological points of view and values. This paper argues that the authority of David does not remain in an isolated and static condition, but based on the internally persuasive discourse in Samuel, the words on David and his kingship are not finite, but open to (re)interpretation especially in the exilic context of the destruction of the city of David and the Jerusalem Temple. In other words, in each of the new contexts that “dialogize” the discourse, the “internally persuasive word” on David and his kingship continuously represents “newer ways to mean” in the (post)exilic communities. This paper eventually aims to reveal how the audience as ordinary people may have perceived the authority of David and the Davidic line in the world of (post)exile, where hierarchical dominance and the authority of the monarchy have been lost.

What does it mean for someone who has sinned against other people to pray to God, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,” as the psalmist does in Psalm 51:4[6]? Jews and Christians have puzzled over this text from ancient times to the present day, especially given their assumption that this is David’s confession after the Bathsheba affair, and given the importance of this penitential psalm in their public and private liturgies. But the problem does not go away if one denies Davidic authorship of the psalm together with most modern scholars. All but a few biblical scholars still view Psalm 51 as an ancient prayer of repentance that would have been appropriate after commission of sins against other people, and not solely against God. A distinctively modern solution would be to treat this confession, with its apparent disregard for the offended human party, as indicative of the breach between religious faith and ethics that plagued the ancient world, and that continues to plague our own. Unsurprisingly, Jewish and Christian interpreters, including most modern biblical scholars, have interpreted the prayer more sympathetically. Even so, there remain many theological and ethical questions about the nature of sin (both general and particular), repentance (to both God and humans), and moral responsibility (especially to other people) in the imaginations of Jews and Christians as they read and interpret this psalm. In this paper, I shall raise these and other questions as I examine various solutions that modern biblical commentators — including Japanese interpreters — have proposed in order to make sense of this important text. (Research for this paper is being funded by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.)

In this paper I will argue that the seven angels of the seven churches in Rev 2-3 are human messengers of the churches, namely pastors of the 7 churches in Asia Minor. This is premised on three grounds. First, it is unlikely that letters to churches are sent to heavenly angels. Second, the reading of the Greek text suggests that these angels/messengers are in the churches. Thirdly and more significantly, on the basis of Codex Alexandrinus which has the reading in Rev 2:20 as "your wife" which is probably the original reading of Greek text of Rev 2:20 given the reliability and dependability of Codex A for the Greek text of Revelation as a whole. If my contention is correct, "Your wife, Jezebel" then refers to the angel's wife which in all likelihood is the pastor's wife. The troubles in Thyatira are caused by the pastor's wife who leads some of the members into sexual immorality and partaking of foods sacrificed to idols. I will relate this reading to the contemporary church, especially the Asian church where several recent high profile cases that attracted media attention focus on the troubles of the church caused by the pastor's wife and the need for the churches in Asia and the West to heed the sayings of the letter to the pastor of the Thyatira church.

This paper discusses the specific Markan text through tradition and redaction criticisms. By doing these criticism, one can see that there were possibly two separate narratives combined together by Mark, which were, the narrative of resurrecting the daughter of Jairus, and the sudden accidental healing of the chronic bleeding woman. The two cases represent two different clusters of tradition. Both persons, the daughter of Jairus and the chronic bleeding woman, received the salvation as also healing (and resurrection). Mark may have received the two narratives separately, and when he joined them together, the theology set behind has two aspects, (1) feminist, which he compared a man with a woman, and by doing so implies a gender equality, and (2) liberative, which he compared two persons from totally opposite social backgrounds.

This proposal will fit in the third section, 'Special Themes on the Synoptic Gospels.' In this paper I excavate the layers of interpretation within the parable of the lamp in Luke 8:16-18 using the tool of biblical interpretation criticism. Part 1 shows the complexity of the passage in Luke 8:16-18 for it cannot be interpreted with just one biblical criticism. This section will show the important aspects of biblical criticism. In Part 2, I will apply biblical criticism to the passage in Luke 8:16-18 to illuminate how the parable of the lamp is portrayed differently in each gospel. Examining the Greek texts of Luke 8:16-18, I will investigate the textual issues of the passage and define parable – the form of the passage. However, there are many shortcomings of looking at the passage through a form critical lens alone. In order to gain a fuller sense of the parable and its surrounding passage, I will employ other biblical interpretation methods. Through these methods, I suggest a richer biblical interpretation. In Part 3, I will elaborate upon the Sitz im Leben of the passage, specifically the historical setting of the Primitive Christian Church. However, as this investigation will establish, an important weakness of form criticism is that it is difficult to establish the exact historical setting and Sitz im Leben of the passage. Other biblical methods offer helpful insights where form criticism falls short. Through this process, the parable of the lamp is better elucidated. Furthermore, this part will show how intertextuality method links Luke 8:16-18 with verses from Job 17:12-14; 18:6, Psalms 119:105, and Proverbs 20:27. In conclusion, I will provide a brief assessment of biblical criticism and conclude with a suggestion for future research in biblical criticism in the twenty first century.

Even as the observance of the Sabbath constitutes the core of Jewish faith, Jesus reorients the Sabbath regulations to meet the existential needs of the hungry and the afflicted ones. He moved far-off from the pharisaic way of construing the Sabbath and used scripture to counter the wrong perception held by the Pharisees. Jesus responds to the charge of Sabbath breaking by appealing to David's example (Mark 2:23–28; Matt 12:1–8; Luke 6:1–5), thereby showing that in principle the Sabbath law might be set aside by other considerations. Jesus did not vacillate in provoking the religious establishment in order to effect emancipation in the lives of the suffering and the affected people groups. It is absorbing to note that in the periscope on the healing of the crippled man, Jesus himself precipitates the conflict by calling the crippled man forward (the Greek word elgeire accentuates this [Mark 3:3; Luke 6:8]). While the earlier studies on the Sabbath controversies dwelt more on the historical plausibility and their Christological implications, this study, drawing mainly from Mark 2:23–28 and Mark 3:1–6 and their synoptic parallels, seeks to stress their interpretive potentials for liberating the exploited and the socially ostracized ones. In his Sabbath controversies Jesus operated on two vital principles: “doing good” and “saving life” (Mark 3:4). In it one witnesses the reciprocity between practical warrants and biblical interpretation. Thus the principles Jesus has enacted could serve as interpretive paradigms in biblical interpretation today. They resonate ethical, theological and epistemological nuances. It throws new insights on how we need to interpret the scripture in the 21st century as we seek to move the margins from the hegemonies of centric forces that operate under different cover. [TRUNCATED]

The Epistle to the Hebrews has received attention in areas such as: literary, historical and cultural contexts etc. The ritual context of the epistle remains in obscurity. This paper seeks to appraise ritual in Hebrews in light of the theological narrative of the Epistle. Ritual is often abbreviated, it is therefore not strange to find such brevity of ritual in Hebrews. This paper proposes the use of narrative analysis from a theological level to understand the ritual context of the epistle. Does the provenance of the epistle to Hebrews offer any light on its ritual context? What was going on ritually where the author was writing from? What were the ritual expectations and realities of the recipients of the epistle? There is a tension in Hebrews between the continuity of the Old Testament ritual and the discontinuity thereof. The epistle introduces and caries this tension throughout the theological narrative. Does the ritual context of the Epistle help in throwing light on the implications of this ritual tension? This paper seeks to employ an eclectic methodology that will bring the ritual, narrative and theological elements together. This method will address the questions raised and hopefully continue the debate drawing scholars from literary, theological and ritual studies to contribute in answering these questions.

The Shepherd of Hermas attests dozens of explicit and implicit apparent conditions of salvation. In his monograph on early Christian prophecy, David Aune examined the form and function of some of these conditions within Hermas’s oracular speeches, but many others remain to be analyzed. The most prominent of Hermas’s salvific conditions include repentance, keeping God’s commandments, and avoiding double-mindedness and wealth, and they often appear in tandem with his shorthand locutions for salvation. These conditions collectively require that Christians live and believe in certain ways, which might suggest that Hermas considered salvation to depend entirely on human agency and action. However, careful analysis of the Shepherd reveals a number of theological presuppositions that undergird the possibility of fulfilling the conditions, including divine election, the Son’s cleansing people’s sins, justification of the flesh, being saved through faith, receiving forgiveness of sins in baptism, and the ongoing activity of the indwelling Spirit. This paper surveys Hermas’s conditions and presuppositions of salvation, examines the theological interplay between them, and explores their possible origins in earlier Jewish and Christian traditions. It argues that the presuppositions’ importance within the ostensibly conditional logic of salvation in the Shepherd far outweighs their being few in number and often mentioned only in passing. When Hermas’s conditions are read together with his presuppositions and not against them, it becomes clear that he grounds salvation’s conditions and the possibility of fulfilling them in the prior, ongoing, and future activity of God the Father, the Son, and the holy Spirit. Seen in this light, Hermas’s many apparent conditions of salvation become not provisos per se but paraenetic catalysts for Christians’ continual conversion in community, flowing from the knowledge that they have been, are being, and one day will be saved.

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each one had six wings: with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the fullness of the whole earth declareth his glory (Isaiah 6:1-3). The three-fold Holy has had immense ethical, ritual, artistic, and musical ramifications. Each repetition is replete with meaning. In an effort to bring the charismatic vision of Isaiah into social and communal consciousness, the sages of ancient Israel introduced the Tersanctus of the angelic Seraphim into liturgy, as the basis for the most important Doxology of Judaism - the Kedusha of the synagogue. As the earliest Christian congregations developed within the synagogue, they adapted and reframed the Kedusha into the Sanctus of the Mass. Many composers from the 14th century onward have dealt with the "Triple Sanctus." Certain conventions in the setting of the Sanctus can be identified. In some works, the initial Sanctus is rather florid, and its reiterations are expressed in progressively rising phrases. The angelic acclamation is interpreted either as an outpouring of sweet sounds, or as a mighty thundering of massed praise. This article examines the Sanctus in various settings and contexts from Gregorian liturgy to works by Palestrina, Mozart, Verdi, and as Jewish synagogue music by Lewandowski.

According to Chen Lin’s poem A Wife Longs for Her Husband and the Book of Luban, we have reason to believe that many Chinese monuments and public buildings were constructed with human sacrifices as “human pillars”, which appeased the deity for protection and consolidation. Human sacrifices were also recorded in historical documents of the building of Tongwan, an ancient city in Xia Dynasty (2200-1760 B.C.E.). Although we cannot find any texts in the Hebrew Bible explicitly mentioning human sacrifice in the construction of Solomon’s Temple, there are texts that describe Solomon turning to other gods that did demand human sacrifices (Solomon built a shrine near Jerusalem for Molech, I Kg 11:7). And in Hebrew Bible as a whole there are many texts that mentioned the practice and/or prohibition of human sacrifices (Lev 18:21 Judg. 11, II Sam 21:1-11; II Kg 3:27). We can further relate ANET texts to the Hebrew texts in order to suggest plausible origins of human sacrifice in the region. This paper proposes to adopt a cross-textual reading of the above Chinese texts and the forced labor and oppression of the people in Solomon’s Temple and cities construction in I Kings 9/II Chronicles 8. Attention will also be paid to the textual evidence that shows not only that human sacrifice is present in the account, but a sharp distinction is made between Israelites and the nations when it comes to Solomon’s labor levy and slavery: “All the people who were left of the Hittites, Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites.... Solomon conscripted for forced labor...But of the people of Israel Solomon made no slaves for his work” (I Kg 9:20-22; II Chron 8:7-9, c.f. Lev 25).

This paper explores the relations between the textual evidence of Hittite rituals practice and oracular investigations, particularly those taken in times of war, and their reflection in the historiographical records of the Hittite empire of the second millennium BCE. The textual evidence raises several questions, such as what was the purpose of keeping such records, or what was the relationship between ritual practice and ritual writing. The said records were part of the historical accounts of the king and his administration, but should they be interpreted as a genuine expression of the Hittite religious tradition, or as an expression of royal propaganda? These various possibilities are examined through several textual examples and methodological considerations.

The Fourth Gospel has literary, historical, and theological impetus to capture the spiritual and liberative longings of people groups. Its dramatic master plan and rhetorical persuasion provide paradigmatic and recurrent power to the reader in order to reform her/himself as an agent of transformation. The stories of the Samaritan woman (4:1-26), the blind man turned healed (9:1-41), and Lazarus (11:1-44) moves the reader’s point of view from the margins to the center. As these stories foreground the reality of borderless liberation, the text as a whole can be placed as a paradigm in the contemporary Asian context. The following questions are significant to consider at this juncture: How does the Gospel of John provide insights for a liberative reading of New Testament scriptures? How is an innovative reading by taking into consideration all peoples possible in the twenty-first Asian context? How does a gnomic rather than a descriptive reading of the New Testament writings possible in today’s context? The aim of the paper would be three-fold: first, suggesting a new way of reading the text gnomically rather than descriptively; second, considering John’s Gospel as a paradigm in order to expand the methodologies and principles to other New Testament writings (and even to the Old Testament writings); and third, facilitating an author-text-reader conglomeration in the interpretative initiatives.

This paper will explore the retellings of and interactions with the biblical account of Noah and the flood (Gen 6-9) in modern literature. The four novels under scrutiny range from children’s literature, via young adult fiction, to main-stream fiction. They also represent diverse traditions and perspectives: some of the books are written from a marked Jewish or Christian perspective while others interrelate with the biblical narrative within a more secular context. The novels were furthermore published in different countries and written in different languages (Dutch, English, and Swedish). This paper will investigate how these novels enhance the biblical story by filling in the narrative gaps and providing the key dramatic personae with personality, background, and motivation for their actions. It will also look at how the novels respond to the theological problems that the biblical account raises. Why did God decide to send the flood? Why were Noah and his family spared from the catastrophe? Did Noah preach repentance whilst building the ark? Finally, this paper will note how several of the novels engage with extra-biblical texts (e.g. the Gilgamesh Epic, the book of Enoch) in order to produce a coherent and involving plot.

In the Chinese Union Version, Ecclesiastes 7:16 reads “do not act too righteously, and do not show yourself too wise – why bring destruction to yourself?” The passage has caused much hermeneutical unease to many Chinese Christian readers, who find the appeal against a determinant pursue of goodness difficult to negotiate and accept; in the Christian world of moral absolutism, where Paul’s urging to “press on toward the finish line” continues to ring loud, such an advice sounds ill-conceived, and to a certain degree, heretical. Applying the Taoist concept of Perspectivism of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tsz), this paper tries to offer an alternative way of understanding the Hebrew wisdom tradition underlining this chapter of Ecclesiastes. It is hoped that through the Zhuangzian worldview of perspectivism and relativism, the contextual importance of wisdom literature and its Hebrew setting can be highlighted and discussed, allowing the readers another angle to approach the text. The audience will also be invited to examine how perspectivism is perceived as a path of deeper knowledge in Zhuangzi’s writings, and how it compares with the way of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, especially as found in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

This paper analyses the conflicts among the Israelite tribes resulting from an ambivalent understanding of human voice and God’s will in the Book of Judges 19-21. The conflicts result in the severe civil wars and the suffering of many females. Land and cities were destroyed and females with cruelly treated. Both phenomenae are parallel and related to each other. We can comprehend these turbulent developments with some insights from a postcolonial-ecofeminist perspective. In so doing, to highlight the complex relationship among human groups, nature and God. This paper will also integrate some Asian experiences in the process of interpretations.

The relationship between the P and non-P Passover accounts in Exod 12:1-14* and 12:21-27* is one of the most contentious questions of Pentateuchal scholarship. Whereas earlier scholarship based on the Documentary Hypothesis often assigned v.21-27* to a pre-Priestly J or E, recent proposals by Christoph Berner, Jan Christian Gertz, and Simon Gesundheit favor a post-P assignment of v.21-27. The lack of agreement on the direction of the relationship between the texts suggests that there are no agreed-upon criteria for determining the direction of dependence. This paper will apply the criteria developed by David Carr (“Method in Determination of Direction of Dependence,” 2001) to contend that contrary to recent trends, the Priestly account in v.1-14 should be considered a redaction of v.21-27. Applying Carr’s criteria to v.12-13 shows that the Priestly account has conflated the apotropaic blood ritual of protection against the negef in the Passover account of v.21-27 with the pre-Priestly narrative of the striking of the Egyptian firstborn in 12:29-33. The Priestly account has consistently taken up conceptions from the non-P accounts and integrated them into the overarching Priestly narrative by making the blood of the Passover a sign, and the striking of the firstborn a manifestation of “judgments” against Egypt leading to a recognition of YHWH (6:6; 7:4; 12:12). The P redaction of v.21-27 also raises the possibility that the often postulated Vorlage of a Passover ritual in 3rd plural address embedded in the otherwise 2nd plural address of v.1-11, which overlaps in its central features with the likewise 3rd plural instructions in v.21-27, is better explained as resulting from the Priestly account utilizing the 3rd plural instructions in v.21-27 as the basis for its instructions in v.1-11 in order to form v.1-14 + 21-27 into a coherent sequence of command and execution of the Passover.

There are two fields of research within biblical studies that have yet to come into full communication within one another: the nature and function of biblical law, and the transmission of the biblical text in the late Second Temple period. This paper will argue that two paradigms have emerged in these two different fields of scholarship that are relevant to one another, but have yet to be brought into sufficient dialogue. They are: the “re-characterization” of biblical law, and the character of the biblical text in scribal transmission. A survey of the nature of biblical law reveals that scholarship generally accepts that the biblical laws did not originally function as “law codes” or “legislation.” However, a number of scholars now argue that a process of transformation occurred, whereby these laws became “re-characterized” as regulative, authoritative law during the Hellenistic period, as manifest by the legal practice of various Sects into the Roman era. This places the transformation of biblical law into the same period in which the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to the scribal transmission of the biblical text. An outline of the text in transmission shows that in the final centuries before the common Era, the biblical text is in a state of “textual pluriformity,” and only “stabilized” into a uniform text after the destruction of the Second Temple. Therefore, these two parallel developments need to be brought into conversation with one another, because they are (purportedly) contemporaneous, and because each of them contains correlating concepts, particularly “textual fixity.” Bringing these two areas of scholarship together raises some provoking questions that point towards a more holistic understanding of both these areas of research.

This paper examines the intermingling of Jewish and Graeco-Roman traditions in Philo’s view of a wise way of life. How does this Jewish author, who lived in the multicultural society of Alexandria in the first century CE, depict the cultivation of a person towards being a philosopher (filosofos), a lover of wisdom, and eventually a sage (sofos) who possesses wisdom? The analysis focuses on the embodiment of wisdom in everyday life and draws on Pierre Hadot’s studies on ancient philosophy as a lifestyle. Drawing on Hadot’s observations concerning the centrality of spiritual exercises in the search for wisdom, I will show that Philo too imagines the performance of wisdom as entailing constant practice. The treatises Quis rerum divinarum heres sit and Legum allegoriarum include two passages where Philo attributes lists of spiritual exercises to Jacob, the eponymous patriarch who represents wisdom to be attained specifically through practice. It will be argued that the exercises listed by Philo are largely familiar from Greek philosophy, yet the named exercises contain Jewish tones that “domesticate” them and enable the audience to grasp how to live a philosophical life in a Jewish manner. For Philo, the process of seeking wisdom connects Jews with Graeco-Roman philosophers. The practice of at least some of the spiritual exercises may originate from the former, yet it can coexist with and even contributes to the performance of his own Jewish tradition.

The popularity of Psalm 109:1 (LXX) in the early stages of the spread of Christianity is shown by the numerous quotations of or allusions to this text by NT authors. In this paper, I will compare the occurrences of this verse in Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. In Codex Bezae, quotations of Psalm 109:1 (LXX) occur in Matthew 22:44, Luke 20:42-43, Mark 12:36, and Acts 2:34-35. That the text occurs so frequently in the same manuscript, written by a single scribe, affords us a glimpse into the layered history of this manuscript with regard to a single OT quotation. I will consider the layout, context and text of the quotation in all four passages, and show that there was a moderate degree of awareness in the Bezan tradition of the passage as an OT quotation.

Not only the form but also the contents of Song of Songs create aesthetic impressions and its concomitant emotions. Expressed to appeal to the aural sensation, it also describes and thus point indirectly towards the visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile experiences. In addition, the many and various artistic ways of metabolising this anthology of love songs, celebrating the wonder of life and love, extend these visions of an ideal and perhaps even alternative reality, where the deepest meaning can be sensed. These sensations also have religious undertones when they are viewed from a psychological perspective: when being in-love is the transitional phase between aesthetic and religious experiences as neurophysiology and –psychology have been suggesting. In this manner the (post)modern question about the religiosity of Song of Songs could in this way be further elaborated upon.

The overall pictures of the creation of the universe in Genesis 1 and Psalm 104 are similar in many respects. Yet, on essential points there are important differences. Genesis 1 appears to focus more than Psalm 104 on the distinction and arrangement of the spatial areas, their inhabitants and the creatures’ responsibility for the sustenance of the distinctions, and emphasizes the temporal order in weekdays and Sabbath. Spatial and temporal arrangement, spatial separation and creation, these are the central processes that lie at the heart of Gen 1. It is marked by verbs that express the processes of spatial separation and of making/creation. In contrast, Ps 104 concentrates on the divine works of creation in its totality. Its perspective is that of unity and ownership. Since Ps 104 emphasizes YHWH’s creation in the framework of his overwhelming power, it only uses terms of creation. The totality of the cosmos testifies to his ownership and sovereignty. Against the background of this general picture, Ps 104: 29-30 will be analyzed in more detail. The analysis focuses on God’s (literally) breathtaking acts: He hides his face, collects some creatures’ breath and sends his own breath away. A new interpretation of the verb ??? in this context will be offered, that can resolve problems that previous interpretations of Ps 104:29-30 could not resolve, while it fits very well in the context of the following verses 31-35.

The Hebrew Bible does not abstain from violent images, also not when it involves children. In this paper, I will discuss the six occurrences of dashed (???) children in the biblical text. I will argue that these children are part of a metaphor that is sometimes explicitly used, other times implicitly evoked in order to speak of the city as a relational entity. Relying on metaphor theory and roles attributed to children in the Bible by previous research, the paper will address the following issues: i) the grammatical and stylistic lay-out of each of the passages with attention for similarities as well as differences between the passages; ii) the children and their place in the metaphor “the city is a mother” underlying all references; iii) the effect of dashing children for cityscaping, and especially the effect generated by spatial contrasts. The paper aims to show that a reading informed by the above mentioned metaphor assists the reader not only in understanding the featured cities better but also their violent treatment of infants.

Does Jesus' crucifixion belong to the category of Johannine "signs"? This important question remains unresolved. Seeking to contribute to the discussion, this paper analyses the use and meaning of semaino in John 12:33; 18:32; and 21:19. The findings are as follows. First, the form is consistent throughout: the present active participle is used and always in the formulaic phrase semainon poio thanato. Second, as evident in the phrase, semaino is inextricably bound up with the idea of crucifixion. Third, the word serves to connect a prophetic utterance to its fulfilment. What it does is to say, "This signifies that." In John 12:32–33, Jesus' description of himself as 'lifted up' signifies his crucifixion, which is then declared fulfilled in 18:32. Similarly, in 21:18–19, a prophetic utterance of Jesus signifies Peter's martyrdom on the cross. Fourth, investigating the language of "lifted up" takes us back to John 3:14, where we find a typology between Moses' lifting up of the brazen serpent in the desert (Num 21:8–9) and Jesus' crucifixion. This OT passage uses the noun semeion twice in reference to the pole on which the brazen serpent was raised. We are reminded that semeion is John's preferred term for Jesus' messianic deeds. From these observations we may gather that semaino for John is a significant term. What maybe its significance? Its exclusive and consistent reference to crucifixion may be taken as an evidence for the conclusion that Jesus' crucifixion is for John a "sign" (we may say, the greatest "sign"). That the term is used of Peter in 21:19 does not alter this meaning: Peter too, like the Jesus, dies in obedience to God's will and for God's glory.

Matt 15:21 locates Jesus very explicitly ‘on the margin’. Ambivalence in the text, however, leaves the reader with a level of ambiguity in relation to the margin and who is crossing whose boundary. Margins morph and move in this text—ethnic to gender to age, to religion and beyond. Such morphing and moving within a biblical text turns attention to the paper proposals for this conference that, in their turn, reveal the moving margins of Asian Biblical Studies. In this paper, I propose to draw attention to these ‘moving margins’ in contemporary Asian Biblical Studies as a backdrop to the cross-marginal reading of Matt 15:21-28 that I will undertake. A third aspect of moving margins will characterize my contemporary reading lens, namely that associated with the movements of peoples not only in Asia but across our world.

Thomas in John’s Gospel is often regarded as a doubting disciple, thus given the name ‘Doubting Thomas.’ This image of Thomas has been passed on to us from the Greek fathers. This paper, however, argues that Thomas is not portrayed negatively in the Gospel after investigating his role in John’s Gospel and the meaning of µ? ????? ?p?st?? ???? p?st?? in John 20:29. The examination of the passages where Thomas appears in the Gospel shows that Thomas is not characterised as a doubter but a loyal courageous follower of Jesus. The major issue lies in John 20:24–29 where Thomas is often criticised for being doubting because of Jesus’ words to him, µ? ????? ?p?st?? ???? p?st??. A close examination of the usage of ?p?st?? and p?st?? in the wider context shows that it is unlikely that Jesus regards Thomas as an unbeliever. Rather it shows that Thomas is ready to become faithful once Jesus provides him a sign, namely, the wound in his body. Once Thomas receives this sign of Jesus, he responds immediately and confesses Jesus as ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28). Thomas’ account serves for a positive purpose for it provides an opportunity to bring out Jesus’ beatitude on the future community of faith. It opens up a possibility of coming to faith in Jesus without seeing. Hence John records Jesus’ statement not as a rebuke to Thomas for being doubting but for the sake of his readers who are distant from the resurrection event, lack tangible evidence and will struggle to believe the resurrection of Jesus on second-hand evidence.

Chronological problems in the book of kings have intrigued scholars for a long time and remain the subject of ongoing debates. One of many questions related to the subject is whether the conflicting numerical data in the Hebrew and Greek textual traditions betray the existence of different chronological systems. J.D. Shenkel argued the case for the period of the divided kingdom and his reconstruction of a distinct Old Greek chronology has been widely accepted. As a result the discussion turned to the question which chronological pattern is the older one. But this shift might have come to soon. The paper raises the question whether the chronological data which Shenkel combined from OG and Proto-Lucian textual witnesses indeed establish a coherent chronological pattern. If so: How is the change from antedating to postdating in the case of Jehoram to be accounted for? Why does his regnal formular does not appear at its proper place? The situation calls for a more complex solution: (a) There are traces of a different chronological pattern in the OG starting already with Ela (1Ki 16,6). It probably came about as a result of a secondary and somewhat erroneous supplementation of a regnal formular for Omri which a scribe had missed and constructed out of the information given in 1Ki 16,23*. Whether this pattern continued beyond the reign of Ahaziah of Israel is unkown due to the lack of textual witnesses. (b) The data for Joram in 2Ki 1,17 (MT) /1,18a (L) does not agree with the OG pattern. His synchronization with Jehoram of Judah might have been prompted by a tradition behind 2Chr 21,12ff. which sees Elijah and Jehoram as contemporaries. As a whole the chronological pattern(s) attested in the Greek textual witnesses appear to be secondary to the chronological system of the MT.

This paper examines the interplay of Greek stylistic concerns and Hebrew exegetical difficulties in the Old Greek translation of Job 21. The translator’s Greek uses an elevated vocabulary, idiomatic syntax, and abundant structuring devices to fashion a lexically cohesive discourse unit in a high register. However, the translator simultaneously diminishes the coherence of this section of the dialogue by making Job agree, for the most part, with his friends, where he disagrees quite vehemently in the Hebrew. The reversed meaning of the chapter is not likely to be intentional, due to theological or other concerns, as is sometimes alleged. Nor do the translator’s greatest struggles come from rare vocabulary, as is sometimes assumed. Rather, at a key transition in 21:17, the translator (somewhat understandably) interprets a rhetorical question as a direct statement, a misunderstanding which affects his translation for the rest of the chapter, with the result that the chapter provides a subtle theological corrective to his friends, that the punishment of the wicked is often delayed, rather than a direct contradiction, as in the Hebrew, where Job flatly rejects the idea that the wicked are punished. An oft-noted feature of OG Job is the large number of minuses relative to MT. In this section, at least, the minuses are likely the work of the translator, and do not stem from the Vorlage. The translator omits material for stylistic reasons, to cut down on redundant material. The long omission at the end of 21, in particular, was seen as redundant due to the translator’s reading the second half of the chapter with the opposite of its original meaning. The paper will focus on Job 21:17-22*, highlighting examples of the above-mentioned features. It will be accompanied by a handout containing the verses under consideration with an English translation.

In 1 Corinthians 4:21, Paul gives the Christian community at Corinth a choice: “Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?” But what exactly does he mean by the rod? The metaphor is generally met with ambiguity amongst commentators. Often it is glossed over with little regard to its actual implication; at other times, it is simply ignored. In this paper, I propose that by threatening to brandish the rod, Paul is in fact (metaphorically) threatening to excommunicate the Christians who are responsible for the rivalries outlined in 1 Corinthians 1:12. Several passages in the NT demonstrate that the early Christian community had a “three strikes, you’re out!” policy when it came to church discipline (e.g., Matthew 18:15–17; Titus 3:10). I suggest that a number of clues throughout 1 Corinthians indicate that this is what Paul had in mind with his use of the metaphor.

Heim has argued that Prov 3:9-10 has been ‘a mainstay of "prosperity gospel"-type preaching for many decades’. In Asia this prosperity gospel push has often been associated with some megachurches and some other forms of evangelism. This paper re-examines the teaching of Proverbs to see if it can be legitimately used to ground prosperity gospel thinking. It is argued that several features of the book undermine its usefulness in promoting such thinking. Firstly, its emphasis on shaped character (including not being greedy) argues against prosperity as the goal of the good life. Furthermore, a more nuanced look at the book shows that wealth is not always pictured as a blessing. Indeed, it is sometimes used as a test of character, and wealth has its own temptations and dangers. It can even be a means to injustice, such when money is used to bribe others. Overall, the book makes it clear that some people are wealthy for reasons other than righteousness. This paper suggests that prosperity gospel readings of the book misunderstand Proverbs. Indeed, Job and Ecclesiastes seem to have arisen in response to mis-readings of Proverbs. Their teaching on wealth corrects such misunderstandings, and affirm the nuanced view of Proverbs. Thus, as far as Proverbs is concerned, Asian Christians wanting to be fully postcolonial need to look beyond the Western obsession with wealth and prosperity. The goal of the good life in Proverbs is not prosperity but godly success in daily living. This is based on the fear of the Lord, choosing wisdom not folly, and having your character shaped by wisdom.

This paper suggests a way of reconciliating two Old Testament disciplines, 'history of ancient Israel' and 'Old Testament theology,' considering a debate of minimalist and maximalist on the history of ancient Israel. Since J. P. Gabler, the historical discipline and the theological discipline have grown to separate enterprises in the field of Old Testament interpretation. Eichrodt and von Rad show good samples for this. The key lies in the concept of history and its assumptions. To reconcile two Old Testament disciplines, I suggest to take some conceptual procedures like below. 1) A dichotomy of history versus theology should be overcome. For history is a kind of literature and a result of interpretation. Both history and theology are interpreted constructs. 2) "What it meant" and "what it means" could be bridged with the help of hermeneutics, as K. Standahl pointed out. As a Korean, I suggests that Gadamer's hermeneutics of integration may be effective. Ancient Israel and Korean experienced advanced agrarian society, which is a common ground. 3) Through the lens of dynamics of agrarian society, historical approaches to the Old Testament can be appropriated as theological interpretations for Korean faith community, in terms of "dynamics of historical analogy." 4) Biblical accounts can be read like a "virtual reality" of the computer game. Elements of fiction come from real life. Without the real, no fiction can be construed at all. Given this, the historical discipline can allow one to grasp the reality of biblical texts more accurate and fully, while the theological discipline would pursue its fruitful task. So let Korean biblical theologians play with the Bible for an Old Testament theology.

Romans 13:1-7 stands out among biblical texts in its influence on discussions of church- state relationships. This paper will explore how this hotly-debated passage is interpreted in contemporary Chinese Christian communities. One approach is to understand the text as discouraging resistance to the government. Some Chinese scholars see it as an exhortation to be subject to the government (e.g. Roland Fung, WaiYee Ng). Within an extended ethical admonition (12:1-15:13), Paul exhorts his readers to assume the responsibilities of citizenship by submitting to the governing authorities (Rome), as long as the government does not contradict the command of God (cf. Acts 5:29). Following the arguments of James Dunn and Robert Jewett, some other Chinese scholars understand the text as a pragmatic attempt by Paul to secure the safety of the Roman church. To this end, Christians are not to subvert the social order (e.g. Baoling Sun). Another approach moves in a different direction. Similar to Oscar Cullman, some commentators reinterpret the term e??????a?s ??pe?e????a?s as “angelic powers”; hence the point of the text is not submission to the government (e.g. Nang Kwok Ho). Others limit Paul's exhortation to his specific situation, arguing that it does not apply it to the present circumstances of Chinese Christians. This understanding has been popular among Hong Kong Christians since the Occupying the Centre Movement. In summary, this paper will reflect on the influence of a modern imperial political power on the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 by showing how the text is understood within the Christian communities of the modern China.

The Hittite kings, as well as other Near Eastern kings in the Late Bronze Age, often married off their princesses to foreign rulers. As they arranged those inter-dynastic marriages to establish peaceful relationships with other Great Kings but also hierarchical relationships with their subjugated kings, marriage seems to have been one of the most important diplomatic methods for the Hittites. This paper presents how the Hittite court recognized the relationship created by marriage in domestic society and diplomatic scene, focusing on the verbs and the expressions relating to marriage in the Hittite language. The usages of the Hittite verb ?amank- (“to tie”), connotes a horizontal link between two physically separated things. Its figurative meaning “to betroth” occurring in a section of the Hittite Law (§29) may indicate that marriage was thought of as horizontal relationship of a groom and a bride tied by their parents. We have other Hittite expressions that were used to describe the Hittite royal marriages and diplomatic marriages, mainly using the verb ?andai- (“to arrange a marriage”) and DAM-anni pai-/da- (“to give a woman as wife” and “to take a woman as wife”). Analyzes of the usages of the verb and the two idiomatic phrases show how the Hittite court regarded the royal marriage and the inter-dynastic marriage as horizontal relationship between a man and a woman, under the divine protection. This will be checked in light of our conception of the ritual of passage that is a crucial element of marriage.

A first taunt song of the five songs in the Book of Habakkuk (Hab. 2:5-20), so called the first woe oracle (Hab. 2:5-8), presents something of a challenge to biblical scholars who have struggled to demarcate the structure of Habakkuk chapter 2. Based upon the redaction criticism, scholars have insisted that the editor of the book of Habakkuk added Hab. 2:6-8. On the other hand, scholars have suggested that when it comes to Habakkuk as a literary unity, verse 5 functions as a bridge between Hab. 2:1-4 and 2:6-20. Although scholars’ endeavors to define characteristics of verse 5 have shed light on understanding how it functions between Hab. 2:1-4 and 2:6-20, they only apply their interpretative methodologies to demarcate the structure of Habakkuk 2 rather than comparing other ancient manuscripts. In this paper, as text criticism, I will argue that verse 5 is a new introduction part of vv. 5-8, although verse 5 is tightly connected with vv. 1-4. In an attempt to prove my argument, I will analyze two ancient manuscripts such as the Aleppo Codex of the Bible produced by Aaron ben Asher (915 C.E.) and the Habakkuk Pesher (1QpHab Column VIII; 1st cent. B.C.E.). Based upon their demarcation of Habakkuk chapter 2, it is noteworthy that verse 5 belongs to following verses rather than previous verses. This paper proceeds in two stages; first, it analyzes the demarcation of two ancient manuscripts; second, it compares Hab. 2:5-8 of the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) with a variety of manuscripts and versions of the Book of Habakkuk: the Greek Twelve Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever (8HevXIIgr), the Murabba‘at Manuscript of the Book of the Twelve (Mur88), the Septuagint, the Targum, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate. As I consider differences among ancient manuscripts, I will explore their different theological perspectives.

The study of Synoptic problem hardly supposes the strong literary, traditional, and theological dependency of the Gospel of John on the Synoptic Gospels. This has, in a sense, separated scholars from each other as belonging to the divided academic kingdoms of the Synoptic Gospels and the Johannine studies, respectively. As for the Fourth Gospel scholars, the research on the formation and theology of Johannine literature and community has mainly been within the boundary of, for instance, Johannine literatures, Gnosticism, the socio-politic relationship with the Jews or the Roman Empire, etc. However, some scholars have recently suggested a fresh approach to the study of formation of the Fourth Gospel by illuminating its relationship with the Synoptic gospels and Greek literatures, especially Euripides’ Bacchae. This paper will examine the probabilities and improbabilities of this hypothesis, which hopefully contribute to the expansion of research interests in the Johannine studies.

Protestant churches in Korea and in the world are now in crisis. One of its reasons is the theology of 'faith alone' (sola fide) by M. Luther. In The Freedom of a Christian", Luther says that "faith alone, without works, justifies, makes free and saves." This doctrine of 'justification and salvation by faith alone' has resulted in the exclusion of works in the Protestant Churches, which in turn resulted in the lack of works and ethics in the Christian life. In his booklet, On Faith and Works, St. Augustine criticizes that "they (the faithful) should endanger the salvation of their souls if they acted on the false assurance that faith alone is sufficient for salvation or that they need not perform good works in order to be saved." We need works for our salvation as sayings in Matt. 19:16-19; Luke 10:25-28; Rom. 13:1-7; Gal. 5:16-23. St. Augustine says that "eternal salvation will not be given except to those who lead a good life"and "that faith cannot save without good works." For our salvation we need not only justification by faith alone, but also justification by works, too. There are two kinds of works, works before justification by faith and works after justification by faith. In this paper I will investigate two kinds of works as follows. 1) Works before Justification by Faith are unnecessary for Justification by Faith as sayings in Rom. 3:27-28; Gal. 2:16. 2) Works after Justification by Faith are necessary for Justification by works and for our salvation as sayings in Gen. 17:1; 18:19; Matt. 19:16-19(Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30); Luke 10:25-28; Rom. 13:1-7; Gal. 5:16-23; Eph. 5:3-5; Deut. 28:1-68. These passages say clearly that we need good works for our salvation after justification by faith.

Following the death of a major figure, the Pentateuch often contains instructions and actions for the dignified burial of the deceased hero. Some of the burial reports continue to attract significant discussion in recent scholarly research on the composition of the Pentateuch. Of special interest for the formation of the non-Priestly materials in Genesis-Exodus are the burial reports of Jacob and Joseph. On the one hand, some critics place these reports as late redactional insertions that connect the originally independent (non-Priestly) ancestral and exodus traditions. On the other hand, other critics follow the classical source-critical paradigm and assign these reports to a non-Priestly source (or sources). Both of the burial reports of Jacob and Joseph demonstrate the importance of transporting the remains of the hero who died in a foreign land back to the promised land in order to be buried with the ancestors. However, not every hero in the Pentateuch who dies outside the promised land is brought into the land and buried there. God informs Moses, “You are soon to lie with your fathers” (Deut 31:16, NJPS), and Moses dies outside the promised land but—unlike Jacob and Joseph—is not buried in the promised land. Instead, Moses is buried in the land of Moab at an unknown location. This paper compares the burial reports of Jacob and Joseph to the burial report of Moses and examines how, taken together, these three burial reports offer insights into the formation of the non-Priestly Pentateuchal materials.

The Book of Esther tells at the end of chapter 2 a story that Mordecai uncovers a regicidal conspiracy by two eunuchs at the palace gate (19-23): the affair is investigated; they are hanged on the gallows; and it is recorded in the book of the annals in the presence of the king. I analyze the narrative of intrigue, investigation, impalement, and inscription through the lens of the Oedipus complex, specifically by the concept of penetration. By conversing with Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Irigaray, I argue: from the viewpoint of masculinity, first, I suggest a more gendered and sexualized reading of the penetrative intrigue and investigation. The text says about a battle of royal penetration. Second, I apply the triadic framework of sex, food, and war, in general, and that of intercourse, banquet, and impalement, in this specific story. The image of warfare and sexuality are allusively juxtaposed with or psychoanalytically transformed into those of food and meal. The Book of Esther is all about meal during violence or killing near feast, and feast around sexuality or eroticism during feast. The Freudian orality pervades all the three siblings. Regarding the impalement, third, I equate the narrative movement of the eunuchs from gate to gallows, from threshold to treetop, with a penetrative revenge by the fatherly phallus. The text soars as a lift of phallic revenge. From the Oedipal point of view on the inscription, fourth, I observe the oppressive transition from the Freudian castration to the Lacanian inscription. The text shrinks into a record of penetrative disincarnation, as the completion of triple penetrations.

Though the word peirasmos does not appear after Jas 1, the theme of testing, or suffering caused by the testing, underlies much of the rest of the epistle. Giving encouragement to believers so that they may endure through the testing can be regarded as an important purpose of James. However, it is not so clear what is the nature of the testing suffered by James’ initial audience. Traditionally, the testing in Jas 1 is regarded as coming from religious persecution. Yet there seems to be no indications in the content of the letter itself that the audience is facing acute religious persecution. Hence it seems to be more likely that by testing James refers to the trials believers encounter in everyday life. For instance, it is widely suggested that economic oppressions is one important aspect of testing in James, since the topic of rich and poor is prominent in the letter. In order to have a better understanding on the nature of testing, the content of the rest of the letter should inform one’s interpretation of the testing in Jas 1. Besides the theme of rich and poor, the other sections in James might also review the community concerns of the author, and hence give hint to the nature of the testing mentioned in the letter opening. Upon an analysis of several major pericopes in James, together with some enlightenment from social-scientific studies in group dynamics, it may be suggested that the testing mentioned in Jas 1 at least includes some sort of disorder within the faith community itself, caused by strife resulting from the evil desires within the believers. Such an interpretation would also shed further light on the coherence of the whole letter of James.

The Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch differs from the Masoretic version in many ways. The substantial variations in content and form include repetitions of some verses of the Masoretic Pentateuch in other places in the Samaritan Pentateuch, in accordance with Samaritan beliefs, or to fill in what is thought to be a lacuna in the Masoretic text; a preference for later vocabulary and forms; a preference for more intelligible versions than those of the Masoretic text; provision of solutions to contradictions and other difficulties in the Masoretic text; and reflection of theological differences. MS London BL OR7562 mainly contains a Samaritan version of Saadya Gaon’s translation of the Pentateuch, written in Judeo-Arabic in Samaritan characters. Among its other components are also various versions paralleled in the Early Samaritan Arabic Translation and its Later Revision (Shehadeh, H. 1989, 2002. The Arabic Translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch I–II. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.), some Karaite Arabic Bible translations, some Coptic Arabic Bible translations, and more prominently, some early Eastern Christian Arabic Bible translations, especially those from the Syriac tradition found in MSS Sinai Arabic 2 and/or 4 (Zewi, T. 2015. The Samaritan Version of Saadya Gaon’s Translation of the Pentateuch. Leiden: Brill). Chapter 49 of Genesis in MS London BL OR7562 is a unique Arabic translation reflecting some of the above modifications and components. The special Samaritan characteristics of this chapter were recognized in the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch and also identified in its Samaritan Aramaic translation (Tal, A. 2010. ??????, ou les yeux de Juda dans la tradition samaritaine. Eds. Riaud, J. & Chaieb, M. L'oeuvre d'un orientaliste, André Caquot 1923-2004. Paris: H. Champion. Pp. 163-171). This paper is dedicated to these issues in Genesis 49 of the Arabic translation used in MS London BL OR7562.

Maimonides states in his interpretation of Abraham’s binding of Isaac (the Akedah) in the Guide of the Perplexed III 24, that the story “contains two notions.” Two years ago at the SBL International Meeting, Vienna, I offered my reading of the first point of Maimonides’ interpretation of the story, this time I would like to present my reading of what he takes as the second point of the story, that it “consist in making known to us the fact that the prophets consider as true that which comes to them from God in a prophetic revelation.” (III 24, S. Pines translation, p. 501) This laconic and enigmatic comment, together with a brief explanation followed with it, needs to be read in light of Maimonides’ discussion in general on prophecy in Guide II 32-48, and in particular on Abraham’s being a prophet in II 46 when he enumerates the 11 degrees of prophecy. While more than a few aspects of prophecy are discussed in the Guide, the focus of Maimonides’ treatment of the Akedah is on the issues of how “prophetic revelation” is communicated to the prophets, how the prophets understand by the “prophetic revelation,” and how every “prophetic revelation” is transformed into their actions. The proposed paper would try to offer some reflections and observations to Maimonides’s view on Abraham’s being a prophet and his action in the Akedah.