The narrative framework that anchors The Story of the Ten Martyrs is an amalgamation of two distinct literary complexes, the account of the executions of Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel and Rabbi Ishmael and the motif of ten rabbinic martyrs dying for the sin of Joseph’s brothers. Both of these strands give expression to the elevated status of the levitical priesthood. Thus, the notion that the sale of Joseph requires communal atonement on Yom Kippur was preserved in rabbinic discussions of the atoning efficacy of the vestments of the High Priest as well as in the earliest surviving Sidrei Avodah. Similarly, the twin martyrology of priest and patriarch thematizes the tension between the institutions they represent by transforming the sequence of their executions into a referendum on their competing sources of authority. I believe that this confluence of priestly interests in part explains the narrative’s theology of atoning self-sacrifice, which is built around an elaborate depiction of the heavenly cult of the martyrs over which Rabbi Ishmael’s supernal double, the angelic High Priest Metatron, presides. Recently, some scholars have argued that the late antique synagogue and much of the cultural production associated with it, such as its iconography and hymnology, reflect the (renewed?) vitality of priestly lore—and perhaps identity—in Byzantine Palestine. In an attempt to fathom the increasingly evident heterogeneity of late antique Jewish culture and society, this scholarship pits the priests of the synagogue against the sages of the study-house as opposing centers of religious life. However, the complex and intimate affiliation of post-talmudic martyrology to both liturgical and rabbinic traditions belies the simplistic bifurcation suggested by this paradigm. This paper treats the capacious figure of Rabbi Ishmael—priest, martyr, and rabbi—as a key for evaluating the nature and extent of rabbinization in late antique Jewish culture.

In 2 Kgs 23:7, we are told that as part of his efforts to purge religious practices he found apostate from the Jerusalem temple, King Josiah tore down houses where women wove garments for a cult statue dedicated to the goddess Asherah. The practice of clothing cult statues is well-attested elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean world of the first millennium BCE (Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece), and in Greece, as in 2 Kgs 23:7, women are specifically identified as the weavers of the deities' garments. In first-millennium BCE Egypt and Mesopotamia, conversely, all cultic textiles were woven by men. Egyptian and Mesopotamian data of the third and second millennia BCE, however, suggest that previously, cultic weaving was done by women. This paper asks whether, in the aftermath of Josiah's reforms, a similar shift occurs in Israel, so that by the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, only Israelite men served as cultic weavers.

This paper addresses the relationships between Hans Frei's emphasis on the plain sense of Scripture and deLubac's figural exegesis.

'Time' is an important issue in Mark's eschatological discourse. The teaching is given by Mark's Jesus in answer to a question about the timing of certain events, 'Tell us, when will this be..?' Yet, the temporal perspective of the discourse appears to lack consistency. On the one hand, there are warnings against over-expectancy, on the other, exhortations to a high state of readiness. We find both chronological specificity ('this generation') and vagueness ('no one knows'). These tensions create difficulties for the interpretation of the discourse as a whole. This paper seeks to give a linguistic account of the narration of time in the discourse. It draws on the resources of literary linguistics, a new but growing interdisciplinary field. It also builds on recent work done by Stanley Porter to show that Mark 13 is a cohesive textual unit. By analysing the linguistic means by which temporal relations are conveyed and encoded, this paper attempts to judge the extent to which the text exhibits temporal coherence.

In both Egyptian and Israelite Wisdom literature, a fundamental issue is the reward for the virtuous life. This paper will survey the “act-consequence” relationship in Egyptian instructions, focusing on major texts like Ptahhotep, Merikare, and Amenemope. The task will be to consider the type of causality envisioned in these texts, whether mechanistic, contingent upon the free will of the deity, or perhaps a more nuanced understanding. What is the relationship between the “God” of Egyptian instructions and Ma‘at? What, specifically, can an individual who lives in accordance with Ma‘at hope to gain? For a culture with a complex belief in the afterlife, how does the prospect of eternal reward shape the advice offered in the instructions? In addressing these questions, we will examine the lively discussion among scholars concerning the Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang. The popular theory that an age of “personal piety” brought fundamental change to wisdom discourse will be considered in this context. I will argue that Ma‘at never “vanished” during the Ramesside period, as some have suggested. These texts reveal an abiding belief in a deity with the power to control events and a guiding principle (Ma‘at) for righteous living. These two beliefs do not appear to be mutually exclusive in the instructions. This discussion will also take up the sages’ understanding of human agency in relation to God. We will then consider the implications of this study for the book of Proverbs and Israelite Wisdom in general. Only with a more precise evaluation of act and consequence in these texts can one accurately assess the relative impact of Egyptian Wisdom on Israel's sages.

This paper seeks to provide a historical and rhetorical overview of Paul’s letter to Philippians, and then apply postcolonial theory to raise questions about imprisonment, leadership, citizenship, and economics with regard to the Pauline ecclesia versus the Roman imperial order. The paper provides a Latino reading of this historical, rhetorical and postcolonial matrix by setting the four major themes identified above within a postmodern, Latino context where imprisonment (e.g., Albizu Campos), leadership (grassroots Latino church leaders), citizenship (enforced upon Puerto Ricans in World War I) and underground economics (cooperatives) have all been major themes in various aspects of Latino life and faith. The paper also aims to raise the question: what is meant by a postcolonial reading of the Bible (specifically the New Testament, where texts are brought into direct correlation with postmodern contexts in a symbiotic relationship where ancient texts help interpret postmodern, postcolonial (con)texts, and postcolonial (con)texts and interpreters critically read ancient texts?

The Gattung of Psalm 137 is extensive. It ranges from a lament commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem (Zech. 7.3), a ballad, a song of Zion, a modified Song of Zion, a Song of Ascent, a complaint, and an imprecation. Psalm 137's complexity is due to the fact that it begins as a communal lament (verses 1–3 or 1–4), has elements of a Zion psalm, (verses 4–6) and concludes as an imprecation (verses 7–9). Moreover, scholars have had difficulty in dating the composition of the psalm, exilic or post-exilic. As I have been working on Ps 137 for ten years (began under Dennis Olson, refined under Brevard Childs, and currently, the opening chapter of my dissertation “Exile, Literature, and Theology: The Literary and Socio-Theological Impact of the Forced Migrations of the Southern Kingdom of Judah” under Robert Wilson), I wish to demarcate Ps 137 as a “complex lament.” By this nomenclature, a complex lament incorporates a communal lament, inanimate objects lamenting as paralleled in the book of Lamentation, a modified song of Zion, and an imprecation. This is further situated by an editor who placed this psalm within a small collection of Hallelujah and Thanksgiving psalms which immediately follows the Psalms of Ascent. By a complex lament, it further incorporates, among others, the issue of the psalm relaying the memory of the first deportation (597 BCE) or as most scholars conjecture, the destruction of the Temple in 587. The title of the paper is Ps 137: A Complex Lament. Reactions and feedback from specialists, especially Dobbs-Allsopp regarding this nomenclature will be appreciated.

This paper examines select episodes in versions of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Blade Runner, which is based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep. In both film and novel, the encounter of various characters with the posthuman simulacrum (Hayles, Deleuze, Baudrillard) that they are or may be raises fundamental questions regarding their humanity. These episodes function as “afterlifes” (Sherwood) of metanoia in Mark 1:15. This opens the possibility of a post-canonical rewriting of the biblical precursor. Additional sources drawn upon include Foucault, Nietzsche, and Sartre.

This paper explores early Christian portrayals of Jesus as an interpreter of authoritative texts, particularly the scriptures of Israel. Focusing on the Gospel of Luke and the Epistle to the Hebrews, I analyze how Jesus is depicted as speaking of his own experience through the medium of scripture and thus as one who possesses expert knowledge in the arts of interpretation. A consideration of the poetics of late Hellenistic hero cult, which conceptualizes the enactment of tradition and the interpretation of authoritative texts through the mouth of the hero, suggests that these ways of “remembering Jesus” are indebted to notions and practices of hero cult. In particular, the story of a hero who speaks from beyond death or from the tomb, as in the case of Protesilaos in Philostratus’s Heroikos, provides an important paradigm for locating authoritative traditions and interpretations of scripture in the mouth of the risen Jesus.

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The Synoptic Gospels portray the works of the messiah as “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the poor have the good news preached to them.” (Matthew 11:2–5/Luke 7:18–23) These classic examples of disabilities from within the biblical tradition—the blind, the lame, the leprous, the deaf—are conjoined with Isaiah 61:1–2’s phrase “good news to the poor”. The biblical disabled are incorporated into the Synoptic Gospels’ “poor”.The Synoptic Gospels interpret these poor disabled not as social outcasts but as key members that populate Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven, an era of grace and healing. This phrase, “good news to the poor,” also used in Luke 4:18–19 and the Dead Sea Scroll 4Q521, testifies to Second Temple period literary currents that offered the disabled and disenfranchised a place within the messianic schema. While the Synoptic Gospels’ favor toward the handicap is also corroborated by Luke 14’s final Great Banquet, Qumran’s War Scroll and 1QSa’s Messianic Banquet deny the disabled a place within the messianic eschatological timetable. How are we to interpret these Qumranic statements?

Deuteronomy includes five texts that prescribe conduct during times of war (20:1–18; 21:10–14; 22:5; 23:10–15; 24:5). These rules of engagement not only command and prohibit certain actions but construct war-related roles for women and men in ancient Israel. With the exception of Deut 23:10–15, a common term for woman appears in each text, and other literary relationships unite these texts. This paper interprets these military laws in the context of the Deuteronomic Code, describes the roles constructed for women and men, and identifies new and enduring questions that attend the study of ancient Israelite warfare and war-related discourse in the Hebrew Bible.

While references to the biblical “Antichrist” figures are rife with psychological torment and effect, many interpretations of these villainous figures involve serious exegetical errors. First, they lump “the Beast,” “the man of lawlessness,” “the Antichrists,” and the number 666 into an amalgamated villain-stew out of which are scooped an amazing array of portraits that function more as projections of fears than as real threats known to the original writers. Second, antichristoi occurs nowhere in Revelation but only in the first and second Epistles of John. While used to embellish perceived threats, these references are not futuristic, but contemporary; it is an error to equate them with psycho-speculation based on the Johannine Apocalypse. Third, it appears that two distinctive antichristic threats are alluded to in I John 2:18–25 and 4:1–3, and the failure to account for these differences contributes to interpretive errors regarding the particulars of the Johannine antichristic passages. I n contrast to psycho-projective distortions of the text, a more adequate reading renders them as texts of liberation rather than of projection. From an experiential-contextual perspective, the errors of these Johannine Antichrists appear to be twofold­: involving a schism of Johannine Jewish Christians returning to the religious security of the Synagogue, and a later threat involving Docetizing Hellenistic Christian preachers extolling the convenience of following a non-suffering Jesus. A fuller understanding of these threats in the first-century Johannine situation provides clarity as to what these particular threats may have involved. An experiential-contextual understanding of these issues liberates later interpreters from errant speculation as to the flaws of others, and attunes one’s sensitivity to one’s own condition existentially. Thus, a psychological reading of these texts diminishes one’s need to address the enemies without and liberates one to recognize and address the enemies within.

Among the numerous charges that are raised against early Christians and are addressed by Tertullian in the Apology is the charge that Christians are barbarian. In Tertullian's Apology the charge of barbarism against early Christians should be read and understood not as an isolated allegation, but rather as part of a complex of related charges, such as cannibalism, human sacrifice, incest, and treason. I argue that the charge that Christians are barbarian allows the opponents of the early Christian movement not only to attribute to them qualities and activities that are associated with the Greco-Roman notion of the barbarian often associated with violence, but also to invoke a vivid imagery of violence with regard to Christians. The imagery of violence in reference to Christians is not only targeted at the othering of the early Christian movement vis a vis Greco-Roman society, but also at invoking and justifying the infliction of violence upon them. I conclude that the notion of the barbarian functions in the the context of the imagery of violence in Tertullian's Apology on two levels -- while it purports to describe the Christian movement through the recourse of vivid imagery of violence, it implicitly invites and justifies its enactment upon them.

The view that Galilee witnessed an extensive degree of Hellenism during the time of Jesus is shared by many scholars. This view which derives from a critical reading of texts was only sporadically confronted with the vast archaeological material displayed by archaeologists within the years. In this view there was a massive presence of Hellenism in Galilee during the first half of the first century CE and this contained Greek theaters, temples, gymnasia etc. The fact that nothing of this kind was ever found dating from the relevant period did not disturb the ongoing concept of heavy Hellenization. Most scholars also agree that Bethsaida was one of only four Galilean/Golan cities visited by Jesus. The other places were Nazareth, Capernaum and Chorazin. Among the four, Bethsaida is unique in that, that it is the only site which is accessible to archaeological investigations and yields a fairly large amount of information on the outlook of the town. The finds demonstrate clearly where Hellenization was encountered, what degree and who represented it. The presentation illustrated by slides, will meander through the streets of Bethsaida; enter homes and building in search of Hellenistic presence. In conclusion, the presentation will show that there was extremely little Hellenization at Bethsaida and the only Hellenistic establishment was a modest temple built Philip Herod in honor of Julia/Livia, as part of the Roman Imperial cult, in the year 30 CE when presumably Jesus was not there anymore.

The SBL’s Archaeology and Biblical Studies series has commissioned a new series of books on the various peoples and people groups of the biblical world. The purpose of the series is to summarize and make available the best of current research on the particular people group in view for scholars and students of the Bible, and other non-specialists. Not surprisingly, therefore, the process of writing the volume on the Babylonians for this series necessarily raised questions once again about the relationship between Assyriology and biblical studies. Of course, the study of ancient Babylonia over the past 150 years has generated many such methodological questions. Recent investigations of the ideological underpinnings of Assyriology, especially as these were manifested in the extreme and polarized positions of Friedrich Delitzsch and Benno Landsberger, make it desirable to reconsider the relationship between the two disciplines generally, and perhaps to give greater definition to comparative methods in particular. The time may be propitious for greater rapprochement between Babylon and the Bible, especially in light of current political events in Iraq, which may initiate a new phase of data and research from ancient Babylonia.

Many scholars assume that associations of various types were popular in antiquity because they offered a person a sense of belonging at a time when the traditional kinship and civic groups were being broken apart. Through group membership a number of social networks could be established and practical benefits could be gained (e.g., relief of poverty; proper burial). Membership in a group also allowed for the attainment of honor and prestige that were otherwise not available to the majority of non-elite persons. This general assumption, however, does not explain how particular groups attracted and kept members. Despite the arguments of Goodman (1994) and McKnight (1991), who independently argue against the view that there was widespread proselytizing in groups other than Christian groups, it is clear that associations of various sorts did attract and lose members. This paper will examine the “rhetoric of recruitment” in Christian, Jewish, and polytheistic texts to see how this language reflects the self-definition of the group itself. It will give particular attention to the types of persons the rhetoric seeks to attract and the types of persons it excludes. Doing so will provide insight into how community ethos can be defined in light of the “non-member.”

This paper will examine particular structural elements in deLubac's hermeneutics.

A paper on Philo and the Gospel of John

Disability studies often center on how any society values sight and hearing, two of our five natural senses. This paper proposes the initiation of a systematic critique of biblical texts that would center on how different books, corpora, genres, and traditions value one or more of all five natural senses. Since this approach aims to establish itself as a legitimate and systematic approach to biblical texts, I propose that it be given parity with other approaches labelled as “criticism,” including form criticism, textual criticism, or redaction criticism. Sensory Criticism would: 1. provide a broad view of the value of the senses in the Bible, especially as they relate to biblical views on disability. 2) furnish a methodological tool to examine texts comparatively inside and outside the biblical corpus; 3) further establish the potential for disability studies to generate new approaches to socio-literary studies. The introductory portion of the paper will outline the methodological problems and issues associated with "sensory criticism."The main portion of the paper will illustrate "sensory criticism" by showing how the Deuteronomistic History often seems to value hearing at the expense of sight. Conversely, the author of Job, though sometimes exhibiting a subtle view of the value of hearing, seems to value seeing as superior to hearing in terms of perceiving God and his actions in the world. A concluding section will provide points of departure for the application of “Sensory Criticism” to other biblical texts and to various communicative genres.

This paper will explore the interrelationships between doctrines about the soul and deLubac's scriptural interpretation.

The story behind Rom 3:21–26 has recently been sought (e.g. by J. W. van Henten and others) in the stories of the Jewish martyrs of 2 and 4 Maccabees. Besides the late date of 4 Maccabees, whose key texts 6:29 and 17:22 do not look like they depend on pre-formed tradition, this martyr theory does not explain Paul's reference to "the law and the prophets" (3:21), nor do such martyr stories, which emphasize Jewish distinctives, seem relevant to a universal gospel uniting Jew and Gentile. A better background is the song of Moses in Exodus 15. God redeems his people in the exodus through a powerful display of his righteousness (Exod 15:13; cf. Rom 3:24), then leads them to worship at the new sanctuary with the "hilasterion" at its heart (Exod 15:17; cf. Rom 3:25). Then the "pistis" in qustion is not the faithfulness of the martyr but the faith of the delivered, not now in God and in Moses his servant (Exod 14:31) but in God and Jesus.

In the second half of what was arguably the most violent century in the history of humankind (the 20th C.E.) almost every major English Bible translation (except Roman Catholic translations) narrowed the translation of the Hebrew word, rtsh, from "kill" to "murder," a word with specific and limited meaning in popular and legal English speaking contexts. It is notable that this occurred in spite of the fact that the word clearly is used more broadly in the Bible itself. This paper will examine the semantic range of the word in Hebrew, the change in wording in the Jewish (TANAKH), Evangelical Protestant (NIV, NASB) and Mainline (NRSV)Traditions, when and why it took place and the implications for interpretation of the ethics of killing in ancient Israel and the modern context.

The paper traces the anthropocentric bias of the cosmology of Colossians, with particular reference to Colossians 1:15–20. By means of a comparison the Stoic cosmology which both informed and differed from that of Colossians, the paper explores what possibilities there might be to move beyond anthropocentrism towards a bio-centric re-reading of Colossians 1:15–20. One of the key questions that follows is: Does the claim that God through Christ has reconciled all things (ta panta) in Earth and heaven indicate a genuine re-valuing of the physical cosmos or does even this reconciliation reflect an anthropocentric bias?

This paper examines the authority figures and the administration of the church in Crete according to the disputed Pauline epistle to Titus by means of postcolonial theory. First, the specific form of internal authority is that of elders (1:5). During the Augustan Empire, Titus’ ecclesial elders could have passed as a professional association of elders, a religious club, or a system of Jewish local law. The multivalence of the term ‘elder’ is to be read as a deliberate example of postcolonial ‘mimicry’ and ‘catachresis’, whereby the colonized group recasts the ruling structures with its own characters in order to exist under but apart from outside authority. Second, the administration by these elders consists mainly of charging and convicting Cretans as liars (1:10–14). The only testimony necessary for a conviction is Epimenides’, viz. that Cretans are always liars (1:12). Ignoring the ‘Liar’s Paradox’, the letter to Titus simplistically considers the Epimenides statement true (1:13). This circularity is constitutive, however, of colonialist ‘stereotyping’, by which a dominant minority maintains control over a subordinate majority. Third, despite the letter’s admonishment “to be subject to rulers and authorities” (3:1), the ultimate authority over the assembly belongs to God and Jesus Christ via both the purported apostleship and authorship of Paul (1:1). This paper results in a picture of Crete that corresponds to both the specific situation of the Roman province Crete-Cyrene at the turn of the era as well as the ruling structures and resistance strategies of imperialism-colonialism in general.

Both in biblical and Mesopotamian texts, the spilling of blood in a homicide was perceived to have a real existence that was dangerous and needed to be remedied. Only in the Hebrew Bible, however, was it conceived to affect more than the killer himself. The nation as a whole or the land of Israel would be contaminated. By contrast, in Mesopotamia, there was no indication that the larger community need be concerned about possible contamination from the spilled blood. The references to the victim's blood in Mesopotamian texts indicate that the spilled blood required the attention of the parties involved in the homicide but no one else. The difference is linked to Israelite concepts of ritual and ethical pollution.

While genre and media seem at times infinitely adaptable to given purposes, they also transform those purposes by their own power to determine audience expectation. These processes are especically apparent in translation/adaptation, and come to the fore specifically in terms of the use of different genre and media to re-present ancient biblical texts. All translation and adaptation picks and chooses between different kinds of similarity. The question is, in terms of the purposes of the translator/adaptor, which points of contact are the ones which suit his or her purposes? And do these purposes (and thus possible constraints of similarities) have natural limits which can be agreed upon? These last questions are particularly relevant for translators and adaptors of biblical materials, which already carry a heavy load of audience expectation.The American Bible Society graphic novel (“Samson” is the only one so far) is the specific product under examination. It can be argued that the format has captured much of the earthiness, humor, and even the sex and violence of the original text often lost in other presentations (Hollywood adaptations to the contrary, of course). On the other hand, genre expectations (e.g. focus on muscles and curves) and format features such as color (black, white, and red mainly) give the product a flavor which is hard to reconcile with text whose real hero is supposed to be Yahweh. Samson as tragic hero in the Bible is quite different from Samson as modern (graphic novel or Hollywood movie) tragic hero. So what do we lose and what do we gain? Principles are much harder to come by than opinion in such matters, but translators/adaptors should be explicity aware of the ways in which they are attempting to achieve similarity as well as where and why they are willing to depart from it.

Lev 23:40 enjoined the taking of four items on the first day of Tabernacles. The Temple rite used palms, myrtles,willows,citrons. Some of the items were called by names that could be construed to mean “glory,” “highest heavens,” and “rescue us.” The pilrgrims held the wreathed branches with fruits and recited Ps. 118 verses 25 (“hoshia na”) and 26 (“blessed be the one who comes”). The meaning of the ritual was so enigmatic that many interpretations were offered. The extant form of hymns incorporate some of the interpretations and Gospel citations suggest they began to be composed in the Second Temple era, starting and ending with the word Hoshanna.” Such hymns can be found in Mark 11:9, Matthew 21:9, Luke 19:37, John 12:13. The simultanious holding of fruits (glory) and myrtle twigs (popularly termed hoshanna according to the Talmud) and willow branches (referred to by a term meaning “highest”) was decoded as a full sentence: “glory” or “hosanna” in the “highest.” We focus on Matthew’s hymn which uses the allusions embedded in the names of the ritual objects to identify the elusive figure mentioned in 118:26, “the one who comes.” The myrtle branches (Hosanna) when read with Jer 23:5, Zech 3:8 and 6:12 signify the branch of David. Jesus is the “one to come” and thus Matthew explains why the rite was performed while reading Ps 118. For him, the myrtle branch refers to a branch imaged in Scripture, the Son of David. His divergence from the other Gospels on this point is striking. The methodological issues inherent in this portrayal concern the conflation of the Sukkot and Passover feasts, the use of talmudic terminology, and the notion that we deal with complex interpretations of branches in Matthew 21:9.

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Recently, both in Europe and in North America, the Anonymous Parmenides Commentary has received new and intensive attention from several specialists in Platonism. Before the mid-nineties, however, and for more than a quarter of a century, no important piece of work was devoted to this text. Such was the overwhelming influence of Pierre Hadot's "Porphyre et Victorinus", Paris 1968, that there seemed not much more left to say. This response to Alain Lernould's innovative paper will assess some of the research trends and possibilities that have begun to open up in the last few years. Mention will be made of Alessandro Linguiti's new edition and Matthias Baltes' proposed corrections of his text, of the interaction of work by eminent Gnostic scholars and by specialists in Platonism leading to the questioning of some apparent certainties in the interpretation of the Anonymous Commentary, and, finally, of the proceedings of the conference on the Anonymous Commentary organised by Matthias Baltes in September 2002 in Prague. In this wider context Alain Lernould's paper will be put into perspective. Apart from textual matters, problems that shall be discussed include the Commentary's relation to Moderatus and to the Chaldaean Oracles. The systematic focus will be on the doctrine of the two Ones and its implications for the triadic speculations that the Commentator puts forth.

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In this presentation I shall outline the boundaries of the territory which the author of one of the apocrypha books, the Book of Yehudit, had conceptualized and depicted. The physical feature of these borders is inferred both by content and literary analysis of the structure of the narrative referring to the geographical space in this book. The space which is reflected in the book extends through the central mountains` region of the land of Israel from Shomron to Hebron. The author emphasizes Northern Shomron as being his land. Neither the sea-shore nor Galilee are considered as such. In the presentation I shall enumerate the various evidences which verify the above mentioned claim. I shall compare between the space of the land which is depicted in the book of Yehudit and that which is depicted in other essays that belong to the period of the Second Temple such as these ones: the Books of Ezra and Nehemia, The Testaments of the Tribes and the Writings of Yosef Ben Matityahu. The objective of this comparison is to draw various models concerning the way by which the people in the land of Israel in the times of the Second Temple grasped the space of the Land in their consciousness. This presentation is a digest of the first part of the PHD Dissertation which I compile within the framework of the Department of The History of the People of Israel in The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Both Professor Elhanan Rayner and Dr. Oded Ir-Shay are my supervisors.

Does the contemporary criticism of "traditional teaching/learning" imply that the whole process of human learning has changed? Why should we think that technology enhances learning? What does the research show? One epistemological model suggests that learning is the construction of paradigms for organizing and retrieving data. In this model, scholarship formulates paradigms of understanding. What happens to students who are subject to large amounts of data when they do not have adequate organizing paradigms? What does the research show? What is the relevance of technology to learning and how do we measure the outcomes? Understanding the questions is basic to formulating strategies for using technology to create a learning environment. A commentary on some of these strategies is included.

Although scholars of religion study the influence of one religious tradition upon another, religions themselves often tend to eschew the idea of influence, hotly denying the infiltration of “foreign” elements. They emphasize instead their continuity with sacred origins. Indeed, a religious tradition will sometimes go so far as to alter its laws, beliefs, or customs precisely so as to differentiate itself from surrounding traditions. Ironically, this means that the religion has subjected itself to precisely the influence it wishes to reject. This paper will examine these quandaries of religious identity through the cipher of a verse from the Hebrew Bible, Leviticus 18:3: “You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their statutes.” In this paper, I will use this verse and its history of exegesis in Judaism to look at how religious identity is created through the erection of boundaries. At the same time, I will examine trends of resistance, interpretations that contract the meaning of the verse and thereby expand the potential for self-conscious religious exchange. Indeed, the very nature of Bible reading will come into play: when and how do Bible interpreters read their own reality into the sacred text, and what are the uses to which they put their readings?

Archaeological evidence is most useful for two sorts of inquiries: a) to illustrate essentially single moments in time, a kind of snapshot approach (eg.,the battles at Yodefat, Gamla, and Masada, the destruction of the temple); and b) to create a collapsed view of real life over a generation or more. While most historians are willing to deploy archaeological evidence for the first sort of inquiry, there is far more hesitation and even unwillingness to use such evidence for the second type. This is in large part because archaeologists don't present their evidence in a format that seems to answer historical questions. What I will do is collect and present archaeological evidence relevant to understanding Jewish village life in the north prior to the Revolt, and especially to specify those aspects that are the same and different from Jewish life in Jerusalem. This will provide definite, tangible data by which Jewish attitudes and also praxis, real behavior, can be identified.

Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike have had occasion to observe (and lament) that the types of critical and rational analyses that have been applied to the Bible by Jews and Christians in modernity, have never taken hold among contemporary Islamic interpreters. We concentrate on one explanation--a specifically hermeneutical explanation-- for this phenomenon. It is our contention that the Qur’an possesses a “textual consciousness” that has set Islamic exegetical sciences on a somewhat unique trajectory. As Stefan Wild phrased it, the Qur’an is “the most self-referential holy text known in the history of world religions.” It displays a fairly consistent awareness of itself as a text authored by God and containing the final, definitive, clear and perfect revelation. Some suras even go as so far as to presage and counter potential criticisms of the Qur’an! Hermeneutical defense mechanisms of this type, we will argue, are completely absent in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. This never stopped early Jewish and Christian interpreters from insisting that their sacred scriptures were proximate to the divine, perfect and comprehensible to all who truly wished to understand them. Only in the final decades of the nineteenth century could Jewish and Christian interpreters, en masse, subject the Bible to a withering form of rationalistic critique that problematized claims of this nature. Scholars such as J.W. Rogerson and Nigel de M. de S. Cameron have referred to this as “believing criticism.” A comparable form of critique has not been witnessed among Muslim exegetes (though was anticipated more than a millennium ago by the Mutazzilites). The Qur’an’s strong sense of itself as a book beyond criticism has greatly hindered this development. We close by calling attention to the work of Muslim exegetes who have called for the development of precisely such a form of critique.

The book of Jubilees records 29 “citations” of records engraved on “the heavenly tablets.” The thematic concerns of this material are akin to the covenantal concerns of the book as a whole: sacred time, space, and persons; with an added focus upon divine reward and punishment in matters related to death or defilement. This characterization dovetails with the observation that the Pentateuchal legal texts underlying these passages are from biblical contexts identified as priestly traditions (“P” and “H”). Conceptual and terminological evidence points to the systematic use of the Holiness Legislation of Leviticus as a primary “intertext” for Jubilees’ creative close reading of the Genesis narrative. In this paper, I will adduce evidence supporting my claim for this use of priestly sources, and I will address some of the theological and socio-historical implications of my claim. Many of the laws assigned to the Heavenly Tablets employ terminology found in biblical texts that also feature the terms “chuqat olam,” or “ledoroteichem.” These terms are viewed in biblical scholarship as “markers” of priestly sources. Similarly, many of the prohibitions assigned to the “Heavenly Tablets” are offenses that are punishable by “karet” in the Pentateuch. For example, Gen 17:14 warns that neglect of circumcision leads to karet. In “re-telling” this Genesis narrative, Jubilees does not use the term karet, but seems to offer an exegetical alternative, stating that any male who is not circumcised on the 8th day is affiliated with “the children of destruction” rather than “the children of the covenant.” Systematic investigation of Jubilees’ references to the “heavenly tablets” yields numerous additional examples of explicit and implicit employment of priestly Pentateuchal sources, reflecting shared elements of form, terminology, and world-view. These commonalities will be discussed in light of the frequent characterization of Jubilees as a “priestly” work in modern scholarship.

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Studies have shown that the average student’s attention span is less than one minute. Most students cannot even watch a T.V. commercial without channel surfing. So how do we impart information that reflects a culture 3,000 years old and may seem irrelevant to a 21st century high-tech life? Meeting students where they are (i.e., Internet, Video Games, Digital Photography and Video, Webcam, Instant Messenger) this interactive paper surveys various successful technological methods derived from our classrooms that have been valuable both on-site and in distance environments. As we provide a panoramic view of technological possibilities, our content will focus on teaching the book of Judges.This paper will embrace basic technologies (incorporating graphic, audio, and video in the classroom) as well as the more advanced techniques such as streaming interactive video and virtual classrooms.

An examination of the continuity and discontinuity in women's cultic and domestic roles in ancient Israel.

In a midrash on the words "for from the top of the rocks I see him" (Num 23:9) found in Yalkut Shim'oni, a 13th-century A.D. collection, a parable is told (in Hebrew) of a king who, attempting to lay foundations, dug until he found "petra." Likened to this king, God, desiring to create the world, looked into the future and saw Abraham, a "petra" upon which he could build and found the world. Therefore, God called Abraham "Rock," and the prooftext is Isaiah 51:1: "Look to the rock from which you were hewn." The same "rock-petra" textually based wordplay is found in Matthew 16:18 where Jesus, having found a trustworthy disciple named Petros (rock) upon whom he could build his Kingdom of Heaven movement, said to him, "You are Petros and upon this petra I will build." (The name "Petros" is attested in early tannaic literature.) Should we think it strange for late midrashim to show up in the New Testament, we need only recall that the "Jannes and Jambres" midrash mentioned in 2 Timothy 3:8 appears not earlier than the third century A.D. in the Targum, and much later in the Midrash. Because of Jesus' "Petros-petra" midrash preserved by the author of Matthew, we may assume that the "Abraham-petra" midrash predates the first-century A.D.

After evaluating the archeological examples and summarizing the biblical evidence, the presentation proposes a reconstruction and explanation for the shift from acceptance (by some) to rejection (by all) of Yahwistic massebot. B'kitzur, many alleged massebot were structural or functional stones, leaving several possible/probable massebot. Amongst the probable massebot, the Arad stone(s) is the most convincing example - a stone, perhaps inscribed, standing in the niche of a government-sponsored temple. Biblical references illustrate varying attitudes towards massebot through the 8th century in the north and the south (Deuteronomy, Covenant Code, Holiness Code, Hoshea, Isaiah, Micah, Kings). By the time of Josiah's cultic reforms, Solomon's royal massebot may have been the last stones standing.

One of the major obstacles to presenting a more balanced assessment of Jewish-Christian relations in the second century C.E. is the virtual absence of Jewish literary sources for the period. Though Jews figure prominently in the writings of the second century Church Fathers and later Christian Apologists, it is becoming increasingly evident in scholarship that these texts portray Jews in a tendentious manner, often reveal more about Christian self-definition than they do about either Jews or Judaism, and tend to talk at Jews more than they talk with Jews. Nevertheless, there is one oft-neglected work that might help to remedy these problems and contribute to a better understanding of Jewish perceptions of Christianity in the second century. There is reason to believe that embedded within Celsus’ True Doctrine are authentic Jewish arguments against Christianity. This paper presents a source-critical analysis of Celsus analyzing the nature of Celsus’ debt to second century Jewish sources and their significance for Jewish-Christian relations.

Numerous commentators have drawn attention to the divergence between the MT and LXX of 2 Samuel 11:22–25, the passage where Joab’s messenger delivers the news of Uriah’s death to King David in Jerusalem. H. P. Smith, for instance, states that the LXX presents “David’s speech as Joab expected him to make it,” whereas the MT contains a virtually opposite delivery of the message and unfolding of events in David’s presence. In fact, the two texts unfold such alternative readings that it is fair to say that a qualitatively different dramatic sequencing is at work in the MT and the LXX. In light of such challenges, it is a difficult matter to argue which text is “original.” Therefore, in this paper I will instead focus on some of the key differences between the MT and LXX in this passage, and highlight some of the literary implications that emerge when these textual trajectories are compared. The paper concludes with three sets of observations. First, the characterization of the messenger is discussed, since this figure is presented in a quite a different light in the two textual traditions. Second, the characterization of David is considered, because (similar to the messenger) the king appears quite differently when the LXX and the MT are considered side-by-side. In the LXX David’s anger is kindled, whereas in the MT, the king has a far more stoical resignation when hearing the news. Third, I will suggest that this text-critical issue serves to underscore the significance of 2 Samuel 11:19–25 within the context of the larger Deuteronomistic History, and contains an important comment on kingship at this turbulent moment in David’s reign.

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Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version (CPV) work in the late 1960s was described by his publisher as “a modern translation with a Southern accent, fervent, earthy, rich in humor.” Typically, the label “translation”, especially as it relates to Scripture, is tied to issues of canonicity and historicity. The CPV is far removed from these benchmarks. What is the usefulness of such a product? The author of this paper considers classifying the CPV and other similar renderings as an adaptive retelling rather than as a “translation”, aligning it with the category proposed by R Hill. As such, the CPV demonstrates a widely-published and practical application of a relevance-theoretic approach to translation practice. That is, it is an example of a translation (or a form of translation, argued in this paper to be an adaptive retelling) for which the translator filled his product with geographical and personal names, colloquial expressions, and common vocabulary to match the cognitive environment or encyclopedic knowledge of his readers. Jordan’s own stated intentions were to provide for his readers a sense of participation and involvement in the Gospel story but “who have been hindered by big words they don’t understand or by ancient concepts they don’t grasp.” This has been Jordan’s self-justification for his widespread use of anachronisms, a device which perhaps has drawn more fire than any other from critics. Broadly, it could be considered a bridging strategy for building Scriptural acquaintance within a people group. Beyond the examination of the purpose of CPV for an inter-racial south Georgia Christian community, the author considers the use of a bridging strategy in SIL translation projects and in major English dialects. The author shows that this type of translation approach has merit and should be seriously considered in certain environments.

The so-called doctrine of the universality of sin has become one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity. Paul’s statements, particularly Romans 3:9–20, refer to the Hebrew Scriptures to prove this position (Ps 14:1–3; 53:1–3; 5:9; 10:7; Is 59:7–8). Rooted in the Latino / Latin-American Sitz im Leben, this paper challenges that traditional Christian interpretation and reexamines several texts widely used to support the doctrine of the universality of sin. We propose a new reading which emphasizes the class factor in these texts, concluding that the predominant view of the Hebrew Scriptures is that of a class sin and not that of universal sin.

A paper on Origen's use of Philo

The setting and date of the book of Joel are notoriously difficult to determine. As several recent studies have shown, when Joel is viewed within its context in the Book of the Twelve, new interpretive possibilities emerge. There are verbal links between Joel and other books among the Twelve, including a shared vocabulary of warning regarding the Day(s) of Yhwh and the land suffering under the effects of human sin (with a concomitant divine judgment). These two themes associate Joel and Zephaniah. Further, the opening of Joel has been fashioned to connect the message of Joel with threats and promises of Zephaniah. That is, Joel opens (1:2) with a command to transmit a message from “your fathers … to another generation,” for a total of five generations. This intergenerational reporting matches the five generation genealogy of Zephaniah (1:1b). During these intervening generations, major catastrophes have stricken the land and people of God, for which Joel’s Days of Yhwh serve as paradigms. Within Joel itself the Days of Yhwh are paradigmatic of an even greater Day when God will set right the created order. We find in Zephaniah this same dual aspect of the Day of Yhwh as historical judgment and renewal expressed in cosmic terms. In its canonical position between Habakkuk and Haggai, Zephaniah functions first to associate Joel’s Day(s) of Yhwh with the Babylonian crisis, and second, to point toward the renewal of creation, whose hopeful beginning is anticipated in the reinstitution of the Jerusalem temple cult. It will also be argued that the linking of Joel with Zephaniah and with other books in the Twelve provides the key to Joel’s canonical locations in the MT and LXX.

The GKSA, the Reformed Churches in South Africa, cherishes its sola scriptura Reformation legacy. Services reflect the denomination’s emphasis on biblical preaching. Throughout its heritage the GKSA reserved the offices of preacher, elder, and deacon for men. How does this reflect the current international debate on the scriptural basis for women in church offices? How do women who have grown up in the GKSA--and love it dearly--feel about their exclusion? In addition throughout the last decade, GKSA women have come for training to its seminary, the Faculty of Theology at North-West University; they face a bleak professional future. A video, "Hear her voice, too: Reformed women speak", addresses these issues. Fourteen highly educated women associated with the seminary and denomination speak out. They reflect different ages, backgrounds, races. They discuss their calling, opposition they encounter and their response to it, and their advice to women following them. They challenge the GKSA’s synod to rethink its gender exclusivity of church offices. The video was developed in 2003, the same year the synod voted to allow women in the deaconate, as curriculum for the seminary’s New Testament classes. As well as integrating the Bible and visual art, the video incorporates primary research material because in the GKSA’s history there is no evidence that anybody before really had asked women their opinions.

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Second-generation household (bayit) members seem to remain under their father’s and, to a somewhat lesser degree, their mother’s, as long as they share the household’s space. Identifying such textual ‘offspring’ here, therefore, will be more spatial/contextual than semantic (i.e. when referred to as ben or bat (daughter), na´ar or na´arah, etc.) The relevant Torah passages will be divided into 3 categories: A. Texts relating to females. B. Texts relating to males. C. Texts relating to both genders. A comparison of these categories will yield an overview as to the world vision and cultural concerns underlying the attempts to regulate second-generation social behaviour by the first-generation authority holders. A brief intertextual collation of the findings with similar materials in Proverbs will conclude this paper.

Joseph often is lifted as a paragon of virtue, as one who rose from slavery to "rule over all Egypt" because of Yahweh's favor being with him throughout his life. In Genesis 47:13–28 we see how the former slave behaves with power. The texts tell us in typical hyperbolic rhetoric that Joseph collected so much grain during the prosperous years that he stopped measuring the intake--"it was beyond measure" (41:49). A literary critique suggests that there was plenty to meet the needs of people during the years of famine. When the years of famine came and the Egyptians ran out of money, they bartered first their livestock one year (47:16), then the following year they bartered their bodies and their lands. Joseph, the text tells us, took their fields and made them slaves "from one end of Egypt to the other" (47:21). An ideological criticism of this passage examines what happens when power is merely transferred, but not transformed. Joseph, the former slave and misused servant, seems uncritically willing to foist on the Egyptians what was put upon him. He institutes a share-cropping system in which one-fifth of all the Egyptians raise of necessity comes to pharoah, with implications that if more is needed or desired from the "master," it and the people themselves belong to the kingdom. In addition, he keeps the power base of the priests in place, thus maintaining the status quo. The common Egyptians' self-determination is stolen in crisis. This paper examines what happens when the slave becomes the master with an eye toward hermeneutical implications in this century. Joseph proves what Audre Lorde has told us: the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.

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Comparative studies of Psalms and Wisdom have been largely relegated to identifying “wisdom psalms,” an enterprise vigorously called into question. Nevertheless, examples of shared rhetoric (e.g., language, motifs, metaphors) between Proverbs, in particular, and Psalms are evident. In the face of the current impasse, new questions need to be asked that afford more subtle comparisons. For example, how do Psalms and Proverbs deploy similar didactic rhetoric and to what ends? This paper examines several so-called “wisdom psalms” and identifies their distinctive goals and theological nuances in relation to comparable passages in Proverbs.

With the rising interest in intertextual reading of the Hebrew Bible, a variety of strategies have been developed and explored. One underutilized tool and strategy has been the Masorah. This paper seeks to explore two things. First, how do structures and notations of the Masorah reveal intertextual reading strategies of the Masoretes. Second, these structures and notations of the Masorah can be utilized for intertextual reading by contemporary readers.

Music and religion are essential components of cultures past and present. For example, examination of how groups use music in daily life reveals elements about the culture from which the music derives. For instance, the study of a culture’s music can shed light on areas such as social hierarchies, ideologies, sex/gender roles, and attitudes towards foreign and domestic instruments. In turn, study of a culture’s religious practices often reveals many of the same perspectives and expresses how some people understand and navigate the world around them; thus, it should not be a surprise that music and religion go together like hand in glove. Religious activity in particular, often utilizes specific musical instruments, select personnel, and designated areas for performance, all of which express many of the above-mentioned elements. Several of these aspects are present in the work of the Chronicler. By looking through the lens of music and religious activity presented by the Chronicler in conjunction with musical artifacts and other archaeological elements, this paper will discuss how the Chronicler possibly understood this unique mode of human expression in the religious practices of ancient Israel/Palestine. It will also explore how the various uses of music described by the writer may further explain dimensions of religious musical performance and its connections with the larger socio-culture.

For most of the 20th century, the Form-Critical hypothesis of the uniqueness of the Gospels was accepted as the scholarly consensus. This affected views of both their Composition and Reception as oral units strung together with no authorial literary intention. This view was challenged by CH Talbert and DE Aune, followed by RA Burridge’s What are the Gospels? (1992), arguing that the gospels share the genre of ancient Lives or bioi. In this paper, Burridge reviews the critical reactions to the biographical hypothesis over the last decade. Analysis of continuing work on the genre of the gospels demonstrates how the biographical approach has increasingly become the new scholarly consensus. This has significant implications for the Composition and Reception of the Gospels. To recognize the Gospels as ancient Lives means that they are ‘Christological Narratives’, composed as bioi, with a concentration on the person of Jesus and a clear authorial intention to provide a portrait of Jesus; they were received in that way by the first audiences. The plurality of the four portraits within the canon also raises interesting questions. Secondly, the biographical genre may help us understand more of the ‘Social Setting’ of the Gospels, in terms of their composition, delivery and initial publication as well as in their reception, not within tightly sealed communities but functioning in apologetic and debate across many early Christian audiences. Thirdly, while the form-critical approach can find many parallels between gospel pericopae and rabbinic anecdotes, there are no comparable rabbinic biographies. This early Christian shift to composition within a Graeco-Roman genre of bioi has implications for their reception, containing a strong theological claim about the importance of the person of Jesus of Nazareth for the right relationship of human beings with God.

Having been trained in eurocentric academies by secular humanists for whom religion is merely a product of culture, many Black scholars have resolved that the historical-critical “method” is a sine qua non in conducting biblical interpretation. Unfortunately, this resolution has led to the uncritical embracing of the dominant conclusions of nineteenth-century eurocentric scholarship. It has also opened the door to a type of humanistic relativism that allows the interpreter to define his/her own canon within the canon or to reject it in its entirety. Many who practice historical-criticism are under the mistaken impression that it is a “method” that is superior to the naive ideologies in the pulpits and pews of our current faith communities. However, they fail to understand that in the absence of concrete evidence, the presuppositions and conclusions of historical-criticism demand as much faith as any other “method” utilized to read scripture. Afrodiasporan biblical hermeneutics should incorporate critical methods, but should also operate with the understanding that it is impossible for exegetes to escape the faith factor. The Bible makes claims about itself that must be either accepted or rejected. Historically, Africans around the globe have accepted the Bible’s claim of divine inspiration and–through experience–have found it to be a book of hope and comfort. While there will always be a need for competent scholars to wrestle with the obvious differences in the received text, the Bible does not have to be robbed of its mystical life-changing power in the process of critical examination. Afrodiasporan biblical hermeneutics do not have to be built on the destructive faith of European skeptics, but can be true to the transforming faith of millions of African believers at home and abroad.

In “Discourse in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin discusses irony as “double-voiced discourse” that “expresses simultaneously two different intentions: the direct intention of the character who is speaking, and the refracted intention of the author” (324). These two voices may be “dialogically interrelated”: they may “actually hold a conversation with one another” (324). This approach to irony sheds light on Mark 3:22–30. On one level, Jesus refutes the scribes with a self-evident argument: Satan does not authorize Jesus’ exorcisms because then Satan would be exorcising himself; he would be divided and could not stand (3:24–26). Mark’s early chapters, however, challenge this logic, for Jesus’ powerful exorcisms reveal precisely that Satan’s kingdom cannot stand before him, which is what has generated the scribes’ suspicions in the first place. Viewed in this light, 3:27’s parable of the bound strong man whose house is robbed makes a striking suggestion. His house's inability to stand before the robber indicates, according to Jesus’ earlier rhetoric, that the robbery (i.e., exorcism) was an inside job. Mark’s voice sounds through Jesus’ rebuke of the scribes, surprisingly echoing the scribes’ questions about the source of Jesus’ exorcistical authority. 3:28–30 delimits Mark’s skepticism: the warning against blasphemy draws a line in the sand the faithful questioner will not cross; Mark emphatically signals that line because he wants to approach it as closely as he may without overstepping. Susan Garrett’s work on God’s cooperation with Satan in ancient Jewish literature allows for an historical contextualization of Mark’s skeptical attitude toward “God’s son” (1:1) in his dealings with demons. On a more fundamental level, thoughtful but faithful believers will find familiar the dialogical tension between questioning and conviction characterizing Mark’s attitude toward the challenging Jesus of his gospel.

Teaching ancient Greek presents a teacher with all of the problems inherent in language teaching, and then some. Biblical language teachers should consider adopting methods developed in language acquisition studies. These methods can enhance students' learning efficiency. Total Physical Response (TPR) is an excellent and proven technique for teachers with energy and a love for their students. I will demonstrate briefly (10 minutes) how TPR works. The demonstration will include the teaching of some basic Greek structures. Another new language acquisition method that greatly enhances internalization is a picture approach to ancient texts. The student looks at pictures while listening to recorded Greek: the student hears only the target language. There are special issues for dead languages, yet even living languages are dead inside a classroom and for the learner. Living languages, however, may have resources like movies and television that are unavailable for ancient languages. The pronunciation issues have practical solutions. The mistake issue ("What if a teacher or student says something that is not truly representative of the ancient language?") is a non-issue. Teachers and students will make mistakes, but an individual’s production in a language never substitutes for ancient data in research. Learners’ mistakes apply to English speakers researching Shakespeare, too, yet few would suggest non-fluency in English as an enhancement to research of Elizabethan literature. Finally, there is an ongoing challenge for training teachers who did not learn the ancient language in a way that developed speaking capabilities. We need to evaluate Greek pedagogical success rates and levels against modern language acquisition programs.

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This paper brings the work of Ellen Davis on the Song of Songs into conversation with Origen's commentary on the Song of Songs.

Scholars agree that behind James’ condemnation of wealthy individuals who persecute the poor stands a Jewish tradition which commonly treats the poor and oppressed as a collective symbol of righteousness. Problematical, however, are the statements of 5:6: ‘You have condemned, you have killed the righteous one; he does not resist you.’ Identification of this ‘righteous one’ has ranged from Jesus as the one executed by the Jewish aristocracy to James himself as the titular head of a righteous community. This paper seeks to demonstrate that behind these statements in James is a developing tradition from the Cain and Abel story. While it has been recognized that Abel served as a topos for righteousness and unjust suffering, it is sometimes overlooked that Cain fulfilled a similar role. Beginning with the writings of Josephus and Philo and continuing through to the Midrashim, Cain became a topos for those who oppress the poor and the righteous for self gain. Some authors portrayed Cain as one who attempted to take possession of the entire world. Others credited him with the invention of weights and scales with which it was later claimed he killed Abel. Echoes of this tradition can be found in James. In 5:4 the cries of the oppressed reach the ears of the Lord in the same way that Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground. Just as James accuses the wealthy of using dishonest means to retain the wages of the poor, so also Cain was accused of increasing his property and possessions through robbery and force. The paper concludes by suggesting that the enigmatic statements in 5:6 represent an indictment against the wealthy which, by drawing on the imagery of the Cain and Abel story, declares they are guilty of the sin of Cain.

J. Christiaan Beker once called Jesus’ cry of abandonment in Mark 15:34 “the one central question posed to us by the Bible” (ThTo 25 [1968]: 194). Like Beker, most commentators on Mark have focused on Jesus’ anguished question to God as he hangs dying on the cross, but have neglected the pervasiveness of the abandonment motif throughout the Gospel. This paper will argue that the quotation from Psalm 22 represents the culmination of one of the governing story lines in Mark’s drama, namely, the abandonment or rejection of Jesus by characters who at one time either are or should be supportive of him. Tracing the abandonment motif through the Gospel will demonstrate that Jesus’ increasing isolation by supporters is perhaps the most striking feature in Mark’s portrayal of him. Not only are there passages depicting rejection explicitly (e.g., the rebuff of his hometown neighbors, Judas’s betrayal, the flight of the other disciples, Peter’s denial, the crowd’s reversal), but also there are passages that anticipate or serve to accentuate overtly willful rejection scenes. For example, Jesus’ sense of abandonment by God in 15:34 becomes even more powerful when read in the context of God’s acknowledgment of his sonship at his baptism (1:11) and transfiguration (9:7) and the centurion’s confession that follows his death (15:39). In other words, the theme of abandonment is interwoven throughout Mark’s narrative and, therefore, the death of Jesus and the Gospel’s christology more broadly cannot be properly understood without adequately accounting for it.

1 John 2.28 and 3.2 both have the protasis "ean phanerothe," "if he appears," surprising because it seems to cast doubt on the certainty of Jesus’ reappearance. But both the Vulgate and modern translations in major European languages translate as "when he appears," "cum apparuerit" in the Vulgate. The paper will explain the context in the early Latin-speaking church that may or may not shed light on the choice of "cum," and demonstrate the Vulgate’s persistent prestige among translators in the modern period.

This paper applies Longacre's Discourse Grammar method to the entire Greek text of 2 Thessalonians. Several outcomes are noted: Among those are (1)the binary structure of the discourse,(2)the role of the ambiguous text in 2:1–10,(3)the prominently marked peak of chps. 1–2, (4)the roster of forms used both for more forceful exhortation and mitigation, and (5)how the imperative mood supplies the mainline of exhortation for the hortatory text in chp. 3. A chart of the entire Greek text is included in the paper along with a selected history of interpretation on the "x factors" in 2:1–10, each as an appendix to the paper.

Recent attempts to assert that God’s compassion is a major theme of the Hebrew Bible stand in sharp contrast to the multiplicity of texts attributing violent behaviour to God. The collective weight of the passages adduced as evidence of a gracious, compassionate God scarcely counterbalance ‘the violent images and expectations of God that overwhelm these “sacred” texts’ (Nelson-Pallmeyer). Yet, if we rage against violence we elevate it as the great opponent, an Other that looms forbiddingly at every turn. It’s true that Job has destroyed ‘the genteel closure of wisdom dialogue’ (Newsom), which was one attempt to bring rapprochement between violence and compassion. Yet with sensitivity we can glimpse connections between violence in the texts and in ourselves, discern movements between violence and compassion. The very scale and relentlessness of violence in the Hebrew Bible challenges us to neither ignore nor minimize it but to note its source and its resolution and be drawn to act compassionately ourselves. Such action is vital in an age and in societies in which ‘the Bible’ is appealed to as affirming that God is on ‘our’ side.

This paper makes a case for a new understanding of “wisdom” and looks at the implications of this understanding for defining the relationship between “wisdom” and “apocalyptic.” Building on a broader survey of textuality and education in the ancient world (D. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature [New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming]), this paper argues that “wisdom,” “apocalyptic” and other texts in Israel and surrounding cultures all were transmitted (whatever their origins) primarily in (pseudo-) familial, oral-written educational settings. Within such settings, what we call “wisdom” writings were those writings used for early education. Yet such cultures used a broad range of other textual genres as well -- narratives, hymns, divinatory or prophetic material, etc. For example, at some point Israel started to use the Mosaic Torah as the first and foundational educational text, rather than “wisdom” writings. As this happened, “wisdom” became an even less distinctive category of Israelite literature than it previously had been. Nevertheless, instructional texts continued to be produced. The balance of the paper explores the emergence of “apocalyptic texts” within a Hellenistic environment dominated by an author-defined Greek educational curriculum and indigenous responses to it. Within this culturally competitive environment, the phenemonon of pseudepigraphy and prophet-like heavenly revelation were strategies for claiming a deeper learning than Greek education literature and/or other indigenous instructional literature. By this point all of the players in the debate (“apocalyptic,” etc.) are authoring educational texts, none are writing “wisdom” texts of the older type, but the texts that are being produced (“apocalyptic texts,” “sayings collections,” etc.) are infused in multiple ways with fictional teaching situations and educational motifs and strategies.

The Deuteronommistic History (school?) and its author(s) have been placed in a variety of social contexts by scholars, ranging from the late Iron Age through the Persian periods. Is the Deuteronomicstic History the product of one exilic author? A school that existed from the late eighth century through the Persian period? Did it pass through several related revisions? And would the choice of one setting over another make a significant difference in its interpretation for ancient and modern readers of the history/school? This paper will not revisit or seek to analyze the various theories concerning the origin of the History and/or school. Rather it will examine the significance of a variety of social contexts from which it might have arisen and seek to make links among these various contexts and the construction of social meaning.

I propose to preside at session two, "Satan." Participants include Deborah J.G. Friedrich, D.L. Christensen, E. Goldman, R. Sherwin, and Z. Garber.

The named audience for Luke-Acts, a "kratiste Theophile", is an otherwise unknown person. Scholars have postulated who this person and the audience of the text might have been (see G. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 374ff.); as Sterling points out, the author of Luke-Acts only uses this adjective kratistos "in addresses to Roman governors" (375). I would like to suggest a possible identity for Luke's addressee: perhaps Theophilus is a moniker for a Herodian ruler in Cilicia, a descendant of Herod the Great's son, Alexander, of the same name (Josephus, Antiquities 18.140). [We do know of another instructional text from this period, Babrius' Fables, which were addressed to the son of King Alexander (to whom he gives a nickname), also in two parts.] I shall explain in my paper how a hellenized (Josephus, Ant. 18.141) Herodian patron of Luke-Acts might have read these two volumes.

"The Words of the Luminaries" (4QDibre Hamme'orot") is a liturgy for the days of the week. It is one of the most important documents for the early history of Jewish liturgy in general and for the development of penitential prayer in particular. The latter remains true even though the weekday prayers in "The Words of the Luminaries" are not penitential prayers per se but rather communal supplications for physical and spiritual deliverance.This paper examines the penitential elements in these weekday supplications. These elements occur in two types of material: 1) confessions of sin that ground the supplications for physical deliverance said on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; and 2)the requests for forgiveness, repentance, and knowledge in Sunday's and Thursday's supplications for spiritual deliverance. This material shares with earlier, contemporary and later penitential prayers a similar mind-set and similar motifs, formulae, and patterns of biblical use. These correspondences indicate that "The Words of the Luminaries" draws upon a well-established tradition of penitential prayer yet, there is room to question whether we have here solid evidence for a daily or regular practice of penitential prayer.

The first recorded war between Israel and other nations is the war against the Amalekites (Exod 17:8–16), who subsequently become the traditional enemy of God. King Saul’s rejection by the prophet Samuel is tied to the fact that he failed to observe the terms of YHWH’s “Holy War” against Amalek. The concept of the Amalekites as the enemy of God was alive as late as the book of Esther, where Haman is described as an Agagite so as to relate him to Agag in the story of Samuel and Saul. This paper explores the concept of symbolic “warfare” in antiquity, which has much to do with the replacement of the ancient tuning theory based on base-60 arithmetic with a more advanced one anchored in the more familiar decimal base-10 arithmetic. The whole enterprise is closely related to the world of mythology throughout the ancient Near East (and subsequently the Greek world as well, transmitted via Pythagoras and others). This world of “primitive science” extends far beyond the boundaries of ancient Israel itself—in space and time. Though some of the oracles against foreign nations in the prophets can be associated with specific military action, we must distinguish between the sort of “holy war” von Rad describes and YHWH’s “Holy War,” which must ultimately be understood symbolically. Though the prophets of ancient Israel functioned in the world of real politics and hence in actual wars between Israel and other nations, they spoke the language of symbolic speech that concerns war as metaphor.

Ezekiel 40–48 contains non-Mosaic legislation that conflicts with Mosaic Torah. For example, Ezek 46.6–7 specifies that the new moon offering is to be one bull, six sheep, and one ram, whereas Numb 28.11 specifies two bulls, one ram, and seven yearling sheep for the same ceremony. Other contradictions include Ezek 44.31 and Deut 14.21; Ezek 45.20 and Leviticus 7.25 (Levenson). Furthermore, the book of Ezekiel envisions a fulfilled Exodus through a radically revised liturgy that only a “new Moses” can authorize; Ezekiel is clearly that “new Moses” in Ezek 40–48. Liturgical revision occurs elsewhere in the Tanakh, though. Ezra, for example, legislates liturgical revision (Neh 8.13–17). Where does Ezra receive his authority to legislate? From a “Mosaic institution”? In the Book of Ezekiel a shift from Sinai to Zion can be discerned. For example, some motifs originally associated with Sinai come to be associated with Zion. This effectively eclipses Sinai as the mountain of God. Moreover, whereas in early poetry YHWH “comes from Sinai” (Deut 33.2; Judg 5.4–5; Ps 68.8–9; from Teman in Hab 3.3–7), in monarchic liturgy he “shines forth from Zion” (Ps.50.2). Zion, then, has become the locus for revelation, for it, not Sinai, is now the place of both theophany—and judgment—since prophecy privileges Zion over Sinai. “Zion revelation” also includes legislation. Thus we should not be surprised to find David making laws (2 Sam. 1.13–16; 1 Sam. 30.23–25). The eventual failure of the Davidides, however, would effect a transfer of “chosenness” from David to the theocratic community (B. Gosse). Thus we should be surprised to find Davidic legislation in Chronicles: cultic leader yes, lawgiver no.

A central metaphor for God in the Hebrew Bible is of God providing food. In the prophetic literature we see some vivid, though contrasting manifestations of this metaphor when visions of restoration follow visions of famine and judgment. It is remarkable that even in the midst of the exile as people struggled to survive the famine, they firmly held onto the belief that God would feed again. Accordingly, God's glorious restoration of Israel's land and people is expressed in the richest food imagery imaginable. In the prophetic literature the metaphor of the God who feeds as image of restoration is portrayed in two interrelated ways. First, in a number of texts (e.g., Amos 9:13–15; Joel 2:18–19), God's provision of food relates to the hope that God will change Israel's immediate future. These visions of restoration express the notion that God will restore the people's fortunes by yet again providing food. Second, in a further development, some texts (Amos 9:13; Joel 3:18)describe the metaphor of God who will feed again in hyperbolic terms, surpassing what would have been considered normal food production (cf. also Ezekiel 47). This paper will investigate the various ways in which this very important metaphor is utilized in the prophetic traditions. It will also ask questions concerning the implications of using this metaphor of God's provision of good as image of restoration in light of contemporary questions such as world famine and poverty.

In this presentation, I locate four points in Judges 16 that have often been used to portray Delilah as a devious, scheming woman. I then show all those points to be ambiguous at best, and thus not good evidence of Delilah’s character or motivation. Following this, I explore the ways in which Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 film Samson and Delilah made, or tried to make, those points explicit in order to remove all doubt as to Delilah’s conniving and obsessive character. Additionally, I briefly discuss what cultural or political influences may have led DeMille to tell the kind of story he tells. This type of investigation into the reception history of biblical texts allows us to see more clearly the motivation(s) of both the writers of biblical narratives, but also the interests and ideologies of later interpreters in reforming the stories.

The Didache presents to us a picture of one or several early Christian communities at an early stage of their process of institutionalization. For the interest of our research on penitential prayer the virtual lack of such texts in this document is nevertheless not a disappointment, because there is already a definite move towards formulaic expressions of penitence. Specific times for the confession of sins are well established on a daily and weekly basis. There is a belief that the confession of sins is a spiritual sacrifice for the life of Christians and the worship of a Christian community. Thus, the Didache presents us with insights into early Christianity as a penitential reform movement. Overall, the document reveals itself as a cradle of penitential prayer and makes this text a fascinating source regarding the development towards penitential prayer in the second half of the first century C.E.

My purpose in this paper is to examine how masculinity is constituted according to the legal material of the Hebrew Bible, with special reference to the Book of the Covenant. The authors of the Hebrew laws were unaware of the gendered character of their productions, and, like most males in all cultures, no doubt equated being masculine with being human. The questions for this paper are: (1) When gender comes to the surface, e.g., in laws specifically about women and men separately, how is masculinity constructed? (2) When gender is not ostensibly at issue, how is masculinity constructed nevertheless?

In his recent book Narrative Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Narratology, Daniel Punday proposes a crossing between the contingent reading of the New Historicism and the general reading of Narratology through the concept of a “corporeal narratology”. Such a proposal may enable us to think about History and Poetics together. This paper takes up Punday’s challenge. In the first part of the study, it tries to decipher the arrival of the so-called “narrative criticism” in the biblical sciences, and to evaluate in what measure a corporeal narratology can help us to think about History and Poetics together in biblical studies. The second part takes up the Lukan mention of the disciples “asleep of grief” (Lk 22. 45) as illustration. Though characteristically passed over, this expression signals a turning-point in the Lukan matter of “eyewitnesses” (cf. Lk 1. 2). As will be shown, a corporeal struggle can be read in Luke-Acts beginning with the Gospel’s first verse, “many have laid hands on” (Lk 1. 1).

One autumn day in 1973, at the Oriental Institute’s excavation at Nippur, a workman rising from his lunch in a trench brushed the balk against which he had been sitting and tablets fell out. In all the remains of 128 inscribed clay tablets were found. The inscriptions turned out to be written in a previously unknown early Neo-Babylonian script and to date from the middle of the eighth century BC, a virtual dark age in the history of southern Mesopotamia. Included in this group of documents is an archive of 113 letters, the only known group of letters to be dated in the half millennium between 1225 and 725 BC. These unique texts throw substantial new light on Mesopotamian history in the early first millennium and provide glimpses of daily life in an ancient city and rural hinterland at a time when tribally organized groups ruled the Babylonian countryside. These peoples included numerous Aramean tribesmen, Chaldean tribesmen, and Arab nomads. From 750 to 612 BC, Arameans, Chaldeans, Arabs, and eventually Assyrians met and mingled in Nippur with “Babylonians,” whose forebears had preserved Mesopotamia’s ancient traditions through the dark age that had just ended. Because the letters from Nippur illuminate the age-old process of migration and settlement on the alluvial plain of southern Iraq, they also advance our understanding of what constituted this region's complex population amalgam that we now commonly refer to as “Babylonian,” both during this period and other periods of Mesopotamian history.

The oath formula chay Adonai traditionally has been interpreted as an affirmation of the life of God, usually translated “as the Lord lives.” Thus an oath is thought to be authenticated by placing it on the same level of veracity as the statement that God is alive. Though Moshe Greenberg demonstrated in his definitive article in 1957 that the term chay is a noun in construct, “the life of the Lord,” Greenberg himself, and scholars since, have avoided the implications of this for the meaning of the formula. In this presentation I contend that this formula authenticates an oath by rhetorically putting the life of the deity at risk if the oath should prove false, “the life of the Lord [be extinguished].” In support of this interpretation I will discuss the formula within the wider context of oath formulae in Hebrew and other Semitic languages.

One reality of living in the Roman Empire was being subject to an ideology of masculinity designed to mold elite male citizens into ideal men whose presence reinforced the imperial power structures. Such molding began at birth and continued throughout the education and socialization of young male citizens. Whereas in social scientific studies of the New Testament much has made of the honor/shame value embedded in the ancient Mediterranean culture, only recently have scholars recognized the degree to which notions of honor/shame as well as multiple other cultural values are intricately linked to sex/gender constructs. Thus, this paper will investigate how cultural ideas of masculinity informed the representations of Jesus that we find in the Gospels. While the overall presentation of Jesus may work to undercut the authority of the Roman Empire, it does little to displace the values of imperial masculinity. We have an example of this sort of challenge to imperial authority by way of imperial values in Philo's presentation of Moses. Philo depicts Moses as a figure far surpassing the emperor in ideal masculinity, to the degree that divinizing language can be applied to him (as with the emperor), in spite of Philo's stringent monotheism. So, too with Jesus, albeit in different tenor depending on the gospel tradition, we have a figure that surpasses any earthly authority, but does so primarily within the unchallenged structures of imperial masculine identity. Certainly, there are places where seemingly alternative values are apparent (e.g., humility, service, non-violence), but these are readily contained within (or by) Roman masculine ideals. Finally, the paper examines whether the gospel traditions are, to some extent, manuals for masculinity in formation. If so, the gospel traditions open the door for the later adoption of Christianity by the Roman elite.

The varieties of ancient Near Eastern royal ideologies and their commonalities are well known to biblical scholars through the studies of such researchers as R. Labat, H. Frankfort, W. H. Schmidt, S. N. Kramer, and H. Cazelles. Royal ideology, with its stress on sacral kingship, is well attested not only in Egypt, at Ugarit, and in various Mesopotamian locales but also in certain biblical texts. A rather unique form of sacral kingship appears in Second Isaiah, however: a broad, collective vision of royalty accruing to the entire congregation of Israel. Scholars regularly observe that this vision exists, but in my view, they have not yet given an adequate account of it. They argue that Second Isaiah has "democratized" Jerusalem's older, dynastically oriented royal tradition. This was necessary and pragmatic, they opine: Judah's destruction as a monarchic state demanded such an innovation. New discoveries call this view into question, especially the discovery of affinities between Second Isaiah and priestly, "Aaronide" theology within the Pentateuch. The so-called PT corpus within the priestly Pentateuch, I propose, presents the selfsame collective understanding of Israelite kingship that we find in Isa 40–55. Examining PT's thinking and theology suggests Second Isaiah's view of sacral kingship was no innovation. It did not invent its broad, collective vision of monarchy but inherited it from its native, "Aaronide" stream of tradition within Israelite religion.

The most gender-inclusive location in the ancient world was hell. Even the original language versions of many apocalyptic texts (e.g., Apocalypse of Peter and Apocalypse of Paul) read like a New Revised Standard translation in that they consistently refer to "men and women" suffering in eternal, fiery punishments. In their heavenly paradises, these texts usually refer only to the gender-neutral (?) masculine plurals. However, Egyptian texts from the fourth century CE and later do occasionally depict the Virgin Mary in paradise and even large numbers of female virgins. In the Coptic Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, there are armies of virgins, parallel to Powers and other angelic figures. This development suggests that many of the sins that were depicted in hell have been connected to the female body since the beginning of Egyptian Christianity, but it is only with the institutionalization of female monasticism in Egypt that the female body, specifically the virgin body, can also be seen as a site for eternal salvation.

This paper compares the character and the function of the Greek chorus with the crowds in the gospel of Matthew. It determines that both the chorus and crowds are characterized as consistent entities. Matthew’s crowds also share a number of functions with the Greek chorus. The two groups differ, however, in that Matthew provides the crowds with a metatextual identity. In their role as Israel, the crowds assume a character and function that is tantamount to that of a known actor. Matthew, therefore, is addressing is situating his 'chorus' within a social context and with an explicit function: his hero is intended to provide the appropriate matrix for the community. Here it is Jesus as hero that provides the appropriate understanding for the community at large.

The verbal sparring between Mani and Archelaus (and, incidentally, the panel of judges) is an interesting one. Whether the Acta Archelai report a historic debate or not, the author's agenda certainly includes portraying both Mani and his teaching in a partiular light. How this is accomplished, particularly with regard to Mani himself, will be the focus of this presentation.

It is the strongest feature of social-scientific modeling that allows, even encourages, models to be continually tested and adjusted to make them more valuable and realistic. This can be illustrated through the modeling of exchange in the ancient world. The work of Marshall Sahlins on ancient types of exchange was foundational, but it was too general anthropologically to be directly applicable in a Biblical setting. Sahlins’s model of exchange was very usefully modified by Stegemann and Stegemann, making it more appropriate for understanding types of exchange in a specifically Graeco-Roman setting. It is thus very useful for understanding exchange in the New Testament. When we turn to earlier periods of biblical history and antiquity, however, such as pre-Hellenistic Israel, we encounter a type of exchange that stands outside the Stegemann model, namely covenantal exchange. In this paper I shall illustrate that the Stegemann model does not account for covenantal exchange, and shall illustrate how adapting the Stegemann model to include covenantal exchange will allow us to be more precise in our description of exchange in the biblical world.

The concluding session of the "Best Practices in Teaching" workshop will include informal discussion among those in attendance and the sharing of practical ideas, handouts, and teaching strategies. Free packets containing some of this material will be distributed.

The divorce sayings attributed to Jesus in Matthew and Mark (widely accepted as “authentic”) are frequently taken as resistance to Roman mores. Reading Paul and Q as offering multiple attestation, interpreters claim that the sayings differ radically from Jewish and Roman law and are linked to Qumran, which supposedly also rejected if not divorce, at least remarriage. Thus the stipulations become Jesus “countercultural ethic,” on the one hand more stringent than Roman and Jewish law, on the other egalitarian and beneficial to women, because Mark prohibits divorce and remarriage to both men and women. Mark 10:11–12 is also taken as attestation of Mark’s Roman setting, on the grounds that Roman, but not Jewish, law permitted a woman to initiate divorce. All of these conclusions are questionable. It is as likely that Paul attributes his divorce ruling to the risen Lord in the prophets as to the “historical Jesus.” Verbal agreements between Matt 5:32 and Luke 16:18 against Mark 10:11 are minor. This paper questions the “countercultural” character of the sayings, arguing the Gospels respond apologetically to a Roman imperial discourse promoting “family values” through nostalgia for an original, indissoluble form of Roman marriage, anxieties about adultery and the promotion of childbearing and rearing. Mark 10:2–16 provides a prophylactic against the anti-familial sayings of 10:29–32: while the urgency of the gospel may require leaving houses, brothers, sisters, parents, children, fields, it does not endorse abandoning a spouse (Mark 10:2–12) or small children (13–16). Matthew’s revisions accommodate both Roman ideological and legal concerns and incipient Christian sexual asceticism. Comparison with Luke 16:18 and Hermas illuminates the dialectic of accommodation and resistance that characterizes early Christian sexual politics. Attention to social context questions whether women ever benefitted from prohibitions of divorce.

Modern historical accounts of the development of early Christian theology tend to conceive of the issue of God — the relation of Jesus to the God of Israel, whom he called “Father,” and eventually the relation to both of the Spirit poured forth on the Church — as the main subject of reflection and controversy between at least the time of Irenaeus and that of the great Cappadocians. At the point when some kind of mainstream consensus is reached on these issues, largely in Nicene terms, it is often argued, the focus turns to the distinct but related question of how Jesus, as divine and human, can be a single acting subject — and indeed whether it is important that Christians should think him to be one. This paper will argue that in fact the Christian understanding of the reality of God and God's action in history developed, from the beginning, in parallel with a concern for the question of Christ’s complex ontological status and personal unity, and that what we think of as “Trinitarian theology” and “Christology” are best understood as emerging in response to a single set of questions.

While Sigmund Freud’s antipathy toward the psychological difficulties associated with Christianity’s so-called Eleventh Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (originally found in Lev 19:18) is fairly well known, little has been made, either in the ancient or modern world, about the challenges demanded by an even more foundational source: The Tenth Commandment, the prohibition against coveting a neighbor’s wife and/or property. What at first glance looks like another law against behavior that would be damaging to society and hence on par with the preceding commandments against false witness, adultery, stealing, and murder, actually raises several questions about this law’s intent, how its violation would be discovered by anyone but God, and, even how it was ever expected to be enforced. In fact, its placement at the conclusion of the Decalogue raises questions about its relationship to the other nine laws, a fact the later Rabbis addressed in Pesikta Rabbati 107a when they determined that to transgress the Tenth Commandment was to violate all of the rest. This equation of thought with sin, rather than deed, calls to mind Jesus’ similar stance in the Gospels, but even more so Freud’s “psycho-mythology” of the Primal Horde and the origins of the super-ego, repression, civilization, and religion in Civilization and Its Discontents. In light of this correspondence, it is possible to consider that the movement of the Decalogue from the supremacy of this one God, to the prohibition of images, to the exaltation of parents, to social restrictions, all reflects a clearly defined arc of renunciation that culminates in the command against coveting and, ultimately, the possibility of Israelite civilization itself – though not without its “discontents.”

Hugh of St. Cher's biblical commentaries were extremely popular in 13th century Europe. They are famous for interpreting biblical texts according to the medieval fourfold sense of Scripture (literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical). Hugh's commentary on Psalm 29 will be analyzed as a case study that demonstrates the ways in which medieval hermeneutics influenced his reading of a biblical text.

The book of Fourth Ezra evidences a sustained use of the motif of childbirth in the first four of its seven visions. This paper analyzes how the childbirth motif is employed by the writer of Fourth Ezra to describe the predetermined timing of the birth of the new age and to envision the signs of the end in terms of dysfunctional birth or labor pains. The childbirth motif also conveys the theme of Ezra’s movement toward understanding. When Ezra finally grieves with mother Zion, he proves himself worthy of receiving esoteric knowledge about the end of the age.

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Israelite wisdom is famously characterized as having a lack of interest in the main concepts of Israelite national religion. However, this paper will explore afresh echoes of ideas from a wider Old Testament thought-world than simply wisdom literature in Proverbs 1–9 and evaluate the significance of this in relation to the characterization of wisdom just mentioned. Echoes of texts from Deuteronomy, prophets and some psalms will be considered in relation to texts in Proverbs 1–9 and to wider issues of formative influence and editorial redaction. This represents a concern of older scholarship which has only recently been taken up again as an area of interest as part of a wider scholarly concern with inner biblical exegesis.

The widespread disagreement among New Testament scholars concerning the nature of the first-century oral Jesus tradition and its role in the composition of the Synoptic Gospels is greatly exacerbated by a commonly-held belief in a universal 'orality' possessing certain essential characteristics. This belief is untenable in light of the vast amount of comparative research conducted in the last several decades on various oral traditions around the world. Different groups attend to the transmission of their own traditions in different ways, and with different results, depending upon their own peculiar motivations, intentions, abilities, and circumstances. If progress is to be made toward determining the relationship between the oral Jesus tradition and the Synoptics, the oral Jesus tradition must be considered a particular thing which may have been more or less like other particular things, and not an example of a composite ‘orality’.

It has become increasingly recognized that the archaeology of the southern Levant is an essential component to the study of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the origins of Judaism and Christianity. However, due to the high level of specialization in the field of Biblical Studies is has become more difficult for many scholars to competently assess a larger and more diverse range of synthetic treatments of Biblical archaeology. These source books on Biblical archaeology are not neutral vehicles of raw data. They espouse a wide range of interpretative biases and agendas which must be understood in order to properly utilize them. Of particular importance is how these volumes implicitly treat the relationship between scripture, history and archaeology. Without some sense of the interplay between these three very disparate forms of data an informed presentation of biblical history and archaeology is virtually impossible.

The parable found in Matt 20:1–15, traditionally entitled “the parable of the workers in the vineyard,” is almost exclusively interpreted with a view of the householder as a God-image and the grumbling vineyard workers as disgruntled religious persons with whom the readers are expected to identify. One notable exception is William R. Herzog’s approach to the householder (Parables as Subversive Speech, 1994). Herzog finds an exploitative and ruthless landowner who intentionally humiliates the day laborers and destroys any possible cohesion among them. Similar to Herzog, my analysis does not read the householder as a metaphor for God. It differs, however, from prior interpretations by reading the parable through the eyes of the householder, who believes himself to be righteous before God and the community. This parable, grounded in the economic concerns of land ownership, use of capital, and extreme disparity between rich and poor, challenges the householder’s self-perception. It presents him as a well-intentioned and law-abiding person who is unable to see his participation in the social, political, and economic injustice embedded within his society.

A common element in Jewish narrative material in the Second-temple period is the figure of a foreign king (or high-placed court official) who displays some kind of veneration towards Israel’s God. Such figures appear in a variety of narrative forms. Often such veneration is a response to some reversal of fortune in the circumstances of Israel or of a pious Israelite. In the most common form of reversal, the foreign potentate is an aggressor who is stopped in his tracks by some display of divine power and is moved to worship God (e.g., Heliodorus in 2 Macc 3:33–39; Ptolemy Philopator in 3 Macc 6:33). Sometimes there is no reversal, the king being well-disposed from the outset and responding with eager veneration at the first opportunity (Alexander in Josephus Ant. 11.331–36; Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the Letter of Aristeas). In one or two instances, veneration goes as far as proposing to “become a Jew (2 Macc 9:17; cf. Bel 28). The purpose of this paper is to survey the pertinent material, to identify the various forms in which such royal sympathy is cast, and to consider the intended rhetorical function of this narrative convention.

This paper assumes the oral context of the first century in which the Gospel was designed not for the eye, but for the ear. The story of Jesus’ death will be explored within its narrative context: the Gospel as a whole. We will be concerned with echoes and foreshadowings in relation to earlier scenes--from the baptism and transfiguration scenes to the three passion prediction units. The first-century Greek-speaking Mediterranean cultural contexts will provide a sense of how the story of Jesus’ death would have been heard by the authorial audience. Questions to be addressed include: How would the ransom saying (10:45) be heard in its narrative and cultural context? What is the connection between Jesus’ life given as “a ransom for many” and the “blood of the covenant poured out for many” in 14:24? Nowhere in the Gospel is the death of Jesus explicitly connected with the removal or forgiveness of sin, a forgiveness that is, nevertheless, stunningly present in the message the women are given for the disciples, “even Peter” (16:7).

It would be helpful if we could determine the terminology of the Greek text before we compare it with Numenius, Alcinous, Kelsos, Apuleius or whatever. While comparing the parallel passages and searching for the Greek text (using the detailed analysis of Tardieu) I wondered about so many uncertainties involved in trying to set this text in the history of Middle-Platonism.

It is usually acknowledged that gnostic Christians had a more open attitude towards Greco-Roman philosophy than was usual in early Christianity. Not only is there little doubt about the influence of Platonism on their views, but they also adopted teachings of other contemporary schools of thought (such as Stoicism) as well. Against this general background, it seems surprising that philosophy is strictly condemned in two Nag Hammadi treatises, the Tripartite Tractate and Eugnostos. Their views of philosophy are, in fact, very close to the most negative early Christian affirmations of philosophy as demonstrated by Tertullian and in Pseudo-Clementine texts. In my paper, I will discuss social implications of the condemnation of philosophy in the texts mentioned above. My suggestion is that it was not only the doxographic question of right and wrong opinions that was at stake in these texts. Condemnation of philosophy also served a more pragmatic purpose of building a barrier against other, rivaling groups. In condemning Greco-Roman philosophy, the authors of these texts denied the value of instruction offered in schools of thought and, in so doing, recommended withdrawal from these groups. While these authors no doubt took over a lot of ideas from contemporary philosophy, their judgments of it do not suggest that, in so doing, they wanted to reduce cultural distance to the surrounding society.

Despite recent unease regarding the use of the terms mimesis and intertextuality as essentially synonymous, the terms continue to be used interchangeably in biblical studies. The implications of the importance of mimesis in Greco-Roman education and literature touch on the direct influence of one text on another, while intertextuality is largely concerned with role of the reader in the interpretive process. One reason for the disregard of the distinctions between the terms may be the difficulty of articulating how one goes about detecting an imitation and what controls we have in interpreting one text in light of another. Should we require strict philological dependence or the use of specific criteria to detect imitation? Should the parameters be broad and the process fluid? Once the dependence is detected, what are the limits for reading one text in light of another? Is there such a thing as mimetic alchemy, where a relationship between two texts set in motion by an author is no longer in his or her control? In this paper I will suggest that significant portions Luke’s picture of the early Christian community in Acts 2–6 are modeled on Plato’s portrayal of the ideal leaders in the Republic and Socrates’ defense in the Apology. Furthermore, I will use this case as an opportunity to explore the distinction between mimesis and intertextuality.

This paper investigates the connection and tension between Paul's description of himself as a mother suffering protracted labor pains (Gal 4:19), and his citation of Isa 54:1, in which the barren woman enjoys abundant progeny without labor pains(Gal 4:27). As a paradoxical Stichwort linking Paul's apostolic "labor" with the promise given to the barren woman, this rich metaphor also suggests a certain disjunction between Paul's mission and the fulfillment of that promise. I will argue that the contrast between Paul's experience and that of the barren woman qualifies any attempt to link his Gentile mission directly with "Jerusalem above." At the same time, the triumphant and widely known motif of the barren woman, with its storied movement from dereliction and futility to abundance and fulfillment, holds forth an eschatological promise that Paul's present labor will not be in vain.

The recent explosion in sales of popular cook books and food–inspired novels has meant that the connections among Eve, food and dangerously tempting female sexuality, perpetuated in visual images in both advertising and film, is exploited by those writers who wish to ‘cash in’ on the ‘gastro–porn’ trend. The books foreground Eve’s role as giver of fruit and, therefore, sexual knowledge. Borrowing from anthropological theory of the relationship between food, body, gender and power, the paper argues that in both the biblical text and in contemporary popular culture, fruit is a metaphor for female sexuality. Comparing ‘gastro–porn’ books against the biblical text, I suggest that the books only make explicit what is already implicit in Genesis 2–3: that is, the connections between woman, sexual body and fruit. The paper explores the encoded messages in Genesis 2–3 that guide the reader to view Adam and Eve’s transgression as the result of Eve’s dangerous female sexuality.

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Characterization has been a central analytical category in the study of narrative since the emergence of narratological criticism. But the modern fetishization of "character" as an aspect of the dominant myth of the self-determining "individual" reflects an ideological impetus that demands critical reflection. In the field of biblical studies, a marked preference for representations of unforgettable persons drives both traditional critics on a quest for "real" historical figures, and literary critics treating characters as substantive entities offering better access to the "truth" of a story. This paper revisits the "religiousness" of ancient novelistic literature from a different perspective. Relating narrative "plot" to "divine providence" provides a critical look at how "characterization" has functioned in narratological analysis of biblical and other novelistic texts. Juxtaposing the Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark, I explore how ancient fiction destabilizes "characters", which function as complex and shifting products of storied intersections. Characters are conscripted by discursive plots reflecting both the mysteries of divine "providence" and the interpellative power of "discourse" itself. Plots are neither propelled by pre-existent "characters", nor connotative of the essence of "characters"; rather, "subjects" are continually constructed and deconstructed in the fractured and ambiguous play of events and context. Divine agency does not merely displace the agency of human "characters"; rather, ancient novels (reflecting the effects of empire, cultural displacement, and dialogism) represent human subjects as neither purely active nor purely passive. What, therefore, emerges when readers and identities, history and fiction, literature and representation encounter one another in the space of a novel(istic) text? Focusing on Aesop and Mark's Jesus renders a new reading of Jesus as neither an historical nor a literary "character", but rather the site of articulation of one both "subjected" and made a "subject" within the complex workings of a divine plot.

Abstract yet to come.

First Clement is a text replete with references to great figures from the past, either characters from Israelite tradition or heroes of the Christ-movement such as Peter and Paul. Yet it also includes reference to villains, such as Cain. This is a phenomenon going to the heart of this important text and therefore demanding an explanation. The social identity approach pioneered by social psychologist Henri Tajfel offers rich resources in this regard. It postulates 'prototypes' as expressing group identity and 'antitypes' as expressing the opposite of such identity. The former offer models to be imitated by Christ-followers in the acquisition and interiorization of group identity, while the latter represent models to be shunned. The former tells whom they should be and the latter whom they should not be. This paper explores such an approach to First Clement and shows that it produces significant interpretative gains.

By comparing different parts of the Jacob-Esau narrative found in Genesis and focusing on the late insertion of Gen 36:9–43 into an already existing P genealogy, this paper questions the traditional dating of P to the post-exilic period. This paper also demonstrates how the unit of Gen 36:9–43 functions in a pro-Edomite manner. Since Edom was vilified in post-exilic portions of the OT/HB (and later Jewish writings) it is unlikely that Gen 36:9–43 would have been inserted into Genesis during this time. Heretofore, since Gen 36:9–43 post-date P, the latter cannot be post-exilic. Gen 36:9–43 appears to be the last pro-Edomite writing included in the OT/HB and the last olive branch held out to these warring brothers before post-exilic “Damn-Esau” theology made reconciliation impossible.

This essay contends that Isaiah 6 is best understood from the perspective of the post exilic era when the Isaiah scroll was approaching its present canonical form -- by focusing on Isaiah 6 as a memory of Isaiah's commission as seen in the context of the entire book of Isaiah. This paper begins by examining Isaiah 6 within the context of Isaiah chs. 6–11, then in the context of chs. 2–12, next in the context of chs. 1–35, and finally in the context of chs. 1–66. (1) Within Isaiah 6–11, ch. 6 may be seen as reflecting the frustrations of Isaiah in the time of Ahaz because Isaiah's words were not heeded. (2) Within Isaiah 2–12, ch. 6 is remembered as a central text among the "bitter memories" preserved in chs. 1 and 2–12. From the vantage point of the post-exilic era, Judahites were remembered as afflicted with blindness, deafness, and with hearts insensitive to the poor and oppressed (cf., e.g., 1:2–3, 17; 3:14–15; 5:4b-5), with Assyria seen as summoned to perform a strange task for Yahweh (10:5–19, 27–32). (3) Within chs. 13–35 readers of the scroll living after the fall of Jerusalem are able to hear and see but also to appreciate the contrast with a time of hardening of hearts. (4) From Isaiah 1–66 as a whole, ch. 6 can be seen as one scene within the full Isaiah scroll, i.e., from a time when there was no longer a question of the truthfulness of Isaiah's vision. Indeed, they heard ch. 6 as a word to a "remnant community." The "bitter memory" in ch. 6 in its full canonical context turns out to be both a warning and reminder of the preciousness of the abilities to see, hear, and be compassionate.

There is a growing assumption among people of African descent, both in the continent and in the diaspora, that Christianity is a foreign, Whiteman’s religion as opposed to Islam which they hail as the African religion. Given the African experience of both religions and their varying dispositions towards African peoples and their cultures, there may be some ground for such assertions. The purpose of this study, however, is to show that the foundational stories of the Christian religion, historically speaking, have more to do with Africa and Africans than most people, Africans and non-Africans alike, realize. Through a historical and intercultural reading of Matthew’s infancy narrative (chapters 1–2), I intend to show that Matthew is attempting a Jewish appropriation of a story that had so much to do with Africa and Africans that it can, in fact, be called an African story. Our thesis is that the tradition available to Matthew was one in which Mary and her son Jesus were known to be Africans of Egyptian origin. This tradition created difficulties for the Jews of Matthew’s time in accepting Jesus as their Messiah, since the Messiah was expected to be a Hebrew (descendant of Abraham) of the line of David. Matthew, therefore, retells the story (redacts the tradition) in such a way as to portray Jesus as a son of Abraham of the bloodline of David. But his make-over leaves many gaps. We shall point out these historical and narrative gaps and show how our thesis of the African origin of Mary and Jesus helps to fill them.

The functions of the infinitive construct and infinitive absolute overlap to a limited extent in Classical Biblical Hebrew. The infinitive construct can be found in place of the infinitive absolute and vice versa, e.g., when the infinitive absolute comes after a preposition (?ahare shatoh “after his drinking” 1 Sam 1:9), or when the infinitive construct occurs with the conjunction waw continuing an imperative (mil’u yedxem hayyom... welatet ‘alexem hayyom braxa “dedicate yourselves today ... that he may bestow upon you today a blessing” Exod 32:29). The degree of overlapping increases in Late Biblical Hebrew, particularly the use of the infinitive construct expressing modality, e.g., wegam lallewiyyim ’en las’et ’et hammishkan “therefore the Levites should not carry the Tabernacle” (1 Chr 23:26). I suggest that the frequency of modal infinitive constructs in Late Biblical Hebrew is inversely related to the frequency of modal infinitive absolutes, and that the increase of the modal infinitive construct should be seen as part of the larger phenomenon of overlapping use. I suggest further that the overlap in functions between the forms of the infinitive construct and the infinitive absolute derives from the ambiguity of the Nifal (hiqqatel), Piel (qattel), and Hitpael (hitqattel) forms, which serve as both infinitive construct and infinitive absolute. Moreover, a synchronic interpretation of the Qal infinitive construct qetol as the construct of the infinitive absolute (qatol) may have contributed to the process that resulted in the merging of infinitival functions.

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When Joseph’s brothers brand him “that dreamer” (Gen. 37:19), a remarkable feature of dream reports in the ANE is revealed: their tendency to cluster around certain historical or literary figures. Joseph apart, also Jacob, Gilgamesh, Hattushili III, Nabona’id and Ahsurbanipal make such figures. This distribution may have to do with “individual preferences of authors” (A. L. Oppenheim), but such “preferences” still call for an explanation. Focusing on the Hebrew Bible but never oblivious of its ANE environment, this presentation examines some categories of dreams and dreamers in search of what is typically biblical (or typically Israelite). Numbers 12:6–8, the nearest thing in the Bible to a hierarchy of prophetic media, suggests the superiority of direct theophany to dreams, possibly also of clear dreams to enigmatic ones. Is a clear (or: theophanic, verbal, auditory “message”) dream rightly styled “Israelite” (Y. Kaufmann) in distinction from an ambiguous (or: symbolic, visual) dream? Is it a ‘proper’ dream at all? I will argue that replies to such questions should be based on the distribution of these dream types in biblical and ANE literatures and on recent psychological insights regarding “styles of dreaming”. Three types of biblical dreamers are noted: (1) The divinely elected patriarch, hero of a ‘biography’, guided in his travels and assured of his God’s support (Jacob: Genesis 28:10–22; 31:10–13; 46:1–5); (2) Secondary characters, warned to refrain from actions against the divinely elected (Abimelech: Genesis 20:3–7; Laban: Genesis 31:24; Cp. Balaam: Numbers 22:8–20); (3) The wise king, initiated into (or predicted) his role (Solomon: I Kings 3:5–15; Cp. Joseph: Genesis 37:5–11). Each of these can be linked to the mentality and life situations in ancient Israel, particularly northern Israel.

My paper seeks to ananlyze the references to divine kingship found in Ezekiel. Particular attention is given to the shepherd metaphor of Ezekiel 34. Significant words, images and metaphors that give emphasis to divine kingship are discussed.

It has long been observed that the oldest biblical reference to the Day of Yahweh is in Amos 5:18–20. The prophet casts the Day of Yahweh as a day of darkness and judgment, but why do a complacent people wait for it eagerly, as a day of expected light? Scholars have treated this original Day as either some kind of festival or an anticipated victory of Yahweh, or perhaps both. I propose that the Day of Yahweh may acquire a more particular cultic aspect when viewed as part of a larger phenomenon in Amos, the association of the prophet with the temple at Bethel. The critiques of Bethel in 4:4 and 5:5 focus on pilgrimage to a site that people "go to" or "seek," and the attack on pilgrimage festivals in 5:21 fits the same audience of religious travelers, most easily located at Bethel. If all these elements of a cultic critique are related to sacred occasions at the Bethel temple, does the book of Amos ever mention any events by name? The one combination is the New Moon and Sabbath of 8:5, whose end the hypocritical celebrants await for the resumption of cheating commerce. Certain special New Moons could have annual significance beyond the monthly cycle, as shown by the New Moon of Dagan at Emar and perhaps the New Moon of Saul and David in 1 Samuel 20. This would be a time to celebrate the new arrival of the moon's light after an interval of lunar darkness, commonly associated with death and danger. The imagery of the Day of Yahweh, with its expected movement from darkness to light, would be explained well by the New Moon. This expectation is then turned on its head in the Amos prophecy.

Nearly every book, commentary or monograph on the Psalms includes some discussion of poetic structures and stylistic devices. While these structures and devices are noted for their beauty and/or poetics, they are rarely discussed in a manner that presents them as core components for meaning. In other words, they are rarely discussed in terms of "how they mean." This paper will discuss how four types of poetic structures and devices contribute to meaning in select Psalms. The four categories follow: form-critical elements and rhetorical patterning; meaning through grammar, e.g., negative vs. positive petitions; metaphor as pseudo narrative; and formal structures that pinpoint meaning, e.g., chiasms.

Various attempts have been made to date the book of Proverbs and its components, mostly with shaky results. This paper considers the different perspectives from which one might ask about the dating--whether of the individual proverbs, the assembling and editing of the various collections, or subsequent additions. It will first criticize recent attempts to identify the Persian period as the main locus of the literary formation of the book, then support the view that the background of chapters 10–29 on the whole is the Judean monarchy and the social locus is in the upper economic strata. The paper will inquire also into the linguistic indicators of dating. Given that Sira and Qohelet also have proverbs about kings and courtiers, special attention to the nuances of the royal sayings in Proverbs will be necessary in order to use them as evidence for a pre-exilic dating. Setting the foundations of the book in the monarchic period does not exclude subsequent activity. There is evidence for significant addition and revision in the Persian or early Hellenistic period.

I propose to chair the Meeting of Oficers and Membership Annual Meeting

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Salome was dubious. “Unless I insert my finger and examine her, I will never believe that a virgin has given birth” (Prot. Jas. 20). “Position yourself,” the attending midwife demands, and Mary acquiesces. Moments later, her own hand aflame, Salome repents of her disbelief. Readers of this text will know that this is not the only time that Mary has been examined, though this is doubtless the most invasive of the encounters. By this point Mary has already suffered an ordeal of the high priest – a “drink test” in the wilderness (Prot. Jas. 16) – not to mention Joseph’s intense interrogation, which reduces the sixteen-year old to tears (Prot. Jas. 13). What was the point (or points) of these stories about the teenage Mary for ancient Christians? This paper will ground these examinations of Mary in multiple, overlapping contexts of meaning, including ancient expectations about the bodies of women and children and the anxieties apparent in second-century Christian circles about defining and maintaining boundaries between Christianity and Judaism. I shall argue that the Protevangelium of James introduces the flesh of Mary as a framework for addressing the problem the Christian present and the “Hebrew” past, finally focusing the attention of the Christian audience on a premier source of tension, the womb that carried their own savior. Salome’s finger is an instrument of early Christians that allows them to probe “holy ground” without getting burned.

An exploration of women as practitioners of magic and divination in the Hebrew Bible.

The communal lament of Isaiah 63,7ff links the prophetic identity (i.e.the idea of the genuine prophetic task) of First-Isaiah with the prophetic identity of Second-Isaiah. In order to do so, Isaiah 63,7ff alludes to two themes, one stems from Isaiah 6 and the other stems from Second Isaiah, e.g. chapter 43,10f. (cf. further references in Second Isaiah). The first motive is the theme of blindness, deafness and the "shemen lev" (Isaiah 6,9f) of the people of Israel, that the prophet announces to the people. The second theme is the very important motive of the servant in Second Isaiah. The people in the lament become in Is 63,7ff the servants of Yahwe. They know, that they are under the threat of the hardness of heart("Verstockung") and they know that their hardness of heart can only be suspended by Yahweh's own conversion (hebrew: shub). That hoping for Yahweh's conversion is a realistic hope, becomes clear in the allusion of Isaiah 63,7ff to Isaiah 43,10f. In Isaiah 43,10f Yahweh announces his "blind servant" (=the people) that he, Yahweh himself, will provide him salvation. Still, the lament of Isaiah 63,7ff is well aware of the fact that due to the peoples' hardness of heart this change (hebrew: shub)can substantially only be based in Yahweh himself.

The “scribes” are mentioned many times in the gospels. Matthew’s Gospel mentions the word over twenty times, but in what context are we to understand the term? How does Matthew’s usage of the word differ from Mark’s? Were the scribes “hypocrites” and “children of hell,” (Matt 23:15), or were they heroes, “trained for the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 13:52)? This paper will examine the Jewish scribal traditions discussed in Matthew’s Gospel. Scholars have often noted the harsh tone of chapter 23, thereby immediately concluding that the authors of the Gospel despised the profession. Yet a careful textual analysis will reveal that the authors of the Gospel greatly respected scribes as teachers and leaders. In fact, education itself may have been a top priority for this Jewish Christian community. One could even conclude that the leaders of the Matthean community were themselves Jewish scribes. This paper will examine various passages that directly mention scribes (Matt 13:52; 23:1–36), as well as those (Matt 11:15–20; 16:19; 17:1–9) that seem to allude to them.

If one is pressed to put a description of the Hebrew Bible in a single adjective, a good case can be made for choosing “exilic” as that adjective. The Exile is, without question, a central theme in the production and the content of the Hebrew Bible. The Babylonian Exile raised crucial theological questions about the historical experience that brought about the expatriation of a large portion of Jerusalem’s elites, and served as the setting where much of the text that was going to become the Hebrew Bible found its trajectory towards definitive form. That text is, notwithstanding what other and more ancient traditions it contains, an exilic/postexilic text in much more than a simply chronological sense. As such, it also embodies a set of reactions to the colonial dynamics in which its production was enveloped. The paper will examine the theme of Exile, looking specifically at several texts still in process of being chosen – the author intends to pursue a longer study of the theme – from the personal perspective of a member of the Cuban diaspora of exiles, and from the postcolonial optic of a Hispanic/Latino living in the U.S. There are resonances and dissonances in such a reading which warrant attention because of the way in which they define the Hispanic view of the Bible.

The present paper seeks to clarify the way in which Paul represents disobedience in connection with both Israel and the nations. “Sin” has been a neglected aspect of Pauline studies in recent times, in that it is something of an Achilles heel in many of the “new perspectives” on Paul. However, fresh avenues have been opened up by the recent work of Stephen Chester (Conversion at Corinth [Continuum, 2003]). The present paper seeks to explore the rather different ways in which Paul construes sin and sinful action depending on whether he is reflecting on the pagan world or the history of Israel. Paul’s programmatic statement in Romans 2.12 will be explored, with attention to the asymmetry between God’s judgment of Jewish and gentile sin. The main body of the paper will provide a comparative account of Paul’s treatment of the relation between sinful action and consciousness. In the case of the gentiles in Romans 1, Paul makes an explicit connection between accountability and conscious disobedient intent (1.18–20, 32), while leaving room for a dimension of (self-)deception. In terms of those under the Law, the present paper aims to modify elements of Chester’s analysis in accounting for Paul’s construction of the “sin”-“me/I” relation. Paul’s emphasis on the action of sin as provoking disobedience in Romans 7, in apparent contrast to the emphasis on the divine action of “giving over” in chapter 1 (where gentiles are in view) will then be sketched. Finally, the paper will conclude by drawing implications for interpreting Paul’s attitude to his pre-conversion past.

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As the title of this year’s companion Pentateuchal section ("A Farewell to the Yahwist?") indicates, the viability of the Documentary Hypothesis is in serious question. No longer are we talking about refining Wellhausen’s original theory, but rather reconsidering or even rejecting the whole. Conversely, there are those who still vigorously defend the Hypothesis, arguing that a proper understanding of the Pentateuchal traditions is impossible without first undertaking a thorough source analysis. As a contribution to the current debate, this paper explores the theme of Promise-Fulfillment in the Jacob narratives in order to test the usefulness of source analysis for interpreting the Patriarchal traditions. In particular, this paper investigates Jacob’s bargain with God as expressed in Gen 28:20–22, tracing its three-fold structure of provision, protection and return throughout the remaining Jacob cycle. What becomes clear – both on linguistic and thematic grounds – is that the theme of Promise-Fulfillment in the Jacob narratives finds its proper denouement only by reading the sources in concert. Put another way, removing any of the sources (as classically defined) from the Jacob material unravels the narrative development of the cycle and undermines the purpose of Jacob's revelation and vow at Bethel. The implications of these findings for evaluating the usefulness and integrity of the Documentary Hypothesis are many, but at minimum they underscore the importance of maintaining a balance between an awareness of the complexity of the Patriarchal traditions and an appreciation of the larger literary themes that unite these traditions and give them meaning.

Biblical scholars and archaeologists are becoming aware of the fact that space is not simply a neutral or empty receptacle within which events take place. Rising awareness of the work of human geographers and others working in critical spatial theory is leading to a fresh understanding and examination of space, particularly to the ways in which societies actively produce their own social spaces. Rather than assuming space to be neutral, scholars are coming to understand that space is a complex social phenomenon, encompassing material reality (how a society produces itself in physical reality), the cognitive systems a society develops to organize and conceptualize space (how it thinks about space), and the symbolic meanings a society ascribes to space (how a society lives in space). But how does one take these insights about space an use them to read space in a biblical text? New Historicism, with its interests in situating texts as material, cultural products of particular societies and historical circumstances, provides one such methodological approach. In this paper, I draw on the New Historicism to propose such a methodology, which I call spatial poetics, as a means of addressing the need for a methodology for reading biblical (and related) spaces.

The transition from Gen. 50 to Ex. 1 is the decisive connection of subjects within the Pentateuch narrative and the Hexateuch narrative. This is the reason why the analysis relating to the literary history of this part of the text is pivotal for the question about the development of the first continuous thread of narration comprising the main subjects of the Pentateuch. The present context already shows contrary tendencies concerning the classification of the patriarchal narratives in the book of Genesis on the one hand and the history of the people of Israel which begins with the book of Exodus and Moses and the exodus on the other hand. The separation of the first two scrolls of the Torah forms the most recent stage of the textual development. On an older textual layer the transition is divided into periods of heilsgeschichte influenced by Jos. 24.. On an even preceding layer, we find that the patriarchal narratives are arranged before the Exodus narrative by the priestly writer. The break between these subjects can be recognized easily. There is no proof of a connection of both complexes before they were combined by the priestly writer.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Eastern European scholars have begun to publish in Western languages and about topics once difficult to discuss. For students of Hellenistic Judaism, the most important of these topics are the manumission inscriptions and a collection of inscriptions to the most high god. Work on both groups of inscriptions appeared in the last five years and, as a result, this important corpora of inscriptions is increasingly cited in discussions of Jewish epigraphy of the Greco-Roman period. This paper will review these recent publications, report on the impact they have had in other research, and identify those areas of investigations where incorporation of these inscriptions is urgent.

There have been several attempts in recent years to consider portions of the Hebrew Bible through the lens of drama, theatre or performance. Although these investigations have been useful and suggestive of the benefits that may wait in store, there is yet to be developed a strong theoretical basis for the investigation. The methodology is still being refined. Performance Analysis, as a methodology applied to biblical studies, must be grounded in an anthropological or sociological context for the investigation to yield continued positive results. This interdisciplinary paper seeks to pursue that theoretical goal by drawing heavily from the fields of Theatre Analysis and Biblical Studies in order to construct a framework for Performance Analysis as a methodology and then applying the methodology to the oracles of Amos. Performance Analysis of the Amos Oracles begins with a linguistic consideration of orality in text. Building upon a linguistic grid, a paradigm is established that presents “performance” as a specific type of orality whose linguistic taxonomy can be identified in texts. Having identified a “performance mode of thought” in texts, concepts drawn from the history of theatre and drama analysis are applied to the literary record in order to investigate the social dynamics that engage when a performance occurs. The paper concludes with an application of the developed theory of Performance Analyses to well known Amos oracles: the Oracles Against the Nations in 1:3–2:5 and the Let Justice Flow oracle of 5:21–24.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus, I argue that slavery conditions bodies. Although Paul proclaimed that there is no slave or free in Christ, Christians bore in their bodies the knowledge of slavery, of slaveholding, and of freedom, as well, of course, as the knowledge of other social relations, including gender relations. I consider two questions. First, how does recognition of the habitus of slavery and thus of the embodiment of slaveholding relations affect our interpretation of social relations in Pauline communities, including,especially, sexual relations? Second, what conditions are imposed and inscribed on some bodies in order to guarantee the freedom of other bodies, and how does freedom inscribe itself on the body?

According to a popular view, Mark’s story of the crucifixion originated in “prophecy historicized”, the attempt by learned Christians to construct a narrative based on Biblical prophecy. But while this theory takes the presence of scriptural elements seriously, its weakness is that many of the details of the story cannot be derived from the scriptures, including the framing of the crucifixion story between named witnesses (15.21 and 15.40–41). A preferable theory might utilize a term coined by James Kugel and explored in recent Hebrew Bible scholarship, scripturalization, whereby traditions interact with scriptural reflection to produce narratives in which the very language of retelling is the language of the Bible. Thus the multiple echoes of Biblical themes and the varied allusions to scriptural precedent in Mark’s story of the death of Jesus are plausibly explained if the evangelist is following in the footsteps of those Jewish writers in the Second Temple period who similarly engaged in scripturalization. Mark’s story of the death of Jesus has some basis in history and tradition, but when he narrates it “according to the Scriptures”, there is an intimate interaction between traditions about the crucifixion and the Scriptural reflection those traditions generated.

The discussions of epideictic rhetoric in the rhetorical handbooks and progymnasmata of antiquity provide an incredibly rich source for understanding how first-century people conceived of rendering praise to a deity. By analysis of this material, as well as comparison with extant hymns from antiquity, such as the prose hymns of Aristides, this paper demonstrates the ways in which the hymn to Christ in Colossians 1:15–20 would have been comprehensible by ancient inhabitants of Asia Minor. Further, this paper analyzes the persuasive function of the hymn in its context within the epistle through the use of both ancient and modern perspectives on epideictic rhetoric. This paper uses rhetorical analysis to both place the passage in its broader cultural context and shed light on its significance for the epistle as a whole.

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Among the many differing interpretations that are reported by Jerome, often only to be rejected, is the set ascribed to “our Judaizers.” It is argued here that these interpretations are simply those of Christians with whom Jerome disagrees, and do not necessarily reflect anything of genuine Jewish-Christian exegetical contact. The paper attempts to describe the exact nature of these interpretations, to ascertain how they fit into Jerome’s system of interpreting the prophets, and to understand why Jerome regards them as “Judaizing.” First, scholarship on Jerome’s exegesis (e.g., Vaccari, Penna, Hartmann, Duval, Jay, D. Brown, F. Young, A. Kamesar, H. Newman, A. Fürst), along with evidence drawn from his works, are used to show that Jerome considered himself somewhat of an eclectic as an interpreter: accepting both the literal/historical meaning of the “Hebrews” (Jews) and the spiritual/allegorical meaning of the church. It is then shown that Jerome approved of the “literal” meaning as it related to Israel’s past, i.e., biblical history, and that he generally assigned a spiritual Christian meaning to prophetic texts in order to make them relevant to the future. The interpretations that Jerome regards as “Judaizing” are almost all attempts to assign a literal meaning to the future—this is in fact how Jerome himself saw it, and he objected to these readings for that reason. In sum, both the literal past meaning and the future Christian meaning are fair game for the Christian in Jerome’s eyes, but a literal futuristic reading he reckons as “Judaizing,” although he clearly regards these interpreters as Christians. The ultimate issues involve Christian self conceptions as "Israel," and Christian readings of the prophets in light of contemporary Jews.

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Decisions about how texts are classified and arranged often affect their interpretation. This is particularly evident in the study of the remains of many early Christian Gospels, as can be seen in the decisions about which texts are included in the standard collections and the way in which they are arranged. In this paper I address how such considerations affect editorial decisions that are being made about the new series, Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts, edited by Christopher Tuckett and myself, with particular reference to an edition of Jewish-Christian Gospels on which I am working. Contra Klijn, whose interest in the history of 'Jewish-Christianity' led him to approach these writings not so much as texts but as 'representatives of three Jewish-Christian groups', I shall argue that a renewed primary focus on the literary questions raised by these texts, such as that exemplified by Vielhauer-Strecker and by Lührmann-Schlarb, is more illuminating for those whose interest is in these texts as elements within the developing Jesus tradition. Yet precisely such an approach calls into question the category of 'Jewish-Christian Gospel'. Formally speaking, the so-called 'Gospel of the Ebionites' appears to be a harmony of the Synoptics, and might therefore be compared more fruitfully with other Harmonies. The 'Gospel according to the Hebrews' appears to be an autonomous, with overlaps with Synoptic, Thomasine and other strands of Jesus tradition, which might be compared more fruitfully with other Gospels such as the 'Gospel according to the Egyptians'. Finally, if it is a Semitic translation made from the canonical Matthew, then the Gospel of the Nazarenes should be compared primarily with other ancient versions of the canonical Gospels. Therefore I shall argue that the term 'Jewish-Christian Gospel' may be misleading, and I shall ask whether the time has come to reconsider this dubious category.

In 1996 Rodney Stark cited evidence indicating a correlation in Roman cities at the level of .69 between the presence of a Jewish synagogue and Christianization. This paper attempts an evaluation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianization for the province of Roman Egypt. Papyrological and other evidence of Jews in various cities and villages in Roman Egypt is correlated with papyrological and other evidence for the rise of Christianity during the first four centuries of the Roman Empire.

It is taken for granted that while Phoenician distinguishes between the particle 'yt, which appears before the direct object, and the preposition 'et meaning 'with', Biblical Hebrew uses the single particle 'et to indicate both the definite direct object and the preposition 'with'. It is likewise well know that in many cases Heb. 'el, which normally means 'to' can mean 'concerning'. It is equally well known that Heb. 'al, which normally means 'concerning' can mean 'to' Not surprisingly, even Clines' dictionary does not mention another rare usage of 'el as a variation of 'et attested in Ex 23:17; Jer 25:9 and Hos 12:5. The reason that even the best dictionaries do not recognize 'el as a substitute for 'et in those three verses is that the standard critical commentators of the 19th and 20th centuries treat each of these three texts in isolation. Failing to cross-reference their emendations of 'el to 'et in each of these texts, modern biblical scholarship comes off like the proverbial Ninevites "who knew not their right hand from their left". The proposed paper will show that the recognition of a particle 'el, which is equivalent of 'et in Ex 23:17 and Jer 25:9 is supported by parallel passages from Exodus (and Deuteronomy) and Jeremiah respectively while the recognition of 'el, which is the equivalent of 'et in Hos 12:5, is supported by several ancient translations and is taken for granted by important modern translations.

This presentation focuses on remnants of illuminated manuscripts from West and Central Asia, produced between the 8th and 13th centuries CE, that were created in the context Eastern Christianity (Syriac and Armenian traditions), Manichaeism, and Islam. These religions not only coexisted peacefully during the reigns of the Umayyad (661–750 CE) and early era of the Abbasid dynasties (750–1258), but also shared a culture of artistry manifested in their book production that superseded the boundaries of religious identity. In order to support this claim, my research centers on common features of these illuminated manuscripts seen in their (1) book format (i.e., horizontally bound codices), (2) page arrangement (i.e., sideways-oriented illuminations), (3) scribal workmanship (i.e., floral punctuation decoration and techniques of calligraphy), and (4) function of illumination (i.e., decorative designs used as markers of text area, and figural scenes used as decoration rather than illustration of passages).

This paper is a programmatic essay introducing ecological hermeneutics as a topic for deliberation at SBL, 2004. The paper will outline a number of recent developments in this hermeneutical approach and some of the major principles currently employed. The major focus of the presentation for 2004 will be on identifying marks of anthropocentric bias in key biblical texts. The primary texts for analysis of this bias will be the narratives of Genesis 1–11. Three basic indicators of anthropocentric bias will be identified, namely, devaluing of Earth/nature, unwarranted destruction of Earth/nature and dismissal/suppression of Earth/nature as a subject. Devaluing indicators will be identified, first of all, in connection with the so-called ‘mandate to dominate’ in Gen. 1.26–28 and relevant sections of the Flood narrative. Unwarranted destruction indicators will be identified in connection with the curse of Genesis 3 and the J version of the Flood story. Suppression of subject indicators will be identified in the P version of the Flood narrative and in the overall pattern of Gen. 1–11, including Genesis 2–3. While the focus will be on a hermeneutic of suspicion designed to uncover the anthropocentric bias, questions will be raised for future consideration of pro-Earth/nature traditions latent within the text.

The book of Hosea contains a wide variety of metaphors, drawn from a range of source domains, including agriculture, sexuality, family relationships, and nature. Hosea’s quick shifts from one metaphor field to the next create questions about the coherency of the book and its message. Examination of the metaphors with respect to their rhetorical function, as well as their literary characteristics, allows a more unified picture to emerge. Cognitive anthropologists have explored the ways in which cultures use metaphors to predicate identity on their members. Often metaphor is used to change the relative position of subjects within the organization of a culture, either to move the subject up or down in the hierarchy. For example, calling someone a roaring lion tends to move a person up (depending on the cultural context), whereas calling someone a silly dove without heart tends to serve a disparaging function. Hosea’s use of metaphors displays such identity creation and movement. When analyzed for rhetorical function, the metaphors in Hosea form a consistent message to the audience: that of submission to YHWH. The identity predicated on YHWH by the metaphors is one of dominance and power, whereas those used for the people are of impotence, weakness, and poor judgment. Rhetorically, Hosea is trying to change the people’s self-identity from one of power and action to one of submission and obedience to YHWH. While Hosea uses a variety of metaphor fields to communicate, they all attempt to move people in this same direction along a social response grid.

This paper considers Klaus Koch’s seminal essay, “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?” from a psychoanalytic perspective, specifically that of Julia Kristeva in her work Powers of Horror. Koch contends that in the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh does not execute retributive punishment as an impartial adjudicator of human action, but rather functions as a “midwife who assists at a birth by facilitating the completion of something which previous human action has already set in motion.” He also maintains that “this concept of a sphere of influence in which the built-in consequences of actions take effect seems strange to us because it is so totally at odds with what lies in the realm of our experience.” This paper argues that in fact, this idea is not at all foreign to us—it describes, rather, Kristeva’s notion of the abject: the common feeling of disgust, the desire to expel that which is defiled and which threatens the identity of the subject (or the sacred). The abject can be literal and material, as Kristeva demonstrates regarding the Levitical laws of ritual impurity, but it can also be interiorized: “defilement will blend with guilt [and] … a new category will be established—Sin.” Thus if sin can be viewed as a transgression of boundaries in which the self commingles with that which is loathsome, the “doctrine” of retribution can be understood as a natural, psychoanalytic reaction to such an encroachment of the abject: the impulse to annihilate, to expel. Yahweh can accordingly be seen as the author of punitive retribution—the one who expels, who destroys, who exiles—while this retributive act can simultaneously be understood as psychoanalytically inevitable, indeed automatic.

Analysis of the mythic and ancient sources behind Revelation 12–15 have tended to focus either on chapter 12, or to isolate individual sources and their probable representative segments. One weakness of this type of analysis is that it ignores the second sign, 12:3–14:20, as a unified literary section. This is somewhat overcome by understanding the Greco-Roman background of “sign,” literary distinctions, especially the flexibility of symbols to reflect the same reality, and the unifying effect of rhetoric. Revelation 12 opens with the statement “a great sign appeared in heaven” and parallel statements occur at 12:3 and 15:1. The nature of these “signs” –shmei'on- as self-contained units influenced by Greek myth, allegory and parable, have not been investigated. The tendency among scholars has been to isolate one particular form or background area as a means of understanding structure and meaning. In this paper, I argue that Rev 12:3–14:20 functions as an allegory that transforms both the Jewish and Greek myth for the writer’s own purpose.

In academic discussions of the Song of Songs, the nearest thing to a discussion of the Messiah in the Song is a nod to the Christian, allegorical reading of the Song which interprets the poetry with reference to Christ and the Church. This paper discusses the interlocking messianic themes of the Song's music: the Song is about Israel's king, a descendent of David, who is treated as an ideal Israelite enjoying an ideal bride in a lush garden where the effects of the fall are reversed. The thesis of this study is that when the Song is heard in the context of the three movement symphony of Torah, Neviim, and Ketuvim, this movement, the sublime Song, proves to be an exposition of the messianic motif of the Old Testament. I am suggesting that the Song of Songs, read in the context of the Old Testament, is messianic music that we do not need allegorically informed ears to hear. The paper discusses the messianic elements of the Song under two broad rubrics, The Royal Son of David and The Conquered Curses of Genesis 3. As these topics are considered, the canonical context is briefly sketched before the Song's interpretation of these musical ideas is explored.

Assyriological discoveries influenced historical reconstructions of King Josiah of Judah. First, his religious reform in Second Kings was seen as a continuation of a pre-assyriological Orientalizing vision of a battle against "pagan" religions with "idols." Second, the discovery that Assyrian influence over Judah did not disappear after Sennacherib's withdrawal altered the historiography of Josiah's reign. Third, publication of Assyrian artifacts & reliefs lead to artistic representations of Josiah in the guise of an Assyrian king.

Among the texts from the Second Temple period, the relationship between the oral and written forms of discourse is complex and varied. The Hodayot hymns reflect an interesting encounter between both oral and written modes of discourse. In this study, I explore the encounter between oral and written forms of discourse with particular attention to these modes of discourse and authority. In this study, I suggest that the speaker of the Thanksgiving Hymns employs metaphors of divine writing as a way of securing the authority of his compositions. Divine teaching is described with metaphors of inscribing and engraving on the writing surface of the hymnist. The use of these metaphors of writing is perhaps part of a larger strategy to present his compositions as authoritative texts.

Reformed Theological Seminary's Virtual Campus has offered the first year of New Testament Greek online since the summer of 1999. More than 300 students have availed themselves of this opportunity, from around the U.S. and beyond – including military personnel serving overseas, foreign nationals, and missionaries, as well as students from residential campuses of RTS and students from other seminaries. Several undergraduates have taken Greek online through RTS Virtual and transferred it into their bachelor's degree. The program has been a success. The dropout rate is just under 12%. The average grade in online Greek I is 92 and in Greek II is 89. What accounts for success in this online language course at the seminary level? This paper will describe the pedagogical assumptions, content design, delivery mode, and student assessment practices of RTS Virtual's online Greek courses. Data will include student demographics, student questionnaires, and sample web pages from the course.

This paper challenges a standard claim in historical Jesus research. The claim is that the so-called servant parables present a structural pattern of reversal and subversion that allows voices of the poor, downtrodden, and subordinate to be heard. The argument goes that the thematic unity of these parables––a slave (alone or with others) in a moment of critical reckoning before his master––breaks down and works at cross-purposes. One cluster of parables depicts master domination of slaves as total and stable, but a second set portrays it as chaotic and driving toward a kind of entropy. According to the standard interpretation, this second cluster of slave parables probes, questions, and eventually “subverts” the horizon of expected normalcy and hierarchy so carefully developed in the first cluster. Scholars, therefore, “uncover” in this structural pattern of reversal and subversion a message from the historical Jesus that offers a welcome challenge to modern theology. My point is that the dramatic function of masters and slaves is not unique but conforms to a pattern familiar from ancient comedy. That comedy expressed the moral values of the aristocratic elite by placing opposing farcical and natural worldviews in tension for comedic effect. First, I analyze the farcical mode in two Lukan tales (Luke 16:1–8; Luke 17:7–9). I then study the natural mode of comedy in three Matthean stories (Matt 18:23–35; Matt 25:14–30; Matt 24:45–51). I argue that far from expressing ”authentic” voices of the poor, oppressed, and marginal in Galilean peasant society, the oral traditions about Jesus that appear in the parables use the figure of the slave to explore broader principles of domination among higher social levels in Mediterranean world.

The 12th century, northern French exegete, R. Eliezer of Beaugency, is the author of a number of biblical commentaries known within a small circle of modern scholarly devotees for their brilliant treatment of the literary dimension of biblical composition. His works deserve greater modern attention! My paper will focus on Eliezer's commentary on Amos, within the broader context of his commentaries on all of the Twelve. It will highlight his exegesis on texts exhibiting such features as: parallelism, inclusio, prolepsis, and the redaction of the biblical text. I will present Eliezer as "the very model of" a synchronic, literary expositor of Scripture.

The older generation of American post-war poets and the new generation of ‘Beat’ poets turned to the paintings of European masters for their inspiration. William Carlos Williams, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso used the paintings of Brueghel, Goya, and Uccello for their reflections on the disparity between the rich and the poor, the absurdity of our technological society, and the inevitability of death. This interplay between word and image allowed these poets to draw their readers into the visually familiar and then reorientate its imagery in a new construction of social reality. This paper argues that Paul operates similarly in his interaction with Graeco-Roman athleticism at Corinth. Paul’s agonistic language (1 Cor 9:24–27) evokes images of athletic iconography in order to challenge assumptions about how social reality was ordered. Paul takes visual images of the eastern Mediterranean basin and gives them a radical twist by applying them to the corporate relations of the divided Corinthian house churches. In emptying the athletic ideal of its elitism and myopic individualism, Paul democratised its discipline and postponed the allocation of its awards. In bringing athletic iconography into dialogue with his cruciform gospel, Paul stripped the polis of its veneration of the ‘Great Man’, whether in civic life or the stadium. Instead, he elevated his house-churches as the arena in which the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ were mutually accepted, as they sought to outdo each other in mutual honour and beneficence. In so doing, Paul constructed a new order that would ultimately transform antiquity.

Pending

In recent years, intertextuality has come to include a wide range of concerns. This paper will explore the scope of intertextuality and serve as a theoretical framework for the other papers in the session.

Attentiveness to the oral/aural environment in which the Sayings Source arose invites examination of these discourses as texts not only performed and heard, but potentially constructed in performance. Drawing on current studies of oral performance, this presentation will explore the aural and oral dimensions of the parable of “The Great Supper” (Q 14:16–24), with emphasis on how it may have been both heard in and shaped by performance. The lack of verbal agreement between the versions of the “Great Supper” (Q 14:16–24) recorded in Matthew and Luke, as well as Thomas, makes it a particularly rich text for study. Uncertainty about how this parable may have been framed by surrounding Sayings Source materials opens additional exploration of ways in which the parable may have been shaped and interpreted in any single performance context.

The Oxford Hebrew Bible will be an eclectic, critical edition of the text of the Hebrew Bible. Problems and procedures in theory and method will be discussed.

Interpreters of Revelation have long grappled with the important yet seemingly misplaced tradition of the “kings of the earth” in the vision of the New Jerusalem (21.24). How can the author pejoratively depict them as the opponents of God doomed to destruction on the one hand, and yet subsequently envision their presence in the eschatological future on the other hand? This paper explores the possibility that the author of Revelation may employ this symbol based on an understanding of the exalted Christ as the eschatological embodiment of Solomonic traditions. Specifically, the first and last instances of this phrase in Revelation (1.5 and 21.24) represent a broader rhetorical purpose within which the otherwise consistently negative references in the document are a subsidiary and conceptually complimentary rhetorical convention. The suggestion is made that such a reading offers a way of re-evaluating whether or not the author demonstrates coherent application of this traditional symbol.

Using James C. Scott's notions of public and hidden transcripts, the paper will study how Jesus avoids political entrapment while engaging his opponents in an ideological conflict over the payment of tribute to Rome. Employing a weapon of the weak, Jesus dissembles while sending a coded message of resistance to Roman rule.

Within the large book of Isaiah, several scholars have argued that various themes or subjects unify or organize multi-chapter units within the book. In this paper, I examine Isaiah 28–33 and argue that the issue of leadership–both good and bad–is the theme around which these chapters are organized. In one form or another, the topic is addressed in all six of these chapters, beginning with a denunciation of the "drunkards of Ephraim" (28:1) and culminating in the acclamation that YHWH is king (33:22). The chapters alternate words of judgment on those presently in leadership (i.e., civic, religious, etc.) and words of hope for future leadership that will alleviate the present crisis of the authors (i.e., a righteous king, etc.). The argument advanced here takes the form of Isaiah as it now exists as the starting point without investigating in a comprehensive manner the redactional activity involved in the production of these chapters. Finally, I argue that this explains the present position of these six chapters in the book better than any chronological or temporal argument.

The two motifs of food and sex always appear together in most Yahwistic stories: the Garden of Eden (the forbidden fruits and sexual awareness), the J supplement in the flood story (marriage between the sons of Elohim and the daughers of men and Noah's sacrifice to YHWH), Noah’s nakedness (and Ham’s sighting of it) after getting drunk, Abraham's offering of food to the three angels and Sarah's remark about sexual pleasure, Lot’s offering of food to the two angels and homosexual advance of the men of Sodom, Lot and her two daughters, Leah’s mandrakes as fee for sleeping with Jacob, Judah’s kid as fee for having sex with “harlot” Tamar, Potiphar’s concern with only food leaving a lonely wife looking for sex. This paper argues that the Yahwist as an author can be recognized from the way he constructs his stories. That is as far as Genesis is concerned the Yahwistic stories are literature produced by an author, not formed traditio-historically, as has recently been argued by Rendtorff, Blum, et al.

In this paper I will investigate the diachronic development of the word ['asher], from its reconstructed origin as a noun meaning 'place' to its use as a functor introducing either relative or complement clauses. In particular, I will discuss the usage of ['asher] vis-à-vis [she-] in Late Biblical Hebrew, Qumran Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew; more specifically, I will attempt to determine whether ['asher] undergoes reanalysis in LBH and QH and can thus be analyzed as introducing more clause types (e.g., causal and result) than it does in Standard Biblical Hebrew (i.e., relatives and complements).

Twenty papyri related to a Jewish politeuma settled in Heracleopolis, Middle Egypt, were published in 2001. The documents are dated between 144/3 and 133/2 BCE. They include 16 legal petitions to the heads of the politeuma, and 4 pieces of official correspondence. Thus, the papyri cast light mainly on the legal powers of the heads of the politeuma. Despite its restricted scope this file yields new data of major importance in various fields, as this paper will emphasize: 1) Social and legal organization of Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt: The existence of a Jewish politeuma is here documented for the first time in an uncontroversial way. These papyri add important indirect evidence for the existence of a Jewish politeuma in Alexandria and Leontopolis. 2) Ethnicity: Ethnic labels and proper names used by Jews linked to this politeuma invite us to reconsider accepted views concerning the value of these criteria for assessing the degree of assimilation/ethnic self-awareness of Jews in the Graeco-Roman world. 3) Language of the Septuagint: The papyri, in particular a deed of divorce, provide new documentary evidence for terms used in the Septuagint to designate specifically Jewish institutions. 4) History of Jewish law: These Jews followed Jewish law for marriage, but Ptolemaic law for business contracts. Intriguingly, phrases such as 'ancestral law', 'ancestral oath', are found in petitions whose context appears (to us) to be Ptolemaic law. This raises the question as to how Jews themselves defined 'Jewish law' in Ptolemaic Egypt. 5) The Septuagint as a legal document? J. Meleze Modrzejewski has argued that the Septuagint was used as a legal code by Jews living in Egypt. The reference to a 'patrios nomos' in legal petitions addressed to the heads of the politeuma will oblige Septuagint scholars interested in the early Sitz-im-Leben of this text to take this hypothesis more seriously.

Creative early Christian interpreters in the Syriac tradition endowed Sarah with a clear voice of her own, one that imaginatively went beyond the Biblical "verba" (most recently discussed by Harvey). This paper traces and compares the interpretation of the first matriarch in early Christian and Jewish Syriac texts, primarily the Peshitta, the works of Aphrahat the Persian Sage, and Ephraem the Syrian’s biblical commentaries and liturgical hymns. Ephraem's scriptural interpretation merits special consideration, since it illustrates aspects of the complexity and contradiction of early Christian identity. While Ephraem especially warned his audience of men and women from all walks of life to separate from the Jews, he nevertheless encouraged them to imitate Sarah, the great Jewish matriarch. This paper moreover shows how and to what extent Ephraem himself followed lines of interpretation in parallel with or even in imitation of Jewish models when detailing Sarah's character.

This paper looks at Justin Martyr’s work, especially the Dialogue with Trypho to explore his accusation that Jews plot violence against Christians. The Dialogue is often portrayed as foundationally anti-Judaic because it states that Jews try to kill Christians whenever they can (Dial. 95.4, 96.2, 108.3, 110.5, 133.6). This is part of a trajectory of Jewish violence that caused the death of their own prophets and Jesus (Dial. 93.4, 96.1, 99.3). Yet when one looks at the whole of Justin’s work, including the Apologies, there are inconsistencies which need to be examined. In many places in the Dialogue Justin does not implicate Jews or even hint that they are behind the violence Christians face because of their beliefs (Dial. 18.3, 26.1, 30.2, 34.7, 35.7, 44.1). These references to violence and the Christian’s ability to withstand it only become polemical when read in the light of the stronger more focused accusations. But is this connect appropriate? When Justin’s accusations of Jewish violence are isolated it becomes apparent that all of the extreme material can be dated to the last years of Justin’s life (150–155 CE). It appears that Justin constructed a rhetoric of Jewish violence against Christians late in his career that is not reflected in his earlier writings. This paper will propose several possible scenarios which help to put the emergence of this particular accusation in perspective. It seems clear that at some point in Justin’s career, perhaps even after he suspected a plot to take his life, he introduced the idea (or tradition) that Jews plotted violence and even death against Christians. The ratcheting of rhetoric in Justin’s work has significant implications for how we consider the role of Jewish violence in early Christian writing.

From Josephus and other sources it is clear that the Roman conquest and reconquest of Galilee had a seriously debilitating effect on the lives of women. In 54–52, 40–37, and 4 BCE and again in 66–67 CE, Roman slaughter of thousands of people and destruction of villages in the areas such as Magdala, Sepphoris (near Nazareth), and Jappha and mass enslavement of thousands of able bodied young women and men would have left a lasting traumatic impact on women. If they were not killed or enslaved, they lost parents and/or husbands and/or children and/or siblings and/or friends in their own or other village communities. Our sources sometimes offer evidence of particular effect and responses, e.g., that the women of Jappha participated fully in the prolonged ‘hand to hand’ combat against the Roman troops inside their village, or that in some villages all women were sold as slaves and all males were killed. In other cases we can reasonably surmise about the disintegration of the patriarchal family and village community that constituted the fundamental social forms in such a society. Such effects were further compounded by the massive building projects of the Roman client “king” Antipas, which entailed both intensive collection of revenues and displacement of whole villages around Tiberias. In these conditions resulting from the impact of empire, we can critically examine once again the overall narrative of Mark’s Gospel and several of its component episodes. Perhaps they can be heard as reflections and responses to such circumstances. The life-circumstances of women characters in Mark seem to reflect the conditions created by Roman imperial rule, and those women appear in Mark’s narrative as representative figures of Israelite society undergoing renewal.

This paper surveys one major system of metaphors in 1 Peter, behavior “in Christ.” I argue that this metaphor cluster constitutes a certain kind of “living space” wherein moral (or immoral) behavior is displayed and constrained. The aim is to show some of the ways conceptual metaphor and other mental space-blending functions shape the moral discourse of this epistle. The hope is that looking at this living-space metaphor will fund nuanced answers to the question, how are moral issues defined and addressed in this letter? By itself, the phrase “In Christ” is quite abstract, but by the time he uses the phrase to close the letter, Peter has described in specific detail what behavior and peace “in Christ” looks like in the concrete. He has outlined how he thinks readers in the authorial audience could live “in Christ” as ordinary citizens (and non-citizens) vis-a-vis non-Christian society. With the simple phrase “in Christ,” Peter evokes the shape of the pattern connecting various pieces of moral advice and gives the pieces a depth of field they otherwise would lack. In the process, heurges readers to take on particular moral stances in their families, their church, and in their society. But these are stances that find their coherence only insofar as they cohere with the character of Christ – with the life, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Ambiuity about prophecy in ancient Egypt has been present at least since the time of the Greek usage of the term prophetes, "one who speaks for/interprets (a deity)," to translate the role of the Egyptian priest, hm ntr, "servant of the god." And scholars have likewise used the terms "prophecy/prophetic" to refer to a wide variety of activity, including the words of sages in classic texts of Egyptian literature which, seemingly, predict the future. Yet in the most recent compilation of prophetic writings from the ancient Near East the only Egyptian text is the Wenamun Report regarding local activity in Phoenicia, not Egypt. The texts often described as prophetic from later periods of Egyptian history have commonly been omitted from the general review of prophecy in Egypt, as have the Biblical texts describing such activity. This paper reviews the question of prophecy, including prophetic dreams, in Egypt, discussing both Biblical prophecy reportedly originating from Egypt and earlier and later texts reporting on "native" Egyptian practices.

This paper analyzes the first Christian comments about foul language, Col 3:8 and Eph 4:29–5:12, situating them within the rich history of moral reflections on obscene speech and contrasting them with one another. I demonstrate that Colossians's laconic prohibition pertains to saying indecent things about others when angry. Similarly, philosophers from Plato to Philo to Plutarch worried that, in the heat of anger, people might utter some disgusting term of reproach. Ephesians expands and radicalizes Colossians, forbidding "even naming" the sins committed by the "sons of disobedience" (5:12), and prohibiting not only "obscenity" and "foolish talk" but even "wittiness" (eutrapelia, 5:4), the word Aristotle had used to designate the ideal mean between crass and cringing. For Ephesians it was the holiness of the congregation that made all this inappropriate. Citing parallels from Qumran and the Mishnah, I argue that this was because of the author's sense that the community of believers lived in God's holy presence (Eph 1:4; 2:6; 5:27), a sanctum in which nothing frivolous, let alone obscene, was appropriate. Ephesians's opposition to humorous talk can be contrasted with Col 4:6, which advocates witty, pungent speech. Hence Colossians 3:8 and Ephesians 5:4 are not simply "parallel" prohibitions of obscenity (as the commentaries routinely assert). Colossians opposes base language but finds nothing inappropriate in witty badinage per se. Ephesians, on the other hand, rejects Colossians's advocacy of speech that is "graciously winsome and seasoned with the salt of wit" (Col 4:6). In fact, these different speech ethics illuminate the two epistles' different visions for how believers will interact with non-believers. Unlike Colossians, Ephesians was advocating a manner of speech so austere that it would set Christians apart from their pagan neighbors.

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Hammurabi, King of Babylon, is one of the few monarchs of Ancient Mesopotamia known today outside of scholarly circles, and is practically the only one recognized by laypersons from outside the Bible or classical sources. However, how well known was he in Mesopotamia itself in the millennium or so after his death, and what influence did he have? Survey of cuneiform sources from Mesopotamia and its environs shows that his name occurs in various contexts and that certain legendary features accrued to his image. Yet his most prominent impression on posterity is his law code. Despite well known indications that the laws were never put into practice, there is ample evidence that they were continually copied. Investigation of the many manuscripts reveals that even while being copied the laws were studied and interpreted. Echoes of parts of the Prologue, Epilogue and laws 1–5 in a neo-Babylonian text known as "King of Justice" indicate that they were considered ideal laws, but their implementation was not according to their plain meaning, but according to what can be called Midrash Halakhah. The stipulations for publishing the laws found in the Prologue and Epilogue, the transmission of the composition over the generations, and the creation of Midrash on its basis, make the Code of Hammurabi one of the few ancient Mesopotamian compositions deserving of the term "canonical".

The Pastoral Epistles are not addressed to churches but to individuals. They are not, therefore, church order but guides for youth who are learning to become more effective leaders in the Christian community. The advice "take a little wine" can best be understood in terms of Greco-Roman theories about the physiology of youth and in terms of the typical training regimen of youthful philosophy students.

2 Sam 19:12–44 presents the historical critic with a perplexing series of events. David's conversations with Mephibosheth, Shimei and Barzillai seem to be in jumbled order (see, e.g., McCarter, "2 Samuel"). A solution to this problem is posed, however, through an anthropological investigation of the pericope. Using A. van Gennep's basic structure of "rites of passage," it is possible to explain David's westward crossing of the Jordan as a rite of passage (and specifically, as a postliminal rite that along with 2 Sam 16 brackets an even larger-scale rite of passage, the transitional period of which took place in the Transjordan). I do not dismiss the problems encountered in the historical-critical reading of the passage, but instead argue that the passage was shaped by the author's priveledging of Israelite concerns of limenality over specifically historical concerns.

This paper will deal with the much debated novel Joseph and Aseneth. It will look at this work through the lens of wisdom and apocalypticism, which seems especially appropriate. Indeed, the scene of Aseneth's initiation and, in particular, her encounter with a heavenly creature, has been rightfully labeled as "apocalyptic". Consequently to this scene, Aseneth's speech noticeably changes: it shifts from a vain and impious form of discourse to a form of wisdom discourse. This paper will attempt to shed new light on this transformation, and, in particular, on the relationship between the apocalyptic scene and Aseneth's change of discourse.

This paper will offer a christological account of the Song of Songs via the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Throughout the prophetic literature, human beings are depicted as committing violence against each other. Their violence is often cited as the reason for the deity's announcement of judgment. This paper investigates the exegetical and theological challenges of a deity who denounces violence yet uses it in response to violence. Amos 3:13–15 identifies the deity as the subject of violence against Israel. Micah 3:1–4 depicts the violence of leaders against the people as the reason for the announcement of judgment. Notably while judgment reflects a correspondence between the accusation against violence and the announcement of judgment, the reciprocity examined in this study is violence of those accused; those against whom the violence was targeted; and judgment that utilizes violence as its mode of execution. The paper includes three sections: Part I: Condemnation of violence (Mic 3:1–4); Part II: Deity's use of violence (Amos 3:13–15; cf. 9:1–5); Part III: Differentiation of violence according to its agents--human and divine.

What is the relationship of theology and history in the so-called historical psalms? My paper will argue that the poetic-historical tradition reflected in the historical psalms sheds light both on the practice of ANE historiography, and in the development of theological reflection.

This paper explores the concepts of fusion and diffusion as a methodological framework for the study of African-American biblical hermeneutics. African-American biblical hermeneutics as the art of constructing a new architecture of history for African descended diasporic peoples in response to their subjugation in the modern world. In essence, the central argument of this paper is that African-American biblical hermeneutics is articulation of a revolutionary language of hope in which the fragile legacy diaspora existence imposed on African descended peoples is transcended. The interaction between the dynamics of fusion and diffusion results, amongst other things, in the creation and enactment of new dreams, discourses, visions of the future, and fresh ways of living out present existence which mediate new syntheses of community and history. Amongst other things, the paper emphasizes that (1) in the process there is a fusion of horizons between the biblical horizon/s and those of African-American experience and history. (2) the interplay between the principle of fusion and diffusion, African-American biblical hermeneutics extracts the African-American experience from its historical spatial womb, and through reflection, the fusion of horizons and the centrality of literary activity in the modern world, inscribes the African-American experience, and its ancestral voice, within the biblical canon which is so influential in Western civilization. (3) the dynamics of fusion and diffusion define the task of African-American biblical hermeneutics as the identification of African-American person as an authentic change agent possessed with significant meaning for American, Diasporic and world history reconstruction. African-American biblical hermeneutics is is an historical museum from which African-American and others can draw significant resources for human, cultural, and cosmic regeneration in the face of destructive domination.

It has long been recognized that 4Q160 (the Samuel Apocryphon) frags. 3–5, lines 2–3 display a direct dependency on Psalm 40:3. While this is indeed correct, scholars have failed to recognize the larger contribution of the opening verses of Ps 40 to 4Q160. The present study explores the literary character of 4Q160 frags. 3–5, lines 2–3 and its exegetical relationship to Ps 40. It is argued that 4Q160 draws upon Ps 40:2–4 as its literary base. Together with identifying the literary foundations of 4Q160, the present study seeks to identify the exegetical framework that drives the author in his use of Ps 40. It is argued that the relevant passages in 4Q160 are fully informed by the expression and language of Ps 40:2–4. As such, the structural and thematic integrity of the psalm is retained in a slightly modified manner by the author of 4Q160. In particular, Ps 40 is divided into two main sections - a past-time narrative that recounts God's munificent aid (vv. 1–11) and a present-time petition to assist in the psalmist's current crisis (vv. 12, 14). It is this same mechanism that drives the author of 4Q160. In composing his own prayer for assistance, the author of 4Q160 draws upon the model presented by Ps 40. While the psalmist performs this task in two separate literary units, the author of 4Q160 collapses them into one while still retaining the language and structure of Ps 40:2–4, though in a strategically modified manner. As such, Ps 40 provides both the literary model and the textual base for 4Q160's independent composition.

Recent Trends in Biblical Studies from a Semiotic Perspective

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Scholarship has yet to reach a consensus on the literary genre that governs the entirety of Job. Traditionally Job is considered part of the wisdom literature, though that is not universally accepted. This paper advances the idea that Job contains sufficient literary evidence to propose that its controlling genre is a nascent form of apocalypse, which has also been suggested by both John J. Collins and Christopher Rowland. This paper defends that proposal by comparing Job to the essential apocalyptic features contained in the Apocalypse Group of the Society of Biblical Literature’s “Master Paradigm.” For example, the fundamental literary expression of an apocalypse is the presence of a revelation. I argue that Job contains three revelations. The first resides in Eliphaz’s vision from chapter four, the second in the latter part of chapter 28 and the third, and most crucial, in the Yahweh speeches from chapters 38–41. Further examples of apocalyptic evidence in Job, though not exhaustive, are visions, otherworldly regions and mediators, references to creation and a narrative framework. I will address three major implications that result from this proposal. First, all of the seemingly disparate literary units of Job can be harmonized without recourse to historical-critical theories of late additions, corruptions and the like. Of especial concern are the Wisdom Chapter (28) and the Elihu Speeches (32–37). Second, interpreting Job through an apocalyptic paradigm offers fresh exegetical perspectives on traditionally enigmatic passages and also elevates the place of perseverance as the central theme of Job. Third, considering Job as an early form of apocalypse may breathe new life into von Rad’s proposal that apocalypse grew out of wisdom literature, which has further ramifications in ascertaining a possible setting for the canonical form of Job.

Polemical speeches (Q 3 and Q 11:42–52) and stories of conflict in Q (Q 7:31–35 and Q 11:14–23) are often interpreted as rhetorical indicators of the process of early Christian identity formation vis à vis other Jewish groups. This emphasis on group boundary formation, however, must overlook the appeals to common ground and arguments for solidarity that undergird the rhetoric of these texts. This paper examines the way that communal imagery such as the basileia of God and the children of Sophia function in Q to resist fragmentation and advocate solidarity within and among first-century Palestinian Jewish communities.

From a linguistic point of view, the Hebrew Bible falls into two principled corpora: Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH)as represented,for instance, by the books of Genesis to 2 Kings;and Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH)as found mainly in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, Daniel, Esther,and Qohelet. Differences between the corpora are noted in the vocabulary, the grammar, and the syntax. The syntactical dimension of CBH-LBH distinction has been investigated since the 19th century at least. Important contributions have been made by S.R. Driver, A. Kropat, R. Polzin, A.R.Guenter, M. Eskhult, and many others. A number of well defined results have been obtained. Notably, it has been possible to correlate distinctive CBH syntagms with phenomena found in epigraphic documents dating from the pre-exilic period, thus suggesting an absolute date for the CBH corpus. After a quick survey of the history of research, the present paper will discuss some methodological issues and illustrate by means of a few examples (e.g.,the use of the locative -ah, the verbal system, etc.)how linguistic typology can lead to chronological conclusions, both relative and absolute.

Gen. 44:5 "Is it not from this that my lord drinks? Does he not indeed use it for divination?" Is a new academic understanding of Genesis 44:5 possible? Scholarly treatments of this verse focused mostly on the use of Joseph’s cup in divination, either explaining its literary context, or establishing the historical background of lecanomancy in Egypt and/or Israel. The question, though, remains how far it was necessary for both the author and the audience of the Joseph story to be familiar with this form of divination? Joseph’s double success as a scholar and a statesman echoes the reasons for his brothers’ hatred: his inclination to predict the future and his vainglory. My thesis is that the designation of Joseph’s cup as a silver drinking cup and as a cup for divination (Gen 44:5), originates from two different social contexts. Their conjunction is an intentional literary device, which functions as the culmination of the story’s plot. If we take these two designations as such, then we assume a common public understanding of their significance. I will show that drinking cups of precious metal, along with gold, silver and fine linen, were a well-known type of gift exchange in the international politics of the ANE and Egypt. Thus, the possession of a silver cup can serve as an indication of the high political status of its owner. Information on the use of cups, bowls, goblets and grails in divination is more scattered, blurred and complex. However, there is a general scholarly consensus that diviners in the ANE both practiced lecanomancy and belonged to ancient academia. The great amount of knowledge-sharing in the ancient Mediterranean can help us recognize the significance of the attributes associated with the cup of Joseph.

The punctuation of two apodoses after conditional clauses in 1 Cor 12:15–16 has generated much discussion. The issue centers on the question of whether the apodoses (ou para touto ouk estin ek tou somatos) are to be translated as questions or statements. NA25 takes the apodoses as statements and GBS3 follows this punctuation. In NA26, however, the punctuation is changed from the period to the question mark and NA27 and GBS4 accept it. There is an interesting phenomenon concerning the translation of these apodoses; while the vast majority of scholars believe that the apodoses in 1 Cor 12:15–16 should not be regarded as questions, the vast majority of the translations understand them as questions. If the argument of the scholars is correct, the translations have to accept it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of double negatives in 1 Co 12:15–16 and determine whether two double negatives in 1 Co 12:15–16 are to be translated interrogatively. In order to find a probable answer to this question, the use of double negatives in classical Greek will be investigated in brief. Then, the use of double negatives in the LXX as well as in the NT will be scrutinized in detail.

The paper will discuss Augustine and the version(s) of the Vulgate/Old Latin that he was using, at least up until 396.

In mythological disguise the historical Galatians of Asia Minor appear on the Great Altar of Pergamon (about 170 B.C.)as rebellious giants attacking the divine upper world from below. Monumental scenes of mass slaughtering tell the triumphant story of chaos and barbarian enemies being defeated by the superior forces of Greco-Roman civilization.250 years later in the Roman province of Galatia, the Pergamene images come to live again. With unsurpassed beauty and brutality they represent the symbolic universe and socio-political reality into which Paul's letter inscribes itself: the sacred imperial world order established and guarded by those whom the apostle denounces as non-Gods and agents of a cursed law. As visual condensation of Galatian history and conceptual point of reference the altar offers a unique reading context and a fresh perspective on the counter-imperial implications of Paul's wrestling with law and works, faith and grace, justification and new creation. Like the ancient giants/Celts of Pergamon, the Jewish-messianic community of circumcised and uncircumcised violates sacred boundaries not drawn by Jewish law alone. It turns the hierarchical order of the Great Altar and the imperial world as a whole upside down and inside out.

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Despite the wide range of research and writing on the textual problem of the endings of Mark's Gospel, consensus about their composition and evolution remains elusive. This paper casts a fresh look at these variant readings by peering through the lens of the historical influence of apologetic interests on the text of the Gospels. It is interesting to note, for example, that the earliest certain evidence we possess for the so-called Longer ending rests with an apologist, Tatian. Efforts at harmonization to other Gospels, the preeminence of Peter, and references to the ascension--all important themes among early Christian apologists--as well as apparent responses to certain challenges articulated by Celsus and Porphyry constitute in part the content of these various endings. Such evidence serves, in part, to support the thesis that apologetic interests on the part of early Christian scribes may well have influenced the formulation and transmission of the punctuations of Mark's Gospel.

The connection of women and gossip has been called an ancient folk myth. This stereotype is influential in several living cultures today, and has also its spokesmen in the New Testament. As an interpretive key I suggest we use elements from the gendered discourse of space in antiquity. The Pastoral Epistles presents as a worst case scenario what might happen if the young widows do not marry, bear children and manage their households: they will be gadding about from house to house, being gossips and busybodies. This will give the adversary occasion to reviling them (1 Tim 5:13–14). A contrast is established between the dangerous space between the houses and the safe space within the household. The open air is filled with a twofold danger related to gossip: here women say what they should not say, but they also behave in a way that generates gossip about them. To label women gossips was a way of making caricatures of their speech and diminish their power, and to use their vulnerable reputation as an argument for sending them back into the houses, were part of common cultural currency of the Greco-Roman world.

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Wayyiqtol, as is well known, descends from an older preterite (*wa + yaqtul). Historically speaking, then, it is a consecutive rather than converted tense. Weqatal, however, most likely developed on analogy with wayyiqtol, the latter having been synchronically reinterpreted as a converted imperfect. As a result, both of these tenses are, within the synchronic system of Biblical Hebrew, converted — a fact generally overlooked by scholars. Scholars therefore also overlook the logical consequence of this fact. Namely, inasmuch as grammar conceives of yiqtol and qatal as "convertible" tenses, it is conceivable for grammar to treat them as such even when they do not appear in the actual forms, wayyiqtol and weqatal. In this paper I will adduce a number of anomalous occurrences of both qatal and yiqtol and analyze them as previously unrecognized instances of tense "conversion," in which the conversive waw has been replaced by a syntactic equivalent or displaced by a deviation in word order. (The conditions of replacement and displacement indicate that I am not merely providing an ad hoc explanation for grammatical difficulties.) Most notably, I will account for 'az yiqtol (but not terem yiqtol) in this manner. The temporal adverb, I submit, has replaced waw, so that the converted imperfect appears without the conjunction, but with much the same meaning as wayyiqtol (compare Exod 15:1 and Jud 5:1). And since we are dealing with the imperfect (and not a vestigial yaqtul), it need not surprise us that we find the long form (e.g., yibneh, not yiben).

The figure of Mary occupies a curious position in the religious discourse of monotheism, a position that is in some ways scandalous by definition. She is variously the virginal spouse and mother of a God famous for his independence of the need for a female consort; the nurturing matrix and interpretive disseminator of a truth or logos which theoretically at least requires no such support; the type of an Adamic humanity usually figured as masculine, and a mediator of grace in a way reserved in theory to God and His immediate personae alone. The gospel and Qur'anic accounts of her life, while unique and influential in ways to which we shall turn in a moment, are brief, and the very occasional rabbinic references to some such figure are few. Because of the themes and tropes associated with her, themes of virginal purity, immaculate conception, anomalous childbirth and exemplary maternity, Mary is severally the type of the perfect Adamic human for Islam, the fully redeemed person for Christianity, and the fallen woman for rabbinic Judaism. By comparing some of the major texts and motifs that have come to be associated with Mary in each of the three traditions, we can then see better how each understands the dissemination and propagation of divine revelation through human language and community.

In this paper I argue that, in comparision to KTU 1.16.v, a theological endeavour of theodicy is found in Isa 6 and 1 Kgs 22.19–22. It is intriguing that the major scenes of the heavenly council in the Hebrew Bible are all related with the problem of ‘evil’. In 1 Kgs 22.19–23, Isa 6, and Job 1&2, the immediate responsibility for causing evil is laid on one of the members of the council, not on YHWH, while in Ps 82, Zech 3 and Dan 7 the primary responsibility for evil is laid on the ‘evil divine beings’. To a certain extent, I find that theodicy is embedded in these passages. As for Isa 6 and 2 Kgs 22 in particular, one needs to pay attention to KTU 1.16.v, in which the classic motif of ‘seeking a volunteer in the council’ is incorporated. As the theme is widespread in the ancient Near East, Isaiah 6 and 1 Kgs 22.19–22 also contain the same. One other motif fused in the Ugaritic text is ‘the incomparability of the head-god among the gods’; no volunteer responds to the call and it is implied that only the head-god himself is able to take on the mission. The latter motif is also classical in the Hebrew Bible, however, Isa 6 and 1 Kgs 22.19–23 do not employ it. It should now be noticed that the mission discussed in KTU 1.16.v is positive and the head-god is commissioned, while in Isaiah 6 and 1 Kings 22 the mission is negative and it is one of the members of the council, not the head-god, who is commissioned. This difference acknowledged in the comparison particularly implies the possibility of theodicy being embedded in the biblical narrative.

According to a widespread tradition in the ancient Mediterranean world, vipers killed their mother during birth, hence were associated with parent-murder. In all three Matthean occurrences of the denunciatory epithet, "children of vipers," the context suggests that Matthew applies it to Pharisees. In two of these instances, the Pharisees claim honorable descent, making the charge of parent-murder all the more devastating.

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This paper will explore the lexeme “sbl” and the motif of forced labor within the narrative of Exodus. It will examine the Egyptian and Near Eastern data as well as the Biblical stereotype.

The consensus of scholarship is that Testament of Job is a Jewish text written sometime between 100 BCE and 200 CE. This consensus is founded on questionable methodology. Furthermore, none of the parallels frequently cited between TJob and other works supports the claim that TJob cannot date any later than 200 CE. Thus it is more defensible to begin with the date of the fifth-century Coptic fragments and work slowly backward, taking more seriously the possibility that a late date may provide the most convincing setting for the text. Such an approach derives additional cogency from the vocabulary in TJob that is almost uniquely Christian and that did not become popular until the fourth century CE. Research by Berndt Schaller and others who have emphasized the unity of TJob has made it increasingly difficult to dismiss this vocabulary as anomalous evidence of late redaction. If one operates on the assumption that the late vocabulary is a reliable guide to the date of the text, a number of ambiguities in the text are immediately clarified. Among these is the author's choice to portray Job as king of Egypt, which is an unlikely image for a community of Jewish subjects but offers a fitting portrait of the Christian communities of Egypt by the late fourth century. The text's description of Job destroying an idol's temple, engaging in a spiritual conflict with Satan, and withdrawing to the margins of urban life vividly expresses the ideology and activity of Christian communities in Egypt ca. 350–420 CE. Not only can a number of other features of the text be explained by such a setting, but comparison with Christian literature from this period may even help to narrow down the author's circle to an identifiable literary community.

The appearance of Ziony Zevit’s recently published masterpiece entitled The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches marks the most comprehensive multi-disciplinary contextualized study of Israelite religions to date. In this paper I review and critique Zevit’s interpretation of the archaeological evidence and conclusions regarding the emergence of ancient Israel and development of Israelite cult within its larger Levantine setting.

As a postmodern Korean-American biblical critic in a multi-cultural, pluralistic America today, sensitive both to my own and dominating culture, struggling with my own border-identity, I am interested in exploring diversity and unity as I study Paul’s letters. The question is: How to be Christ-like with inter-cultural and/or inter-religious sensitivity rather than arrogance? How does one read Paul’s statements about being “in Christ” with this sensitivity? The typical tendency in racial/minority groups often runs with extremes, advocating either a forced sense of unity such as “melting pot, losing all ethnic/cultural distinctiveness” or a narrow sense of diversity such as “maintaining an ethnic enclave without interacting with outsiders.” When one reads “in Christ” as a boundary marker that separates those who are “in Christ” from those who are not, the debate between Paul and the Corinthians seems to be between these two extremes. But reading this formula as a metaphor for a way of life (1 Cor 1:2, 4, 30; 4:15, 17; 15:31; 16:24), a study of the “in Christ” formula (especially in 1 Corinthians) opens much more room for inter-cultural and inter-religious interactions as creative tensions, because throughout the texts “in Christ” becomes an image (type, typos, to be imitated) for a way of life with others, which is both cross-like and resurrection-like.

While the characterization of Q as “oral-derived” is certainly correct, as a bare designation it tells us virtually nothing, for interactive cultural environments open up a spectrum of ways orality and writing might engage one another in a given set of materials. Hence the concept “oral-derived” cannot dictate in an a priori manner the nature of Q, nor can other meta-theories, such as those that appeal to composition-in-performance or to the dynamics of oral performance. The paper focuses upon the Our Father (Q 11:2–4), using methods developed by John Miles Foley and others for taking soundings for the possible dual effects of orality and writing upon actual specimens oral-derived texts. The Our Father conforms in important respects to the petition genre utilized by peasants in certain kinds of contacts with imperial administrations. It thus is a manifestation of the reality that the forms assumed by oral tradition in the setting of the village are affected by the inevitable interaction of peasants with bureaucratic mandates of imperial administrations. After arguing that Q composition itself displays features and techniques native to writing culture, the paper proposes that cultural memory approaches (Jan Assmann) may provide a way to reconcile literary and orality models for Q.

Of all the passages in the Hebrew Bible, none has piqued the interest of scholars more than Num 5:11–31. Part of the attraction would seem to lie in the uniqueness of the procedure described there. Why should a woman, who is suspected of unfaithfulness to her husband, be required to drink a potion of water into which dust and ink has been mixed? Typically this passage has been described as an ordeal which has an immediate effect. Nevertheless, by considering the references to an oath and isolating the effects of the oath’s curse, a connection may be drawn between this biblical rite and ancient Near Eastern oath rituals. Some of the best preserved oath rituals are found in two Hittite texts, KBo 6:34 and KUB 43:38, the Soldiers’ Oath. When coupled with corresponding themes, terms and gestures from Akkadian sources, it becomes clear that Num 5:11–31, is an elaborate oath ritual and not an ordeal as has been presumed.

Last year’s Synoptic Gospels Section featured the Gospel community debate by presenting updates and challenges to the thesis presented by the volume 'The Gospels for All Christians,' edited by Richard Bauckham. Arguably, the most influential paper opposed to Bauckham’s thesis was by Margaret M. Mitchell entitled, “Patristic Counter-evidence to the Claim that ‘The Gospels Were Written for All Christians.’” According to Mitchell, evidence in patristic literature appears to contradict, or at least complicate, Bauckham’s assertion that the Gospels were written for “all Christians.” Mitchell concludes that contrary to Bauckham, the patristic interpreters thought it was important to ask where, when, and to whom each of the Gospels was originally written. For Mitchell, these questions of origin and audience provide a hermeneutical key that contradicts the thesis that the Gospels were written for “all Christians.” This paper intends to present a counter to the reading Mitchell gives of the patristic “localizing traditions.” The patristic evidence can be given a different reading; a reading that is more appropriate to the nature of the 'historia' the patristic exegetes would have assumed. The patristic evidence certainly does provide a hermeneutical key for the reading of the Gospels. But contrary to Mitchell, this hermeneutical key is not meant to confirm the interpretation of the text, but its authority and reliability. The various traditions connect the Gospels to the apostolic roots of founding Christianity, not merely a local Gospel community.

There is much uncertainty about the status of many sites in Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Samaria, but recently new evidence has emerged about the status of Mt. Gerizim during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The archaeological excavations of Izhaq Magen attest to the construction of an impressive city and sacred precinct on Mt. Gerizim in Hellenistic times with some remains stretching back into the Persian period. The excavator suggests that the Persian period sacred precinct was at first relatively small, but was heavily rebuilt when it was replaced during Hellenistic times. After summarizing the Persian period remains from Mt. Gerizim, this paper will explore some possible ramifications of these finds for Samarian and Judean history. Among the topics that may be discussed are the growth of Mt. Gerizim, the relationship between the Samarians of the Persian period and the Samaritans of later Hellenistic and Roman times, and the relationship (or rivalry) between the sanctuaries at Mt. Gerizim and Jerusalem.

In his apologies, Justin Martyr impugns Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verrus, Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Senate, and Ubricus, prefect of Rome, for succumbing to the bloodthirsty violence and perversion demanded by their gods. “You” bestow rewards and honors on those who worship Zeus and follow his incestuous example, “you” are led by unreasonable passion and wicked demons to persecute those who speak the truth, “you” expose infants, producing a steady supply of children to be reared for the purposes of prostitution. “Indeed,” Justin lamented, “the things openly done and honored by you [i.e., emperor, sons, and Senate], as if the light of God were overturned and not present, you charge against us.” In the process, Justin linked idolatry, murderous violence, and illicit sex to label his targets as bloodthirsty and perverse. He adopted a similar strategy to a different end in the Dialogue with Trypho. There it was Jews who were associated with idolatry, violence, and sexual licentiousness. God attempted to keep the Jews from bad behavior, Justin argued, but they were so recalcitrant that they could not be cured; they habitually worshiped demons, reveled in porneia, and murdered the righteous among them. This paper considers Justin’s arguments regarding the legitimate, rational violence/justice of God, his attempt to render imperial violence as perverse, and his claim that violence against Jews fulfills the divine plan. In each case, Justin reserved reason, self-mastery, sexual purity, true piety, and righteousness for Christians alone, anticipating the purportedly glorious day when God will exterminate the persecutors of the Christians in an act of supreme, divinely executed justice.

In this paper I propose to explore notions of rabbinic holiness. I am particularly interested in moments where the rabbis differentiate between God-given holiness (Israel is a holy nation) and holiness as a separate spiritual goal for the elite (i.e. the rabbis).Within the latter category I will focus on holiness achieved through certain sexual practices (e.g. restraint in sexual intercourse). It is my intention to trace these ideas back to their biblical roots as well as contextualize the rabbinic reading of those biblical sources within the wider mileu of late ancient notions of holiness, spiritual elitism and asceticism.

The Seminar will discuss methodological issues of critical spatiality raised in Wesley Kort's new book, Place and Space in Modern Fiction.

This paper addresses various kinds of scribal data, such as the use of spacing and marginal markers in biblical and other texts, the representation of the tetragrammaton and other "nomina sacra," and the development of the codex format (or some subset of those issues).

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Today many scholars think of the Book of the Twelve as a redactional unity, consisting of different writings with different origins, but arranged and (partly) reworked in a later time with a theological purpose. Some of the writings are even thought of as being written with another writing in mind. But how can we know that these writings were not altogether written by one author, who chose the form of different writings as a literary device to express a complex meaning? Couldn’t the Book of the Twelve be the work of an author, who, as Dostoevsky did in modern times, used polyphony to express a theology and at the same time to discuss it? The question here – as in many other texts- is, how to distinguish the voice of one author from the voices of other authors. Trying to answer that question requires first to see clearly the fundamental difference between “composition” and “redaction” as perspectives of the exegete, and to understand that ascribing a text to an “author” or a “source” is just one kind of taxonomy and should follow a taxonomic procedure. This procedure will be statistical in nature, even if no formal statistical analysis is applied. The paper will first explain the theoretical presuppositions and then use them, trying to describe the peculiarities of the language of a portion of the book of Joel as distinguishable from a portion of the book of Zephaniah.

The practical debates concerning Temple management were fundamental to Jesus' antagonistic relationship with the Temple authorities. By analyzing the Temple Demonstration (Mt 21:10–17 and parallels) and The Parable of the Vineyard Tenants and the Son (Mt 21:33–46 and parallels) within economic and halachic contexts, fresh ways of reading Jesus' last week emerge. Apart from the messianic claims of Jesus, the ire of the temple authorities may have been raised by a more palpable impetus in the Temple Demonstration: contrary halachic and economic perspectives surrounding the sellers. Subsequently, the Gospel accounts relate the parable of the Vineyard Tenants and the Son which—with the help of Targum Isaiah and 4Q500—is shown to be a midrashic retelling of Isaiah 5. The tannaitic Sifre on Deut 14:22 is found to be especially fruitful for contextualizing the parable as a critique of tithe-evasion accomplished through exegetical maneuvering, while Josephus witnesses to the sometimes violent hoarding of tithes by the high priestly family of Ananias—a connecting point to the parable and an exposure of high-priestly motive for conspiracy to murder. Jesus demonstrated against the corruption of the sellers and with the Vineyard Tenants and the Son offered a tithe-oriented critique against the leaders for hoarding and withholding tithes, rather than giving of the “fruit” of the “vineyard” to the “owner.” In these passages Jesus' fiercest debates originate primarily from economic and halachic matters and help better explain the climax leading to death.

This paper examines the conceptuality of Job 29–31 which includes the final speech of Job after the dialogue with the friends has finished and the speeches of Elihu and Yahweh begin. Both the content of these chapters and their position within the plot of the book suggest that this text unit constitutes the kernel of the entire book, a plot unit that is essential to the logical understanding of the book. In order to grasp the conceptuality of Job 29–31 this paper examines these chapters not only as a block in its own but also as part of the flow of the litigation motif as a whole. This paper argues that Job 29–31 is conceptually coherent. The core of its conceptuality lies in Job’s true intention in bringing God to the courtroom. It is not to prove his innocence through a litigation process, which is impossible in a lawsuit in which God functions both as the accused and the judge, but to encounter God face to face. The function of the litigation metaphor in the Book of Job, therefore, is not to establish the legal-theoretical justice, but to link together the two aspects of justice, the legal-theoretical aspect and the personal-existential aspect.

Was Qumran a "penitential movement?" Was "repentance" a central value among the sectarians? In fact, the Scrolls and related literature tend to emphasize a subtly different notion of human transformation: divine recreation of human beings. God, not the human will, is experienced as the primary agent of change. Repentance, a concept central to Rabbinic Judaism, has often been employed anachronistically in the interpretation of the Scrolls. The paper will test this claim through a close examination of specific aspects of biblical interpretation, initiation rites, baptism, prayer, and praise at Qumran. The sect's terminology for itself and representation of its own history will also be considered. The paper will conclude by placing the role of repentance at Qumran--or relative lack thereof--in the larger religious historical context to which it belongs.

The proposed paper will examine a newly discovered work in Arabic by Theodore Abu Qurrah (d. ca. 820). This new work, in format a dialogue, offers not only a new, substantial work by one of the first Christian Arab theologians, but also the most detailed theological treatment of Islam in that theologian's corpus of works. The paper will be structured as follows. It will begin with a brief introduction to Theodore and his importance in the development of early Christian Arabic literature. It will then recount how four unknown works by him were recently discovered in Syria, including that which is the subject of the present communication. Following this, it will present the content of his Against the Outsiders and offer a number of arguments for its authenticity. Finally, it will raise some questions about the compositional history of this new work and its relation to others of Theodore's works, especially to a widely circulated dialogue between Theodore and an Abbasid Caliph, a work usually considered spurious.

The project focuses on an area within a 35–km radius around the ancient settlement of Pepouza. The archaeological survey is not thematic; it does not focus only on the Montanist (2nd to 6th cent. C.E.) or Christian (at least 2nd to 9th cent. C.E.) period. It documents all stages of the cultural history of the region, from prehistoric to Ottoman times. Settlements such as Pepouza and Tymion are analysed, as well as their “natural” environments, the ancient land use and agriculture, the living conditions and religious orientations of the ancient rural population. The approach is interdisciplinary, involving archaeology, epigraphics, numismatics, ethnoarchaeology, history (social, economic, art and pagan religious history, history of early Christianity and of the church of late antiquity, Byzantine and Islamic history), architecture (3–D graphics), geosciences (land surveying, cartography, photogrammetry, geophysics, geology, geomorphology), paleo-botanics as well as medical anthropology. The paper describes the methods of individual disciplines involved.

Three generations are mentioned in the Decalogue: the fathers (whose "iniquity" is referred to), the sons (i.e., those to whom the Decalogue is addressed), and the sons' children (those who are to honor their parents). The relationship between the three generations forms the deep structure of the Decalogue. The paper suggests that the discontinuity between the sons and the fathers, and the continuity between the sons and their children should be looked at from a psychological perspective. It will be argued that (1) an exilic date of the Decalogue fits the generational pattern, and (2) a psychological analysis of intergenerational discontinuity helps us understand the sons' willingness to embrace Yahwistic monolatry or, more precisely, divine fatherhood.

The use of the exodus story to challenge and bring freedom from tyranny has long been recognized as one of the most prominent appropriations of this biblical text. As such, the exodus also has typically been celebrated as a powerful text for bringing about social, political, and religious freedom. The use of the exodus, however, has not always been so illustrious. Some appropriations transformed the exodus from a story aimed at procuring freedom to one directed toward conquest. Others have taken up the theme in failed quests for freedom. Tension arises between the significance of the exodus in its biblical context, its traditionally glorified status in Jewish and Christian tradition, and the uses of it by subsequent readers who either transformed its meaning or found it unable to transform their circumstances. By exploring how some have transformed the exodus, while others have applied it in failed causes, this paper will also contemplate the parameters, dynamics, and strategies involved in using a biblical text. Uses of the exodus by Europeans coming to North America will illustrate its transformation into a conquest. During the sixteenth century Spanish debate over conquering and imposing Christianity upon the indigenous populations, Geronimo de Mendieta transformed the exodus by portraying the conquistador, Hernan Cortez, as a Moses who had come to liberate the “heathen Indians.” The nineteenth century American struggles with slavery will illustrate the use of the exodus in a failed quest for freedom. Southerners, abolitionists, and African Americans all appealed to the exodus, but for quite different purposes. Confederate uses will be compared with appropriations made by African Americans and abolitionists. The issue of determining the legitimacy of an exodus application also will be discussed.

Portrayals of the afterlife in the textual traditions of late antique Egypt afford a rich locus in which to explore the hybrid nature of early monastic ideals. Relfected in melding the paradisaical, other-worldly belief of Judeo-Christian religion with the Hellenic myth of an ideal city on earth, the classical polis is here reconfigured in Jewish-Christian terms. In this wedding of worlds, exemplary citizens are imagined as ciphers of a prelapsarian "return to paradise." Marked by transcendence of gender, the absence of bodily disintegration, and free access to the heavenly realm, "true monks" are readily identifiable. They simultaneously reside in both this world and the next. This hybrid existence, however, has little to do with disembodied spiritual prowess. Although "true monks" keep company with the angels, transcendence of the human sphere is finally grounded in the civic virtue of being good neighbors, that is, making life in community, heaven on earth.

Teaching large introductory Bible classes can be frustrating and disheartening. We're passionate about the subject, yet the students seem unmotivated, uniterested, and unwilling to work, if they even show up. After several years of experimentation with the mandatory introduction to the Bible at Notre Dame and supporting other instructors as a staff member at our teaching and learning center, I would like to share some ideas and lessons culled from recently published research. Specifically, there are several strategies and kinds of assignments which have helped me improve student motivation and engagement, such as experiential learning activities, collaborative learning, and the use of technology. In the end, the students may still be unhappy that they have to take the course, but I hope some of these observations may give you ideas about how to increase your students' involvement in the class.

Various traditional explanations have been given for the use of acrostics in the biblical book of Lamentations, but virtually none has been given for the striking phenomenon of letter reversals appearing in the acrostics in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. This paper offers a new proposal, in light of acrostics in the ancient Near East, post-biblical Jewish writings, and especially elsewhere in the Bible itself. This paper posits a socio-rhetorical purpose driving the letter reversals, due to the immediate and subsequent historical fray of the destruction of Jerusalem and the debate about who is to blame for the destruction.

The paper attempts to offer a clearly defined perspective on the ancient question of the Logos in Philo and John by means of emphasising the creation aspect in their references to the Logos in Joh 1.1–18 and in Opif. 16–35. Both authors use the Logos for the divine word of creation in Gen 1. Both emphasise the revelatory and explanatory task of the Logos (in Philo, the explanation of creation, in John of God himself). The Logos, in both authors, is pre-existent to creation. The beginning of the world is linked to the Logos. Both distinguish between the transcendent Logos with God and the immanent Logos in creation. All these similarities derive from the sapiential tradition. The main difference between Philo and John is that in John the Logos of God is identified with the man Jesus Christ, while in Philo, it is the Torah which derives its universal authority from the Logos. Yet even here there is a fundamental parallel: the Logos is the reason for the universal relevance of a historical parameter. The main function of the Logos in both authors is to link the particular, historical to the eternal plan of God. Further samples of Philo’s writings can demonstrate the unique suitability of the term for the task. Consequently, the similarities between Philo and John are rooted in their identical intention, not in any direct dependence. Independently they give evidence of a broader Hellenistic Jewish tradition for which the term Logos was important in the interpretation of Gen 1, thus combining Greek philosophy, Jewish wisdom tradition and biblical exegesis to support the argument for the eternal relevance of a historical – and therefore potentially arbitrary – event and providing the hermeneutical basis for the interpretation of this event as the revelation of the unchanging will of God.

Gerald Bechtle’s The Anonymous Commentary one Plato’s Parmenides (Bern, 1999) challenges one of the major scholarly periodizations in ancient philosophy, namely the dichotomy between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. According to Bechtle, such a dichotomy which first led Pierre Hadot (REG, 1961, 410–438 and Porphyre and Victorinus, 1968) to ascribe the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides to Plotinus' disciple Porphyry, beginning with the recognition of doctrinal similarities between the Commentary and Plotinus’ Enneads. Bechtle does not deny such similarities. But instead of interpreting them as traces of Plotinus’ influence on the anonymous commentator, he sees these similarities as anticipations of Plotinian doctrines on the basis of an assumed continuity between "Middle" and "Neo"-Platonism. Bechtle thus defends the thesis that the anonymous commentator is pre-Plotinian, which implies not only 1) that the commentator chronologically preceded Plotinus and presupposes no knowledge of Plotinus, but also 2) that the commentator already anticipates Plotinus’ own thought. Bechtle’s arguments are primarily of a philosophical, rather than philological, nature. He finds precedents for certain of Plotinus’ doctrines in previous authors, in particular Numenius (although the description of such anticipations in Numenius’ thought are not really new). Bechtle also underlines certain features that he judges to be characteristic of the pre-Plotinian (i.e., "non-Plotinian") philosophical context, for example the ambivalence in the doctrine that the first principle is at the same time both "being" and "beyond being." Against Bechtle’s interpretation, I argue that the anonymous commentator is indeed chronologically post-Plotinian (and perhaps Porphyrian), since he demonstrates reflection on Plotinian doctrines. The critical assessment of Bechtle’s work will of course necessitate a discussion of the translation of certain passages in the commentary (e.g. the fragment on p. 12, Fol. 93 lines 23–4).

The Deuteronomistic History presents Samuel as the final savior Judge (1 Sam 7:3–17), bringing to an end the era of the Judges and inaugurating that of the Monarchy heralded by Saul's rise to power (1 Sam 9–11). As such, the era of the Judges and that of the Monarchy are categorized as distinct historical periods, brought to an end or initiated through divine impetus. An examination of the pre-Deuteronomistic Saul material, however, demonstrates far greater continuity between these eras, as Saul’s authority is founded measure-for-measure upon the narrative traditions of earlier Israelite Judges, especially Gideon/Jerubaal (Judg 6–8). The pre-Deuteronomistic material presents Saul as the ultimate Judge, far more successful than his predecessors, who parlayed his power basis into the nation’s first successful Monarchic institution. The continuity of the Judge/Monarchy eras, however, worked against the Deuteronomistic theology of history. The character of Samuel (with whom already rested a tradition of sacral jurisprudence) was thus introduced into the narrative as the final Judge, separating the institutions of Judge and Monarch and allowing for the discreet historical categories to emerge in the text. This periodization scheme ultimately served the interests of the Josianic redactors who sought to introduce a new historical period with the narratives concerning Josiah.

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Because of the similarities between John’s portrayal of Jesus and the Jewish traditions of Wisdom or Sophia, many scholars have questioned and critiqued what they read as the masculinization of Wisdom or Sophia in the Fourth Gospel. Focusing on only the female gender of Wisdom or Sophia and only the male gender of John’s Jesus, these studies have, however, both started out assuming and ended up reinforcing a binary construction of gender. Instead, I will propose in this paper that we look at Wisdom’s embodiment in John’s Jesus in transgendering as well as engendering terms. Interpreting the cross-bearing Jesus in John as also a boundary-crossing cross-dresser, I will argue that one can read this Gospel for the cross-purposes that create a new and blurred gender, and in the process put into crisis not only binarity, category and identity, but also the originality and primacy of Jesus’ “Father.”

Revelation scholars agree that the Beast is Rome. Rome was a key problem for all Jews/Christians. The question was: What can be done about the Beast? Jewish groups offered three different options: (1) We can beat them; (2) If you can't beat them, join them; and (3) If you can't beat them, transcend them. 1. The Violent Approach. The Zealot party actually believed it could defeat the Roman Empire militarily. They created panic by stabbing their enemies with hidden daggers. They spread terror throughout the country. 2. The Appeasement Approach. The High Priestly party was convinced that there was no possibility of defeating the Roman Empire. Rather than antagonize Rome, it sought to ameliorate the tensions that existed between Jews and their Roman rulers. It wanted to disarm the extremists so that it would be allowed to make peace with Rome. 3. The Nonviolent Approach. Finally, there is John's approach. Rather than capitulate to Rome (as the high priestly party prefers to do) or fight Rome militarily (as the Zealots prefer to do), John is proposing a "transcendent" battle. John views the most significant battle not as physical warfare, but as the battle of the human will. The true "conquerors" will "conquer" as Jesus did, by nonviolence--dying to their own will.

The figure of Jacob and Israel in Genesis together with archaeology, provide an insight to mythmaking in the Pentateuch. The story of how Jacob comes to be called Israel looks completely made up and unconvincing and appears to have been simply sandwiched into the narrative. The folk etymology of the name sounds completely made up. Egyptian records of the 13th century BCE (stele of Merenptah) confirm that a group called the “children of Israel” was living in Canaan. Most likely, there were two individuals, one called Jacob and another called Israel. When two groups coalesce, there is a fusion of their mythic stories. Various heroes, gods and goddesses get promoted, absorbed, and syncretized with one another. The identification of Jacob with Israel suggests a combination of the two peoples. But if the peoples carry the name “children of Israel” why is the Jacob tradition so strong? The answer to this may be that the Jacob tradition is the older one, and perhaps goes back to the Hyksos. The Hyksos were foreign rulers of Egypt in the 17th century BCE. They were Semites and most likely Canaanites. They conquered Egypt in 1674 BCE and founded the 15th dynasty. They took on many Egyptian customs and names. The third Hyksos pharaoh (1634–1626 BCE) was named Yakub-har (The Great Jacob). Often cultures and religions adopt and absorb the sacred history of others. Hyksos stories and legends became intermingled and adopted by the “Israelites” and by their foundation myths. As various Canaanite groups coalesced to form the population of the Kingdom of David, they combined their foundation myths and adopted all parts into their genealo

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An assessment of the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew from the point of view of the average user.

Judahite seal impressions are generally less adorned with figurative motifs than most inscribed West Semitic seals. The Hezekiah bulla, as well as the Hebrew University #4000 seal impression, are exceptions. The seal cutter decorated them with a clear icon of a beetle pushing the dung ball. This paper will explain the religious meaning of the beetle icon in Egyptian thought. Further, it will show how it was adapted by the Judahite king, Hezekiah, to serve his purposes. What is particularly interesting about the beetle symbolism is that, centuries later, it resurfaces in Patristic writings where Christ is compared to a beetle.

The paper will argue that LXX Jeremiah results from translation of a flawed Hebrew Text containing more than 300 cases of haplography, which accounts for 64% of its word loss.

Epiphanius was the first church father to discuss the "heresy" of the Nazarenes. According to him the Nazarenes' Christian doctrine was correct. They erred only because they were still fettered with the circumcision, Sabbath and the rest of the Jewish Law. Therefore, their position was totally objectionable (Epiphanius, Pan. 29.7.5; 29.9.1). The first part of the paper will argue that Epiphanius did not have any historical information about a separate sect called the Nazarenes. He created the sect in order to provide a kind of "pure" stereotype picture of Jewish Christians before they were effected by Ebion's teaching, which would overthrow all attempts to combine Christian faith with the practice of Jewish Law: "People like these are easy to catch and refute—they are nothing but Jews" (Epiphanius, Pan 29.9.1.). The second part of the paper will discuss Epiphanius' description of the Nazarenes in view of the social identity theory: the significance of the stereotypes in creation of social identity, Epiphanius' role as entrepreneur (cf. F. Barth) who create stereotypes and collectives, and the significance of the anti-narratives for the heresiologists who undermine the identity of their opponents by placing them in the continuum of heresies which runs parallel to the history of the "correct" doctrine. Once created the heresy of the Nazarenes continued its living in the writings of other fathers as well as in the studies of modern scholars. Insights drawn from the social identity theory may help to understand and overcome some of the complexities that face a scholar who studies early Jewish Christianity and so make way to a better understanding of the time when Judaism and Christianity were not yet separated, the time that nobody remembers as it was.

The most prominent scribal auxiliary mark in the cuneiform alphabetic texts from Ugarit is that of the small vertical wedge ("Trennungskeil"). The most conspicuous function of this auxiliary mark is suprasegmental, namely word division. This paper will survey the variety of usage of the small vertical wedge within the Ugartic corpus and then focus on select examples where this wedge seems to function as a syntactical marker.

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In the Book of Ruth, the symbolism of the "seed" of the grain harvest that yields the bread of life joins with the symbolism of the "seed" that yields the next generation, in an interplay that builds and resonates throughout the well-loved story--from its beginnings in a tale of famine and widows, to the gleaning and winnowing of grain and the suggestive night-time encounter on the threshing floor, to the conclusion in progeny that leads to the great King David. This presentation will demonstrate a pedagogical strategy and share resources for engaging undergraduates in a close, literary reading of the Book of Ruth, a reading that foregrounds the story's dual symbolism of agriculture and procreation. Part of the presentation will be conducted as a demonstration workshop in which the session participants converse in pairs about sample discussion questions, then move all together toward a reading of the full text. The demonstration workshop will necessarily be abridged, but participants will receive resources including a verse-by-verse commentary on the symbolism and a full set of homework and/or discussion questions.

“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” (Job 19:25 KJV). This verse is one of the most famous lines in the book of Job. It also represents one of its greatest scholarly problems: Just who is Job’s redeemer? The largest number of commentators believe that Job refers here to God, who will ultimately vindicate him. Several interpreters have, however, disputed that claim, particularly in recent times. Within the minority, quite a number of scholars maintain that this is a heavenly figure independent from God, who will act in some legal capacity on Job’s behalf, as a judge, witness, advocate, or avenger. Other proposals regarding who Job’s redeemer also exist, such as he is the personification of Job’s cry in 16:18 (Clines) or he is the Satan (Day). While all these positions have arguments in their favor, none of these proposals considered at length the greater ANE legal context of the book. This paper maintains that Neo-Babylonian trial procedure might shed light on the question because it had some influence over the law of ancient Israel at the time that the book was written. Consequently, this paper offers a new suggestion regarding Job’s redeemer based on a comparative historical study of the legal metaphors of the book of Job with approximately 250 Neo-Babylonian litigation records of the late seventh to fifth centuries, BCE. Special emphasis will be given to those Neo-Babylonian documents related to the assertory oath and to conditional verdicts.

In Israelite Wisdom Literature, women, food, and drink are often closely connected through language bearing sexual overtones. The metaphors convey a positive (Prov 5:15–20, Cant, Eccl. 9:7–9) as well as a negative evaluation (Prov 5:3, 9:17–18) of sexual intimacy. The paper analyses this distinct metaphorical use of eating and drinking from a socio-cultural perspective, explores a possible background of Hellenistic ideas or practices, and aims at a feminist interpretation of the topic.

Scholars have devoted much attention to the ways the author of the Pastoral Epistles adapts Hellenistic commonplaces concerning household management to formulate leadership and family ideals. This paper expands that analysis by locating virtues associated with household management against a broader backdrop of Roman imperial treatments of concord and discord. In particular, it explores how the author’s representations of household division draw heavily from contemporary political treatments of discord and are the mirror image of a widely represented idealisation of the well-governed family. This is especially the case in his numerous depictions of quarrelsomeness and uncontrolled speech and their contribution to the erosion of “the household of God.” If ideal families are led by men who are “not quarrelsome” and women who “learn in silence” (1 Tim. 2:8), the author’s opponents encourage “vain discussion” (1:6), “disputing about words” (2 Tim. 2:14), “senseless controversies”, and “quarrels” (2 Tim. 2:23; Tit. 3:9), leading to the household-eroding vices of women “gadding about from house to house… saying what they should not” (5:13 – RSV; cf. 2 Tim. 3:6; Tit. 1:11). The discussion focuses on metaphors associated with the quarrelsome family, its representation in Greco-Roman treatments of household life, and how that portrayal serves as a topos in ancient literature to discourage vices popularly believed to undermine city and state. The author of the Pastoral Epistles has adapted moral commonplaces associated with quarrelsome families to promote his own unique representation of family ideals – and of the church more generally -- as a well-governed household centred in regulation of speech and right confession of belief.

This reading of Lamentations 1–2 will take as its starting point the inherent double-voicedness or dialogism of lament psalms, which consist of at least two discourses -- that of the supplicant; and another, 3rd person voice (the "didactic voice") that speaks objectively in defense of YHWH against the implicit charges of many supplicants. The poems of Lamentations evince a similar structure, but in Lamentations 1–2 the didactic voice "switches sides", in other words, is co-opted in favor of the (female) supplicant's grievance. This generic shuffling has obvious theological consequences. Bakhtin's understanding of genre and dialogism will undergird the analysis.

The letter to the Philippians has traditionally been described as one of Paul’s friendliest and most joyful letters. In recent years, it has been suggested that ancient Greco-Roman concepts of friendship might especially apply to an understanding of this letter. This suggestion has found some favor, in particular, with rhetorical critics of the letter. Though occasionally these scholars who favor friendship imagery as an organizing theme recognize the hierarchical aspects to ancient sources on friendship, they have yet to recognize how “friendly” rhetorics in the letter to the Philippians could function hierarchically. This study, then, endeavors to examine the strengths and limitations of these approaches to Philippians, while proposing its own feminist reading of the interaction of arguments in the letter. It will be noted how it is not remarkable that ancient friendship is coextensive with kyriarchal relations in terms of gender, class, colonial status, and race/ethnicity (and a range of other factors). Thus, it should not be surprising that a rhetorical act that seems to be working with such conceptions (like Philippians) would also reinscribe relations of oppression and domination.

Studies of Pauline epistolography have highlighted early Christian use of common Greco-Roman understandings of the letter and letter-carrier as a stand-in for the actual presence of the letter sender. This paper employs these insights to interpret the “letter of Christ” metaphor in 2 Corinthians 3:1–3, seeking to show how it serves Paul’s larger rhetorical aims within the letter as a whole (understood as basically comprising the canonical 2 Corinthians 1–9). Paul writes in order to defuse displeasure at his failure to visit Corinth during his trip to Macedonia, a “double favor” (1:15) which would have manifested the status of the Corinthians among the Pauline communities. To ensure this letter as an adequate replacement for this status-granting visit, Paul subtly emphasizes the constant importance of the Corinthians in his travels, portraying them as the “letter of recommendation” for his mission, sent by Christ, written on his heart, and “known and read by all men (3:1–3).” In this way, Paul shifts the criterion of his sufficiency from his own activities to the presence and nature of the Corinthian community itself. This strategy continues in the exegesis of Exodus 33 later in the chapter. In so boosting the Corinthians’ notion of self-importance, Paul hopes to effect conciliation. The “letter of Christ” metaphor is a powerful and apt image for this goal – so apt, in fact, that we need not posit the use of letters of recommendation by Pauline opponents as an external impetus for the choice of this metaphor.

As is increasingly acknowledged, even by traditional historical critics, the interpretation of texts is always a site for the exercise or struggle of power. Thus it is no surprise that contemporary debates about sexuality and sexual ethics sometimes revolve around debates about the meaning and import of biblical texts. This paper offers a survey of some recent treatments of the subject, focusing on the interpretation of Paul’s letters and attempting a rhetorical and ideological analysis of recent scholarship.

The modern era has seen an increasing attention paid to the early Augustine, not yet Bishop of Hippo, and so not yet author of the Confessions, The Trinity, the City of God. Still in the future are the formidable polemics against Donatists and Pelagians, with accompanying “theologies.” This period, extending from conversion (385 C.E.) to ordination (391), has caught the attention of an array of notable scholars from Alfaric (1918) to du Roy (1966) to Cipriani (1994), seeking to find here a key to future theological developments or derailments, depending upon assessment. This period is brought to a close with the writing of De vera religione (late 390), Augustine’s last work as a layman before ordination (ca. January 391). All scholars agree that during these critical six years Augustine has been increasingly turning to the scriptures, though not all agree on how much and how soon. In this paper I propose to show that the De vera religione reveals an Augustine on the cusp between philosophy and scripture, his intent to give an account of God which is true to the scriptures and yet fulfills and surpasses the aspirations of Late Antique philosophical piety. It is the God who not only creates, redeems, and calls to repentance and covenant, but also exercises and initiates disciples into the divine paideia. Truth, health, life, first and highest essence, Trinity, one, goodness — the divine titles Augustine explores embody this conjunction of the biblical and the philosophical. In the last analysis, the question must be faced: to what extent is Augustine’s God of “true religion” the God of “biblical religion”? This exploration proposes to answer that question.

The Project on Ancient Cultural Engagement (PACE) at York University, Toronto, is developing a new kind of commentary for ancient authors who lie at major cultural intersections. We are beginning with Josephus and the new commentary with translation from Brill. I hope to demonstrate that placing a commentary on-line creates an entirely new phenomenon with possibilities unimaginable in print. It also obviates the old theoretical cases against commentary-writing. Josephus' autobiography provides the exemplar.

In this paper I explore the image of the dead and disfigured body in the lament Psalms and in the book of Job. Relying on the work of various theorists, I argue that the image of the dead body is a signifier whose referent is an absence (not-life) and, as such, this signifier generates meaning only through its relation to other signifiers in a semiological complex. Stated differently, the image of the corpse is meaningful only insofar as it is embedded in a web of cultural values and beliefs. I interpret the cultural web of the dead, disfigured body in the lament Psalms and in the book of Job alongside that of the images of the battered corpse in James Allen’s exhibit “Without Sanctuary,” an installation of souvenir photographs and postcards of lynchings in America from the 1870s to the 1960s. I argue that the representation of the dead, disfigured corpse as political commentary in the photographic instillation helps to interpret the representation of the dead, disfigured body in the biblical texts. Just as the instillation displays images of the corpse whose original function was to reinforce social control, but which now, in the instillation, function as political commentary and judgment of the American social fabric, so also, the construction of the dead, disfigured body in lament Psalms, though in the service of traditional Israelite piety and worship in the Psalms, comes to function as a radical critique of the nature of God in the book of Job. The biblical textualization of images of the dead, disfigured body, like the images of the corpse in the photographic instillation, calls into question the cultural/theological/political web in which the corpse derived its original meaning.

This paper will analyze a Christian medico-magical papyrus, P. Oxy. XI, 1384 (= Van Haelst 584 = PGM II, 7). This sheet of papyrus contains three medical recipes (ll. 1–14; ll. 30–33; ll. 34–36) and two short Christian texts (ll. 15–22; ll. 23–29). While the recipes closely resemble traditional medical remedies transmitted by Aetius of Amida or Alexander of Tralles, the two Christian texts, which seem to be magical historiolae, are hitherto unknown. The first has Jesus as subject. While he was in the desert, people went to visit him asking for cures for sickness. Jesus answered: "I gave olive-oil and poured forth myrrh to them that believe in the name of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son." The structure of these words recalls magical invocations: short and impressive discourses pronounced during a medico-magical performance. One very interesting aspect of this text is the final inversion of the Holy Spirit and the Son in the Trinitarian formula, which finds parallel in a magical papyrus and in Christian literary writings deriving from different cultural backgrounds. The other historiola (ll. 23–29), an angelic invocation to Iao Sabaoth asking him for a remedy, evinces a similar dramatic tone. All of this induces us to believe that P. Oxy. XI, 1384 had a practical scope and was used as a sort manual or guide for healing performances. The socio-cultural context of late antique Egypt and of Oxyrhynchus in particular points to the hypothesis that P. Oxy. XI, 1384 was written or used by a man (or a woman) of monastic condition, or in any case by a person connected with this kind of milieu.

The Psalms are often cited as evidence for a vindictive God being invoked by worshipers intent upon revenge. This popular (mis)conception cannot be dismissed lightly. There are fifty-three psalms in which the psalmists either pray for the obliteration of their enemies, or assume that God will destroy their enemies. The prevalence of enemies in the Psalms suggests that God does not act by wiping out God’s foes or the enemies of the righteous. In effect prayers for vengeance function as appeals by victims of injustice that God set things right. The affirmation is that God “stands at the right hand of the needy." Granted, this aims at comforting the afflicted; but it also empowers the afflicted in opposition to oppression and their pursuit of God’s way, and it invites the comfortable into solidarity with the afflicted. The way is open for reconciliation. The affirmation that God stands with suffering victims obliterates the doctrine of retribution. As in Job sufferers cannot be scapegoated nor blamed. The way if open for reconciliation rather than retaliation. The demolition of retribution creates a logical space for grace. The Psalms ultimately define happiness/righteousness not as moral rectitude, but as dependence on divine forgiveness. A model of a non-retaliation is found in Ps 35:11–14. The psalmist affirms solidarity with other sufferers rather than blaming. This important “exception” captures the underlying theological dynamic of the psalmic prayers. More so than it first seems, therefore, the Psalms invite readers and prayers toward non-retaliation grounded in grace rather than revenge, in forgiving rather than finding fault.

It has become common to think that Deuteronomy contains an outline of a 'constitution' for Israel, even if this is sometimes thought 'utopian'. This paper explores (in dialogue with J.-M. Carriere, S. Grosby and others) whether this political idea can be pressed further, to the point where Deuteronomy exhibits a concept of nationhood, which is being worked out in contrast to prevailing ANE and/or Israelite ideas. Elements include; law, land, people, institutions, centre and periphery, worship. Proposed modern parallels (e.g. democracy, separation of powers) are critically explored. And the paper opens on to Deuteronomy's relation to Joshua and the DtrH in this regard.

This paper will address the place of Mark’s passion narrative within the larger context of Roman Christianity. There is an increasing consensus among scholars to view texts such as Mark, Hebrews, and 1 Peter as stemming from a Roman environment and therefore reflective of christological developments particular to this provenance. This paper will explore the likely precedents, both Greco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish, which have contributed to Mark’s deeply sacrificial appraisal of Christ’s death. Such precedents would include Jewish martyrological traditions and the figure of the rightoeus sufferer from the Psalms and the book of Wisdom. In addition, the paper will explore the extent to which Mark’s sacrificial appraisal of Christ’s death both complements and diverges from similar sacrificial appraisals found in texts traditionally associated with Rome, in particular Hebrews.

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The themes that surround the handling of food and drink in biblical narratives are many, running the gamut of: survival, death, desire, deceit, manipulation, rape and murder. Asking for a drink of water from a woman’s jar is a simple opening gambit that may easily lead on to any of the other outcomes named above, however, it is a request that may easily be made and acceded to since it relies on everyone’s need of water to make it innocuous. As Goffman has shown, such simple human interactions of meeting necessities may lead to further acts of courtesy or courtship — whether true or deceptive. And in biblical stories we can find the full range of possible outcomes. The simple Rebekah who provides a drink of water, becomes the manipulative Rebekah who deceives her husband to secure survival and inheritance for her favoured son; Jael’s over-lavish provision of a drink leads on to deceit on her part and death for her enemy.The role of women’s purveying of food and drink will be explored in all its fascinating twists.

Ephesians 6:10–20 and its relationship to the genre of battle exhortations has been a subject of recent scholarship. This paper seeks to explore the identity of the passage as a fictive battle exhortation by comparing it to battle exhortations in the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The paper argues that Ephesians 6:10–20 mimics the pattern of such battle exhortations and that consideration of the passage from this perspective sharpens the understanding of its function in the context of the document as a whole.

Metaphoric allusions to disability or disabled persons arise several times in the eschatological rhetoric of the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic literature. Using rhetorical analysis and metaphor theory, this paper will explore some underlying assumptions about disability that are basic to these allusions. The paper will also focus on attitudes about disability that the rhetoric attempts to inculcate in the reader. Among the passages that the paper will examine are Isa 35:1–10; 42:10–20; Jer 31:1–30; Mic 4:6–5:1; and Zeph 3:14–20. In conclusion, the paper will discuss some possible modes of reading or interpretation that will help in dealing with or challenging some of the prophetic assumptions about the body and wholeness reflected in these eschatological visions.

Throughout the book of Jeremiah, a rhetorical strategy of personification develops the land of Judah as a major character in the dramatic narrative underlying the prophet’s oracles and speeches. Especially in the poetic passages, the land itself emerges as a central tragic figure, as well as a character embodying hope for future restoration. The brief lament in Jer. 4:19-22, if interpreted as an utterance of the land, exemplifies Jeremiah’s practice of personification. The speaker in this passage remains less than clear, however, as the perspectives expressed might also be those of the divinity or of the prophet himself. The intentional ambiguity of speaker in this poetry suggests an intertwining of divine, human, and ecological identities. Jeremiah evokes empathy for the land through the poetic techniques of personification and the fusion of diverse perspectives.

The terracotta statuettes known as Judean pillar figurines have long been associated with Israelite religion. Discussions have tended to focus on whether these objects represent human women or a goddess--and if the latter, which goddess. Other approaches wrestle with the problem of how these images relate to Judean Yahwism. This paper will sidestep these issues and concentrate instead on what the pillar figurines might tell us about women's religious practices and the context of these practices. Asking non-theological questions of the terracottas and considering cross-cultural and ethnographic data can provide insights into the dynamics of women's lives in ancient Israel and to the role of women's religious behaviors in their families and communities.

This will be a study of the complex data that establishes a culture and ethnicity and an examination of how we can get to religion via text or artifact. Examples will be drawn from various periods.

The writings of the ancient Israelites may be studied many times over, but with every change in our understanding of these texts, particularly their historical contexts, come new data. For several decades scholars have been analyzing the earliest writings of the Bible in an effort to reconstruct the history and religion of early Israel, and these texts continue to provide fresh insights into the initial phases of Israel’s existence. The present paper returns once more to the oldest poems of the Hebrew Bible to extract a few more nuggets of information that may be matched up against the archaeological record. Some of the insights gleaned from this study are: 1) a twelfth century "exodus" in which only two or three of the tribes seem to have participated; 2) the existence of an "Israel" in Canaan at the time of this exodus; 3) a historical setting for the beginning of the enslavement in Egypt. The present paper will also discuss the relationship between the two groups of "Israelites" (or proto-Israelites) and offer a new historical context for the poem in Genesis 49. Indeed, it would appear that the poem is neither a collection of tribal sayings, nor a piece of Davidic propaganda, but a victory hymn composed on a particular occasion in the Late Bronze Age.

There are few biblical texts as over-interpreted as Genesis 3. Whereas in premodern times, this text was read uncritically through a Pauline lens, in recent biblical scholarship a plethora of diverse—often mutually contradictory—readings has been proposed, drawing on structuralist, feminist, rhetorical, ideological and psychoanalytic perspectives. This paper attends both to 1) the literary context of Genesis 3 in the primeval history (Genesis 1–11), where human wrongdoing is portrayed primarily as violence, and 2) to concern with violence in the contemporary world. It explores the possibility that Genesis 3 narrates an “originary,” paradigmatic case of violence, in the sense of the transgression of boundaries external to oneself which ought to be respected, in this case boundaries articulated by God, the primal Other. Could it be that all inter-human violence is to be understood as stemming from this primal act of boundary transgression? Does this shed light on the positive articulation of the human calling in Genesis 1 and 2?

Does Matthew's infancy narrative describe a virgin birth (or, more precisely, a virginal conception)? That Christianity has unanimously understood it that way is due, in large part, to two factors: 1) after the first century Christianity was almost entirely Gentile, and 2) the Christian tradition has read Matthew's and Luke's infancy narratives as two versions of the same story. What happens if we read Matt 1:18–25 from a strictly Jewish perspective and without assuming that it means the same as Luke’s story? If we take Matt 1:18–25 as a scene written by a Jew for Jewish readers, it is by no means clear that Matthew believed that Jesus had no human father. In making this case I will argue three points. 1. Matthew's language of divine begetting, in its biblical context, does not exclude a human father. 2. The mention of the four women in Matthew's genealogy prepares the reader for an irregular, potentially scandalous birth, not a miraculous one. 3. In Matthew's quotation of Isa 7:14, the semantic range of parthenos and the normal sense of "will conceive" do not by themselves portend a virginal conception. I conclude that Matthew probably did not intend his story to be about a virgin birth. I will explain that the "probably" rests on other considerations that make it imprudent to rule out the alternate possibility.

Traces of a magical ritual ascent appear in the Acta, sections LXIII.5–6 in an account of Mani's spiritual forebear, Terebinthus. The ritual description immediately follows a passage that clearly indicates that the subject is ecstatic ascent, not eschatological release from the world. It is said of Terebinthus that "he would declare to them . . . about where souls depart to and how, and in what way they return to bodies again" (LXIII.3–4). This refers not to reincarnation but to ecstatic out of body experience. True to the polemical intent of the Acta, this attempt to ascend into the heavens for revelation fails. Nevertheless, the procedure of the ritual is comparable to similar rituals in the PGM and elsewhere. The preceding references in the Acta to Babylon, Persia, Egypt, and the old woman all suggest traditional associations with magic. In addition to reconstructing the possible ritual sources on which the story is based, this study will explore the purpose of Hegemonius/Archelaus in drawing on the theme of magic, as well as possible parallels to narratives in the Gospels and Apocryphal Acts.

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The institutionalized preferential treatment of texts over artifacts in the study of most ancient cultures is not surprising. As students we are trained to read ancient texts in their original languages, but we are rarely trained to read recent archaeological field books. In biblical studies, with so much emphasis on the literary canon, even those teachers and scholars who are interested in exploring the material culture of the ancient world have great difficulty finding the time to accomplish the task. Nevertheless, for those who make the effort, there is no doubt that the importation of archaeological data greatly enriches our classroom experiences. This paper examines practical ways that archaeology can be integrated into biblical studies, without simply introducing artifacts as 'show-and-tell' items.

The rise of penitential spirituality does not simply reflect developments in Israel’s religion as a result of historical catastrophe. The book of Job points to another influence, one that arises out of Judaism’s entry into what the philosopher Karl Jaspers called “the Axial Age.” Characteristics of the Axial Age include a heightened sense of divine transcendence and a newfound sense of self-consciousness. Both of these features appear, e.g., in Job’s second reply to the YHWH speeches (Job 42:2–6). They are also at work in the speeches of Elihu (Job 32–37), which reject the basis of individual lament. According to Elihu, a pentitential attitude is necessary in the act of petition (33:23–26). Many of the oppressed are not liberated, however, because their protests are devoid of proper praise (35:9–16). But God is great and righteous, rewarding people according to their works; misfortune is only an instrument in the hands of God to save the guilty (36:5–16). Elihu ends with lengthy praise to this wholly transcendent and ever just deity. By reason of his power and righteousness, God is to be feared and revered; the divine being has no accounts to render to humans (37:19–24). Claus Westermann (1981, 203) has called attention to the affirmation of divine righteousness in second temple petitionary prayer as a development that disallows the complaint against God and overcomes the polarity between lament and praise. There is a similarity between the theology articulated by Elihu and that observed by Westermann which calls for investigation. This paper will suggest that the affirmation of divine righteousness in the speeches of Elihu and early pentitential prayers such as Nehemiah 9:6–37 and Daniel 9:4–19 are related expressions of Axial Age thinking.

In 1991 M. Yon and M. Sznycer published an important new Phoenician inscription dated to the first year of Milkyaton, king of Kition and Idalion ("Une inscription phenicienne royale de Kition [Chypre]," CRAI 1991, 791–823). The present study will (1) offer several lexical and syntactic revisions to Sznycer's interpretation of the inscription, (2) explore its unusual structure, and (3) discuss briefly its significance for Cypriote history in the early fouth century BCE.

Hebrews is arguably the most rhetorically sophisticated document in the New Testament. Yet scholars disagree about whether it is an example of deliberative or epideictic rhetoric. This paper suggests a definite answer to the question. It begins by observing that the anaphoric list in Hebrews 11 is an integral part of the author's overall rhetorical strategy. The author has crafted his commendations here to echo and anticipate material in the surrounding contexts. The list thereby reinforces points already made and prepares the audience for what they will soon hear. Literary clues suggest that the author intended for listeners to expect Joshua to be named after Moses. However, instead a rhetorical pause is introduced when no named person is associated with the next event (11:30). Listeners are then surprised when they hear Rahab's name in Joshua's place (11:31). Women generally do not appear on ancient Jewish example lists, Rahab on none. Familiarity with this famous chapter causes modern readers not to appreciate the rhetorical effect Rahab's commendation was calculated to have on the original audience. The list was designed to shockingly place Rahab at the climactic center of the chapter. Why? This cries out for explanation. The explanation can be found once we realize that the author expects his listeners to be familiar with the wording of Rahab's deliverance in Joshua 6. When Hebrews gives its climactic exhortation in 13:11–14, this recalls Rahab's commendation and its background. He even models Jesus' example on Rahab's. We then see that the author of Hebrews was most skilled in the art of deliberative rhetoric. He intended for his readers to adopt a specific course of action that recapitulates that of Rahab. This insight helps us make significant progress in unraveling the riddle of Hebrews.

The Kingdom saying in Q 11:20 is often interpreted within a time frame (future versus realized eschatology). This paper suggests that Q presents the exorcisms of Jesus, not as in Mark 3:22–28, as Jesus' personal power, but as power over space, indicated by the images of kingdom and household in 11:17–18. Drawing on the insights from the interrelations between shamanism and conflicts over land in Latin America, this paper suggests that Jesus' exorcisms in Q 11:14–23 represent a "power from below" that challenges the existing power structures in Galilee.

Pilate’s wife makes her solitary appearance during Jesus’ trial and there warns her husband “to have nothing to do with that righteous man” (Matt 27:19). While it may appear that the evangelist is exonerating Pilate, postcolonial theory offers a different perspective. Pilate’s wife, unlike Pilate himself, is privy to revelation and acts decisively, thus providing a dramatic foil to Pilate’s vacillation that clearly renders the impotence of the Roman ruler. At the same time, she is drawn against Joseph, the “righteous man” (1:19) of Jewish lineage, whose response to a dream is more effectual despite his identity as imperial subject.

The fragmentary text of POx 2949 has been studied as a part of the Gospel of Peter, which covers verses GPet 3–5a and offers an interesting textual variant to the so-called Akhmim fragment. Because of the notable differences between these two witnesses and the difficulties of fixing fr. I and II of the POx 2949 together, no overall reconstruction of POx 2949 has been possible. However, if fr. II is set aside as a part from a different page, it is possible to end up with a reconstruction that is not quite distant from the corresponding passage in the Akhmim fragment. This tentative reconstruction leads to the unconventional conclusion that POx 2949 represents a later version of GPet 3–5a than the Akhmim Fragment.

This paper investigates the recent history of interpretation of the earliest building phase of the Rotunda, also known as the Church of the Archangels or the Church of St. George, in Thessaloniki. Archaeologists now largely agree that this structure, which mimics the Pantheon, was originally part of the early fourth-century palace complex of the emperor Galerius, who for a time persecuted Christians. They also hypothesize that as early as the late fourth century, the Rotunda was converted into a Christian church, which contained mosaics depicting martyrs. But in the past century, this interpretation has not been the only one. Moreover, the structure is still a contested site of (religious) meaning: while the Archaeological Service was studying and restoring the Rotunda, members of the Greek Orthodox Church entered it and re-consecrated it for religious use. In this one archaeological site we find evidence of what we in twenty-first century North American would consider both religion and politics. We also see that the categories of religion and politics are insufficient to understand the complexities of these archaeological remains, a principle known from scholars as different as S. R. F. Price and Talal Asad. By investigating the past century of theories about this structure, this paper will show how interpretations of this structure subtly construct certain images of early Christian religion and its relation to the political.

Not only do empires subjugate people and deprive them of freedom, they also inculcate the values of the oppressors. This paper will examine possible implications the uniquely Lukan motif of repentance may have had on resisting imperial values and ideology. Throughout his gospel, the author suggests that he understands repentance to represent a fundamental change in thinking that significantly alters the way things are and/or should be. An examination of Luke reveals that the author is intentional in his use of the motif of repentance—most likely as a way of responding to the social inequities perpetuated by imperialism and experienced by members of his community. Specific social, moral, ethical, financial, and religious inequities are challenged in Luke, and repentance is presented as the method for correcting them. Repentance in Luke is more than sorrow over sin; it is a challenge to the values and ideologies of Roman imperialism.

The Prayer of Manasseh offers a late Second Temple example of an individual prayer of penitence. This paper explores its formal similarities and differences with the earlier Psalm 51 in order to answer the following: How do penitential prayers that contain reference to the divine attribute formula of Exod 34:6–7 compare with other penitential prayers? What is the theological significance of the individual prayer of penitence and how does its emergence relate to the presumed “institutionalization” of a communal penitential prayer genre in the Second Temple period?

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Research in Christian apocryphal texts has made enormous progress during the last decades. Many texts have been discovered, edited and re-edited, translated into various modern languages, or re-interpreted. But some very basic questions still remain unanswered: What does it mean to ‘interpret’ Christian apocrypha and what really takes place in a reading of apocryphal texts? Why do we interpret apocryphal texts in the ways we do? The proposed paper examines the hermeneutical questions asked above and tries to find answers with the help of Umberto Eco’s literary theories (e.g., in his famous Lector in fabula). The hermeneutical and methodological theses will be illustrated by examples taken from the Gospel of Peter the “Unknown Gospel” at Papyrus Egerton 2 + Papyrus Cologne 255, and several apocryphal Acts.

The paper presents a reading of the Fourth Gospel based on the principles of C.S. Peirce’s semiotics. The Johannine Jesus is a sign of God, of course. But because of the complexity of Peirce’s semiotics he can be defined more precisely as a dicent indexical sin sign, i.e. a sign with secondness in all relations. This leads to new understandings of the coherence of Johannine theology, Christology, eschatology, ecclesiology and ethics. Because of the sign’s genuine triadic relations to an object and an interpretant the Johannine Jesus sets the community in a relation to God that involves a praxis determined by the crucified one as the sign of God.

The repatriation of the statue of Marduk from Assyria to Babylonia is a major event in Neo-Assyrian history. One interesting piece of evidence related to this event has not yet attracted the attention it deserves. The letter of Assur-hamatu’a to Assurbanipal (SAA 13 139) provides a weighty insight into Marduk’s return from the point of view of ideology, theology, and prophecy. This unconventionally designed letter quotes a prophetic oracle that not only presents the Assyrian theology of reconciliation in a nutshell but also provides a close parallel to the Deutero-Isaianic idea of redemption.

This paper will exmine the use of the verb charizomai and cognates in the papyri with special focus on the relational implications of the terminology. It will then explore the implications of such usage for the New Tesament, especially the letters of Paul.

This paper provides a semiotic reading of Mike Nichols’ television adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America in reference to two biblical encounters with angels, those of Jacob and Elijah. Kushner’s work is complex, and it addresses issues like the human condition, homosexuality, AIDS, race, religion and politics, while emphasising elements of choice and identity. For Kushner, it seems, ‘angels’ signify an absence rather than a presence of the divine, puzzles rather than answers, and turn-of-the-millennium angst. Kushner’s ‘Prior’ character is declared a prophet by the messenger angel while dying of AIDS. Prior’s encounter harbours echoes of Elijah’s own encounter with an angel of the Lord while struggling with depression and a desire for death (1 Kings 19:1–9). Furthermore, unwilling to accept the role of prophet Prior wrestles with the angel, and, in a similar vein to Jacob’s experience (Gen. 32:22–32), this results in a ladder leading to heaven and a blessing. This paper explores the complex world of signifiers in Angels in America, while paying particular attention to the biblical elements present in the text.

This paper will examine texts of Judah's collapse and texts of Israel's rebuilding by drawing from disaster studies (articulated for Ezekiel by Daniel Smith-Christopher) to show that Jeremiah uses both social visions as ways to help the destroyed society survive.

This paper makes use of the annotation model from the OpenText.org project to provide a full grammatical analysis of Mark 13. It will provide a summary of the linguistic features in the chapter and highlight patterns, key participants and semantic structures and discuss some of the difficulties encountered in the analysis of the passage.

Yahweh as healer is not a major metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, but it plays a significant part in the prophetic books. In many instances this metaphor is conveyed by the Hebrew root rp’ with Yahweh as subject; however there are several other verbs and nouns focusing on the healer metaphor (restore, make whole, medicine, balm, disease, wound, sickness, etc). This paper discusses the portrayal of Yahweh as healer in the prophetic books offering a few possible responses to the following questions: (1) How did the prophets understand the healer metaphor? (2) Were repentance and obedience a prerequisite for Yahweh’s healing? (3) Is there a difference between the prophetic view of healing compared to the rest of the Hebrew Bible? According to the prophets, Yahweh’s healing was more than a medically verifiable physical process. The prophetic books focus more on the spiritual healing of Israel and Judah than on the physical healing of an individual (cf Isa 57:18–19; Jer 3:22; 30:17; Hos 14:5 [4]). In some instances Yahweh offered comprehensive deliverance or concrete promises for a “sick” people. This comprehensive healing includes the rebuilding of the city and temple, forgiveness of sins, joy and prosperity (Jer 30:17; 33:6; Ezek 47:8–12). Yahweh’s healing was not restricted to his elected people alone; he even offered healing to Egypt (Isa 19:22) and tried to heal Babylon (Jer 51:8–9). Yahweh is portrayed as a healer because he has a passion for his people in need just like a physician has a passion to help sick people. In some prophetic texts repentance and obedience are seen as a prerequisite for Yahweh’s healing (Isa 6:10; 19:22; Jer 3:22; Hos 6:1) while there are at least two references that speak of Yahweh’s healing despite Israel’s apostasy (Isa 57:17–19; Hos 11:1–3).

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The identity of the people standing behind Enochic writings has puzzled scholars for a long time. Although several hypotheses have been proposed, the issue is far from being resolved. Any designation of the possible group(s) behind the Enochic lore must therefore be given special attention. One of such designations is situated in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch. 2 Enoch 35 unveils a tradition according to which the Enochic writings will be eventually handled by the books’ guardians to a group designated as the Men of Faith (Slav. muzhem’ vernym). The reference to the group as the last link in the chain of transmission of the Enochic scriptures recalls the terminology attested in the later “Enochic” material appended to some manuscripts of Sefer Hekhalot and known as Chapter 48D of 3 Enoch. In this account the revelation which is initially given by Enoch-Metatron to Moses passes through several transmissions into the hands of people named the Men of Faith. Scholars have previously suggested that this designation in the Hekhalot passage appears to function as a quasi-technical term for the mystics or their mythic ancestors. In this context the designation reflected in 2 Enoch may hold the key to the enigma of the Enochic group(s) standing behind the early Jewish mystical speculations. The paper will investigate the designation “Men of Faith” found in 2 Enoch and its role in the polemical developments taking place in the Slavonic apocalypse.

The recent work of scholars such as Theophus Smith (Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America) and Yvonne Chireau (Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition) has shed new light on African American religious praxis and its impact on the ethnogenetic impulse in the Black Diaspora. Moreover, both raise awareness of the complex relationship that exists between African American “conjure” and the Blues tradition. Chireau’s research, in particular, has noted the ways in which one Blues sub-genre—so called Hoodoo Blues—served as a mechanism for the reclamation of indigenous conceptions of the supernatural and the construction of what amounted to a modern Blues faith. This paper builds on the work of Chireau by examining the implications of the use of this sub-genre for: (1) the formulation of principles for the hermeneutical engagement of the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts; (2) scholarship on the nature and scope of esoteric traditions in the Black Diaspora; and (3) the construction of 21st century Afrodiasporan spiritualities of resistance.

The paper sets out to analyse the way the interface of history and theology in John differs from the interface in the Synoptics and to discern the problems and opportunities this brings for those in search of history in the Fourth Gospel.

Why would Samson have set fire to the tails of three hundred foxes so as to take revenge on the Philistines in Judges 15: 4–5? Many scholars have tried to associate Samson with a mythological sun-related hero such as Heracles or Perseus, and consequently, Samson’s use of fire and fox to take his revenge was seen as a result of his solar association. This parallel is unsubstantiated and based on either anachronistic parallels or entirely speculative mythopoetic interpretations, while clear literary parallels from the ancient Near East would offer a much better interpretative matrix for understanding the passage. Both in the Samson story and other ANE texts we find the existence of the bestman. In ANE literature, the bestman accompanies the new couple as a witness at wedding ceremony even up to the consummation of the marriage. Some texts also highlight the danger of a bestman who could ruin the marriage by taking advantage of this special role. In Samson’s wedding, there were thirty Philistine bestmen, but they ruined Samson’s marriage, one of the bestmen even stealing his wife (Judges 14: 11, 15–20). Samson took revenge on the thirty bestmen by means of the three hundred foxes. In the Sumerian Proverb collections, as well as in later literary traditions that depend on them, the fox appears as a liar or treacherous figure who steals another’s house, probably reflecting the behavior of the fox in nature in that it gains its hole by stealing other animal’s dwelling. In the Samson story, the foxes seem to be employed as stand-ins for the treacherous bestmen who ruined Samson’s marriage. This shows that the author of the Samson story was well aware of the deceptive-bestman-as-fox motif, which is present in a variety of wisdom literatures between the Sumerian Proverb collections and the Hebrew Bible.

Semiotics, Ethics, and Scriptural Criticism

This paper describes and illustrates several computer-based methods for discovering and displaying graphically structure in Hebrew poetry. The simplest but computationally most intensive methods are measures of order and disorder employing Claude Shannon's communication theory. His approach for finding the entropy or disorder on a communication channel ("or a literary text, for example the King James Bible" sic) is extended here to compute the more interesting enthalpy (en thalpein) as heat or order "stored" in the text. These methods were applied to the Hebrew text of the Book of Job, which although it does not have the most Hapax Legomena in the Hebrew Bible, does exhibit the most poetic structural variety, including a prose prolog and a prose epilog, which provide a convenient computational baseline with which to calibrate the method. The resulting graphics are text-long series of histograms for both entropy (disorder) and enthalpy (order) colored-coded to represent the speakers in the dialog. After applying this top-down method to discover global structure, one can then apply the more refined and specific methods of Dr. Baek-Sung Choi's dissertation "The Unity and Symmetry of the Book of Job" to identify and display deep textual structure based on phonemic, lexical, morphological, syntactical, and grammatical measures as well as the semantic parallelism/chiasmus normally employed in the analysis of Hebrew poetry.

The major effort invested by King Herod to expend the Temple Mount compound towards the south, despite the difficult topographic conditions, was primarily aimed at providing site for the erection of the Royal Stoa. Josephus Flavius describes this huge edifice with highly superlative terms, claiming it to be “the most worthy construction project to recount about that exists under the sun” (Ant, XV, 412). Many proposals have been made with regard to the reconstruction of the Royal Stoa, based mainly on Josephus’ description. These proposals did not take into account the hundreds of fragments of Herodian architectural decoration, revealed during the 1970’ in the collapse at the foot of the Temple Mount enclosure walls, as they have never been fully published by the excavator, the late Prof. Benjamin Mazar. However, since 1997, the ‘Publication Project of the Temple Mount Excavations’ took upon itself to publish the final report. As a member of the project’s team I was assigned to investigate the Herodian architectural fragments. The examination of these artifacts leads to new understandings with regard to the architectural decoration of the Royal Stoa, and thus, for the first time, a more detailed and accurate reconstruction of this edifice’s facade and elevation can be presented.

Grammarians of ancient Hebrew have not been able to achieve consensus regarding such a basic point as which linguistic parameter (Tense, Aspect, or Mood) was grammaticalized by the “perfect” suffix conjugation and the “imperfect” prefix conjugation. This paper proposes that the prototypical feature set of the basic verb forms may be discovered using an empirical method of statistical correlation between formal features and semantic function. In order to yield the required correlations, such a computer database of the verbs in a corpus must be tagged for indicators such as morphology, lexis, and syntax on one hand, and semantic values such as time reference, aspect, and modality on the other. One may then determine the strength of an association between each form and each function by correlating the semantic values with the forms and positions of the verbs. Because complete objectivity is a chimera, reproducibility of findings should be the aim instead. The bulk of the present paper is intended to describe the most useful criteria for tagging the semantic values, so that any one researcher’s analysis of the data may be reproduced by others.

In contrast to those scholars who seek to create a gap between the egalitarian impulse in the early Christian community and the hierarchical Roman imperial social structures, this paper suggests that the use of women in Luke-Acts points to early Christian appropriations of imperial discourse in the portrayal of virtus and imperium on the Roman imperial stage of masculine comportment. In other words, the “serenity” or “femininity” attributed to the Lukan representation of women resonates with the broader socio-cultural context, wherein female sex and gender have become tropes, either bolstering masculine identity by demonstrating the male control of potent women, or, conversely, emasculating others through the ascription of female identity to male characters. In this Roman colonial context, the “out of control” topos—a hallmark of negative female identity—can be ascribed to communities or to individual men, in order to undermine public performance and personae. Luke-Acts adopts such imperial discursive strategies of argumentation to foster a colonial comportment of women and men in the service of its own story of origins.

In my paper, expanding upon the work of J. T. Milik and Milena Varzonovtseva, I will show the following: 1. That the Second Book of Enoch is the Old Bulgarian translation of a Greek original written in the ninth century in a Constantinopolitan or Balkan context. 2. That it is indeed a Christian text, both in its short and long recensions, presupposing a knowledge of the New Testament and of some ecclesiastic writers closely connected to the Origenist tradition. 3. That it is connected to the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition, including works in Syriac that reflect sixth-century Middle-Eastern traditions. 4. That it contains a pronounced Origenist doctrine. 5. That it also contains a continuation of the mythological debate with the Manichees, similar to the one observable in the Book of the Holy Hierotheus. 6. That the Secret Book of the Bogomils contains standard Manichaean-type dualist teaching. 7. That it contains a continuation and a reply to the anti-Manichaean polemics of the Second Enoch. On this basis I will draw the following conclusions: 1. The mythological polemics observable between the Second Enoch and the Secret Book of the Bogomils is a continuation, in a ninth, tenth-century Balkan context, of the debate recognized in the Book of the Holy Hierotheus in an earlier Middle-Eastern context. 2. The best explanation for this is that the two examined works are apocryphal writings written in the environment of clandestine heretical groups in the Balkans, which have preserved among them an old and hereditary antagonism, going back at least to the sixth century Middle East. 3. Therefore the research presented in this paper both reveals the presence of Origenist doctrines as late as the ninth century in the Balkans, and seems to reconfirm the idea of a direct Manichaean influence, via perhaps the Paulicians, on the Bulgarian Bogomils.

Teresa de Lauretis in her article, “The Violence of Rhetoric: considerations of representation and gender”(1989) speaks of women,“ as those of us whose bodies and pleasures are out there where violence is (in that we have no language, enunciative or power apparatuses to speak them.” The Passion of Perpetua, describing the deaths of a group of martyrs in Carthage in March of 2003 CE, has been treasured for, among other reasons, its inclusion of the actual words and sentiments of one of these martyrs, Perpetua, a nursing mother. In this paper I will propose that the representation of both Perpetua and another of the martyrs, Felicitas, a slave who gives birth in prison and is martyred soon after, needs to be assessed in the context of the heated debate during this period around the nature of the body of Christ and the resurrected body. The descriptions of Perpetua and Felicitas are so pertinent to the rhetorical polemics around this topic to suggest that rhetorical aims rather than women’s voice or women’s bodies underlie the emphasis on lactation and parturition in the portraits of these two women martyrs.

Following David Trobisch’s use of sacra nomina as evidence for his theory regarding the earliest editions of the NT writings, it has become apparent that more scholarly work needs to be done on the background of this mysterious phenomenon. Toward this end, I argue in this paper that the nomina sacra originated in Alexandria (a suggestion first made by Paap). Given certain circumstances within the intellectual and culture history of Alexandria, including the increasingly widespread application of the so-called ‘acrophonic principle’ to hieratic script in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, I argue that the earliest copyist of NT texts inherited their technique from their (non-Christian) fellow scribes.

Several writers refer to a tollere liberos ceremony performed by Roman fathers. When a child is first born it is placed on the ground. Then the father decides if he will raise the child as his legitimate offspring. If so, he literally raises the child. This lifting of the child from the floor/ground is his symbolic acknowledgement of his paternity of the child and of his desire to rear it. Many secondary sources refer to this ceremony such as Dixon, Harris, Hallett, Osiek, Balch, and Tregiarri. Although many primary texts are citied in support, hard evidence for this ceremony is lacking. First, we will consider secondary authors on the ceremony. Then, second, we will consider the primary evidence they cite. Rather than actually examining the sources, most authors have merely assumed that the evidence is convincing. Third, we will interact with evidence from the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the footnotes of Loeb Classical Library translations. Fourth, we will draw some conclusions regarding the relationship between ancient fathers and children and regarding our study of the same.

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Ethical issues in the book of Acts are properly understood only when they are placed within the context of both the characterization and plot of Acts. Within Acts, the temporal location of the various characters is pivotal to their status as ethical role models for the reader. Ultimately, Paul--a post-apostolic witness to Christ--serves as the premier ethical role model for Christian readers of Acts.

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This paper will present a survey on my last five years of research in the field of Ugaritic syntax, which in 2003 took shape in the PhD Dissertation "Estudios de Sintaxis verbal en textos ugaríticos poéticos". Using the Ugaritic Baal Cycle as a test corpus, the dissertation tries to carry out a systematic application of text-linguistics to the syntax of Ugaritic, in an attempt to provide an explanation for the problem-ridden syntaxtic values of the Ug. verbal system (as the yqtl-qatala opposition or the different "forms" of the preformative conjugation). Given the already well-established usage of text-linguistics in the field of Biblical Hebrew (as per Niccacci et al.), its application to Ugaritic can open the scope of possibilities both within each language and in the field of NWS comparative studies, and those possibilities, along with its caveats and limitations, will be examined in this communication.

Umberto Eco’s novel “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988) not only mentions branches of Gnosticism within the text, but uses Gnostic themes and metaphors to shape the narrative on the small and large scale. The main characters engage in parallelomania across history in quest of the mysterious “Plan” with such zeal that they call the Plan into existence, enticing hostile opponents to join the chase, even though their data cannot bear the interpretations placed upon them and the links made are absurd. These characters see themselves as elites in quest of knowledge, like Gnostic “spirituals” (“Believe there is a secret and you will feel like an initiate,” p. 529). However, they are unmasked as ignorant demiurges who desired “to give shape to shapelessness” (p. 337) and have thereby created a monster over which they have no control. The wisdom that a Sophia-character attempts to reveal to them is, paradoxically, that there is no wisdom in the Plan at all. Eco’s notion of Gnosticism is rather old-fashioned, a combination of a Jonas-style synthesis of ancient heresiology with Hermeticism, as is confirmed by his writings outside the novel. “Foucault’s Pendulum” playfully attacks the interpretive principles of universal analogy (“Hermetic semiosis”) and extreme hermeneutical suspicion (“Gnostic” exegetical inversion), which in Eco’s intellectual context belong to deconstructionism and radical reader-oriented theories of interpretation. Yet, if we go beyond the author’s intent (an authorially sanctioned move, within reason!), Eco’s critique can also be directed against the construction of the category of “Gnosticism” itself, in keeping with the recent insights of scholars such as Karen King and Michael Williams.

This paper argues that Martha's and Mary's salutations to Jesus ("Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died . . .") are reproaches that stand in the long tradition of reproaches cast against God by Israel in the face of imminent or realized catastrophes. By reading John 11.1–44 against the Jewish lamentation tradition, I will show that the evangelist both relies on and subverts the genre to sharpen his portrait of "the Lord" and "his own". The paper will also consider to what extent the Raising of Lazarus functions as theodicy for the Johannine community following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

This paper investigates how the Nehemiah memoir, both as an independent source and as a piece incorporated into the larger framework of Ezra-Nehemiah, addresses Yehud’s relationship to imperial modes of power, especially technologies of writing. In the memoir, oral communication is presented as the norm within the community, while writing is reserved for imperial matters. This probably was not the actual situation, thus Nehemiah's work reveals Nehemiah’s own construction of how writing was to be understood. In addition, Nehemiah’s exhortations to YHWH are strikingly “oral” – Nehemiah addresses YHWH directly, yet he is obviously writing rather than praying. So Nehemiah, at the places where he expresses his purposes most directly, ends up drawing attention to the written nature of his comments. Nehemiah’s writing elevates orality (resistance to an imperial technology of power?) while making imperial assumptions (texts are necessarily persuasive). The memoir’s present context, Ezra-Nehemiah, however, emphasizes writing’s overarching authority: The memoir is now preceded by imperial correspondence and includes a ceremony celebrating the authority of a particular text. The editorial framework of Ezra-Nehemiah covers Nehemiah’s original focus on the oral, assuming the power of texts and writing. In the memoir we see Nehemiah as a figure fashioning himself, a figure who represents himself by writing, yet in writing seeks to valorize orality. Nehemiah, a colonial subject, both resists and accepts the empire and its writing. Nehemiah’s editors more directly favor imperial means of authority, creating Yehud as a colonial subject, but one of a strikingly different flavor from their erstwhile governor.

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One of the most highly debated issues regarding the book of Acts is its literary genre or text-type. A number of suggestions have been made and evaluated. What is rarely raised is the topic of the ethical issues that attend to such analysis. In other words, what were the ethical implications for the author, the audience and interpretation if Acts was written according to the canons of the various genres? This paper will examine several of the most recent proposals regarding genre and scrutinize the ethical implications that are entailed by each of these proposals.

The scholarly discussion of women and law in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East has expanded greatly over the past fifteen years. It is of course not a new concern. A review of biblical and cuneiform scholarship over the last century uncovers a sprinkling of articles and books whose titles begin “The Rights of Women,” “Die Stellung der Frauen,” or “ La Condition de la femme” in the laws in one of the cultures of the ancient Near East. Nonetheless, in part under the impetus of the women’s studies movement and in part stimulated by developments in the study of biblical and cuneiform law, the discussion has grown broader, more analytically precise and more sophisticated. It has, moreover, extended in multiple directions, serving diverse aims and reflecting a plethora of methodologies. This paper will sketch some of the main threads of the conversation thus far, identify some of the limitations of what we have learned about gender and biblical and cuneiform law, and raise a few issues that seem to hold promise for further study. It will do so under five rubrics. The first is “law as law;” that is, the ongoing investigation of the logic, structure, language, setting and purpose of legal materials that address gender. Second, “law as historical and cultural artifact” refers to the investigation of legal texts as evidence of social institutions, practices, relationships, and roles of women and men. Third, the paper summarizes some ways that sociological and anthropological disciplines have been used to better understand ancient legal texts related to gender. The fourth rubric is “law as philosophy,” Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s (1989) felicitous term for examining the ways in which the ancient Afro-Asiatic laws reflect the social values and ideals of their drafters and redactors. Assessment of such values and ideals in relationship to gender have been a matter of much debate. Fifth and finally, the paper looks at ways scholars have drawn on critical theories to examine not only how the ancient drafters of the legal materials constructed gender but also how the legal materials continue to construct gender.

Drawing on Homi Bhabha's concept of hybridity as a characteristic of postcolonial cultures and their products, this paper explores the linguistic paradoxes in Daniel. A text which has an explicit ideology of linguistic and cultural purity and separation from the hegemonic Aramaic and Persian cultures is shot through with vocabulary and stylistic features which are drawn from the language and literatures of the dominant group. Daniel can be seen as a textbook example of a text which embodies the ambivalences of a colonised culture and this may go some way towards accounting for puzzling features of the text. The work of Daniel Smith-Christopher on native American recption of this text reinforces this theoretical perspective. The paper concludes with some reflections on the methodological appropriateness of using categories drawn from contemporary postcolonial interpretation in reading a book such as Daniel.

The geographical term, HAROSHETH HAGGOYIM, used in Judegs 4, has been the subject of conjecture and debate for over a century. Attempts to identify it as a particular settlement or town have all proven unsuccessful. Reference to the LXX transcription of the name, viz. Arisoth, points to the solution. The original term was a plural, cognate with Akkadian erishtu "cultivable land." An older suggestion, to see it as a cognate to Aramaic hursha "copse, forest," which in turn was supposedly cognate to an Akkadian ghost word, *hurshu a putative singular of hurshanu "mountain" was based on unsubstantiated conjectures and supported by one aberrant translation in poorer manuscript traditions of the LXX, where "forest" supplanted the standard transcription. The resultant theory adduced that HAROSHETH HAGGOYIM was the forested "Lower Galilee." Sisera's chariots running around in forested hills is a ridiculous picture! Instead it can be seen that HAROSHETH HAGGOYIM is paralleled in the poem of Chapter 5 by the expresson "At Taanach, by the Waters of Megiddo." In other words, HAROSHETH HAGGOYIM taken in its obvious meaning is the great agricultural zone between Megiddo, Shunem and Taanach.

This paper analyzes Handel’s 1739 oratorio Saul as biblical interpretation. Primary attention will be given to Jennens’ libretto in comparison with the biblical text and with Cowley’s earlier poem Davideis, which Jennens acknowledged as a source. In particular, I am interested in the representation of Saul’s madness. The biblical story explains his aggressive and paranoid behavior in terms of an "evil spirit" sent from God to punish Saul for his disobedience. This explanation did not comport well with 18th century concepts of God or madness. Thus, the libretto avoids the narratives of 1 Samuel 13 and 15, which receive only one allusion that places Saul’s madness before his disobedience, as its cause. Further, it explains Saul’s madness in two ways: as a failure of reason to govern passion, and as an ate out of Greek and neo-classical tragedy. In addition to analysis of the libretto, I will consider Handel’s music as interpretive of character, in comparison with the role of music in the biblical narrative. The latter presents music almost as a form of therapy, but the oratorio renders Saul’s music of madness more powerfully than David’s music of health. The role of music itself is thus more ambiguous in the oratorio than in the books of Samuel. This discussion will be contexualized both in terms of Handel’s other biblical oratorios, and also in reference to 18th century theology and medicine, as these influenced the depiction of Saul's madness.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the textual affinities of Origen’s Gospel of Matthew using the Quantitative Analysis method. Some scholars have traced the Caesarean text-type to Origen, mostly in his Gospel of Mark; but more recently, some have challenged that view, even the existence of a Caesarean text-type. This presentation attempts to clarify, confirm or repudiate that Origen was a witness of a different text-type in the Gospel of Matthew. Origen’s text was reconstructed from the citations, adaptations, allusions, and interpretative quotations, using a revised version of the methodology established by Gordon Fee. The reconstructed text was collated against a selection of manuscripts representative of the four major acknowledged text forms: (1) Alexandrian, (2) Caesarean, (3) Byzantine, and (4) Western. The significant variants were selected as sole tangible evidence. The Center for New Testament Textual Studies of New Orleans ran the results of the collation through its Quantitative Analysis database and provided the quantitative tables, using primarily the methodology established by Colwell and Tune. The tables were analyzed and revealed that Origen’s text of Matthew had strong affinities with the witness f1.

This paper explores the ritual use of snakes in early Christian, especially “Gnostic,” communities: what purpose did the snakes serve in the gatherings; what exegetical basis was there for such practices; and what, if any, role did these rituals play for the given community’s identity construction? Our evidence for Christian snake handling comes from certain New Testament verses, from heresiologists’ claims, and from certain amulets and vases. We also know from the Nag Hammadi and related texts that some “Gnostic” Christians, in interpreting Genesis, gave the serpent a salvific role, and some then bolstered this interpretation with John 3:14 and Matt 10:16, verses where Jesus speaks highly of serpents. Some even identified Christ with the serpent (based on John 3:14). Some Christians also may have been influenced by the many pagan cults and mysteries that included snake handling. Then, from another point of view, I wish to discuss the heresiologists’ exaggerating and blackening descriptions of “Gnostic” snake handling, which is related to their attempts at defining “orthodoxy” and “heresy.” Many heresiologists claimed that certain “Gnostics” not only venerated the serpent but that some even let a snake sanctify their eucharist. These sometimes fantastic stories seem to go back to Hippolytus’ brief remarks, and thus they should be evaluated with caution. Particularly Epiphanius used snake-stories as a rhetorical tool in combatting heresies. However, we know, for example, from Mark 16:17–18 that some seemingly “orthodox” Christians handled snakes to test or prove their faith. Even if used for such purposes only, I suspect that the mere presence of snakes in communal gatherings deemed “heretical” might have given rise to accusations such as snake worship, especially if the people in question read texts which criticized YHWH and praised the serpent’s advice to eat from the forbidden tree.

Before the exile, the prophets of Israel functioned – at least some of them – face to face with their king. After the exile, however, the prophets of Judah functioned under a foreign king, with no Davidic ruler present, even as a puppet. Unlike their predecessors, post-exilic prophets could not directly address their king. Priests and other leaders probably collaborated with Persian officials in order to maintain their stations, but such low-level patronage is quite different from facing an indigenous ruler directly. Thus the prophets after the exile had limited access to the real political power. Did that change make a difference? The answer is a resounding “Yes.” In that new situation, post-exilic prophets proclaimed somewhat different messages vis-à-vis the king. Haggai and Zechariah hoped for the restitution of the monarchy and urged the rebuilding of the temple. However, the anonymous speaker(s) in Zechariah 9–14 envisioned a different future: they thought that the new day promised in Isaiah 40–55, Jeremiah 29–31, and Ezekiel 34–48 had not come to fruition because the new leaders, including the Davidides and the priests, had been unfaithful to God. This article will survey those views briefly. Then it will turn to the presentation of the monarch in the rest of the Twelve, arguing that in the rest of the book the king was irrelevant or a rex absconditus. Even where discussed, the king often was “off stage” somewhere. Finally, the article will conclude that one factor helping to shape prophecy in Israel was the presence or absence of the king. Since the king seems off stage even in books like Amos and Hosea, one implication is that the Book of the Twelve was edited in circles that had little real interest in the restoration of the monarch.

Pending

Most scholars believe that the Gospel of John provides evidence for the historical experience of the Johannine community within and for which it was written. In most constructions of the community's history, this experience includes a traumatic expulsion from the synagogue. This paper will explore an alternative interpretation: that the Gospel's references to expulsion or exclusion may not reflect the actual experiences of the community but rather may represent the evangelist's warning against "backsliding", that is, returning to Judaism.

Recent anthropological studies of ancient Near Eastern texts and of peoples that have preserved their original culture in modern times have shown a worldview, in which things and living beings dispose of a material and perpetually emanating aura. It can be tapped by contiguity, and certain qualities can be conferred to other subjects or objects. The "magic" view reckons with a dynamic system of powers, in which beings are connected with one another. By ritual acts one can gain access to these powers.Biblical exegesis can use these insights for a better understanding of Old Testament ritual texts. Taking as example the law of burnt offerings in Lev 1, a close reading can show that the oldest layer of the chapter contains a self-effective ritual, formulated in 3. pers. sg., describing the exact process of the offering ( Vv.4–6.9aba). The laying of the offerer’s hand upon the animal has the effect of "being accepted" (ni.) as atonement. Everything functions automatically. The ritual could be used without any intervention of a deity. At a later stage, the piece was framed by sentences declaring the form of the offer as an express command of YHWH to the Israelites through the mouth of Mose. Thus it was secondarily founded on divine authority.

The presentation will focus on courses at the most introductory level and at the graduate level. It will discuss how archaeological site-related information, such as slides, museum catalogues, archaeological reports, and websites, can be used in religion courses.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Rephaim in Sheol are sketched as men who have been stripped of their masculinity, their bodies being reduced to shades or shadows of their former selves; the most vivid descriptions of the Rephaim being found in prophetic taunts against Israel’s enemies. My analysis refracts Sheol and its Rephaim through a combined lens of colonial discourse and a feminist critique of masculinity, which reveals Sheol as an imperial power that receives, and then emasculates those it colonizes, yielding the Rephaim. Engaging prophetic passages with Daniel 12:1–2, we can then understand the Rephaim as being held in a womb like suspension in Sheol, poised for birth. As such, the gendered relationship between Rephaim and the Sheol is one of male-female, but with both prophetic and psalmic texts exposing a male preoccupation and anxiety with emasculation. Given that the Rephaim in Sheol particularly in the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 14), are portrayed as exclusively masculine, my analysis suggest that the Rephaim in Sheol ultimately function as a rhetorical strategy to enable the Hebrew audience to experience a psychological victory in the midst of their own captivity thereby bolstering their own eroded masculine identities. Like the rhetoric of emasculation in the prophets, the Psalmists’ dread of Sheol is rooted in a vulnerability to being stripped of those attributes intrinsic to their own masculinity. In this respect, my analysis of the Rephaim engages David Clines’ essays on the construction of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible.

A Word Hidden in the Heart: the Appropriation of Scripture for Christian Virtue Ethics

A paper on Clement's use of Philo of Alexandria

The memory of historic figures in the societies for whom they are important is, often enough, relatively straightforward. The role of universally admired figures in social memory who come to symbolise society's norms and values is fairly intuitive; even the memory of villainous figures serves the sociological function of pointing out where society's boundaries lie and what happens when they are crossed. But what are we to make when society remembers controversial figures? How do various groups within society contend for their interpretation of those figures? How are the lessons that can be learned from the memory of their lives constructed, legitimated, propagated, and received through various levels of society? The work of sociologists (Barry Schwartz, Gary Alan Fine, Michael Schudson, et al.) in theoretical and empirical studies on collective memory have problematised such instances and shed some light on the social and political forces at play in the construction of difficult reputations. In addition, social memory studies have identified examples where the difficult reputations of controversial figures have transitioned into dominant reputations and have suggested some of the dynamics involved in that transition. The historical Jesus represents an interesting case of a figure whose reputation in the memory of society would have been extremely problematic, especially for those who would later propose positive interpretations of his life. What is more, the fact that this dynamic has not received proper attention in historical Jesus studies suggests the power of the processes by which formerly difficult reputations become dominant historical images. This paper will advance some preliminary hypotheses concerning the rise, reception, and transition of the reputation of the historical Jesus from difficulty to dominance.

The presentation shares a reinvestigation of the Zakkur Inscription based on new photographs that we made by Wayne Pitard and Andrew Vaughn in 1994. The Zakkur Inscription has been widely referenced as one of the important Aramaic inscriptions that informs our knowledge of treaties. This presentation presents a precise palaeographic analysis based on new photographs as well as new readings that have ramifications on larger interpretative matters. The goal of the presentation is both to share these new readings and findings as well as to solicit feedback on some of our new proposals.

As one of the Jehoiachin Exiles, Ezekiel's identification with the community of deportees is clearly apparent. The present study suggests that Ezekiel's sympathy with his brethren audience conducts him to build a separatist ideology, by which he constructs the Jehoiachin Exiles' exclusiveness over the community of Those who Remained in the homeland prior to the destruction and in its aftermath. I will argue that Ezekiel's position in the conflict between Exiles and Those who Remained governs his prophecies of judgement against Jerusalem, as much as it frames his perspectives in the prophecies of consolation kept only for the Exiles. To substantiate this argument, the presentation will track down the interpretive devices by which Ezekiel rephrases the Pentateuchal concepts of exile, and transforms (temporarily) the triangular relationship between God, People and Land. These theological paths that Ezekiel had paved, indeed, constituted the Diaspora ideology from the Neo-Babylonian period and on as the national-religious community of God.

John 20 provides a dramatic climax to the fourth gospel and draws together many of the themes and trajectories of the entire book. This paper will apply a matrix method analysis (described in papers by me before this group in 1987 and 1996) to this chapter. The matrix method models the way in which readers/auditors apprehend the narrative, and discloses both diachronic and synchronic structures present within the text. The paper will review the method and the theory upon which it is based and then summarize the results of the analysis. John 20 contains perhaps the most complete epistemology of Jesus' resurrection to be found in the New Testament. The matrix method reveals that this epistemology revolves around an interrelationship of seeing, knowing and believing. The issues defined by this interrelation not only involve the characters within the narrative, but also implicate the text-recipient and her/his relation to the text. The author of the fourth gospel pushes the epistemology even further and suggests a resurrection ontology. Parallels between John 20 and the Pauline tradition suggest that this move resides as part of the earliest accessible traditions which deal with the resurrection narratives, and represents a primitive Christian way for understanding this event. A hypertext version of the paper, as well as of John 20, will be available online for downloading [should the address be included in the abstract?]. This hypertext rendering demonstrates a uniquely electronic form of the biblical text. This version of the paper will provide participants with a firsthand opportunity to interact with the text through the matrix analysis. The hypertext rendering of John 20 will be demonstrated in the session.

Authority, as philosopher Yves Simon once observed, has a bad name. Yet, as he went on to argue, human freedom and the common good are inconceivable without authority. The issue, then, is not how to move toward a utopia that lies somewhere beyond the need for authority. Rather, the question has to do with what kind of auctoritas we will have and in what way it will be exercised. In relation to Luke-Acts, the question can be posed in this way: What is the nature of authority within the community that purports to live under the dominion of the kyrios panton? In view of the larger theme of this Consultation, this paper will be a ethical-theological analysis of the construal of authority in Luke-Acts via its narrative embodiment.

Despite many attempts at solving the problem of the religio-ethnic identity of the Matthean group, the scholarly community is still divided: some maintain a non-Jewish origin of the gospel and its author (Clarke, 1947; Meier, 1981), others claim that the Mattheans were well within the confines of first century Judaism (Saldarini, 1994; Overman, 1996). Taking a socio-historical as well as literary approach, the present paper will use praxis-oriented and ethnic criteria analysing the judgment language of the gospel in an attempt to solve the conundrum. As has been argued by Duling (1995) and others, the Matthean community should be understood as a voluntary association. Further, if Ascough (2001) is correct, this community had gone through the three major transitional stages of formation, cohesion, and regulation, using the gospel as its ‘manifesto.’ Being the text in the New Testament most concerned with divine judgment (Marguerat, 1995), this ‘manifesto’ of the association is marked by a constant urge to define insiders and outsiders in terms of beliefs and codes of conduct. The judgment language of the first gospel thus provides us with a rare opportunity to resolve the question of the self-identification of the Matthean community. Enabling a discussion of what might be identified as ‘Jewish’ or ‘non-Jewish’ in the gospel, two criteria will govern the analysis: a praxis-oriented criterion, concerned with issues relating to the keeping of Jewish laws, and an ethnic criterion, distinguishing between Jews and non-Jews as portrayed in the gospel. It will be shown that an analysis of divine judgment in the first gospel firmly establishes this ‘manifesto’ as a Jewish document used within a Jewish community cherishing the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah. As such, the Matthean voluntary association was one of many Jewish associations, identifying itself as part of the larger Jewish community.

The stelae from Bronze Age Syria provide a potentially fruitful perspective from which to view ancient Syrian religious ideologies and practices, since these objects have been identified in both the archaeological and epigraphic records. Furthermore, these stelae exhibit both continuity and disjunction with their Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and southern Levantine analogues. Previous work by archaeologists has focused on establishing the basic sequence of Early (Mari, Tell Chuera), Middle (Ebla), and Late (Ugarit; compare Ashur, Hazor) Bronze artifacts and archaeological contexts. In contrast, philologists have concentrated on identifying the indigenous Syrian term for ‘stele’ (sikkanu) in Early (Ebla), Middle (Mari, Tuttul), and Late (Ugarit, Emar, Tell Munbaqa/Ekalte, Hattusha) Bronze epigraphic sources. Because of the formidable problems of geographic distribution, local variation, and diachronic change, most attempts at synthesis have amounted to little more than juxtaposition. This paper will concentrate on a holistic reading of the Late Bronze artifacts and documents, since these sources exhibit the widest distribution of archaeological contexts (temples, royal/private houses) and literary genres (votive, narrative, ritual, legal texts). A stele is a physical, public mediator of social discourse, a visible, material locus of the negotiation of power relations among gods, social elites, and the general population. This paper will contend that each context in which a stele appears necessarily implies all of its other contexts, creating a coherent social construct.

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The modern study of Manichaeism has been a perpetual reconstruction process of the “authentic Manichaean voice” covering both original textual material and descriptions “through the eyes of the other”. The source value of the latter material has been intensively debated. How much are the eyes of the other to be trusted and on which issues? My study will overcome this artificial dichotomy by tracing discrete instances in which Manichaean discourse is apparently intentionally generated “through the eyes of the other”. I will attempt to follow these rhetorical strategies within the poorly mapped interactions of Manichaean and philosophical discourse and practice. That Manichaeans had exercised a philosophical appeal within the highly competitive landscape of late antique philosophical schools is clearly reflected by Alexander of Lycopolis’ polemical treatise. I will attempt to enlarge the picture by proposing new readings especially of passages from the vita of Mani (e.g. Mani’s interactions with worldly power).

In the kingdom of Mari (on the Euphrates, roughly where Syria meets Iraq), around the time of Hammurabi (just after 1800 BCE), King Zimri-Lim hardly moved out of the palace without consulting the gods. He rarely needed to ask their opinion, however, because the gods readily volunteered it, using diverse means to get their messages across. In this presentation the accent will be on messages that deal with the welfare of king, dynasty, or land. The issue of what is or is not Utopian/dystopian in this genre of material will be addressed.

4Q252 is a somewhat perplexing literary composition. It quotes Genesis in a selective manner and employs divergent techniques of interpreting the scriptural text. The nature of this document has been a matter of dispute. According to George J. Brooke, 4Q252 carries theological messages, or at least exposes specific theological themes, like the land, and blessings and curses. Moshe J. Bernstein sees the text simply as a non-ideological interpretation of exegetical cruces in Genesis ˆ in his view, we have no way of knowing on what basis the Genesis passages were selected. They both agree that further examination of 4Q252 is needed in order to clarify its characteristics. My aim is to critically assess some of the possible unifying motives behind 4Q252, on the basis of detailed analysis of its pericopae. This paper attempts to show that 4Q252 can be read as a selective exposition of history, with particular interest in crucial moments in the course of patriarchal generations, starting with the flood. Election of certain lines of ancestry, and rejection of others, seem to play a significant part in this exposition. Moreover, the presentation of history in 4Q252 reaches out towards future and the messianic age. Even if the theme construction of 4Q252 is largely inherited from Genesis, the composition is built to emphasize certain themes while ignoring others.

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The social provenance of the Deuteronomist's has been a prime topic of research ever since Martin Noth's redaction-historical model of the Deuteronomistic History appeared. The hypothesis of an individual author was soon replaced by the assumption of different 'schools'. F.M.Cross and R.D.Nelson proposed two dtr circles, whereas Rudolf Smend and his students, suggested there were three dtr circles. The postulated period of dtr activity concurred with the increased numbers of Deuteronomists. The concept of a group of scribes collecting, writing and reworking texts over a longer period of time resulted in the question of the composition of this group. These facts made it conceivable that the dtr groupings were of different origins. The existing, more or less established proposals to identify their socio-economic affiliation, are contradictory. The deuteronomists were of priestly origin (G.von Rad) or scribes belonging to the Jerusalem court (Weinfeld), late students of early northern prophets (Nicholson) or supporters of the prophet Jeremiah, even perhaps descendants of north-Israelite refugees, especially those stemming from former priestly families (Clements). The 'am-ha-arez or the elders also appeared to be suitable candidates. Jürgen Albertz suggested a compromise, proposing that all relevant societal factions of the Jerusalem elite participated. My lecture will consider the divergent results of research concerning the social provenance of the Dtrs from a sociological perspective. The studies of Max Weber, Edward Shils, Talcott Parsons and S.N.Eisenstadt are with regard to content and methodology the starting point of my considerations. In this connection two sociological concepts, 'tradition' and 'charisma', stand in the forefront. They serve as heuristical instruments, when the conditions of old oriental society, which allow the development of new conceptions of social order, are inquired about.

This paper explores the Septuagint of Exodus as a mirror of Alexandrian Judaism, its theological views and its social and cultural situation. It devotes particular attention to the exodus theme and the way it reflects the paradoxical hermeneutical situation of the translator(s). The paper also deals with the place of the Greek Exodus in the overall context of the Pentateuch. The author currently prepares a volume of philological and exegetical commentary on the Greek Exodus for the "Septauginta deutsch" project.

Abraham Heschel, Terence Fretheim, and Walter Brueggemann have made important contributions interpreting anthropomorphic metaphors in the prophetic writings. They have drawn our attention to language that portrays God as emotionally engaged with creation in a way that involves suffering. While their points of similarity are well known, few have recognized the significant ways these three scholars differ from one another. They approach metaphorical language about God with different presuppositions, and they employ diverse hermeneutical approaches. As a result, their characterizations of God are profoundly dissimilar, if not inherently contradictory. This paper examines these differences. After demonstrating how each scholar employs a unique interpretive approach to anthropomorphic metaphors about God, it shows how they have consequently arrived at different understandings of divine pathos, wrath, fidelity, and mutability. This work demonstrates how Fretheim and Brueggemann bear Heschel's influence while moving in new directions. It also points to the significance of hermeneutics for biblical theology and suggests that biblical theologians need to be more transparent not only about their presuppositions but also their interpretive paradigms.

Scholars have recognized that Calendar was a major issue dividing the Qumran sect from the Jerusalem Temple leadership. This paper argues that Jubilees was identified as "the second Torah" of Qumran (e.g., 4Q177). The “torah” of Jubilees gave Sinaitic justification for the Qumran sect’s solar calendar. The Qumran sect found justification for two "torahs" in their interpretation of Ex 24:12 and claimed that the Jerusalem Priestly leadership had rejected this torah of Jubilees and its calendar.

The wilderness, or wilderness experience, for the Israelites forms a central part of the Hebrew narrative. Later the wilderness, or desert, motif is picked up by biblical writers and used as a paradigm of everything from hardship, testing and disobedience to an idealized place of purification and nearness to God. In this paper I will briefly trace the idea of the wilderness (and the wilderness period) as it is positively interpreted in the biblical Prophets, such as Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. For them the desert can be an ideal place of close guidance from and communication with God, and this understanding is later picked up and expanded upon by those at Qumran through the self-understanding of their own wilderness experience. By looking at texts such as the Serekh (1QS) and 4QBarki Napshi, I argue that the community found benefits to--and almost a necessity for--a return to a place of wilderness in order to enact covenant renewal and receive divine revelation, much like that given the children of Israel at Sinai. In this way, the wilderness embodies for them a place of close connection to the divine and a portal to the heavenly age to come.

The paper examines the epistemological divide that currently exists in biblical studies and that is part of larger developments in western intellectual discourse. We are in the midst of moving from a positivistic epistemology, characteristic of the modern western worldview, to a postmodern epistemology. The former assumes objectivity, value neutrality, and universality whereas the latter recognizes the contextualized, particularized, and localized nature of all exegetical work. The drama of this divide is particularly visible when scholars examine rape laws in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. Two sections illustrate the epistemological divide as reflected in research on biblical and ancient Near Eastern rape laws. The first section examines two passages in the book of Deuteronomy (21:10–14; 22:22–29) and its scholarly interpretations. The second section considers ancient Near Eastern texts, such as the laws of Eshnunna, the Code of Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian laws, and Hittite laws. Both sections demonstrate that exegetes are divided on how to classify laws dealing with sexual violence. The paper does not resolve the conflict or offer a compromise, which is neither available nor desirable, especially not in the case of rape codices. It is an attempt to acknowledge the epistemological divide in the exegetical work, especially as related to biblical rape texts, and to invite biblical scholars to openly address our epistemological differences as the reason for our different interpretations regarding rape laws in ancient Israel.

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All scholarly treatment of the Decalogue views it as a law code. Scholars are unanimous in their assumption that the proclamation of the Decalogue as recounted in Exodus 19–20 was a covenantal act and that the ten utterances themselves constituted legislation promulgated upon the initiation of this covenant. However, a close reading of the Elohistic narrative (of which these events are a part) on its own terms reveals that this is not the case. The Decalogue is presented as a representative sampling of the style and substance of the legislation to be promulgated immediately thereafter, and it was proclaimed for the sole purpose of establishing in advance Moses’ credibility as mediator of God’s laws. This Elohistic tale of the Horeb theophany is indeed the origin of D’s version of the same events, but the latter differs radically from the former in its idea that the what took place at Horeb accounts for the very existence of prophecy itself. D’s notion of prophecy as a divine concession to Israel’s fear of direct exposure to the deity’s self-revelation is thus an interpretation of E’s narrative; the Elohistic author believed otherwise.

Traditionally, the genealogies in 1 Chronicles 1–9 have been understood as reinforcing the status quo of the society at the time of the Chronicler’s composition. However, some more recent works have challenged that opinion and have argued instead that these chapters contain subtle critiques of social practices and institutions (especially the recent articles by Gary Knoppers and Ehud Ben Zvi). This paper builds on their insights into such topics as intermarriage and the role of women while offering further examples of such social critique not previously considered. Drawing on the methodology of utopian literary theory, the "missing" genealogies of Dan and Zebulun, the abbreviated genealogy of Naphtali, and the so-called "legitimizing" genealogies of Judah and Levi will be read to discover what type of better alternative reality (the literary theorists’ definition of "utopia") is constructed through these texts. When the genealogies of these tribes are read in tandem with the Chronicler’s "all Israel" ideology, a rather distinct view of the identity of "Israel" emerges. In Chronicles, "Israel" is not defined by time, space, ethnicity, or limited only to the Golah community, but the term is subject to constant redefinition and serves a utopian function in the presentation of Israel’s past. Chronicles does not simply advocate the replication of an "Ideal Israel" from the past in the Chronicler’s present or future. Instead, by advocating principles of identity which transcend the universalism/particularism debate, Chronicles offers to its readers a better alternative reality of who Israel is and can be in the future.

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In the Pastoral Epistles, the metaphors of slave (2 Tim 2:24–5; Titus 1:1), soldier (1 Tim 1:18; 6:12, 20; 2 Tim 2:3–4) and athlete (1 Tim 4:7–10; 2 Tim 2:4–13; 4:6–8) describe the life and work of the Christian missionary. Ephesians 6 prefaces the "panoply of God" with athletic language. Further, these metaphors occur in epistles set against a background of imprisonment and stressing endurance despite pain or opposition. In Paul and the Agon Motif, Victor Pfitzner suggests martial and games metaphors should be kept distinct from athletic tropes. True enough, the Pastorals use athletic language in ways distinct from the traditional, Greek philosophical discourse; yet they may be making these transformations in particularly Roman ways; the combination of metaphors for athlete, soldier and slave suggests the context of the gladiator. The Pastorals transform Hellenistic convention, but do so in very "Roman" (and not very unique) ways. Why would the image of athlete be morphed into the gladiator? Socially "despised" though gladiators may have been, they welded a unique cultural influence and ambiguous fame. As metaphors, the represented the unbowed captive, heroically enduring despite any opposition (Carlin Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans). I intend to argue athletic tropes provide a contextualization for Paul's sufferings. They reframe the intra and extra communal struggles of Paul, valorizing his efforts and suggesting he was a success despite (or, perhaps, through) his apparent defeat. Compensatory, these metaphors offer vindication of Paul's seeming obscurity and defeat; Paul is presented as a "noble sufferer" proving his character, and therefore his message, authentic.

This paper seeks to analyze what it is that constitutes a Latino/a modality of interpretation in biblical criticism. Arguing against an essentialist conception of such an enterprise, the paper will argue for a contextual and strategic program. It will look at the fundamental factors that impinge upon Latino/a interpretation and map out a strategy for interpretation in the light of such factors.

Early Christian apologists like Justin and Athenagoras employed the belief in resurrection of the body to both make the case for Christianity's essential belonging in the Greco-Roman world and to hold the Empire at arm's length. Resurrection of the body served as a shorthand for a set of assertions about God's power,the value of the created world, and the legitimacy of certain interpretations of Scripture. Using the theory of Anthony Cohen about the symbolic construction of community, I argue that the apologists used resurrection belief to preserve the distinctive identity of their own communities, while countering severe pagan objections (Celsus, Minucius Felix) to the doctrine. It became part of an early Christian strategy by which they, in Averil Cameon words "wrote and talked their way into empire."

Foreign rulers are figured in the Hebrew Bible as sources of considerable threat, not only militarily but culturally. Diaspora anxiety about the lure of the foreign court has generated deep ironies in Biblical literature concerning the interactions of Israelites with foreign rulers. Bringing insights from literary theorist Linda Hutcheon and cultural anthropologist Michael Herzfeld into conversation with Biblical hermeneutics, this paper explores the ironizing of power in Hebrew Bible construals of three foreign monarchs: Joseph as "Egyptian" ruler, Belshazzar, and Darius. Pausing momentarily on the hyperbolically pious anxiety of Abimelech in the matter of Sarah as a signal of ironic ambivalence about the import of the patriarchal covenant for "all the families of the earth" (Gen 12:3), the paper moves to examine multiple ironies in the Joseph narrative regarding insider/outsider boundaries and assimilation, political power invested and divested, and identity masked and unmasked; these tropes will be seen to ironize the story of the Garden of Eden. Ironies inhering in the writtenness of revelation will be analyzed in the story of Belshazzar and the terrifying inscription written by the disembodied hand; Belshazzar's untimely death following his investiture of courageous hermeneut Daniel with the insignia of royal power may best be read as an ironic narratological response to his ill-fated hermeneutical risk-taking. Questions of writing and power will be probed further in the story of Darius, who first signs himself into powerlessness, then rewrites a real word of power that ironically binds royal authority in the mundane realm to the acknowledgement of the God of Daniel. In each of these stories, ironic constructions of foreignness and power are rhetorically performed by means of a highly self-conscious intertextuality. This suggests that irony should be more fully appreciated as a constitutive texture of some late traditioning processes in the Hebrew Bible.

This paper will show how the inclusion of traditions about women is essential for the study of the composition of the Pentateuch. The theme of the “promises to the patriarchs” has often been explored as a key organizing element of the Pentateuchal narrative. However, in most of the source- and redaction-critical treatments of the theme, the role of the matriarchal traditions is ignored. A detailed look at these traditions shows that they once belonged to an independent group of women’s traditions about fertility and childbirth. With the incorporation of the promise for limitless offspring into the patriarchal promise narratives, and with the growing importance of the promises as a theological motif in ancient Israelite tradition, these once-independent narratives concerning the matriarchs and the birth of a specific son were increasingly subsumed under the patriarchal history’s general promise of increase. This process has already begun in J, but P, in Genesis 17, finalizes it, taking the promise of Isaac away from Sarah and giving it instead to Abraham. This difference between J and P is linked to larger, fundamental theological differences between the sources which are reflected, for example, in the creation narrative; source criticism thus provides an important key for unlocking the history of women in ancient Israel.

The imposition of herem as a means of destroying and consecrating to the deity, enemy populations and their land, is well-attested in biblical texts. In the books of Joshua and Judges in particular, we find a number of references to herem where specific emphasis is placed on the complete extermination of Canaanite populations. Through this act, the conquering Israelites render the land an empty vessel in which they, and their patron deity, Yahweh, can set up residence. These biblical herem narratives are consistent with the interests of other first millennium herem texts from Moab and South Arabia, which also present herem as population extermination. This distribution of texts suggests that this type of herem was most at home in an inland, tribal setting. In this paper I shall demonstrate that all of the biblical references to herem where explicit reference is made to eradication of population, concern the tribe of Benjamin. I shall argue that these Deuteronomistic compositions contain much older, Benjaminite material, and constitute some of the earliest traditions relating to Israel’s conquest and occupation of the land. These findings accord with archaeological evidence, which suggests that the territory of Benjamin was the first region to have sustained Israelite settlement. Once these texts’ original Benjaminite interests are exposed, certain aspects of the texts’ significance and compositional history come into clearer relief.

Peter’s interpretation of his vision as recorded in Acts 10 hinges on the statement “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” In that chapter and for several beyond, the reader of Luke’s narrative observes the process by which Peter comes to conclude that God is impartial with respect to the Gentiles and that Peter himself is to make no distinction between Jew and Gentile. To this end, as will be demonstrated below, Luke has prepared the reader to anticipate and appreciate Peter’s process through a series of texts in his gospel related to cleansing and leprosy. The particular theological points about “cleansing” developed through the leprosy stories find their ultimate expression in Peter’s description of his vision to the Jerusalem council where they become a warrant for the inclusion of the Gentiles into the Christian community. The paper proceeds in four movements. First, I locate the issue of the acceptability of Gentiles within the wide horizon marked out by Luke 4 and Acts 10. In the second section I track the evangelist’s effort to establish a narrative identification between the Gentiles and the lepers. Third, I demonstrate how occurrences of forms of the verb katharizo function to link the cleansing passages in the gospel to the account of Peter’s vision in Acts. In the final movement, I draw conclusions about the relevance of “cleansing” in the leprosy narratives for properly understanding Peter’s interpretation of his vision as presented by Luke the evangelist.

Imagery drawn from the basic structures of the Roman family pervades the Fourth Gospel. For instance, Jesus’ submission to God as paterfamilias is prevalent in pericopes such as John 17:9–10, which hints at the Roman practice of issuing an adult child with a peculium. In this paper exploration will be undertaken concerning how Jesus’ life, when viewed from the perspective of a son’s relationship with a paterfamilias, provides a model for his followers’ relationship with God. Attention will also be given to the fatherhood motif of 6:31–51 and 8: 33–59 in which Jesus’ listeners are urged to shift their allegiance from their earthly ancestors, who were God’s agents, to the true source of power, God the father, the paterfamilias. In order to execute this shift there is a necessity for believers to sever emotional ties with earthly figures and re-establish them with the divine. This process is represented by Simon Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus and the threefold assertion of love in 21:15–19. The sequence of events involving this disciple is reminiscent of the Roman threefold procedure involved in manumission from one’s current affiliation and the establishment of new lines of paternal authority. Indeed, Simon Peter must relinquish his ties with the earthly forms of authority, including the “earthly” Jesus to be free to accept the risen Lord, the Logos who is co-existent with the Father. Believers who accept the risen Jesus become children of the Father.

No two biblical icons have so profoundly affected configurations of politics and gender within Jewish and Christian cultures as Isaac on the woodpile and Jesus on the cross. This paper explores the tortured relations of these fundamental texts with themselves and each other under three related headings: 1) secret and spectacle 2) queer motherhood 3) divine and human(e). Under (1) we explore the tension between the public spectacle of Roman crucifixion as "state terrorism" and the markedly private, secret Abrahamic "sacrifice." We also explore how these ancient sacrificial grammars have been explicitly invoked for purposes of anti-imperial resistance (whether by Jewish or Christian "martyrs," or by "terrorists" like Muhammad Atta), but also how they have been incorporated into the founding myths of monarchies and states. Under (2) we consider how the genders of Isaac and Jesus are convolutedly produced (performed, directed), but also how those gender productions are bound up with issues of reproduction. Isaac and Jesus are both queerly "feminised" as fecund male bodies and performers of "sacrifice" as childbirth "done better" (consider, for example, the interpretive stream that has the Johannine Jesus give birth to the Church, as water and blood gush from his opened body). In (3) we explore the no less convoluted relationship between divine and human(e) bodies and ask what difference it makes whether other bodies come between God and the sacrificed body (as in the fourfold Father-father-son-lamb model of the Akedah), or whether, as in the Trinitarian Christian tradition, Father, father, son and lamb are essentially one and the same. The latter conflation, we contend, is an attempt to suture the wound between religion and ethics, fathers and sons, and authority and dissent. Sacrifice is altogether more palatable when you don't have to hear another body scream.

Most nonbureaucratic writing in the first century Roman world was intended in one way or another to be transformed into oral performance. Q is well suited for oral delivery both as a whole and as individual speeches. This presentation will include performance of parts of the woes speech in both English and Greek according to my own reconstruction of the expected style of delivery in the first century Roman world, accompanied by a discussion of the features of the woes speech that make it effective in oral delivery. Since emotional delivery was a central part of first century oral performance, particular attention will be given to the emotional force of the speech. The differences between the Lukan and Matthean versions of the Q speech correspond to the variation that would be expected in different oral performances. The amount of variation between the Lukan and Matthean versions of the Q speech as well as the particular differences in those versions also provide clues to the way that the speech may have functioned in the oral environment of early Christianity. The Q speech functions more as a speech outline with suggestions for effective phrasing than a text to be presented verbatim.

It has long been recognized by Western scholars that the Qur’an depends heavily on numerous early Christian apocrypha for its accounts of the lives of Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist. The Qur’anic traditions of Jesus’ Nativity, however, present a peculiar combination of early Christian traditions, for which there was no known Christian parallel for a long time. Recent discoveries in the fields of late ancient Christian literature, liturgy, and archaeology, however, have now combined to reveal a local Jerusalemite tradition that was the likely source of this early Islamic tradition. The newly discovered Kathisma church presents a fascinating “missing link” between the Christian and Qur’anic traditions. This church was originally associated with the Nativity of Christ, but it also came to be linked with the Holy Family’s legendary flight into Egypt. The Kathisma is the only place where these two early Christian traditions intersect, outside of the Qur’an. Moreover, the church of the Kathisma was converted into a mosque in the early eighth century, and its decorations suggest very strongly that the recycled sacred space continued to commemorate the Nativity of Jesus, as the Christian shrine had before it. Furthermore, the importance of this shrine in early Islamic culture is underscored by the important architectural and artistic relationships that its excavators have identified between the Kathisma church/mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Although one cannot entirely exclude other possibilities, the history and traditions of the Kathisma church present a high degree of probability that at least this one Qur’anic tradition likely came into being not in the Hijaz, but only after the conquering Arabs had come into contact with the local traditions of Christian Palestine.

One of the greatest treasures of Saint Catherine’s Monastery is the Codex Theodosianus, a lectionary dated to the tenth century, containing seven brilliant illuminations. Every letter of this manuscript is executed in gold leaf, in majuscule letters of great beauty. An analysis of the text indicates the use and original dedication of this codex. A review of the Orthodox theology of the icon provides important insights into the correspondence between script and image, and the manner in which this manuscript may be understood as an icon of the Gospel. Numerous slides will be shown, demonstrating the monastery’s recent program of manuscript photography using a high resolution digital camera, which promises to make all the manuscrpts of this exceptional library more accessible.

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For the two great Alexandrian teachers, Clement and Origen, martyrdom represented the pinnacle of Christian commitment. Both authors devote a significant amount of space in their literary corpus articulating the purpose and necessity of martyrdom. In particular, Origen produced a treatise on martyrdom during a period of persecution under Maximin Thrax in 235 CE. Their defense of martyrdom, which informs and buttresses Christian support for and attitudes towards martyrdom, has occupied the attention of historians of Early Christianity for some time. Less examined has been their convictions regarding the nascent cult of the martyrs and participation of Christians in the veneration of martyrs. Though the evidence is scant, this paper will consider Clement and Origen’s views regarding the cult of the martyrs. Further, given that both Clement and Origen openly engage the Hellenistic culture of their time, particular attention will be given to their understanding of traditional Greek hero veneration and how their views may or may not be related to their understanding of Christian martyr veneration.

Luke-Acts has generated no small debate among commentators interested in determining the biblical author's attitude toward the Roman state and perspective on the church's life and witness within its sociopolitical context. The breadth of interpretations--ranging from conciliatory to revolutionary--reflects the complexity of the issues, the ambivalence of Luke's message, and a host of methodological questions concerning how best to characterize a text's political perspective or its claims about the gospel's relationship to society. In this paper, I argue that a narrative analysis of Paul and his custody settings in the story of his prolonged detention (Acts 21–28) offers considerable contributions to discussions about a Lukan view of the practice of Christian ministry within the Imperial context. An analysis of Paul's actions and roles, performed within locations designed to quarantine or censure him, reveals that Paul consistently manipulates and transcends the restrictions that his custody settings intend to impose on his behavior. Although Luke's narrative creates an expectation that Paul is destined to experience suffering and powerlessness as a prisoner, nevertheless Paul emerges in Acts 21–28 as one in control over his environments and with privileged access to the upper echelons of Roman society. Paul exercises explicitly God-given abilities to discover opportunities for proclamation and to exert influence over his circumstances, all precisely within locations designed to restrict his power, visibility, and influence. This divinely-directed manipulation and subversion of his settings reveals that Paul's missionary vocation is not subject to the control of the religious and political powers of the world. The result is a picture of the Way as a subtle yet real challenge to Roman interests and authority.

MSS T.-S. H12.8–9, in a recent catalogue described as an "Aramaic poem with Hebrew refrain based upon Book of Daniel", housed in the Cambridge Genizah Collections contain an odd specimen of Aramaic poetry. These two fragments are two copies of a poem which consists almost entirely of 'recycled' Biblical Aramaic with some Biblical Hebrew. The poem celebrates the rebuilding of the Temple in the face of fierce opposition, borrowing its narrative elements from Ezra 4 and 6, enriched with eschatological motifs drawn from Biblical texts such as Daniel 2. In this paper I will present text and translation, together with a commentary on the sources of the text, as well as on a refrain that only occurs in one of the copies.

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Illustrated with some famous museum examples of weapons that were destroyed/manipulated already in the ancient period, this paper will analyze the motif of destroying weapons in Isaiah 2/Micah 4 (and its reversal in Joel), as well as Zech. 9:10; Isa. 9:5. Do these motifs represent an ancient anti-war sentiment expressed in Prophetic hopes for a future age?

In light of feminist criticism, biblical scholars are paying increasing attention to representations of women in ancient literature, including legal materials. The tendency, however, is to examine women as one cohesive category. Womanist critique of feminism encourages a more nuanced approach that examines a confluence of factors that complicate or occasionally override gender concerns. The complex of socio-economic factors that determine legal status in ancient law, according to some scholars, includes gender, class, wealth, title, age, and family position. This paper engages in critical analysis of the relative legal status of women under various socio-economic circumstances as treated in ancient law collections and establishes a broad context in which to read biblical laws as they relate to women. For example, distinctions among women can be explicit, such as in the class ranking of awiltum, mushkentum, and amtum in Babylonian law. Equally explicit, but still subject to scholarly debate, are the differences among temple-related women such as the naditum, qadishtum, and ugbabtum. Class distinctions exist even among slave women, depending on their owners. In most instances, laws dealing with slave women are more similar to those affecting slave men than to those affecting free women, although the lines become blurred when marriage and childbirth are at issue. These examples demonstrate the necessity of a nuanced approach to questions of gender in ancient law, biblical or otherwise. Texts must be examined individually with attention to the confluence of socio-economic factors before any generalized conclusions can be safely drawn. This paper gives such attention to laws that provide clues to the relative legal status of ancient women in Israelite and Mesopotamian civilizations.

The programmatic Joel citation in Acts 2 anticipates that “young men (neaniskoi) will see visions” (2:17). This paper explores the specific roles of characters identified as a “young man” in the unfolding Acts narrative (5:10; 7:58; 20:9; 23:17–22), with particular attention paid to Saul who is first introduced as a "neanias" (7:58). The emphasis falls not only on what these figures “see” (vision), but also on how they behave (morality), especially in contexts of violence and death. In expounding the “moral vision” of Acts’ young men, this study will attempt to correlate the narrative presentation of Acts with pertinent OT wisdom portraits of “angry young men" and recent studies of masculinity in the NT.

Reflections on Israelite society in light of issues raised by Daniel Fleming's "Democracy's Ancient Ancestors."

Economic anthropology of the ancient world has demonstrated how religion and economics are not free standing institutions but are embedded in the key institutions of kinship and politics. Further, religion and economics exert mutual influence one upon the other, each borrowing the language of the other in the presentation of its own conceptions, goals and visions. For example, many of the activities contributing to the offering of a sacrifice are essentially "economic" in character. But prophetic proclamation can borrow from the economic sphere in order to present its visions of judgment as well as future salvation. A prime example of the prophetic use of metaphor drawn from "political economy" is found throughout the book if Isaiah. This paper presents a study of the literary and social function of prophetic language rooted, for example, in economic exchange and trade (Isa. 2:16) , the acquisition and loss of wealth and power (10:13–19), tribute (23:13), the display of riches and status (3:18–26) and of the royal treasury (39:2–4), and the "wealth of nations" which, in eschatological vision, finally "flows" to Israel when the nations submit to Yahweh and to servitude (Isa. 60:5,11; 61:6; 66:12). The paper argues that the book of Isaiah exhibits a rich diversity of economic metaphor which not only ties together the spheres of religion and political economy but contributes to the message and unity of the book itself.

The hermeneutics of suspicion leads one to ask with Phyllis Bird, “Where should we look for female religious activity behind … documented practices?” Lev. 12, the passage that considers the woman who has given birth, offers a starting point. The chapter, famous for its patriarchal implications, invites an inverted reading—a reading of women’s power. The woman who has given birth to a boy is ritually impure for a total of forty days, a period roughly contiguous with the puerperium, the six-week period “during which the anatomic and physiologic changes brought about by childbirth resolve”—but for a girl it is eighty days. Magonet speculates that the double period of impurity for a daughter reflects the occasional phenomenon of the “menstruating baby.” Following the withdrawal of the maternal hormones, a newborn baby girl may experience vaginal bleeding. Thus, the text may account for the “equivalent of ‘two women,’ each with an actual or potential vaginal discharge.” The mother bears the ritual responsibility for the two. It is the “potential” that really counts here. Since the “menstruating baby” is not inevitable, such cannot be the primary rationale for the ritual cleansing required of all mothers who bear female children. The mother must act for her daughter in anticipation of her adult menses and child-bearing. One could speculate that its very markedness suggests an analogy to the eighth day circumcision of the male child mentioned at Lev. 12:3. Indeed, a particular woman (in another puzzling passage at Exod. 4:24–26), Zipporah, ritually acts on behalf of her son (and husband), circumcising the boy. Ilana Pardes’ reading of Zipporah-as-subject suggests the possibility of the parturient-as-subject. The text recollects the woman-as-“mohelet” when it places the parturient’s ritual for the girl in symmetry with male circumcision (Lev. 12:3–5), framing them anew as rites of reproductive potential.

One of the ways in which scholars have tended to separate the “undisputed” letters of Paul from the “disputed” ones, especially in the case of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (the Pastoral Letters) is by assuming that the “authentic” Paul advocated a type of asceticism whose hallmark was celibacy (e.g., 1 Cor. 7: 6), in contrast to the vilification of those that “forbid marriage” by the “household ethic” of the later Pastorals, which are therefore “anti-ascetic,” and therefore non-Pauline. I intend to counter this assumption by showing that the conflict is one between understandings of varieties of asceticism, a conflict that existed fairly early in missionary (apostolic) Christianity (e.g., 1 Cor. 9). The main struggle is between an asceticism defined as an individual struggle against “group esteem and group honor” (Malina) and that defined as a disciplining of individual desires and passions for the sake of group transformation (Valantasis). The rhetorical strategy of the Pastoral Letters thus attempts to define a “true” asceticism.

This paper will examine issues of sexuality and gender with regard to angels. It will focus primarily upon the portrayal of angels in the Gospels and Acts, but all the relevant literature from the period will be considered. An examination of the Gospels and Acts reveals two interesting observations regarding the sexual nature of angels: (1) angels are celibate, and (2) angels seem often to be described as “young men.” The conception of angels as celibate seems to stem from two related beliefs. First, angels are believed to be immortal, thus having no need to procreate (and no need for sexual intercourse). Second, when angels do engage in sexual intercourse (e.g., Gen 6, 1 Enoch), there is inherent danger, since they are going against the order of creation. With regard to the gender of angels, angels are always portrayed as male, which may be the reason that there has been no examination of this issue—it is simply taken for granted. However, the very fact that they are always portrayed as male begs the question: why? This paper aims to understand the cultural setting of the texts that portray angels as celibate, masculine creatures (to whom human females are often seen as a threat (e.g., Gen 6, 1 Cor)) and argues that angel beliefs from the period reflect the largely cultural milieu of androcentricity and male-dominance. Additionally, it will discuss how these beliefs about angels greatly affected the actions of particular human beings (i.e., the early Christians) in the subsequent generations.

In recent decades, the portrayal of God in the Hebrew Scriptures as an ambiguous and negative deity invites much attention. Yet, none of the scholars engages the issue from an Ugaritic perspective. A close look at the portrayal of the Ugaritic deities indicates that they are a fusion of both benevolent and malevolent beings. Similarly, the portrayal of God as both an “unchanging,” “loving,” “compassionate” God and a “capricious,” “hidden,” “ambiguous” God suggests that his portrayal in the Hebrew Scriptures is also a fusion of both positive and negative sides. The two incidences in the Ugaritic literature that describe the deities acting against human beings both involve human disobedience and divine punishment. The pattern is: order, chaos, new order. This pattern explains some of God’s negative actions toward his people in the Hebrew Scriptures. The difference between the Ugaritic and the Hebrew Scriptures’ portrayals lies in the idea of human projection. For the former, the portrayal of the Ugaritic deities is a result of human projection. Thus, the mixed nature of the deities reflects the mixed nature of humanity. In contrast, God clearly states in the Hebrew Scriptures that humanity is made in the image of God (Gen 1:26), not the opposite. The problem is that human beings tend to project our own conceptions of what God should be like into His divinity. Thus, we project the ideal of order into His divine nature and wrestle to make sense the reality of chaos that is present in God’s divine action toward humanity. An honest acceptance of God as a God of both order and chaos; and the fact that he would use chaos to bring out a new order may help us to look at the negative portrayal of God in the Hebrew Scriptures in a more positive light.

Despite ten years of research into the Tel Dan Inscription two aspects of the ancient source have not been fully investigated: the literary analysis of the inscription and its historical significance for the study of the Aramean state during the Iron II period. The inscription’s literary form and historical provenance are interrelated and have direct bearing on the reconstruction of the political institutions that created it. An analysis of the inscription’s literary form reveals that the Tel Dan Inscription is a product of royal propaganda that can be classified as an “autobiographical apology.” This interpretation is supported not only by the use of first person narration, but also by the haphel verb form hmlk (line 4) and the phrases “my father slept …” (line 3) and “I slew seventy kings” (line 6). In addition, the multiple kings of line 6 can be compared with other accounts involving large numbers of anonymous kings associated with Aram-Damascus, possibly reflecting the dimorphic nature of Aramean society. The apology of Hazael, preserved in the Tel Dan Inscription, reflects his efforts to consolidate control over Aramean tribal groups in order to transform Aram-Damascus into a territorial state.

1 Cor 7:21 is a notorious _crux interpretum_ in New Testament studies. Does Paul encourage his readers to seek freedom or is he actually expecting them not to yearn for it? This paper suggests that interpreters of the Pauline passage should take into account the interplay between Paul's view of contemporary slavery and his understanding of Christian sexual ethics. It has been noted that Paul in 1 Cor 6:19f., when prihibiting illicit relations, uses the image of slavery: the body is the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit and does not belong to the Christian. What is Paul actually recommending the female slaves (who were often forced to be their masters' mistresses) to do -- and does the answer to that question help us understand 1 Cor 7:21?

This paper will examine the role that source- and redaction-critical scholarship played in the interpretation of prophetic literature throughout the twentieth century. It will emphasize the means by which prophecies of restoration were identified as later redaction and therefore removed from the reading of prophetic texts. Such strategies resulted in the reading of pre-exilic prophets as prophets of judgment when in fact they combined elements of judgment and restoration. The implications of such insight for contemporary interpretation of prophetic literature will be discussed. Examples will be drawn from various prophetic books, such as Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Amos.

From c.165 to c.550 C.E., Pepouza, described by opponents as an “insignificant city in Phrygia,” was the religious center of a Christian prophetic movement called Montanism. Montanus, one of the founding prophets, gave the name “Jerusalem” both to Pepouza and Tymion, another settlement 12 km. farther North, calling on all Christians from everywhere to gather there. A later Montanist prophetess explicitly proclaimed that the (New) Jerusalem referred to in Revelation 21 would descend there out of heaven. The larger of the two settlements, Pepouza, soon became the physical and symbolic center of Montanism, which quickly spread to other parts of the Roman Empire. In time, Montanist patriarchs presided over the movement from Pepouza until the buildings belonging to Montanism’s ecclesiastical headquarters were partially destroyed and then confiscated by John, bishop of Ephesus, acting on the orders of Justinian I. Situated in a desolate area of western Turkey prone to earthquakes, the exact location of Pepouza was lost until discovered in July 2000 by a team led by the author of this paper. In particular, two key pieces of evidence led to the identification of the site. First, a bilingual (Greek and Latin) inscription, acquired by the Ushak Archaeological Museum in 1998, enabled the team to locate the site of Tymion. Secondly, based on this information, the team was able to find the remains of a monastery, known from ancient sources to have been situated at Pepouza. This paper (illustrated with relevant photographs and maps) describes the search for and discovery of the long-lost cities of Pepouza and Tymion.

Although in Acts there is a noticeable lack of citations of the ethical teaching in Luke, there are phrases that might function as "place holders" for that teaching among persons already familiar with it. Examples are the references in Acts to the message of the reign of God and to "deeds worthy of repentance." However, when we ask whether the behavior encouraged in Acts (by teaching and by the example of authoritative persons) fits the ethical teaching in Luke, it is impossible to give simple answers. The resulting issues are explored in relation to some ethical topics, such as ethics for church leaders, the ethic of love of enemies, and the ethic of possessions.

The paper will survey current lexicons ot the Latin Vulgate.

The narrative world of The Apocalypse is populated with only four female characters. In each case, the female character is drawn to type ideologically and theologically, marked with explicit sexual signifiers, and repeatedly connected with food and violence. Elsewhere I have written that anthropological studies regularly find the triad of women, sex, and food linked across cultures in significant ways. John links that same triad in The Apocalypse, and adds a fourth element, violence. This paper examines two of John's four female characters, the woman clothed with the sun and the personification of Babylon as a whore, demonstrating that John draws only female characters with explicit sexualized language and roles. Both characterizations make liberal use of the quartet of elements – women, sex, food, and violence – in 12:1–19:3, where John constructs a bizarre, fantasy-driven depiction of the female and an "ideology of desire." While these two female characters appear to be drawn along opposite lines – one is protected and rescued, the other criticized, demonized and destroyed – John's message about women is unambiguous. These characters embody his fantasies and he exerts control over them, demonstrating that women are dangerous and women with power are frightening. The ferocity of John's language is more than performative language or rhetorical bravado. By using one character as a foil for hostility against the empire and another as an object of desire, the reader learns that both are objects of fear and fantasy, drawn together in a fantasy world ruled by the language of conflict, violence and war. The Apocalypse uses female sexualized language inscribed with violence from beginning to end. It is language that constructs, consumes, destroys and conquers; it is language that permits no response or rebuttal.

Previous work on healing in Greek religion has informed us about the deities that performed healings, the types of ailments that motivated individuals to approach them, the vows and votive offerings that marked this human-divine transaction, and the use of successful healings as propaganda for specific gods and their cults. I would like to employ archaeological evidence, that is, inscriptions and anepigraphic votive offerings, to address two issues about the human side of Greek healing cult. First, ancient requests for healing can offer insight on how the body, the concept of health, and the lack thereof, are construed in antiquity. Not all health problems are represented equally; votives most often show those body parts related to labor and economic production, such as legs, arms, and eyes, or those related to human fertility. Thus the perceived need addressed by divine healing would be construed more holistically, toward an individuals useful activity and toward concerns for the survival of the family and community, rather than toward a simple release of the individual from pain or ill health. Second, votives and inscriptions can also shed light on what place a divine healing would hold in the religious life of an individual. Aside from wealthy people such as Aelius Aristides, who took up residence for large parts of his life in a healing sanctuary, preliminary evidence suggests that requests for divine healing are rather infrequent. Healing would then be less like periodic medical treatment, and more like a conversion experience, in which the narrative of ones life would be reformulated around the healing. To develop these issues, I will concentrate on archaeological evidence from Ephesos, elucidating it with evidence from west and central Asia Minor, and occasional literary references.

Although opposition is a common element throughout the Lukan narrative account of Paul’s ministry, the nature of that opposition takes an interesting turn after the so-called Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. In particular, the two most prominent stops along Paul’s ministry travels in Acts after that meeting are in Corinth and Ephesus, the two places where the narrator describes Paul’s ministry after leaving the Jewish synagogue under duress. This paper posits the thesis that the accusations against Paul in Acts 21 are to be linked intratextually with these two narrative sections as the basis of those charges, and that these allegations raise serious concerns about Paul’s ethics in light of his ministry apart from the synagogue setting. This paper has three parts: (1) an examination of the accusations against Paul in Acts 18 and 21, (2) an assessment of those accusations regarding Paul’s ministry practices and ethics in contrast to the practices and ethics associated with the Jewish synagogue, and (3) an exploration of plausible theological and ethical implications for the implied Lukan audience.

Roman imperialism represented both the logical conclusion and the paradoxical undoing of the equation of domination and manhood in antiquity. Classicists writing in the wake of Michel Foucault have begun to mark a shift in the hegemonic construction of masculinity in its complex relationship to Roman imperialism. Stances conventionally signifying “effeminacy” were appropriated and reconfigured as novel spaces for the display of traditional masculine virtues in a changing political and social context. My paper examines the production of such ambiguous and ambivalent male colonial subjects in both polytheistic and Christian narratives from the early imperial period. Specifically I will read Xenophon of Ephesus’s An Ephesian Tale together with the Gospel of Mark, highlighting their common interest in the “suffering self.” While the compromised masculinity found in the ancient novels like An Ephesian Tale has long been noted (and scorned), far less attention has been paid to the complex gendering of Jesus in the gospels. Noting relevant parallels between the male leads of both narratives, my comparative reading will aim to make Jesus’ masculinity more legible from a historical and postcolonial theoretical perspective. Special attention will be paid to those moments in both narratives when suffering and desire disrupt the neat division of “masculine” activity and “feminine” passivity as well as “active” liberationist and “passive” postcolonial modes of resistance. Throughout, I will underscore how the ambivalent replication of colonial ideology in the theology of each narrative plays a key role in shaping such male subjects.

Paper on Paul

The present communication aims at presenting and analyzing new evidence concerning the Arabic versions of Ps.-Dionysius’ writings and at putting them into the wider context of the Melkite Graeco-Arabic translation movement. (This movement is roughly contemporary but not identical with the better known ‘Abbasid translation movement, in the course of which Greek philosophical and scientific works were transmitted to the Arabs.) Ps.-Dionysius was a Greek Church Father active around the year 500 whose exact identity remains an unsolved mystery. Under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite – Paul’s Athenian convert – he composed four treatises and ten epistles. Taken together they present a coherent system, deeply indebted to Athenian Neoplatonism and in particular to the philosophy of Proclus (d. 485). The Corpus Dionysiacum was translated into several ancient languages: Syriac (a very early translation is by Sergius of Reshaina, d. 536), Latin, Armenian, Georgian, and Church Slavonic. Only little is known about Arabic versions of the corpus, and even the fact of their existence is frequently overlooked. On the basis of new evidence (Sinai manuscripts containing Ps.-Dionysius’ works in Arabic translations) one may draw the following conclusions: 1) the entire Corpus Dionysiacum exists in Arabic in at least two parallel manuscripts; 2) the translator is Ibn Sahquq of Emesa, and the Arabic version was produced from the Greek original in Damascus in Safar 400 (September-October 1009); 3) Ibn al-Yabrudi, whom previous scholarship identified as the Arabic translator of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, is not the translator but the commissioner and copyist of the entire Corpus Dionysiacum; and 4) there are other Arabic translations, different from the complete one, of some parts of the corpus.

Avot is an early rabbinic composition that appears in the Mishnah yet differs greatly from all other mishnaic tractates. Whereas the Mishnah is primarily concerned with the halakhah, Avot consists entirely of non-legal materials. Avot's highly stylized artistic prose and pervasive didactic program distances the text even further from the Mishnah and suggests that, in terms of genre, Avot should be viewed as a late member in the trajectory of ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew wisdom. Two prominent literary features of the work, however, have no precedent in biblical or post-biblical Jewish literature: the chain of transmission and the collection of named wisdom sayings which are attributed to multiple sages. Indeed, it appears that these literary traits were not inherited from the wisdom tradition or earlier Jewish literature, but rather were borrowed from a contemporary Greek literary genre. Avot thus emerges as a rabbinic text in which the ancient Hebrew wisdom tradition merged with contemporary Graeco-Roman literary practice. Moreover this synthesis enabled the author of Avot to design a treatise that could mold the ideal rabbinic persona through wisdom literary techniques while legitimating the burgeoning rabbinic movement and its leadership.

What was the Exile? A first answer to this question might talk about the forcible removal of the people of Israel from their land in 586 BCE. This answer, however, quickly crumbles under suspicious scrutiny. It is elitist; the Exile was not of all Israel, but of a segment largely drawn from the ruling classes. Yet even with this qualification another bias still lies hidden. Both the initial description and its refinement are anthropocentric. Both focus on the Exile in terms of humans. In this paper we will decenter the human and explore a geocentric view: What does the Exile look like from the perspective of Earth? The primary characters in this recentering will be the city, Jerusalem/Zion, and the land. Texts will be drawn from Lamentations and Isaiah of Babylon (Isaiah 40–55). The city, with the land as its companion, plays a key role in these sections. Not only is its condition described, but it also speaks and is spoken to, suffers and acts. To what extent do these texts represent an anthropocentric commandeering of the voice of Earth akin to the elitist definition of Exile? To what extent might they express genuine emotions of members of Earth in response to the dislocating experiences of Exile?

Recent archaeological excavations in the Galilee have contributed important evidence in establishing the cultural nature of the Galilee in the first century of the Common Era. Too often the findings of these excavations have been overlooked within New Testament scholarship, and more specifically Historical Jesus research. The cultural picture emerging from these recent excavation projects is of a diverse social matrix, but one that was, nevertheless, Jewish both culturally and religiously. As others have pointed out, however, many have been too quick in uncritically describing the cultural environment of the Galilee in the first century in an anachronistic manner looking to the more substantial discoveries of later centuries to substantiate reconstructions of first century Galilee. While the emerging archaeological picture of the Galilee in the first century has provided material remains from the first century, the picture is still too vague in most places and invisible in others. The correlation, however, between the recent Galilean archaeological projects and the ancient literary witnesses from the first century call for a reassessment of the literary sources in light of the material remains. While others have addressed this question from the standpoint of seeing what light archaeology can shed upon the ancient literary sources, this paper focuses upon the assistance the literary sources can provide in “filling in the gaps” left from the incomplete material remains, specifically as it relates to the question of the linguistic (trilingual) and religious (Jewish) nature of the Galilee in the first century.

In the Wisdom of Solomon, Sophia plays an integral role in the sage’s theology of creation. The sage claims that Sophia, the immortal spirit of God, is present in all things. Yet the text itself, in spite of its radical claim, first acknowledges, and then marginalizes, non-human creation and focuses mainly on human creation. My paper will examine the theology of creation of Wis 1:1–2:24. In 1:13 the narrator claims that God created all things for existence but the ungodly invited death into the world. Cognizant of the fleeting nature of human and non-human life, the ungodly decide to oppress non-human creation and the righteous person. The exploitation of non-human creation receives chronological priority in the speech of the ungodly (Wis 2:2–20), yet by the end of the second chapter non-human creation has been marginalized in preference to human creation. Wisdom’s role as the fashioner of all things is overshadowed in Chapters 6–9. Solomon desires and courts Sophia and God gives her to him. In this eloquent but anthropocentric poem, Sophia’s relationship with the cosmos is marginalized. My paper argues that the sage initiates a radical theology of creation yet all too quickly loses sight of the implications of his claim. The sage himself may not have realised the potential and the irony inherent in his claim that it is the ungodly who are blind to the mystery of God in regards to creation (Wis 2:21–22). In recent times the Wisdom of Solomon has received renewed attention from biblical scholarship. My paper will look at the anthropocentric bias evident in contemporary scholarship and ask the question whether this is the fault of the Wisdom of Solomon or its interpreters.

Syriac Dialogue Hymns have been an important part of eastern and western Syriac liturgy since at least the middle of the fifth century C.E. The structure of the hymns derives from a Mesopotamian Dispute genre, in which two debate partners discuss a topic until one has victoriously defeated the other. Syriac Christians fused this Mesopotamian Dispute form with their sacred biblical texts. When retelling biblical narratives, Syriac Dialogue authors utilized a “freeze-frame” approach: they paraphrased a biblical narrative up to a certain point and then froze the scene and constructed an elaborate debate between two of the biblical characters. These conversations usually centered on contemporary theological issues or problems, such as the virgin birth. At the end of the debate, the biblical characters would pronounce an authoritative answer to the problem. In instances where biblical narratives or theology was vague, contradictory, or lacked argumentative support, Syriac Dialogue authors used the debates to bolster the biblical material. They filled in missing pieces to establish biblical justification for contemporary theological positions. By placing the discussion back into the mouths of biblical protagonists, their theological stance was sanctioned. Furthermore, their theological stance was endorsed and inculcated by its repeated, liturgical performance. The line between the original biblical material and the additions became blurred and the Dialogue interpretations become seamlessly interwoven into the canonical texts.

The stories of Daniel 1–6 are often identified as Court Tales that construe the social world of these narratives as a fairly accurate representation of the social reality behind these tales. Thus these stories encapsulate a "Lifestyle for Diaspora" (Humphreys), a description by and for Jewish courtiers of successful and faithful Jewish life in the court of the foreign king. Alternatively, the wisdom orientation of these tales and an identification with the maskilim (wise ones) of Daniel 11–12 highlights a similar provenance for these stories as products of an upper class, well-educated group. These identifications perpetuate a fundamental incongruity of Daniel studies, namely, that the stories of Daniel 1–6 depict a more positive view of imperial rule than the negative portrayals of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel 7–12. Recent work by Daniel Smith-Christopher seriously questions this construct given the realities of life under a hostile, dominating empire. He suggests that the king's court serves as an ideal setting for a political and religious folklore of resistance against imperial hegemony. Larry Wills describes the Daniel 1–6 stories as narratives containing seeds of novelistic interest, including danger, escape and humor. These novelistic qualities, particularly humor, provide clues for an alternative understanding of the social reality of these tales. This paper utilizes the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and his conceptions of the novel, genre and menippean satire to demonstrate that these tales are finely crafted novelistic satires of resistance designed to ridicule foreign kings and empires. This imaginative use of humor and satire reflects a creative manipulation of the social reality of life in the royal court to resist king and empire, and thus crafts a thematic link with the judgmental visions of Daniel 7–12.

This paper argues that the influence of the Roman empire is more pervasive with regard to, and more formative for the origins of Christianity than is often thought or recognised. It is especially true with regard to the history and legacy of the ‘Johannine trajectory,’ that is, the tradition located mainly in the Roman province of Asia which also provided the language and conceptual apparatus for the definition of Nicene/Chalcedonian orthodox Christianity. The paper illustrates this with reference to the manner in which imperial ideology is mirrored in the Gospel of John, and how Jesus of Nazareth is constructed in the image of the emperor by means of nomenclature and narrative scenes, as well as with regard to the manner in which early Christianity appropriated the imperial ideology of the ‘return of the Golden Age’ (in, for example, apocalyptic texts and other text such as the Epistula Apostolorum). This is then followed up by demonstrating how this Christian imperial ideology ‘from below’ eventually defined the Christian Roman emperor, Constantine (as well as his successors into the Byzantine empire), as God’s viceroy, and led to the construction of orthodox Christian views of God and Christ as Byzantine imperial figures. This last is borne out by paying attention to post-Nicene/Chalcedonian iconography.

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In the wake of the canon debate in modern literary studies, the issue of the canon of the Hebrew Bible is, once again, a prominent item on the agenda of biblical scholars. Various recent studies take a new avenue of approach to the question of canonicity by focusing of the library as the origin and model of the canon. My contribution will take its cue from his library angle and look at the cuneiform evidence for a connection between the acquisition policy of librarians, the presence and position of individual works in catalogues, and the canonicity of literary and scholarly works. I shall pay special attention to the Ashurbanipal libraries and the so-called ‘Catalogue of Texts and Authors.’ A comparison with the pertinent biblical and rabbinical data will conclude my paper.

This paper suggests a new interpretation of Judas the Maccabee’s dream (2 Maccabees 15:11–16) by arguing that the redactor incorporated Egyptian traditions about the gods’ transfer of the sickle sword to the king and his symbolic slaying of the enemy with this sword in the description of Judas’ dream and his subsequent victory over Nicanor. The dream presents the deceased high priest Onias and the prophet Jeremiah as praying for the Jewish people and adds a prophetic act to this intercessory scene. Jeremiah extends his right hand and delivers a golden sword to Judas, saying: “Take this holy sword as a gift from God, and crush the opponents with it” (2 Macc 15:16). Judas triumphs over Nicanor and shames him by having his head and his right arm cut off, hanging them from the citadel as a public sign of his victory (15:30, 32–5). The usual interpretation assumes that the sword legitimates Judas’ leadership, but this does not fit the context. It is more plausible to interpret the sword, in line with Egyptian traditions, as a symbol of victory. Egyptian documents from the New Empire onwards depict a scene in which a god (or several gods) hands over the sickle sword of victory to the king. Sometimes this symbolic act is combined with another scene during which the king executes his opponent with the sickle sword by severing the head from the body. Both scenes are strikingly similar to 2 Macc 15’s descriptions of the dream report and Nicanor’s shameful end. If this reading is justified, it implies, of course, that the Egyptian traditions were adapted for a Jewish audience. The prophet Jeremiah as God’s messenger would have taken over the role of the Egyptian gods.

Scholars have tried to search for theological and historical explanations of Jesus’ death (see S. McKnight, CR 2001). They discover the literary backgrounds and concepts (martyrdom, wisdom, suffering servant, eschatological prophet…) that influenced the author of Mk. And they look for the unified theological concept of the passion story. In agreement with their own interest these diachronic readings put more or less emphasis on particular verses of Mark (the divine dei; passion predictions; 10:45; 14:24 a.o.). I will focus on reader response. Recent hermeneutics have shown that in biblical scholarship the word “meaning” is a notion which par excellence emphasizes the communicative and dialogical character between the author, text and reader. Therefore, if one aims to look for the narrative truth in the passion story the perspective of the reader has to be worked out explicitly. A. Yarbro Collins has done this for the first century readers (both Jewish and Roman), but what happens if a modern reader reads this text? It is my conviction that the now generally accepted narrative critical scheme of a real reader who stands outside the framework of the narrative world has to be corrected in the sense that the real reader not only receives the (written) text but also generates meaning through the (read) text. The meaning of Jesus’ passion is only fully spoken out when a real reader combines the findings of diachronic research with a reading “from this place” (see the vols. edited by Segovia and Tolbert 1995). My “real” reading puts emphasis on the indissoluble unity of Mark’s presentation of the active life of Jesus and his death. This view makes it possible to exceed the many alternative and sometimes incompatible interpretations about the historical, literary or theological background of Jesus’ death.

The Pastoral epistles were concerned with preserving a particular quality of life by focusing on the integrity of God and the Christian gospel. This focus also provided the rhetorical framework for 1 Timothy, within which the identity and ethos of the Christian community (probably in Ephesus during the late first century CE) were to be defined and appreciated. The reception of 1 Timothy 2:8–15 however witnesses to its usage through the centuries inter alia in ways that inhibited or repressed women’s religious leadership and the development of their full potential. The paper explores the literary and linguistic, socio-cultural and theological-rhetorical contexts of the pericope—with special reference to Genesis 3:16,20 and women’s potential as lifegivers (literally and metaphorically). Of particular interest is the relation of the passage to images for God as savior and Christ Jesus as hope, mediator and ransom in 1:1; 2:3–6, and its implications for biblical hermeneutics as a liberative and healing practice "for all" (1:15; 2:1,4,6; 4:10). By searching for the probable reference of metaphors for God and humanity in 1 Timothy, the essay attempts to account for the world view or perspective of an ancient canonised text as a crucial part of its recipients’ ethical responsibility toward understanding God, themselves and society. How this text functions with respect to presentday societal issues such as rape—particularly with reference to gender stereotypes—becomes a test case for the interpretation of its (alternative) perspective by later audiences. The paper forms part of a research project in the Human and Social Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, titled The rhetoric of feminist biblical interpretation: Reclaiming the transformative potential of biblical documents and God-language as authoritative texts for moral and social orientation in churches and theological education, with special reference to violence against women.

This proposal takes as its starting point ‘Second Renaissance Part I & II’, a short film of the Animatrix Series, issued last year (2003). In this short anime film, elements of the creation accounts are used and reconfigured in the context of an end-time scenario, describing how robots (presented as humankind’s own ‘creation’) take over the world. This paper explores the creative interplay of images, subtexts, genres and cultures in this short film. Attention will be paid to the particular reconfiguration of the notion of ‘creation’ with apocalyptic themes. The underlying scriptural texts will be approached as forms of religious discourse and socio-rhetorical methods will be used to examine the recontextualization of creation discourse as a constituent part of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Both the multiplicity of competing creation visions (including diverse takes on a prototypical ‘fall’), as well as early reconfigurations of creation discourse towards new argumentative ends, will be analysed. In terms of its visual facets, the Japanese anime genre in which the alienating and destructive power of technology plays an important role, as well as films in which the theme of the creation of a ‘human’ being, robot or computer and/or the take-over by these human-made creations is elaborated, will be taken into consideration Examining the creative reconfiguration of both textual and visual traditions taking place in the context of modern discursive practices, especially in terms of some of the remarkable similarities of patterns and structures, proves to be illuminating. Such an analysis also makes it possible to get a fuller grasp not just of the more traditional elements used in this particular film, but also of the way these elements are reconfigured to express a particular perception of this world and its makers.

Late Antiquity has often been discussed in terms of decline. While this is true for many urban centres, surveys in the countryside of Sagalassos support the notion of a flourishing rural settlement and economy. This paper attempts to identify the mechanisms behind the opposite fate of town and country in Late Antiquity. The critical concept in this discussion is the ability of communities, whether rural or urban, to adjust to changing political, social, religious and economic circumstances. It will be shown that, for diverse reasons, rural communities were much more flexible than cities, tilting the balance of settlement from the towns to the countryside.

The penitential prayer (Bar 1:15–3:8) is the first of the three parts that compose the deuterocanonical book of Baruch. The introduction (1:1–14) displays the aim of what follows. The exiles are aware of the reason they are scattered in the foreign country. Because of their sin the Lord's wrath and anger are upon them. The community of the exiles, after having heard the words of the book of Baruch, takes on the penitential attitude. Their reaction is presented as normative for further generations. Therefore their next step is endeavour to include the community of Jerusalem into the same behaviour. The penitential prayer is the overture. The Jerusalemites should confess God's righteousness and their guilt in everything that came upon them. The prayer has affinities with two other parts of the book, especially with the poem in which Jerusalem consoles her scattered children (4:5–5:9, the third part). The admonition to seek wisdom in obeying the commandments of the Lord (3:9–4:4, the second part) has as well connections with the penitential prayer. The whole book is visibly rooted in the Deuteronomistic and Jeremian literature and also in other books of the Hebrew Bible. The paper will discuss the meaning of guilt, punishment and forgiveness in the penitential prayer. It will only touch the issue there is no description of the reaction of the Jerusalemites in the book and there is also no example of the book of Baruch in Hebrew. Has its proposal not been accepted? Or was it composed to serve as a compendium of the growing canon? In any case, its intention is clear - to build the unity between the people in Judea and that scattered abroad.

Scripture as Scripted and Script

Both the reconstruction and the interpretation of Q 16,16 in its presumed Q context and in its Mt and Lk context are notoriously complicated. In the paper it is argued that the saying functions in Q as part of Q's polemics with the Pharisees (or the Jewish religious leaders in general) who are once more represented as the main opponents of the early Christian mission. The controvery here is about who has claims on defining the concept of God's "basileia" and on the way it should be preached. Luke (16,14–15.16–18) has better preserved this original context than Matthew, who has not only broken up the Q section, but has some of the sayings addressed to a wider audience and has used the saying on the Kingdom both for criticising the lack of response to the Christian mission and for comforting the messengers.

This presentation documents the changes which affected the city of Saglassos (SW Turkey) in its institutions (type of municipal government), its urban layout (maintanance of the urban infrastructure, repair of public buildings, , encroachment and eventual ruralisation) between the reign of Constantine and its destruction by an earthquake around the middle of the 7th century AD. The mechanisms which gradually changed urban life and their impact on the life of the population will be discussed.

My textbook Hebrew for Biblical Interpretation (SBL, 2003) teaches the verb differently than traditional grammars. First, it teaches binyanim and conjugations by frequency rather than logical order. Second, it teaches the verb in the context of interpretation. Third, I developed Kittel's system of indicators so that students would not have to learn paradigms by rote. I would share the research and theories from applied linguistics, referred to in the Introduction, that support this approach.

Chronicles of temple plundering have served as milestones throughout the narrative history of the ancient Mediterranean world. From the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Roman era in particular witnessed the sack and destruction of numerous temple complexes across the Empire. While literary and archaeological evidence has managed to shed some light on the practical and political ramifications of temple and temple treasury plundering in Antiquity, scholarship has not yet thoroughly examined the integral socio-economic and imperial significance of this pillaging to various communities in Greece, Roman, Asia Minor and Israel. The task of this paper is therefore twofold. First I will examine the literary and archaeological evidence pertaining to temple treasuries: their contents, defenders, physical location(s) within the temple and broad social-economic and political location(s) within their local culture and historical milieu. This (re)constructive project will then lead to discussion of select examples of temple treasury plundering, with the aim of identifying commonalities in the methods and means of these acts — with particular attention given to the religious and political dimensions therein.

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The masoretic gloss "three times" on the words 'el-ha-sur in 2 Sm 21:10 links the Rizpah story to Is 30:29 and 51:1 (Mm1835); both texts are part of larger prophetic oracles that contain other verbal and thematic similarities to 2 Sm 21:1–14. These include the need for rain (2 Sm 21:1, 10; Is 30:23, 25) and Rizpah's loss of sons, cf. Is 51:18, Jerusalem is a woman who has lost her sons: "She has none to guide her Of all the sons she bore; None takes her by the hand, Of all the sons she reared." The larger prophetic oracles (Is 30:6–33, 51:1–23) both address God’s people (in 51:3 Zion is a woman); both call for penitence, and are powerfully hopeful of the future. The masoretic gloss is hermeneutic, inviting us to bring the narrative side by side with the full oracles; Rizpah becomes a figure of penitent Israel finding restoration. She has been struck with catastrophe for the sin of Israel’s king, but stretches the sackcloth “to the rock”: that is, (a) she turns to God who gives victory, comfort, and joy (Is 30), and (b) takes up the obedience of the founding couple Abraham and Sarah, from which once more Israel may become many (Is 51).There are hermeneutic implications. One of the ways that narrative may become prophecy is through figure. This gloss shows the move being made with a particularly difficult narrative. There are text-critical implications, for the cross-reference would not work if the text read `al-ha-sur, as the Old Greek witnesses imply.

In 1 Corinthians 1–4 Paul enters into an ideological discourse in order to re-assert his authority over the factious Christian community in Corinth, a point which I have argued elsewhere. Chapter 4 culminates with Paul using the image of himself as the father of the community. He threatens to return to Corinth and discipline those who behave towards his authority in an arrogant fashion. In 5:1–6:20 it become clear that the reason that Paul, the absent father, is attempting to re-establish his paternal-like authority over the community is to prevent the ethical collapse of the community which would lead to dishonor for himself and God. In this paper I will engage in a soci-rhetorical analysis of 1 Cor. 4:14–6:20 in order to show the way in which Paul's rhetoric contributes to his authority claim and becomes the basis for drawing the community into a process of self-regulation with regard to ethical matters in his absence. I will explore both the various socio-rhetorical textures of the text (inner texture, intertexture, socio-cultural, ideological , and religious textures) as well as the blending of what Robbins refers to as early Christian rhetorlects. The result of this analysis will be to show the complex nature of Paul's rhetoric and its socio-cultural, ideological, and religious rootedness.

Several OT passages (most notably Ezekiel 37 and Zechariah 14.4–5) have commonly been cited as possible background material for the extraordinary signs that occur in Matthew 27.51–53. However, on both verbal and theological grounds, I would like to suggest that a complex of passages centered on Isaiah 52 are more probable canvases upon which Matthew has painted his dramatic presentation. Literarily, several verbal parallels exist between Isaiah 48–52 and Matthew 27.51–53 that do not appear elsewhere. The uncommon phrase “holy city” appears in both these passages (Is 48.2; 52.1; Mt 27.53) in the immediate context of identical resurrection terminology (egeiro; see Is 51.7, 19; 52.1; Mt 27.52–3). Further points of contact include the idea of rocks splitting (Is 48.21; Mt 27.51; the only two times this juxtaposition occurs) and the description of the sky being darkened (Mt 27.45; Is 50.3). The linking of these two passages also works theologically. Marked throughout by a concern for Israel, Matthew opens the door for Gentile inclusion after the crucifixion. Likewise, this interest in the salvation of the Gentiles appears in these Isaiah passages, and I propose that a parallel progression can be seen in both Isaiah 52 and Matthew 27. Just as in Matthew the dead are raised, go into the holy city, presumably speak to people, and the centurion exclaims that Jesus was the Son of God, so also in Isaiah the intertwining of the “holy city” and resurrection occurs in the first two verses, the good news is announced by the messenger “who brings good news” (v. 7), and salvation is proclaimed to the Gentiles (v. 10). It is my opinion that the existence of these verbal and theological parallels suggests Matthew’s use of this Isaianic complex.

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Isaiah 6:1–5 picks up the theme "kings" for the first time since the superscription lists four Judaean kings under whom Isaiah served. It pinpoints a date for the prophecy: "the year King Uzziah died." And it shifts the focus to "the King, the Lord Almighty" in the setting of his throne in the temple. In Isaiah Davidic kings are pictured either as dying or being afraid of dying. This is consistent with the need to deal with the disappearance of Davidic kings with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BCE. The shift to emphasis on divine kingship fills the vacuum and directs the attention of Jews to the Heavenly King who raises up new empires and who returns to dwell in the new Temple.

Problem-Based Learning stimulates inquiry and research by posing a problem to students. It focuses on teaching students how to learn rather than what to learn. This paper describes an experimental application of Problem-Based Learning to a Biblcial Studies course, namely "Women in the Biblical Tradition." The experiment met with both success and failure. Strategies for improvement will be discussed and course materials will be made available.

The study of metaphor involves a number of complex and controversial issues, including the question of how one identifies a metaphor. What constitute the defining features of a metaphor? What distinguishes this particular trope from other figurative devices? While some scholars have abandoned the attempt to devise criteria for recognizing a metaphor, others have turned to componential semantics to develop a helpful mechanism for identifying metaphors. This research can be applied to the Bible in order to help us better understand the metaphors found in biblical prose narrative. This paper will utilize componential semantics as a means to evaluate the numerous metaphors that appear in the story of David, Nabal, and Abigail (1 Samuel 25). When Nabal’s servant describes the way Nabal responded to David’s men, he remarks: “He swooped down upon them” (1 Sam 25:14). What tags this utterance as a metaphor? Componential semantics provides a model for locating the semantic incongruity that in large part marks a metaphor. The explication of this and other examples will be based primarily on the Katz-Fodor notion of selectional restriction violations and the research of Eva Kittay. Kittay builds upon the work of Katz-Fodor and other linguists in order to demonstrate how a statement without an apparent selection restriction violation can qualify as a metaphor. She insists that instead of looking only at an isolated word or sentence, the evaluation of an utterance as anomalous, and thus metaphorical, requires the interpreter to consider the larger textual unit created by the cohesion of separate but related sentences. The use of these linguistic theories results in a productive tool for identifying biblical metaphors and enhancing the exegesis of 1 Samuel 25.

“He is a God!” exclaim the natives of the Island of Malta as Paul casts the snakes away from his hand and does not swell up and die (Acts 28:6). The divine attestation is partially answered by connecting the attribution of divinity to Paul in Acts 28 with representations of ancient doctors, especially Asclepius, who are similarly attributed with divine qualities. A number of divine portraits of doctors occur on statues, reliefs, coins, and gems. These representations demonstrate that the acclamation of Paul as a god and the subsequent healing of Publius’ father in Acts 28 gain a striking relief when read against the iconographical background of ancient doctors.

Much of our current scholarship on penitential prayer has focused on the literary features of the tradition, with form and tradition criticisms serving as our primary methodologies. While these approaches have produced fruitful results, sociological and anthropological analyses of the prayers can yield new insights regarding the role of these prayers for those who wrote and prayed them. The penitential prayers in Daniel 9 and Bar 1:15–3:8 prove quite useful in demonstrating the social aspects of penitential prayer. The two texts clearly exhibit some literary relationship. Yet, despite their similarities, they display remarkable differences in their worldview, their understanding of sin, their attitude toward foreign powers, their vision for the future, and their suggestions concerning proper action. This paper analyzes these two prayers in order to explore these features and to reflect on the socio-political aspects of penitential prayer.

The dominant colonial and apartheid racial, ethnic, and religious discourses that we have inherited in South Africa emphasise and institutionalise difference. We are steeped in ‘separateness’ (the English translation of ‘apartheid’). Our sacred texts have not escaped this separateness. For the majority of our faith communities, their religious texts and faith practices are kept carefully separate from the religious texts and faith practices of ‘other’ communities. Within the post-colonial Africa context more broadly, the dominant discourses on the encounter between Christianity and Islam tend to present these two traditions as adverse foes competing for a monopoly of African identity. But there are counter discourses, both in South Africa and in other parts of Africa. For example, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa provides us with such a counter discourse. In detention centres and jails and in exile, South Africans of all races, ethnicities and religions shared their sacred texts and faith practices, united as they were by a common commitment to the context of struggle. By looking at such other ways of interpreting (reading) the Bible and Qur’an in Africa, this paper seeks to explore alternative ways of liberating these texts from the tyranny of antagonistic and proselytizing readings, that is, readings that entrench otherness. In particular, the paper will deploy the notion of African agency as a hermeneutical tool to explore this ‘other way’ of theorizing these alternative readings of these sacred texts. Therefore, through selective case studies from both Christian and Muslim readings of the Bible and Qur’an, the paper shall attempt to show that these sacred texts do as a matter of fact talk back to faith communities with an ecumenical spirit that embraces our common humanity.

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I propose to look at several biblical women who use the power of food and drink to kill men or to determine whom the dining men kill. Jael (Judges 4:17–22) and Judith use drink (in Jael's case milk, with its own powerful symbolism) along with the promise of sex, as though one conveys the other, to reassure and sedate the men they need to kill. Herodias (Mark 6:14–30) and Esther (Esther 4–7) have equally deadly aim and also use food and more importantly drink to meet that aim, but in their cases, the drunken man is not the man who dies. Thus the stories of Jael and Judith advocate a more direct subversion of the female role as nurturer—the nurturing turns to murder; the nurturing role was in fact all along a disguise for a female warrior. The stories of Esther and Herodias, on the other hand, propose more complicated and less subverted use of the nurturing role. These women nurture not to kill, but to persuade others to kill. Herodias’ use of the banquet as this kind of opportunity has the added twist of the victim’s head being served at the meal—instead of the banquet becoming murder, the murdered becomes a part of the banquet.

For scholars interested in using epigraphic material to enhance understanding of early Christianity, the late Second Temple Period and Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the temple, Fergus Millar's overview of Jewish inscriptions in volume III of the revised edition of E. Schuerer's History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ has proved to be an invaluable resource since its publication in 1986. With a bibliographical coverage rarely going beyond 1983, it is, however, now seriously out of date at least in some areas. During the last two decades a huge amount of work has been done on Jewish inscriptions: new editions of texts long in the public domain have been produced (e.g., by William Horbury and David Noy), inscriptions which in the early 1980s could only be reported (e.g., the then recently discovered Jews and Godfearers text[s] from Aphrodisias and most of the epigraphic material from the Sardis synagogue) have now been definitively edited and many inscriptions unknown to Millar are now available for study. Some of these inform us of Diaspora communities hitherto unknown. For those who wish to use Jewish epigraphic material but are not themselves experts in the field, keeping abreast of this annually expanding mass of material, much of it scattered, is all but impossible. The purpose of this paper is to make that task more tractable. I propose to review the main developments in Jewish epigraphy over the last twenty years. Special attention will be paid to the current state of research in key areas such as the Aphrodisias stele texts, synagogal offices/titles, and the role of women in the synagogue.

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Although emphasis on source criticism in the study of early Christian literature has diminished over the last three decades, the legacy of source criticism still dominates the way scholars first look at early Christian documents. When parts of a one document resemble parts of another and literary dependence cannot readily be demonstrated, scholars almost automatically assume hypothetical sources. One scholar's hypothesis becomes the next scholarly generation's fact. The next generation more precisely delineates the hypothetical sources, sometimes creating new hypothetical sources in the process. Scholars approach documents with no extant sources and all too quickly create hypothetical ones to explain inconsistencies in thought or style. When our methodology predisposes us to look for sources, we find them, or more precisely, we create them. This paper examines the history of source critical theory of two non-canonical early Christian writings, Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas. The similarities in the two histories are striking. With each of these documents the majority of scholars favors multiple source hypotheses, though rarely is there full agreement on the delineation of these sources. With each of these documents a small but highly knowledgeable minority of scholars sees the document as a substantial unity, Aaron Milovec on Didache and Philippe Henne on Hermas, being the most persuasive in current scholarship. The various forms of literary criticism that have become increasingly influential in scholarship over the last three decades have help us to begin looking at the unity of documents rather than the inconsistencies. The paper concludes that scholarship is at the beginning of what will be a trend toward seeing these and other early Christian documents as unities.

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From an examination of the extant epigraphic and literary evidence from Corinth it emerges that the origins of the problems discussed in 1 Corinthians reflect responses by members of the early Christian community that were culturally conditioned. Paul's resolution of these issue requires substantially countercultural stances. This paper will aim to classify in cultural terms both the origins of the difficulties and the different strategies proposed in each case by Paul.

In this paper I will focus on how the editors of the present collection of stories in Dan shaped the way that the reader is expected to understand the interpretative skills of Daniel in chapters 4 and 5. The narratives of the first six chapters of the book were free-standing stories brought together in at least two stages (3–6?, 2–6 [7], and then 1–6 [12]) to produce the first half of the present book. It is commonly claimed by scholars that the Daniel of 1–6 and that one of 7–12 have different abilities: the former being portrayed as skilled at interpretation, the latter as always dependent on an interpreting angel. I argue that the stories in 1–6 present Daniel as an interpreter equally as dependent upon heavenly assistance as in the visions of 7–12. The problematic material for my approach is found in chapters 4 and 5. When studied as stories from a court/administrative setting, those two chapters present a court diviner in whom was the ‘spirit of the holy gods’ (ch 4), or one who simply understood enigmatic writings (ch. 5). However, by reading them in their present context and by giving attention to the overall narrative, the dates assigned to events, inserted poetic material, the use of specific terminology, and their placement in the second half of the story material, it can be shown that the reader is intended to understand Daniel’s source of information in each case as a revelation from the God of Israel. In this way, independent stories about skillful Jews, became a unified portrayal of the abilities of the central character, thus legitimating the message of the visionaries who were encouraging the people of God during the persecution under Antiochus IV.

For my paper, I propose to treat the relationship of the Exodus narrative to the Dtr-History. After many scholars have demonstrated the probability that the literary join between the Exodus account and Patriarchal narratives is very late (perhaps not earlier than P), the relationship of the conquest traditions in Josh to the oldest strand in Ex 1ff. deserves renewed consideration. While it is quite tenable that Genesis consists of two originally independent literary complexes (viz., chaps. 1–11* and chaps. 12–35*) that have been secondarily integrated and expanded, one finds it difficult to conceive that an Exodus account ever existed without a continuation and conclusion depicting entrance into the land. The question is whether the present form of Num-Josh still contains this original storyline, or whether it has been completely replaced by later material. I wish to critically assess several of the more recent responses to this question, focusing my attention on their consequences for the way one understands the development of the Dtr-History.

During the past few decades scholars have been pursuing two parallel lines of research concerning Biblical Hebrew. On the one hand, diachronic variation: how Biblical Hebrew developed over time, particularly between the pre-exilic and post-exilic periods. For example, how Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) differed from Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH). On the other hand, dialectal variation: how Biblical Hebrew may exhibit differences according to geographical region. For example, how Jerusalemite Hebrew (JH) differed from Israelean Hebrew (IH). In an article published in 1955 Cyrus Gordon wrote, "The North-Israelite contributions to post-exilic Hebrew prose... remain to be worked out in detail." This paper examines several examples of LBH where the form or usage identified as late (post-exilic) also occurs sporadically in early (pre-exilic) biblical texts that in turn exhibit features characteristic of IH (or non-Jerusalemite Hebrew). Such examples suggest a relationship between (pre-exilic) IH and LBH. The paper briefly considers some of the difficulties involved in exploring this relationship.

Paper on Philo of Alexandria

Translation Memory (TM) and Terminology databases have been used by professional human translators for many years. Their use for translation of the Tenach has not been widely accepted by field linguist translators due to lack of familiarity with Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) and a lack of tools to facilitate the process. This paper presents the design, development and preliminary use of a tool which builds a noun phrase Translation Memory database. It can be used with a translation memory (TM) and term extraction algorithm developed by GrapeCity Inc. and it is based on a Layered Hebrew Parser previously developed by the author. The tool uses a wide coverage clause and phrase Hebrew parser presented at the past 2 SBL conferences to extract, compress and index noun phrases (NP’s) and some prepositional phrases so that they may be stored in a database for use by translators. The Hebrew NP TM tool will be used by GrapeCity translators and lexicographers to reduce the effort needed to provide a first draft translation of the Tenach into Mandarin. This new translation will replace the current Chinese Mandarin version that was published in 1920 which is difficult for current native speakers to read and comprehend. The Hebrew NP TM tool will greatly facilitate this process. In addition the CBH NP database has a general application and can be used to speed translations for other target languages.

This paper considers how two pedagogical techniques in Proverbs, namely, repetition and contradiction, contribute to the book’s aim to form wise persons (1:2–7). I propose that the experience of repetition and contradiction in Proverbs instructs readers about the relativity and fragility of human knowledge and, by doing so, reinforces claims to that effect in the book. This combination of “patterns of experience” and content, in the end, makes it more likely that readers will learn the importance of humility, a hallmark of those who “fear YHWH” (e.g., 22:4; 3:5–8; 26:12). The paper builds, in particular, on W. P. Brown’s proposal that there is an “overarching editorial arrangement and pedagogical movement” to the book as a whole (“The Pedagogy of Proverbs 10:1–31:9,” in Character and Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical Interpretation [ed. W. P. Brown; Eerdmans, 2002], 152). That is, Proverbs teaches readers by both its content and arrangement.

This paper will give a descriptive outline of the present research discussions and developments in the study of warfare in ancient Israel, especially in the areas of religious/ethical aspects and issues, contributions of the study of military history, literary analyses of the rhetoric and ideology of war accounts, and historical reconstructive issues. A particular portion of the paper will "devoted" to current discussions concerning the term "herem" in its war contexts.

The Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalamun (ASQ) repeatedly links the disuse of the Coptic language with the loss of Egyptian Christian religious identity, predicting that some would “abandon the beautiful Coptic language by which the Holy Spirit spoke many times from the mouths of our spiritual Fathers.” This paper explicates the ASQ's conceptions of the Coptic language as an identity-bearing distinctive of Egyptian Christianity. While scholars are currently unable to establish a date for the first drafting of the ASQ, philological and sociological analysis of the text in the light of other Arabic sources referring to the disuse of Coptic will further develop knowledge of the historical context of this apocalypse. This paper argues that these references to the disuse of Coptic — written in Arabic — preserve the mood of a community that was reacting not only to Islamisation, but also to other Christians who had already become linguistically arabised, at a time in which neither Coptic nor Arabic had a strong literary foothold in the community of Qalamun. By more precisely identifying the communal orientations that the ASQ's references to the disuse of Coptic imply, this paper will help to chart the arabisation of Egyptian Christians.

The problem of what caused the clash between Paul and Peter in Antioch has been subject to an extensive debate, but so far no convincing solution to the problem has been presented. This interpretation focuses on the interplay between ideological and sociological factors. It is argued that it was the status of the Gentile Jesus-believers within the predominantly Jewish Jesus movement, that was at stake. It is suggested that Paul’s solution to the problem of the salvation of Gentile through Christ involved an inclusion of Gentile Jesus-believers into the covenant without changing their ethnic status. This theological conviction of Paul had dramatic consequences on a social level, since it implied that Jews and Gentiles had the same status before God. Thus, an ideological element resulted in a changed behavior regarding social interaction between Jews and Gentiles within the Jesus movement. This challenged the ideological outlook of James, who certainly was in agreement with Paul on the issue of the salvation of Gentiles through Christ, but who disagreed on the idea of equality before God and a widening of the covenantal theology. Basically, the issue at stake in Antioch was the question of how Gentile Jesus-believers would be saved, and the proper degree of social interaction between Jews and Gentiles within the movement.

Verses from the Bible have been used to support apartheid, the KKK, various dictatorships and all-out war. How Scripture is lifted from its context and applied to various situations is a gray area with few hard and fast rules. War-torn Africa provides a backdrop for this study of the interaction of ideology and Bible translation. While a civil war was raging in Ivory Coast, an inter-confessional committee produced a biblical selection destined to provide comfort and consolation for war victims. Issues confronted while developing the booklet “Hope in the Midst of Suffering” are discussed. Choice of key terms is another area where sensitivity to context and overall Bible ethos needs to be exercised. A cross-sampling of the translation of Yahweh Sabaot (rendered in many African and European languages as “Lord of the armies” demonstrates the importance of matching Bible translation strategies to given contexts and the crucial role translation consultants must play in the Bible translation process. The rendering of a name of God can determine how the deity is perceived and how a community of believers defines itself. In this paper, the interaction between audience, translator, and exegete is explored.