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The Pentecostal movement is undeniable in Ghana and has become even more influential in recent times across the Christian landscape. Healing as a central Pentecostal practice and its attendant deliverance practices are widespread. A study of such occurrences reveals appropriation of African Traditional mechanisms and methods in novel ways in current development. The state of the healthcare system, characterized by an inadequate doctor to patient ratio and a general inadequate health care system is fuelling such phenomena. The erstwhile resonance between African Traditional Religion and Pentecostalism has seen a face-lift in the arena of latter borrowing from the former in unexpected dimensions. This is in novel manifestations as has not taken root aforetime but has succeeded in making indelible impressions.

This paper concerns a Coptic text called the Mysteries of John. This text exists in its entirety in a single manuscript from the year 1006. It was first published by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1913, but since then, only three scholars have written about it beyond a brief mention. I analyze this text in its manuscript context using the perspective of new philology. I try to understand why, in 1006, two monks would deposit this manuscript in their library thinking that it would be to the “profit and assurance of those who will listen” (to quote the colophon). I propose that for insight into this perception of value, we may look at the context of Muslim-Christian interaction generally and, more specifically, the persecution of Egyptian Christians at this time under al-?akim bi-Amr Allah (996-1021).

The paper will provide an introduction to Mesopotamian magic and witchcraft and the ancient cuneiform literature that treats these topics. Our sources are the work of priests and scribes; they reflect the use of magic in the service of the elite and reflect elitist conceptions of magic. The presentation is meant to provide background to the papers treating the first millennium CE Aramaic magical texts from Mesopotamia. Most Sumero-Akkadian magical rituals have as their focus the counteracting of evil. The principal agencies and causes of harm were gods, demons, tutelary gods, ghosts, witches, evil omens, curses, and sins; some of these forces will be discussed.

Joseph is presented in Genesis as a victim of jealousy and hatred and also as a man whose beliefs and personality traits freed him from paralyzing hatred, seeking refuge in mischievous behavior or wasting his energy in seeking revenge. Instead, something propelled him to reboot himself in a totally new situation and become utterly successful. First, I will explore what Joseph is doing in Gen 37–50 that fits with the behavior seen in Colombian IDPs who have “rebooted” themselves in completely new environments. This will be read in the light of what other scholars have said in the past. My goal here is to see how Colombian IDPs might help us see the figure of Joseph in a new light. The second issue to be explored in this paper is what IDPs in Colombia think about why Joseph is presented as so forgiving for ancient Israelites. Joseph might be used as a figure to endorse something that people are already willing to do (forgive their captors) rather than as many scholars see it as a model for people to do something they don’t want to do. I will explore whether this willingness to forgive is part of the ‘reboot’ that Joseph experiences.

At the critical moment when Jerusalem was under the Babylonian siege, Jeremiah prophesized against Jerusalem (588BCE). For that reason he was thrown into a cistern to die. While all Zedekiah’s nobles kept quiet, a black man, of African ancestry (Ebed-Melech) had courage to protest to king Zedekiah, and accused the nobles of wickedness and murder. He was given the opportunity to save the life of one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament from untimely death. This paper is not only to discuss critically why he was considered a black man, but more importantly his unusual courage, risk and sense of moral judgment which are needed by modern protesters. Through protest he saved his own life (Jer. 39:15-18). Our protest may save our own and other lives.

Megiddo through the Ages

After Ignatius and Aristides, Justin Martyr was one of the earliest Christians, writing under his own name, to combine the originally separate ideas of Jesus’ pre-existence on the one hand and Jesus’ virgin birth on the other (e.g. R.E. Brown). Scholarship has assumed that this combination was a simple harmonization of the Johannine prologue with the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives. I argue that it was a complex thought process, which I analyze in terms of G. Fauconnier and M. Turner’s blending theory. Whether or not Justin relies on the Gospel of John for his Logos theology, he has to solve a number of problems as he combines the two ideas that Jesus pre-existed in heaven and was then born to the virgin Mary. How could Jesus be from the seed of David without a father in the Davidic line, and how did Mary conceive Jesus? Justin solves the first problem by rerouting Jesus’ genealogy matrilineally to some extent and placing Mary in the David line. Ignatius had come up with more or less the same solution as did the pseudonymous authors of the Ascension of Isaiah and the Proto-Gospel of James. But given his philosophy background and his apparent belief in single-seed conception, Justin goes further to claim that Mary contributed nothing to her child: Jesus’ blood, flesh, etc., came from God’s Power, not Mary. In fact, Justin is uncomfortable saying Jesus was born “from (ek)” Mary; he prefers to say “through (dia),” which incidentally places him in company with Valentinians (P. Bobischon). There are implications here for Justin’s solution to the next problem of how Mary conceived. He interprets and rewrites the Lukan annunciation so as to identify the Spirit and Power of God that approached and overshadowed Mary as none other than God’s Word, the pre-existent Jesus. Thus according to Justin, as the Logos Jesus took the place of his own would-be father and any paternal seed. This would be some sort of autogenesis (cf. E.R. Goodenough, J.A. de Aldama; pace D. Minns and P. Parvis) as well as parthenogenesis, even though Justin insists that Mary was not copulated with by anyone, whether human or divine. Justin seems wary of angels, Gabriel in particular. The authors of the Proto-Gospel of James had Jesus’ ostensible father Joseph suspect angelic paternity. Justin’s bizarrely innovative doctrine of auto-parthenogenesis could be a reaction to that sort of suspicion and to the idea that Mary conceived Jesus aurally as the Lukan angel spoke the word/Word of God into her ear. If so, Justin may have anticipated the authors of the Letter of the Apostles. His blend is not as efficient as theirs, however, in that it involves more than one descent from heaven, first Gabriel’s followed by Jesus’ heavenly descent as God’s Word and Power.

Carey Moore, in contrast to popular treatments of the Epistle of Jeremiah (e.g. Kratz, Assan-Dhôte and Moatti-Fine, Ball, Nickelsburg, Thomas, etc.), was surely correct to posit that 10:11's Aramaic was the primary inspiration behind the themes and the central impetus to write the so-called letter from Jeremiah (Ep Jer). Yet, Moore was only partially correct. It seems best to view the Hebrew and Greek editions of Jer 10:1-16 as both reflecting an inherent dualism or an original logical paradox which Ep Jer sought to remedy for exilic Judaism. Second Temple Period Jews and their apotropaic predilections in a cosmos of evil spirits needed MT Jer 10:1-16’s aniconic logic in contrast to the popular interpretations reflected in LXX Jer 10:1-16. This paper seeks to show how both MT and LXX Jer 10:1-16 mutually led to the creative matrix of Ep Jer's original purpose and intent. As in the various issues surrounding the text forms of Jer 10:1-16, the primary matter of importance remains the proper interpretation and usage of 10:11's Aramaic poetry. This paper will outline and explain how the popular usage of LXX Jer 10:11-16 in demonic exorcisms brought on the perceived need to create Ep Jer’s mode of argumentation and major themes. However, one must assume that both text forms of MT and LXX Jer 10:1-16 existed as the matrix for the creation of Ep Jer’s message to the Jewish Diaspora.

The literary categories according to which modern scholarship has classified the book of Jubilees presuppose a certain understanding of its relationship  to the Sinai revelation as recorded in the book of Exodus. This paper explores how the Christian communities that read and used the book of Jubilees understood the connection: as commentary, second revelation, rewritten Bible, or something else?

Geoff Ryman's 2004 novel Air describes the near-future arrival of the Internet to "the last village in the world," a tiny, impoverished hamlet in central Asia. However, this Internet is not quite the one that we know, which requires access to an internet-connected computer or equivalent. Instead it is an Internet that is directly available, by way of new technological developments, without restriction to every human mind. No wires or computers are involved, at least at the user's end, nor are there any subscriptions or other fees required. In this paper I discuss Ryman's novel in tandem with the story of Pentecost (Acts 2: 1-42), using each story to analyze and critique the other. Along the way I draw upon the work of Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard, Serres, Steiner, and Robert Wilken.

Editing the Coptic Old Testament In our paper, we will present the "Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament,“ which is a long-term research project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. This project fills a huge lacuna, as no modern edition of the Bible in Coptic, which is a daughter version of the Septuagint, exists. The project aims to provide a complete documentation of the manuscript evidence, digital editions of all Coptic OT manuscripts, critical editions of all OT books, corpus-linguistic analyses, and translations into English, German and Arabic.

Few biblical scholars assess the costs of “eunuchizing” oneself for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19:12c-d). Most interpret Jesus’ enigmatic words metaphorically, as an invitation to voluntary celibacy (without defining celibacy). Some view acceptance as a ‘gift’ (e.g., Blinzler, Schnackenburg, Patte, Davies, France, Hare, Keener, Witherington). And almost all read Jesus’ words in light of preceding verses about marriage, divorce, and remarriage (19:3-11). Such readings miss the fact that in antiquity, “eunouchizo” was used synonymously with “to castrate.” That early Christian men practiced self-castration is clear from the ban on self-castrated clerics promulgated at the Council of Nicea (Canon 1). These interpretations also neglect Matthew’s broader narrative context, including subsequent verses, where self-made eunuchs appear immediately before Jesus teaches his disciples that the kingdom of heaven belongs to (non-procreative) children (19:13-15) and encourages would-be followers to relinquish their earthly riches, property, houses, farms, and family members (19:16-29). Although their heavenly rewards will be magnificent (19:29-30), their earthly costs will be steep. Costly signaling theory offers a fresh interpretive approach to Matthew’s self-made eunuchs. Drawing on recent work in signaling theory (e.g., Sosis, Bulbulia and Sosis, BliegeBird and Smith, Ruffle and Sosis), I will argue that self-castration serves as a reliable and honest signal of these men’s commitment. The perplexing decision of some early male followers of Jesus to castrate themselves becomes explicable when viewed as a costly signal. Self-made eunuchs demonstrate the irrevocable commitment Jesus desires of followers who join his eschatological movement. For their deliberate sacrifice of bodily wholeness, future progeny, and social status, Matthew’s eunuchs will be rewarded richly in the kingdom of heaven. Their bodily signal communicates to current and prospective adherents the kind of self-abnegation that is necessary to be a genuine follower of Jesus. The eunuchs’ signaling also alerts potential “predators” outside the committed group of Jesus followers (i.e., Pharisees and scribes whom the evangelist delegitimizes) that Jesus is the only authoritative interpreter of scripture and divine will. Through their self-castration, these men risked not only their physical well-being through a dangerous act, they risked social ostracism. They foreclosed options, making defection difficult (as eunuchs were viewed by the broader Roman male populace with derision and horror). They alert potential adherents to significant costs, including costs to preexisting household members who are left behind, from economic stability and social ostracism to the loss of kinship networks. Yet they will also enjoy individual and collective benefits, both now and in the hereafter; they will benefit by the community’s growth, special instruction, baptism, healing, mutual support and, above all, a new family where they may call themselves brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of God. Jesus’ closest disciples even receive thrones and power to determine the eternal fate of others (19:28).

“The Dialogue between a man and his Ba” is a Middle Egyptian literary text preserved on a single papyrus, P. Berlin 3024, dating to the beginning of the second millennium BC. The text has received a broad scholarly attention due to the ambiguity of its message which conveys pessimistic notions concerning both life and death. In this paper I set out to propose an explanation of the unprecedented fact that a Ba, mistakenly translated as “soul”, can talk to his human owner, when the latter is still alive.This research notes that rare conversations between humans and other normally incapable-of-speech entities occur in Egyptian and Ancient Mediterranean literature when a warning or an admonition is given to the main character. These conversations are usually framed in situations of great suspense and close danger such as this, in which there is a man who is about to commit suicide on one side and his Ba’s hedonistic discourse on the other side. Since the incoming danger is approaching from the man himself, only an aspect inside his own person can restrain him from death, and the funerary aspect of the Ba makes him suitable to finally succeed and protect the man. At the same time, he raises an instruction that serves as a moral to the reader, who is more attracted to the highlighted message by the use of this newly-identified literary resource of admonitions transmitted by incapable-of-speech entities.

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This paper uses sociology of social deviancy and public visibility to study the veil of Tamar in Genesis 38. The idea of social conformity or deviance is here specifically studied in terms of public display or covering to create a sense of knowledge or opacity in the forming of identity. Particularly, garments or body coverings create perceptions of individual identity in public, either by a person wearing or not wearing them. Many of these kinds of studies conclude that not only the type of clothes or coverings, but also the public visual positioning of the wearer is a signifier of identity. Veiling is a dual sign of resistance to colonization and the acquiescence to gender domination. The veiled woman in a postcolonial feminist sense is under “double colonization” (Musa Dube). However, the various meanings of this identity often depend on the viewpoint of those viewing the person(s) in the veil. The use of veils depends on contexts such as legal imperatives, public space, the identity of the perceivers, and any general perception of risk. Legal texts on women and veils in ancient West Asia indicate various religious, hierarchical and gendered ideologies. The veil also differentiated between ethnic, urban and tribal situations for women. Women were identified in the visual public space by their veil or bare head, creating a highly visual social and legal statement of conformity or non-conformity. In Gen 38, Tamar uses the veil as a polyvalent symbol, capable of multiple visual social meanings. For example, Hirah perceives the woman whom Judah purchased for sex (zonah) as a religious practitioner (qedeshah), even though there is no evidence that he directly sees her. The narrator connects her with female Canaanite ethnicity through public “viewpoint.” Hirah’s vision is described through this free indirect discourse. If this is because of the veil, the narrator is using the assumed social world as a cue for linking female veiled characters with derogatory characterizations or social risk. The symbolic world of the Hebrew Bible creates the "qedeshah" as transgressive for legal and cultic reasons, quite apart from the historical realities which are difficult to define. Therefore, in this study, while it is important to note the biblical and historical evidence, the interpretation centers on the metaphoric narrative strategy of visual dissonance between the veiled and unveiled. The narrative of Tamar and Judah in Gen 38 can be read through this lens of sociological and postcolonial themes of covering, uncovering and social risk. The veil of Tamar illustrates her risk taking action, her ethical self-objectification and her objectification of Judah in the pursuit of sexual activity. Tamar’s veil, when considered through the lens of the sociology of head covering and public visibility, is the sign by which she controls her own representation of otherness biblical ideologies of sexual and social deviancy. Her “unveiling” at the conclusion of Gen 38 creates a moment of destabilizing ethnic and gender norms in the creation of Israelite identity.

Absalom killed his brother and rebelled against his father, King David. No wonder that many are convinced he is a negative character. I'll try to show that Absalom is first and foremost a sensitive personality, a charismatic leader, a person of deeds, and when he encounters injustice he does not ignore it, he fights it. I shall follow his behavior from the rape of his sister Tamar to his cruel death, inflicted by Joab, to David's heavy grief. The author provides details that explain Absalom's reactions and criticize his father. Absalom's story contains hints that he could have been an appropriate successor to the throne of David.

This paper will consider the understanding of angels that is set forth in John of Dara’s previously untranslated commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and Moses bar Kepha’s previously untranslated works “On the Creation of the Angels” and “On the Orders of the Angels.” It will then examine the theology of demons that is set forth in the treatise “On Demons” that is attributed to both John of Dara and Moses bar Kepha. According to this treatise, because Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection are efficacious for the entire creation, it is possible even for demons to be saved if they repent. The author is skeptical, however, about whether or not they will ultimately do so. Comparing the theology and the style of this work to the writings on angels by both John of Dara and Moses bar Kepha, it is suggested that the treatise “On Demons” is more likely to have been written by Moses than by John.

From the classical period of Islam until modern times, many Muslim jurists have identified Q 33:57-61 as a foundational Qur’anic textual evidence proscribing blasphemy of the Prophet Mu?ammad. The three most defining works produced by the medieval Sunni tradition addressed to this sensitive topic, Qa?i ‘Iya? al-Yah?ubi’s (d.1149) Al-Shifa’ bi-ta‘rif ?uquq al-mu??afa, Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya’s (d.1328) Al-?arim al-maslul ‘ala shatim al-rasul, and Taqi al-Din al-Subki’s (d.1355) Al-Sayf al-maslul ‘ala man sabba al-rasul, all prioritize Q 33:57-61 in various significant ways. In particular, the Arabic verb ’adha utilized in this passage, variously translated as to offend, insult, trouble, inconvenience, or affront, attracted the attention of these jurists and occupied a prominent place within their legal exposition. Despite its important role in the development and justification of blasphemy rulings, a more holistic comprehension of ’adha and its cognates in Qur’anic usage reveals considerable semantic fluidity and ambiguity, raising significant questions about the way this word group has been employed to explain and defend particular readings of Islamic blasphemy law. This paper explores how Q 33:57-61 was interpreted within these three treatises and by the broader classical tafsir tradition, drawing in particular on those tafasir appreciated for their legal and traditionist leanings (e.g. al-?abari, Ibn al-‘Arabi, al-Qur?ubi), and problematizes the role this passage played in medieval debates about Islamic blasphemy law. The presentation highlights the marked disconnect between the classical tafsir tradition and those treatises devoted more exclusively to expositing and defending blasphemy rulings, and argues that the use of Q 33:57-61 as an evidence for blasphemy law is not an obvious or unavoidable reading derived from the sacred text itself, but rather that it is the result of a complex interplay between the Qur’an, tradition literature, and Islamic legal philosophy. In conclusion, this paper does not assert that jurists like Qa?i ‘Iya?, Ibn Taymiyya, and al-Subki are somehow in manifest error in their exegetical argumentation, but it does seek to demonstrate the intricate, even fragile construction of this interpretation of Q 33:57-61 when it is subjected to closer examination. In general, the paper generates insights relevant to the fields of Qur’anic interpretation, the classical tafsir tradition, and Islamic legal thought.

While "confined" (36:5), Jeremiah receives a divine command to “take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you” (36:2) and he commissions Baruch to transcribe it (36:4). What are the contents of the scroll and its replacement (36:28)? Was the earliest layer of the Book of Jeremiah written in prison? Although these historical questions cannot be answered conclusively, I read Jeremiah 1-20 following the “prison poetics” proposed by Doran Larson. Larson states that a prison text exhibits “material links to the strategies of power exercised within prison” and “a recurring trope in the work of the prison writer is to inscribe an alternative map of her/his cultural, social, and moral location by writing alternative bonds of personal or historical association.” Thus, reading Jeremiah 1-20 alongside other prison literature—ancient and modern—provides a heuristic for theorizing dynamics of power and the trauma that has increasingly concerned scholars of Jeremiah in recent years. In particular, this way of reading illuminates Jeremiah's use of older biblical traditions to critique political power and project an alternative way of faithful life.

The genre of the Song of Songs as love poetry is well established, as it shares strong thematic parallels with ancient Near Eastern Egyptian love songs, and a number of points of contact with Mesopotamian love songs as well. However, an investigation into the Song’s relationship to biblical wisdom illuminates the fact that it also shares a number of affinities with the antecedent ancient Near Eastern didactic or advice literature genre, what we call ‘wisdom.’ Scholars are increasingly recognising that the various genres of biblical literature were the product of a single literate or ‘scribal’ class, as they were in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and most seem to be coming to an agreement that these genres were flexible, shifted and that the boundaries between them are not rigid or always clear. Genres are not viewed as mutually exclusive categories, as scholars are observing that different types of biblical literature blend various genres and conventions. Books can ‘dip into’ several genres, and works of one genre can borrow the conventions of others, so that we see the blending of genres, or even the subversion of them. This paper will demonstrate that the Song of Songs incorporates forms and conventions used in the cognate ancient Near Eastern advice literature genre throughout the book, so that the Song shares points of contact with both the love song and advice literature genres of the ancient Near East. The primary forms used in ancient Near Eastern advice literature appear in the Song of Songs, as well as a number of other forms and conventions commonly detected in ancient Near Eastern didactic or ‘wisdom’ writing. The Song also displays content typical of ancient Near Eastern advice literature, as well as a number of other themes commonly observed in wisdom writing. The purpose of this exploration into the Song’s use of these features is not to label the Song as ‘wisdom’ proper, or have it categorised as such, but rather, to understand what the presence of the features and conventions, used in ancient Near Eastern advice literature, means for the interpretation of the Song itself. The Song of Songs is clearly a love song, yet it also does something quite different than other ancient Near Eastern love song texts, by combining the love song genre with the ancient Near Eastern advice literature genre to produce a wisdom literature about romantic love and how to pursue love wisely.

In the light of the genealogy of the virtue tradition, this paper will explore some of the ways in which character ethics opens fruitful horizons, on the one hand, and constrains one's vision of particular texts, on the other, in an attempt to diagnose the dialectical promise and problem of virtue ethics for hermeneutical and ethical reflection on Israel’s ‘wisdom literature’.

While the structural and semantic readings of Quranic surahs have afforded a way to read linguistic coherence into the longer suras, such readings necessarily remain silent on the ethical, theological or feminist implications of this perceived structural coherence (El-Awa, Chapter 3, 2006). Similarly, feminists and modernist Muslims read gender equity into the Quran via the oft quoted 33:35 - seen as an irrefutable statement of gender equity. Such readings fail to acknowledge the wider context of Sura 33 which enforces a gender apartheid and gender heirarchical social order that is quite absent from some other suras of the Quran. More specifically such readings fail to comment on some distinctive features of this Surah e.g the divinely ordained authority of the Prophet and his exemption from the rules governing domestic relations that apply to the rest of the community, in which the power and authority of the Prophet is consolidated while that of his domestic partners diminished. Similarly the categorical declaration that no man can claim to inherit the Prophetic authority and that he is the seal of the Prophets (33:40) consolidates his unique and preferred position within the community of believers and within all religious communities till eternity: this signals an exponential ascent in the prophetic authority in all spheres of life in this late surah from a humble beginning of early surahs - e.g. Surah 68 al-Qalam. In the light of the above, my paper will compare Sura 33 al-Ahzab with Sura 42 as-Shura as presenting two alternative models of prophetic authority, community formation and gender relations

In this paper, we will present new evidence pertaining to the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron I at Megiddo and analyze data from past excavations. Meticulous excavations of stratigraphic sequences in different parts of the site, accompanied by good control over ceramic typology and a rigorous program of radiocarbon dating, enable observing minute developments in the history of the site. We shed light on the history of Megiddo in the later phases of the Late Bronze and early days of the Iron I, the end of Egyptian rule and the appearance of Philistine pottery. All three issues have implications beyond Megiddo.

The investigation of powerful texts seeks not only to understand their content, but their function—how do they accomplish the response within us that they do? The text of 2 Samuel 11-12 is such a text. For thousands of years this text elicits a strong moral response from its hearers; few hear this story of David’s abuse of power and Nathan’s subsequent parable of the feasting on the poor man’s lamb and not recoil. I assert that the David and Nathan story provides ample evidence for the presence of moral disgust issuing from physical disgust on the part of David for the eating of the ewe-lamb. First, I argue that David—as well as the reader—is disgusted—by the eating of the lamb because it is described in terms of cannibalism and the blurred boundaries between life and death (2 Sam 12:3-4). Second, another type of cannibalism is implied in the text—that of the “devouring” of Uriah and the consuming of his assets (11:25). So much attention has been placed on David’s power and the responsibility of a superior to act with justice, that the potency of David’s and Uriah’s similarities have been overlooked. These similarities aid the reader in distinguishing yet another type of cannibalism present in the narrative. Lastly, the issue of the parable’s purpose and classification will be examined to see what relationship they may have to the notion of disgust. I argue that the role of the parable is not to safeguard the prophet Nathan, but rather to broach the “self-other asymmetry”—the need to gain distance from a situation involving oneself in order to sense the emotion of disgust. Considering the context of this story in the David narrative, the resulting saga of David’s family may offer an intriguing situation for understanding the role that both physical and moral disgust play in its reading.

This paper will attempt an interpretation of Colossians 3:1–4:1, focusing particularly on the relationship between slaves and their masters, which is the third grouping of the Haustafeln. A special attention will be given to the relationship between the baptismal saying with the theme of eradication of social boundaries (Col 3:11) and the intergroup ethical saying with the assumption of patriarchy (3:18–4:1, particularly 3:22–4:1). Based upon a social theory on intergroup relationship of subgroups (slaves and masters) under their superordinate community (Jesus-community), together with a social process theory of liminality, it will be argued that the apparent dissonance between the sayings are in effect intended by the author of the letter to provide an occasion for the community members to evaluate how the ideal of being reflected in the liminal moment may be put into practice in the traditional patriarchal relatedness.

Isaiah 10:5-15 is widely recognized as a single literary unit, containing the famous "Woe Assyria, rod of my anger" oracle. At its center lie a series of boasts cited in the name of "Assyria," in vv. 8-11 and 13-14. This paper will focus on the motifs in vv. 13-14. Each of these motifs is well-attested in the Assyrian royal inscriptions, and this has led commentators to describe verses 13-14 as portraying "the typical claims of the Assyrian kings to enormous power, almost endless military success, and great wisdom,” (Roberts) and to cite passages where individual motifs appear in different Assyrian inscriptions. But there is good reason to believe that these are not simply "typical" motifs, pulled together from a wide variety of Assyrian inscriptions of different kings. The motifs concatenate in a unique way in the letter to the gods of Sargon, describing his eighth campaign, where the first three motifs noted (strength, wisdom, defense of borders) form part of Sargon's self-presentation. This self-presentation was discussed in detail by van de Mieroop, who noted contrasts to the presentation of Rusa, Sargon's opponent. Sargon is portrayed as wise, respectful of boundaries, recognizing that these come from the gods, while Rusa is portrayed in opposite terms. The letter to the gods presents Sargon as the guardian of boundaries, a role he assumes in his wisdom; the gods give him the power to enforce boundaries. When Isaiah 10:13 references the claims Sargon makes against Rusa, it turns them against Assyria. The verse cites Sargon as boasting about his wisdom and strength, but instead of portraying him as using these to defend boundaries, it accuses him of removing boundaries of nations. Isaiah 10:13a effectively charges Sargon with the precise crime for which he set out to punish Rusa, thus justifying a punishment of Sargon by the true Guardian of boundaries (YHWH). This focus on Assyrian removal of boundaries reflects the experience of the southern Levant under the Assyrian domination, in which boundaries of formerly-independent kingdoms were re-drawn as they became Assyrian provinces. The author of Isaiah 10:13 references both the connections made in Sargon's letter to the gods between Sargon's wisdom and his obedience to the gods, both of which lead him to seek to defend borders, and the idea that strength was given to him by the gods to use for that purpose. But rather than guarding boundaries, the Assyrian has used his wisdom and power to remove nations' boundaries. Sargon is therefore in open revolt, by his own criteria, against "the gods," an accusation that directly connects the boasts of Isaiah 10:13 to the impending Divine punishment described in 10:12. Other similarities between Sargon's letter and Isa. 10:14 include the plunder of treasure in the mountains, and the unique motif of gathering eggs from a silent bird. These motifs all appear in Sargon's letter, and are reworked in Isaiah in order to cite actual Assyrian boasts while subverting Assyrian ideology.

To further the discussion of the ‘Construction of Christian Identities’ Seminar, this paper proposes to narrate observations regarding the behavior of those who received the letters of Paul by discerning hints and descriptions within the letters. This written observation of group behavior, interpolated from Paul’s writings, may be the beginning of an ethnography of the earliest followers. Geographic and social location affect, perhaps create, cultural identity, perception and reality. Paul’s letters are embedded in multiple networks of meaning within the overarching Roman Empire. Finding strategies for parsing ‘identity’ (an Enlightenment period term) from an ancient religious movement that crossed both social and provincial boundaries will be complicated. Difference and stereotype, group participation and commonality gives meaning and purpose significant to participants but may be difficult to discern two millennia later. As a first step, this paper will seek to describe elements of social behavior in the narrative world of the Corinthian Correspondence. ‘Narrative world’ because we have only Paul’s side of the conversation and observations are made through the lens of the story Paul speaks. The corpus of Paul’s letters crosses boundaries, not only social boundaries in Paul’s own story, but also geographic region. This paper seeks to reduce a few of these variables by limiting the observation to the letters to followers in only one community, Corinth. Observations are inferred from Paul’s comments and his instructions. For example, 1 Cor. 16:20b (2 Cor. 13:12a) “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” Unless this closing instruction is hyperbolic, this is a sign that there was a group behavior that could be described as a “holy kiss.” The kiss had multivalent meaning and social convention in the Roman Empire. Apparently the members of the group would know who was eligible to give and, conversely, who should and who should not receive such a kiss. This kiss functioned as a marker for group boundary and inclusion. The context of the instruction, 1 Cor. 16:19-20a (2 Cor. 13:12b) was greetings from others outside the local community, the instruction here in the letter functioned as a signifier of inclusion. In 2 Corinthians, the preceding context is a call for unity and order connecting the kiss with group cohesion. The context following in 1 Corinthians, is an anathema that is emphatically Paul’s: “Let anyone be accursed who has no love of the Lord” (1 Cor. 16:22a). The anathema suggests there were others outside group from whom the kiss, as a sign of inclusion, would be withheld. Participants would know, without further instruction, the difference between the two. They would be able to nuance any socially constructed gray areas less by theological or ideological correctness, and more by social mores or ritual purity. Observations regarding initiation, expulsion, adjudication of grievances, emissaries and correspondence, leadership controversies, ritual, and the collection of money provide the beginning of an ethnography for Seminar discussion.

For more than a century scholars have debated whether the remark by Jesus to Paul at Acts 26:14 that it is hard to kick against the goad is an allusion to Euripides’ Bacchae. After many decades of skepticism, the tide of scholarly opinion now tends, correctly, to recognize the allusion. What purposes it serves requires more reflection. Within the narrative it serves as a captatio benevolentiae by the character Paul when he is confronting powerful people who potentially stand in the way of his new religious movement. As part of the narrative’s rhetoric to its implied audience, it serves as a reminder that the force behind Paul’s mission is even more powerful than was the cult of Dionysus.

While most interrogatives are rendered literally in LXX-Pentateuch, this paper attempts to answer why there are some constructions that at times are also rendered non-literally. Sometimes questions are rendered as statements (particularly rhetorical questions) or statements rendered as questions. Some questions are rendered literally but in Greek are constructed to assume a yes or a no answer. The exclamatory use of ????? gets rendered in a variety of ways. This paper suggests that these and similar departures from literal renderings of interrogatives are not evidence of textual variants or difficulties in translation, but should be understood in light of the translator’s Hellenistic Education. Any Hellenistic student who learned to write and read would have been trained in thinking through a text and in rewording it in various ways (including restating questions as statements or vice versa). We can gain insight into this training through Aelius Theon’s textbook of Progymnasmata. Many of the departures from literal renderings of interrogatives in the LXX-Pentateuch show a concern for the rhetoric of the passage or reflect the perceived concerns of the character in the text positing the question. No doubt other sorts of deliberate transformations in LXX literature can also be better understood when seen in the context of Hellenistic pedagogical practices and exercises.

The text of Esther is a cognitive-exegetical pendulum which moves between two poles: the recognition of Esther’s flexibility as she crosses lines in the social, gender, and ethnic realm, and the simultaneous feeling that the borders are impassable, and there is no possibility of movement from one circle to another. Esther is portrayed as the perfect “other,” one who has internalized her limited possibilities and marginal place in society, but also as an individual who undergoes an impressive process of taking responsibility and leadership as far as one possibly can, culminating in the governance of her nation. Esther moves between the preservation of the hierarchal definitions of society and heroic and empowering acts; between the ability to alter borders and a social rigidity which builds impenetrable walls; between a constant threat over weakened sectors and a utopian hope for a coexistence which blurs distinctions of nation and gender, and in which the individual is given the freedom to act regardless of ethnicity, gender or religion. The reader of the book of Esther is faced with two conflicts of identity: Is Esther a woman who maneuvered with sophistication between various layers of hierarchy, or a woman who cowered before rigid patriarchal conventions? And is the society Esther faces a well-guarded hierarchy with impassable boundaries, or not quite what it seems? The proposed lecture will investigate the dual design of Esther’s character, and the fascinating opportunity awarded to the reader, who can influence the reality of the text with personal analysis. The book implements the principle of reading as a dialogue between the reader and the text, providing the reader with the final say regarding the messages conveyed by the text. In addition, I will explore the need for dual readings, which express the possibilities of simultaneously being outside and in, to be represented specifically by a woman.

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The enigmatic epithet in Isaiah 14:12 has long been a subject of speculation and curiosity. Translators and commentators alike have largely agreed on the basic meaning of the words often rendered as, “Day Star, Son of the Dawn,” but it is the referent of this appellative that has puzzled scholars. Under the influence of the Vulgate’s rendering of this phrase, and in coordination with certain New Testament passages, some have understood this verse to be talking about Satan. Such a reading, of course, does violence to the continuity of the oracle, which begins and ends by explicitly naming Babylon as its subject. Taking the context into consideration, other scholars have suggested that this passage uses heightened language to speak about the king of Babylon. This suggestion, while having the benefit of respecting the integrity of the prophetic oracle, ultimately does not stand up to close scrutiny. Who, then, might this Day Star be? In the mythic and political literature of Babylon, there is one figure whose name comports well with the form of the epithet in Isaiah 14:12. What is more, his actions – seen as glorious and victorious in their Babylonian context – match those decried in the oracle. It is Marduk, king of the gods of Babylon. This reading fits within the context of Isaiah’s prophecy against Babylon, and solves the problems raised by either reading that has been commonly suggested. It is not a parenthetical condemnation against Satan within an oracle against Babylon, but neither is it necessary to read Isaiah 14:12-14 as metaphorical descriptions of a human king’s self-aggrandizement. The actions described in these verses are precisely what Marduk undertakes in Enuma Elish. This passage, then, should be read as a statement of the heavenly conquest over Marduk by Yahweh which manifests itself in the human sphere as the destruction of Babylon. A comparison of other oracles against Babylon in Isaiah and Jeremiah with Marduk’s activities in Enuma Elish support the observation that oracles against this nation employ language that subverts the most famous victory myth of Babylon’s pre-eminent god.

Biblical scholars have recently used the philosophical messianism of Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin in interpretative projects on a range of topics, relating especially to Pauline eschatology. However, little attention has yet been paid to how these expressions of philosophical messianism inform interpretations of the messianic identity ascribed to Jesus in the gospels. In this paper I offer a re-reading of the Parable of the Great Feast that arises from the productive tension between the messianisms of Agamben’s and Benjamin’s writings and the messianic concept in the parable. For Agamben and Benjamin, the messianic is a relation made manifest in the structure of time, a theme their thought shares with the Parable of the Great Feast, which does not describe a meal but is focused instead on those who come when they are called, those who realize the time is Now. As the men who are first invited to the feast decline because of their obligations to worldly matters, the ones most despised by society—“the poor, crippled, blind, and lame”—take their places. In this way the parable envisions the eschatological feast as open to those who are not confined by worldly designations or obligations. Indeed the ones who come are not healed of their various disabilities but rather retain their particularity. They thereby express an Agambenian messianic time that nullifies the conditions of the world without doing away with them, thus revealing a “pure potentiality” that is human life. Given the context of a Greco-Roman meal, the parable reiterates a social form to give it new meaning, one with distinct political implications, which become clear in the parable’s intersections with the thought of Benjamin. His term, Jetztzeit or “Now Time,” describes the possibility of the past to be redeemed in the present. In the recognition that time is not a linear progression of discrete moments but rather a structure of thought that can connect events of the past with the present, time always holds the possibility of new conditions. Its structure allows the eruption of a “weak force” that characterizes the “divine violence” of insurrectionary acts. Jesus’ utterance of the parable, and not only the parable’s content, thus reveals Jesus’ messianic identity as carrying such a “weak force.” Furthermore, Jesus fulfills the expiatory role that Benjamin describes of a religious educator, in that he relieves the ones deemed sinful from their burden of guilt. My philosophical-theological reading of the Parable of the Great Feast interprets the invitation to the feast as a Benjaminian messianic interruption in linear time that illuminates the possibility of a new kind of subjectivity, one that Agamben characterizes as “pure potentiality.” The Kingdom of God that is signaled by the proper eschatological feast, in contradistinction to the one the Pharisees presume includes only the pious (and therefore also only the physically sound), is the one taking place in the “Now-time” that is the site of redemption.

Darkness (hšk) is a rich and fluid image in the Hebrew Psalter—while it occasionally appears in a positive context as a visual element of the theophany (e.g., Psalm 18) or as part of the cosmic order (e.g., Psalm 104), it more typically carries a negative sense in the figurative language of the lament/complaint psalms. In these texts, darkness is associated with distress, wickedness, danger, and above all with separation from the divine sight and presence, the most extreme form of which is death. Nowhere in the psalms is the language of darkness, distance, and death more concentrated than in the individual lament of Psalm 88. Through a close examination of darkness imagery in the biblical psalms, informed by the use of similar language elsewhere in Hebrew poetry (e.g., Job), I will demonstrate that “darkness” served in certain cases not simply in a metaphorical sense, but rather as a standard metonym for Sheol. Since “darkness” of course should not be taken as “Sheol” in every occurrence, I will also identify structural and semantic factors in the wider poetic context (e.g., parallel terms) that can guide the interpreter in each case. By recognizing specific metonymic uses of “darkness” in biblical poetry and setting these alongside other prominent associations of darkness in the figured world of the ancient Hebrew writers, we can arrive at a deeper understanding of texts like Psalm 88 and the impact they were intended to have on those who participated in their performance.

This dissertation project discusses how Greco-Roman and early Christian texts on abortion are used by authors and lawyers in twentieth-century America to (re)construct the past in order to reform U.S. abortion laws. I will consider books and essays by four individuals: John Connery; Germain Grisez; Michael Gorman; and John T. Noonan. Each author, pointing to sources such as the Hippocratic Oath, Roman laws, and numerous texts from church fathers, attempts to tell the same narrative: that the practice of abortion was widespread in antiquity – of course, that is, until Christianity came on the scene. Using such varied texts as the _Didache_ to conciliar decrees of the fourth century and beyond, the story that each author wants to implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) tell is that the current historical moment of legalizing abortion in the twentieth century sets a precedent that has not been seen since before the moralizing presence of Christianity in the first century. By showing that each of the four authors fails to fully appreciate the historical context of each example they use in their constructed narratives, I will then contextualize the main examples shared between the four while also putting the twentieth-century authors and their works in their specific contexts (e.g., the tumultuous 1960s, Paul VI’s _Humanae Vitae_, the subsequent mobilization of Catholic activists in the anti-abortion movement, and the 1973 _Roe v. Wade_ decision by the U.S. Supreme Court). The current structure of the dissertation centers around each author’s use of the past and is trifold: considering the texts that the authors cite in common and situating the examples in their historical contexts; discussing how each author makes the past present, that is, using the past to comment on the then-current atmosphere in 1960s and 1970s America; and showing how the authors reconstruct the past to influence the future by attempting to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. I think that this project will make an impact in scholarship that focuses on healthcare in antiquity (by exploring the rhetoric surrounding ancient medical practices), history of interpretation (by examining how ancient texts are used to construct and contest U.S. laws), and early and late antique Christian identity formation (by considering the rhetorical practices used to differentiate Christians from “others”).

Lamentations 4:11-16 is both a microcosm and a macrocosm of the failure of priestly theodicy. At a first level, the narrator attributes the destruction of Jerusalem not to the caprice of divine anger (vv.11, 16) but instead to defiled and defiling religious leaders (vv.13-14; cf. Lev 13:45) whose shedding of innocent blood has polluted the holy sanctuary and forced God’s departure (2:7). At this level, the narrator appropriates and apparently agrees with conventional priestly theodicy (cf. Lev 15:31; Num 19:13, 20). At a second level, the narrator subtly acknowledges that priestly theodicy has collapsed under its own weight. When priests become impure by “pouring out” (šapak, v.13) the blood of the righteous, then does not God become comparably impure by “pouring out” (šapak, v.11) lethal and excessive fury on an entire city? By extension, if Jerusalem’s survivors should look on the entire cultic enterprise and say “Get away! Impure!” then purification offerings (Lev 4:1-35), sacrifice, and any other rituals meant to connect God and people are nugatory. This essay will examine ways in which the book of Lamentations mourns not only the fall of Jerusalem and the collapse of all theodicies – prophetic, sapiential, and priestly – but also the entire infrastructure that supports ancient Israel’s religious worldview.

The verbal phrase “smote [him] in the fifth [rib]” occurs only four times in the Hebrew Bible, and these four occurrences are within 2 Samuel. Three of these pertain to the familial and professional rivalry between Abner and Joab (2 Sam 2:23; 2 Sam 3:27; 2 Sam 20:10). The act of striking someone in the anatomical area of the fifth rib has pragmatic utility that fits the specific social and physical parameters within the narrative settings of these three occurrences. The fourth occurrence, the assassination of the napping Eshbaal (2 Sam 4:6), differs in circumstance. Moreover, the Hebrew and Greek versions of 2 Sam 4:6 describe substantially different scenes. In evaluating portrayals of violence and the vocabulary of violence within the biblical anthology, we observe cases of violence that are framed as socially or theologically justified harm, or illegitimate harm, and some cases are ambiguous. My analysis of the rhetorical weight and selective use of this peculiar phrase “smote [him] in the fifth [rib]” elucidates the text-critical issue exhibited in the differing Hebrew and Greek versions of 2 Sam 4:6.

Before the advent of archaeology, the ancient Near East (ANE) was understood mostly through the lens of the Hebrew Bible. One example is our understanding of how the ancients made sense of and theologized divine images. Divine images were the standard means of divine-human mediation throughout the ANE, yet the biblical authors banned and ridiculed them as the devotional objects of fools and false faith. After all, how could something of wood or stone, crafted by human hands, actually be someone divine? This sentiment was adopted by what would later become Western society, and continues to resound strongly in religious circles today. In reality, the Mesopotamians experienced the same logical difficulty with idols that the authors of the Bible express, but dealt with it in a different way. Primary texts from ancient Mesopotamia provide the answer to the above question about a material object’s potential for divine status; they also present the Mesopotamian solution to the cognitive dissonance elicited by the notion that a hand-made image, which can also be reproduced, is in fact a deity. My thesis is that, rather than shy away from or prohibit the use of divine images, the Mesopotamians elevated the discomfort elicited by the paradox of a hand-made god, and used materiality to drive the theological point that the gods are simultaneously part of this world and otherworldly. In order to accomplish this task, specialized ašipu-priests performed a series of ritual acts and incantations, all of which were prescribed by a combination of written tablets and oral traditions. This induction ceremony, the Mis Pî (“Washing of the Mouth”), granted idols agency as mediators between divinity and humanity, status as gods or goddesses, and meaning as recipients of human devotion. These rituals and incantations, together with other primary texts, highlight a paradox that is at the core of many theologies and philosophies – that the material and eternal can and do exist both separately and as one, and all simultaneously.

The combat story of David and Goliath is one of the best-known stories in the Hebrew Bible. This story presents David’s bravery and trust in God before a big challenge and gives its readers inspiration and courage. However, this story is one of the texts that give biblical scholars headaches too. Its text raises many text-critical questions, as LXX and MT show huge differences; LXX 1Samuel 17 is approximately 46 percent shorter than MT. Vv.12-31, 41, 48b, 50, 55-58 are missing in LXX. Researchers in the past century have produced roughly three types of arguments. First, Wellhausen, Barthelemy, Gooding, and Rofe have held the view that LXX is an abridged version of a longer Hebrew text. Second, McCarter, Stoebe, and Klein suppose that MT is an expanded version of the shorter original text, reflected in LXX. Third, Tov and Lust claim two Hebrew versions of the story. LXX reflects an older version, and the editor of the later Masoretic text includes a separate and parallel version in the final form; inclusion of the later version resulted in the contradictions within MT 1Samuel 17. This paper attempts to create an entirely different view. MT 1Samuel 17 may reflect an original text, created by combining two sources of the combat story, like the creation stories in Genesis 1-2, or the Flood Narrative. The two different sources in 1Samuel 17 caused the LXX translator to do a source-critical work to remove discrepancies. The LXX translator identified two distinct images of David from the story; a shepherd boy and a weapon carrier of Saul. Then, the LXX translator wanted to describe David as Saul’s weapon carrier and removed the image of the shepherd boy David. This redactional work seems to have been somehow successful, as many scholars today think that LXX is original. However, the translator and source critic made a huge mistake by leaving some shepherd boy images in the weapon carrier source. Vv.38-40 states that David was given Saul’s garments, including a bronze helmet, breastplate, and his sword; however, David was not used to them. So David chose the shepherd boy’s weapons, which include a slingshot. This remaining shepherd boy imagery is not fit for the weapon carrier image of LXX’s David. LXX 1Samuel 16 describes David as ‘a man of valor, a warrior’ (v.18) or a semi-professional soldier. Saul loved David’s capability greatly, and David became his weapon carrier (v.21). Considering Jonathan’s skillful weapon carrier in 1Samuel 14, Saul’s weapon carrier David should have been trained and familiar with his boss Saul’s weapons. In contrast, however, David felt very strange with his boss Saul’s weapon and finally chose the shepherd boy’s weapons (vv.38-40). The tension between two images in vv.38-40 is a smoking gun for an existing shepherd boy source at the LXX translator’s hands. The first source critic made a mistake by leaving vv.38-40 from the shepherd boy sources!

This paper focuses on several occurrences in which the interrogatives mi "who" and ma "what" function as indefinite pronouns (following Haspelmath's 1997 terminology) in Biblical Hebrew, as can be found in the following sources: 1. 1 Sam 19, 3; 2. 2 Sam 18, 12; 3. Job 13, 13; 4. Prov 9, 13. While the lexicons mention these functions of the interrogatives (inter alia BDB), their semantics was not studied in a systematic manner. As we will demonstrate, these uses of the interrogatives can be found either in downward entailing environments (such as in the case of example 4), or in modal environments (2, we include the future tense under this category, as is in 1); and they function either as NPI (=negative polarity items), as is in 4 or as FCI (=Free Choice items), as is the case in 3. Similar uses of the interrogatives are known from other languages as well (Haspelmath 1997). For example, it has been studied extensively in the context of Japanese (inter alia Nishigauchi 1986, 1990; Shimoyama 1999, 2001). More importantly for our purposes, in a discussion about the semantics of these forms, Kratzer and Shmoyana (2002) have established the connection between the functions of these pronouns in questions and their functions as indefinite pronouns, relying on Hamblin's (1973) analysis to the semantics of questions, according to which a question denotes a set of its answers. In this paper, we will examine the applicability of Kratzer and Shmoyana's (2002) analysis to the data from Biblical Hebrew. More specifically, we will ask to what extent the data from Biblical Hebrew are indeed similar to what is surveyed in the typological literature about these functions of the interrogatives in other languages. In addition, we will examine the similarities between these data and what is found in other Semitic languages, most notably Classical Arabic, where one can find similar functions of the interrogatives, but with a somewhat different syntax and different semantics. Finally we will ask whether one can trace the origin of some later developments pertaining these pronouns in Mishnaic Hebrew already in their Biblical uses.

This paper scrutinizes portrayals of the Jerusalem temple and priesthood in Jesus films. In Jesus’s era, priests offered animal sacrifices daily in the temple. Some films make no attempt to depict cultic functions (e.g., Pier Pablo Pasolini’s The Gospel according to St. Matthew and Philip Saville’s The Gospel of John). Other films allude to sacrifice by showing non-animal and live animal offerings for sale (e.g., John Heyman’s Jesus), and sometimes smoke rises nearby (e.g., Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth). Nevertheless, inaccuracies abound; for example, Jews did not sacrifice donkeys (as intimated in Heyman’s Jesus), and (pace Saville’s Gospel of John) Jesus would have entered the temple precinct (?e???), but not the sanctuary (?a??). Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ explicitly—and relatively accurately—presents lambs being slaughtered; yet immediately thereafter Jesus institutes the Eucharist to replace animal sacrifice altogether. And in an objectionable adaptation of Yom Kippur, Catherine Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story shows a priest instructing Herod the Great to place his sins on the head of a bull, which is then slain to absolve Herod's ensuing slaughter of boys in Bethlehem. Through these and other examples, Jesus films evince a range of historical (in)accuracy as well as theological supersessionsim and anti-Judaism. In many ways, though, the films reflect tensions and ambiguities inherent in the gospels themselves. The gospels nowhere describe sacrifice in detail, and it is debatable to what extent Jesus himself—as opposed to his disciples—participates in temple rituals. Also, Jesus calls the temple a “house of prayer,” the literal designation of Diaspora synagogues, which were not sites of animal sacrifice. Ancient written gospels and their contemporary film counterparts thus illuminate significant discursive practices of religious competition, especially concerning Christians’ voluntary rejection of animal sacrifice.

Jesus does not cite the Shema in the Gospel of John as he does in the Synoptic Gospels; rather, the Fourth Evangelist weaves the Shema throughout his narrative, deploying it in service of his Christology via intertextual echoes. The author uses the Shema to locate Jesus within the divine unity (e.g., 10:30; "I and the Father are one"). He also draws upon interpretations of the Shema in the Hebrew prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah) to characterize the Johannine community as eschatological Israel restored. The prophets envision Israel regathered as a unity under the one God; John uses similar language and themes to demonstrate that Jesus' disciples now fulfill that role. This is a rhetorical move that effectively reverses the socio-historical situation of the Johannine community, which has been excluded from Jewish communal life in its particular locale. Johannine believers in Jesus are portrayed as God's restored people, while the Johannine "Jews" are "cast out" of the eschatological covenant community. The paper concludes by exploring the anti-Jewish potential of this reading.

Kierkegaard’s practice of interpretation grounds the meaning of Scripture in two factors: certain recurrent patterns in the biblical texts, and the individual’s capacity to put those themes to an edifying use. The ability to employ biblical texts for edifying purposes requires the cultivation of certain passional requisites, including a discontent with one’s own ethical/religious character, a receptivity to God’s gratuitous love, a delight in the sublimity of self-giving love, and a yearning to become a radical lover of the neighbor. All of these qualities presuppose a passionate concern for the shape and direction of one’s own life. Kierkegaard feared that the forces of modernity, such as “the crowd,” “levelling,” etc., exacerbated the difficulty of the already arduous task of developing such concerns. He feared that the cultural dynamics of “the present age” fostered various collectivisms that militated against the individual’s attainment of any real sense of self-responsibility. Of these collectivisms, the populist amalgamation of church, nation, and prosperity was one of the most pernicious. Consequently, in order to understand the Bible aptly individuals must be jolted out of enervating conformity to the prevailing cultural ethos and learn to worry about their lives in the right ways. This paper explores the strategies that Kierkegaard employed in his later literature to provoke a dissatisfaction with the allurements of populism and to foster an openness to the revelation of self-giving love. It is assumed that the challenges that Kierkegaard faced have resurfaced with new virulence in the form of contemporary American neo-populism

Creation, the Ongoing Priesthood of Jesus, and Divine Action in Hebrews

For many modern scholars the martial language and imagery that saturates Tertullian is colorful window-dressing on what for us is a “religion”. I want to argue, in this short paper, that the language and ideals of the ancient warband were not incidental, but essential for contextualizing Tertullian. His concept of his ecclesia as a disciplina in which a fraternitas of fideles was united by a great sacramentum against “the Devil and all his pomps” was echoed in his use of the words infideles and desertores for those who abandoned their oath or left the group. I would like to focus, in particular, on the emotional values and associations Tertullian adopted from the ancient warband – particularly the rebellious bands that formed in resistance to kingly or state regimes in the ancient world. I will especially focus on Tertullian’s notion of fides, tracing its movement in Tertullian, from a complicated internal emotional balancing system to the kind of absolute and unconditional “loyalty” that appears again and again in the ancient warband.

The Novum Testamentum Patristicum project (V&R) seeks to offer systematic treatment of the Patristic reception and exegesis of each book of the New Testament all throughout Late Antiquity, with forty volumes envisaged. Instead of a selection of translations of specific passages from Patristic works, the NTP volumes are commentaries of the Patristic exegesis of each NT book. This paper derives from the work on the second volume on 1 Peter (which deals with 1Pt 2:11-5:14), and offers a discussion of the various branches of interpretation of the exhortation to the presbyters in 1Pt 5, in the exegetical treatises and collections devoted to this letter: Didymus the Blind’s In epistolas canonicas brevis enarratio, Anonymus Scottus’ Commentarius in epistolas catholicas, the Venerable Bede’s In epistulas septem catholicas, Pseudo-Oecumenius’ Commentarium in epistulam priorem Petri, and the Catena Armenica and Catena Graeca linked to Pseudo-Andreas.

This paper employs W.V. Harris’ (2011) straightforward definition of “class” as a division of society the members of which live at roughly equivalent economic levels with similar access to amenities. A class of people shares many of the same values not shared by other classes and possesses similar levels of honour. The paper examines various examples throughout the Gospel of Mark with this notion of class in view, and pays specific attention to livelihood, gender, ethnicity and social practices such as dining. Reading Mark through the lens of class, the paper proposes, brings into greater focus some of the satirical dimensions of this gospel.

Emotional rhetoric is an important, but understudied, aspect of the emergence of the early Islamic polity and the rise and spread of Islam. This paper seeks to contextualise emotional content in the Qur’an by examining some late antique comparitors. It begins with a comparison between the way that grief is portrayed in pre-Islamic poetry and inscriptions with the way that these emotions are portrayed in the Qur’an. Grief is known to be a prominent theme of pre-Islamic poetry, and Hoyland cites it as one of the main emotional themes in pre-Islamic inscriptions. In the Qur’anic portrayal, God relieves the believers of their grief, thus shifting them out of their pre-Islamic emotional state and into a new emotional state appropriate for the believers. This paper describes how the re-alignment of emotions mirrors other patterns of emotional reattachment encouraged in the Qur’an, particularly that from old tribal and familial associations to the new Muslim community. Neuwirth has noted the Qur'anic discouragement of the old tribal affiliation in favor of the new community (‘From Tribal Gelealogy to Divine Covenant’, 2015), and she compares the Qur'anic community-building with that in the Bible. This paper seeks to extend the comparison to the emotional aspects of such re-alignment, and thus concludes by comparing the role of grief in the Qur’an with that in select Syriac memre poems and select Biblical passages.

Several recent publications that reconstruct, to some degree, the history of ancient Israel include a fresh account of Josiah’s reign in the second half of the seventh century. These works examine Josiah’s achievements from several angles and pay special attention to the Josianic law book, or Urdeuteronomium. One study, Jack Lundbom’s commentary on Deuteronomy, even develops “a new quest for Urdeuteronomium” in the course of the introduction. This paper’s point of departure is a review of Urdeuteronomium as it is being identified by Lundbom and others in current scholarship. After critical analysis of these positions, the paper suggests parameters and criteria for extending research on the law book of Josiah, or Urdeuteronomion.

Pseudo-Hegesippus (or "On the Destruction of Jerusalem") is generally treated as a loose translation of Josephus' "Jewish War" and thus primarily as significant in relation to Josephus. This paper argues that it is important to understand Pseudo-Hegesippus in its own right, as a unique piece of late fourth-century Latin Christian historiography that operates at the ideological crossroads of Jewish (and Christian) identity formation and theological history. In this way we can best understand Pseudo-Hegesippus as a pointed history that engages via Jewish identity the 'ethnic discourse' endemic to early Christian historiography. Scholars have long recognized that the central point of Pseudo-Hegesippus is to relate and explain the destruction of the Second Temple and its significance. What has yet to be realized is how Pseudo-Hegesippus effectively ties Jewish identity (the Jewish people) to the Second Temple (and Jerusalem) so as to insist that, when the Temple disappeared from history in CE 70, this signaled in important ways the end of the Jewish people as well (e.g. as God’s covenant people). Pseudo-Hegesippus was written to ‘write the Jews out of history.’ The literary-rhetorical means by which Pseudo-Hegesippus achieved this goal are numerous, and too large for one conference paper. This paper simply takes a first step toward the ethnic discourse of Pseudo-Hegesippus—a step toward establishing it as an important marker in the early history of Jewish-Christian relations—by noting the distinctions the text sometimes makes between the Hebrews (Lat. Hebraeus/Hebraei) and the Jews (Lat. Iudaeus/Iudaei). It is unsurprising to find an early Christian historian taking a negative position toward the Jews while portraying in more positive light their ancient, original, pristine forebears, the Hebrews. Aaron Johnson has shown that Eusebius built an entire ‘ethnic argument’ upon such a distinction in his “Praeparatio Evangelica.” What is interesting is to note the different ways in which this is done. This paper thus illustrates the rhetorical means and literary strategies by which Pseudo-Hegesippus subtly and occasionally insinuates a distinction between Hebrews and Jews in his history. One means by which Pseudo-Hegesippus does this is by situating Hebrew identity in positive correlation to Christian identity through Jesus, and in contrast situating Jewish identity within a culpably negative connection to Jesus and Christians. Another is by implying within the narrative different kinds of relationships to God: the Hebrews appear as “the people of God,” whereas the Jews appear as enemies to the Deity throughout the narrative. Finally, whereas Hebrews in Pseudo-Hegesippus often appear as ancient heroes of faith, Jews operate in the narrative as an uncontrollable and self-destructive people; Pseudo-Hegesippus even inserts a few pejorative stereotypes to essentialize Jewish character. This paper illustrates these rhetorical proclivities of Pseudo-Hegesippus, engaging the Latin text and reading them in contrast to their parallels in Josephus (when they exist). This serves to show that 1) Pseudo-Hegesippus is most fruitfully approached in its own right; 2) the text is interested in ethnic identities, particularly Jewish; and 3) Pseudo-Hegesippus should thus be read within the ethnic discourse of early Christian historiography.

Recent ethnographic and anthropological research on the phenomenon of spirit possession has shed light on the cultural and religious meanings attached to it in contrast to earlier functionalist studies that had focused almost exclusively on the social and political mechanics of possession and exorcism. In particular, these newer approaches have shown that possession has a rich cultural significance, as it enables humans to be in contact with their past, reflect on cultural and ethnic relationship with other groups, and to develop ethical and existential subjectivities. Many of these features can be advantageously observed in the varied early Christian discourses around possession and exorcism and they help illuminate documents that would be otherwise opaque to the gaze of a modern observer. The present paper takes into consideration the Gospel account of Jesus's "accusation" of performing exorcisms in league with Beelzebul. An analysis of the various synoptic narratives in light of anthropological theory on possession enables us to see the significance of the various demonic identifications in the pericope, the sense of their political articulation, and finally the text's reflection on the process through which Jesus's subjectivity as an exorcist came to be constructed.

One of the most difficult expressions in Colossians, and indeed in Paul’s corpus generally, is Col. 2:18. The first part of the verse says “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels.” Then comes the difficult expression ? ???a?e? ?µßate???. The word ?µßate?? is a hapaxlegomenon and it does not occur much in the LXX. There are at least four main interpretations of this word and its clause within which it occurs. The purpose of this paper is to take a new approach to this phrase that supports one of the four interpretations that views ?µßate?? as “entering into a temple.” First, we detect probable OT allusions to a temple idea at a number of significant points in chapters 1 and 2, both with respect to Christ as the temple (1:19; 2:9) and believers as the temple (1:9 [temple builders]; 2:10a). In particular, 1:9, 1:19, and 2:9-10 are usually seen by many commentators as key verses in the epistle, particularly with respect to presenting Christ as the only source of true “filling” in contrast to the visionaries’ view of filling (often seen against the background of the local mystery cults), though most commentators do not relate these verses to a temple notion. What we have in 2:18 then is what amounts to an “anti-temple” or a pseudo-temple, which the false teachers were contending that people needed to experience in order not to be disqualified from first class Christian status. Paul has repeatedly been making allusion to the temple of Christ and the temple of believers identified with Christ to insist that Christians already have all the “fullness” of temple experience needed for Christian existence. They have already “entered” into the true temple and should disregard the false experience of those who say they are “entering” into some other kind of heavenly temple.

Scholars interested in iconographic exegesis have investigated the memorable second stanza of Psalm 60 using relevant visual data from the ancient Near East. However, little iconographic attention has been given to the first stanza of the psalm outside of Othmar Keel’s work in The Symbolism of the Biblical World. In this paper, I examine Psalm 60:3–7 in light of Keel’s comments on the National Lament form and ancient Near Eastern iconographic siege motifs from two angles. First, I attempt to elucidate what Keel means by his reference to siege motifs and ask if one can be identified in a National Lament. Second, I examine the language of Psalm 60:3–7 and argue that such terminology provides distinct references to siege events. After demonstrating that the language of Psalm 60 is closely related to recorded siege events through the Hebrew Bible, I turn to Neo-Assyrian pictorial representations of siege warfare in order to examine any analogous features. Ultimately, I conclude that due to congruency between the motifs in Psalm 60 and the Neo-Assyrian reliefs, Keel’s category of “siege motif” should be broadened to include the existence of a siege motif in a National Lament—Psalm 60.

The paper intends to reflect on which ways the study of Paul's life interacts with either anthropological or socio-political (Person) and literary or psychological (Self) concepts. How much can these research approaches to "Paul" inform each other? How much are they distinct?

The participle is named after its apparent double nature—it seems to “participate” in both the verbal and nominal paradigms. Properly speaking, the participle is a deverbal adjective. As an adjective, it inflects for gender and number to agree with a nominal head, which it characterizes as the Actor in the event encoded by the corresponding verbal forms. At the same time, due to its derivation from a verbal source, the participle interacts relatively freely with the system of Binyanim to produce semantic distinctions related to voice and valency. This paper will discuss two interesting aspects of this double nature: 1. the syntax of the participle phrase in relation to the deverbal aspects of its semantics, and 2. the incorporation of constructions involving the participle into the Biblical Hebrew verbal system.

The concept of epieikeia: a divine and royal attribute. "The word group epieik- does not have an exact equivalent in the Hebrew language. In fact, it appears only three times in the translated texts (Ps 86[85]: 5; Dan 4:24; 2Esdr 9,8) and is related to different terms. Conversely, it occurs very often in the books originally written in Greek, mostly as an attribute of YHWH. Indeed, it is interesting to notice that the semantic family, frequently used in the Greek literature – the first attestation is in Homer (Il. I, 554) – does not appear in the translated texts of the Septuagint. It seems that the authors of the non translated books took the concept directly from the Greek world where it was used to characterize the conduct of perfect judges (Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea 1138; Rhetorica I, 13) or kings (Plato, Politicus 294-301). Harnack considers that the word group in the LXX connotes God’s behavior towards his nation as a forgiving and patient king (cf. Wis 12:18). Some questions arise in this regard: a) How did the Greek concept of epieikeia start to be used as a divine attribute? b) Why did the translator choose exactly this root to describe God’s clemency? c) Is there a connection between the description of Hellenistic Kings and the God in the Jewish literature of the diaspora? The answer must be found in papyri and inscriptions of the Ptolemaic period and especially in the Peri Basielias treatises written by Ecphantus, Diotogenes and Stenidas and transmitted by Stobaeus, where epieikeia is considered the fundament of a perfect kingship. "

The Yehudite literati who read and reread the Book of Hosea construed and remembered a Northern prophet of the old monarchic era and the instance of YHWH’s word associated with him. As they did so, they could not but think and explore Exile, both from the perspective of the putative characters populating the world of the book and their memory of monarchic Israel and from their own perspective. Moreover, Exile was not a self-standing concept within the world of the implied author of the book. Hosea, YHWH as they imagined the deity, and within their own ideological discourse. Instead, it was a concept and node of memory deeply intertwined with and which was meant to evoke other concepts and central nodes of memory, inter alia, Israel’s (only to be expected) rejection of YHWH’s ways and the multiple ways in which it may be mnemonically instantiated, the Exodus from Egypt and utopian futures (both including and not including David). This paper will explore some of the distinctive flavor carried by and evoked by the voices of Hosea and YHWH (as imagined through the reading of YHWH’s word to Hosea) on matters of Exile and Exile’s construction.

Priestly gifts from livestock and produce are prescribed in various places in the Pentateuch. They are further endorsed in the opening narrative of Tobit and in Qumran halakhah, as amply discussed in previous research. In this paper, however, I aim to discuss the short manifestations of this religious statute in wisdom literature. Priestly gifts not constituting a common theme in wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible, later wisdom literature was thus required to integrate that theme into its sapiential matrix. One such attempt appears in Ben Sirah 7:27-31, where the priests are one of the groups of people which receive their living from the individual property holder. In that passage, priests are elevated to a rather high status: “Fear the Lord and Honor the Priest”. With this passage in mind, several fragmentary passages in the wisdom composition 4QInstruction may now be better understood. I will address 2-3 references to priestly gifts in 4QInstruction, discussing their relation to both Ben Sirah and Pentateucal laws.

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In Mark 14:32-42, Jesus takes three disciples into Gethsemane and instructs them to stay awake while he goes further in to pray. Finding them asleep on his return, Jesus urges them to stay awake and pray (vv.37-38a). He then offers a rationale for his appeal: t? µ?? p?e?µa p????µ?? ? d? s??? ?s?e??? (v.38b). This paper seeks to resolve the referent of p?e?µa in this dominical proverb and the nature of the intended comparison. An examination of 30 English, 10 German, and 10 French scholars regarding the referent of p?e?µa in 14:38 yields two findings. First, 66% of scholars favour an anthropological referent, while 34% prefer a divine referent. Second, most German scholars (80%) favour a reference to the divine p?e?µa (mostly following Eduard Schweizer), while most English scholars (70%) and all French scholars favour a reference to the human p?e?µa. Most commentaries simply make passing remarks regarding the referent of p?e?µa, and even the single essay dedicated to this dominical proverb, by David Aune, has a different emphasis. Hence, there is no sustained argument for either position. In conversation with early Jewish traditions, I will argue that p?e?µa in 14:38 refers to the divine spirit and that the intended comparison is not an inner human struggle but the proleptic contrast between a believer who can rely on divine assistance in trying times and a non-believer who has no access to such resource. My argument unfolds as follows: 1. In Mark, p?e?µa refers 14 times to ‘unclean spirits’ and 6 times to the divine spirit, but the reference of p?e?µa is unclear in 2:8; 8:12 regarding Jesus and in 14:38 regarding the disciples. Dismissing the absurdity of a reference to p?e?µa ????a?t??, these texts either refer to the divine spirit or they have a ‘new’ referent—the human spirit. 2. I suggest that 1:9-13 (where the divine spirit is in view), 2:6-8 and 8:11-12 have a common dynamic, where Jesus is tested by various opponents and aided by the divine spirit through the provision of knowledge, understanding, and power. 3. Nevertheless, even if 2:8 and 8:12 refer to Jesus’ ‘human spirit’ (so Markan scholarship), I contend that the underlying referent is the divine spirit. Examining early Jewish traditions, I argue that the anthropological p?e?µa, referring to one’s life, vitality, or personality, should not be (sharply) distinguished from the divine p?e?µa as the extension of God’s life in humankind. 4. In both 13:11 and 14:38, the only texts where p?e?µa occurs in relation to the disciples, Jesus promises that the divine spirit will help them what to say (13:11) and what to pray (14:38) in times of testing. In both sayings, Jesus speaks proleptically of the post-Easter reality. 5. The term s??? in 14:38 denotes the whole person from a particular perspective, in this case the weak, frail human existence that is incapable to stay alert and pray to ward off trying circumstances. Looking at the other Synoptics, I will also discuss Matthew’s preservation and Luke’s omission of this dominical proverb.

How could the author of Isa 58 get the message of social justice from the cultic laws in Lev 16; 23; 25? This is the key question of my paper. First, on the basis of internal textual evidence in the passages I will give arguments that there is literary reuse between them. Second, on the same grounds I will argue that it is Isa 58 reusing Lev 16; 23; 25 and not vice versa. Third, I will take a closer look at the function of the reuse in Isa 58 and how precisely the cultic passages of the Day of Purgation in Lev 16 and 23 and the year of Jubilee in Lev 25 are combined and applied to a message of social justice. The study sheds light on how the relation between cultic and moral laws was perceived in the HB. I will argue that Isa 58 begins by indicating the textual basis in the legal sources for its application of the cultic laws to questions of social justice. Further, Isa 58 displays a creative strategy in acknowledging the original meaning of a lexeme like mela’kah and a phrase like ‘nh + nepeš in their respective contexts, while also reusing them creatively through wordplay as it appropriates the legal passages for its own purposes. The phrase w?tapeq lara?eb napšeka (Isa 58:10) has been a particular conundrum for exegetes. Commonly this has been interpreted on the basis of etymology and comparative linguistics. I will argue that it makes better sense to see it as part of a conscious reworking of cultic passages for the specific purposes of Isa 58. This study is intended to shed light on how later biblical authors perceived the character of Torah and how they appropriated it as a legal and ethical source. It also raises methodological issues related to the study of reuse: to what extent can the question of reuse be established independent of the question of direction of dependence? Are the two questions rather to be understood as mutually dependent upon each other, so a case for reuse can only be demonstrated if the question of direction of dependence is also taken into consideration?

Jerome, in his 46th letter, claims that “in the cottage of Christ all is simple and rustic: and except for the chanting of Psalms there is complete silence. Wherever one turns the laborer at his plough sings Hallelujah, the toiling mower cheers himself with Psalms, and the vine-dresser while he prunes his vine sings one of the lays of David.” Jerome’s idyllic representation is not entirely off the mark; psalm piety was a mainstay of Christian piety in general and monastic practice in particular. What about ancient Jews? This paper will answer this question by focusing on the scattered references to Psalm piety in rabbinic literature as well as material remains such as amulets and inscriptions. It will weave a portrait of Jewish scriptural encounter that situates the bible as an object of lived reality. It will demonstrate that Psalms are important not because of “what they mean,” but rather because “how they mean.” In other words, attention to Psalm piety allows us to build a method that views the bible beyond interpretation, and reconstructs it as an object of practice and performance. Furthermore, this paper’s attention on Psalm piety will help deconstruct the artificial, but popular, scholarly binary between liturgy and piety, as well as the false dichotomy between elite (=rational) and popular (=superstitious). It will demonstrate that far from opposing Psalm piety, rabbis were both its proponents and practitioners. They must be examined within the fabric of Late Antiquity and not above it. Ultimately, by combining an array of literary sources with material evidence this paper will answer a set fundamental questions about the religious world of Late Antiquity: Was there an ancient Jewish Psalm piety? What does it look like? Where and how does it map unto and diverge from Christian practice? What theoretical lenses are required to best view and appreciate it?

While many scholars have referred to the drying of the earth in Gen 8 as a process of re-creation, some scholars have even identified oblique references to the account of Creation in Genesis 1. This paper takes this line of inquiry further and demonstrates that Genesis 8-9 contains sequential references to each of the six days of Creation as reported in Genesis 1. It has long been noted that the accounts of the sending of the raven and the dove are tropes taken from the Mesopotamian flood tradition. This paper argues that these tropes are reworked in Genesis so that they may more closely hew to corresponding elements in days 3-5 of the original creation account in Genesis 1. The tight correspondence of sequential lexical markers between Genesis 1 and Genesis 8-9 is exhibited only when Genesis 8-9 are read in their final form. Put differently, only when the so-called Priestly and non-Priestly versions are merged does this pattern emerge. The implications for the classic source-critical approach to the account are explored.

This paper will consider how Iraqi nationalism incorporated themes and paradigms from Iraq´s pre-Islamic history to inculcate a distinct national identity during the 20th century. Starting in the 1950s, when Iraqi artists and poets started to experiment with form and consciously develop a unique Iraqi aesthetic, this paper will consider how these cultural products were subsequently incorporated by the political elite culminating in the rule of Saddam Hussein (1979-2003). During his reign, archaeology, like so many other features of Iraqi cultural and political life, was utilized primarily to justify and legitimize Hussein´s policies. Iraq´s ancient history, therefore, became closely aligned with his authoritarian and repressive rule and not as a inspiring past to bolster national pride and unity. The destruction of the National Museum and many regional museums in 2003 symbolizes this shattering of the past and how highly contested and politicized archaeology had become in Iraqi society.

The Song of Songs is the most ecological text of the Bible, yet it has rarely been read for its environmental wisdom. This is, in part, because many readers fail to recognize land as a fundamental ecological category. Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife ecology, wrote, “Land is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.” In this reading of the Song, I suggest that the characters, and in particular the female, can be simultaneously understood as people and land. Drawing on the Song’s language, I propose the following categories by which to interpret the Song’s ecology: Identification with nature; Beauty; Wholeness; and Right livelihood. I. Identification with Nature. In the Song, the couple identifies with the natural world; they are deeply attuned to the land and its creatures and rhythms. The boundary between the couple and the natural world is porous, and the identity of the lovers flows back and forth imperceptibly from body to land. At times one cannot distinguish whether the subject is the female character or the land. Deep ecologists use the term “identification with nature” to express the ideal relationship between people and natural world, and to affirm the intrinsic value of all beings and the kinship between humanity and nature. Through the couples’ “identification with nature,” the Song provides an antidote to anthropocentrism, the tendency of humanity to set itself over and above nature. II. Beauty. For decades, aesthetic appreciation of nature, especially that which is grounded in the picturesque, has been criticized as “anthropocentric, scenery-obsessed, trivial, and morally vacuous.” But in the last fifteen years, a new field—eco-aesthetics—has emerged, contending that an appreciation of beauty is essential to the development of environmental ethics. The Hebrew term yafah, beauty, occurs more in the Song than in any other biblical text. Beauty in the Song is founded in the land and its creatures. Solomon and the Shulamite can only recognize beauty in each other because they have seen the gazelles in flight and the sheep on the mountainside. The Song’s understanding of beauty offers a significant contribution the field of Bible and ecology and ecological aesthetics. III. Wholeness. “Wholeness” captures the ecological principle of the interdependence of all the creatures and habitats—plants, animals, soil, water, air. Wholeness is the mark of a healthy ecosystem, but today our biosphere is fractured and ailing. The Song offers a vision of wholeness that can inspire and motivate people to help restore the world. IV. Right Livelihood. Humanity’s proclivity towards consumption and ownership of the earth’s resources is at the root of today’s dire environmental predicament. In the Song, the Shulamite’s life is a paean to simplicity and a celebration of nature. Drawing on her values, the Song presents a critique of consumerism, wealth accumulation and control of nature, and encourages an environmental ethic that honors the land and its creatures.

This paper aims to explore the conceptual models that underlie the ways conversion to Judaism was conceived during the Roman period. In the works of Philo of Alexandria, who is probably the first Jewish author writing in Greek to express such a view, the prevailing model is that of proselytes as new citizens of the politeia of Israel, while he also emphasizes the new spiritual kinship between God and the proselytes. Another Jew writing in Greek about the conversion of gentiles—to the Gospel in this case—, the apostle Paul, makes use of both the politeia model and the model of divine adoption, with the peculiarity that this adoption is performed through Christ. In Paul’s writings, however, another model is also at work, which takes into account the problem posed to Jews by the foreign lineage of the gentiles who wanted to be included among the people of Israel. Lineage or genealogy mattered to Paul as it did to many other Jews. As a consequence, Paul resorts to the notion of a (spiritual) adoption of the gentiles through Abraham, the ancestor of the nation. Interestingly, the same idea is found much later in rabbinic literature, particularly in the Jerusalem Talmud. Whereas Pauline scholars have emphasized long ago that Paul may have been influenced by the Roman notion and practice of adoption, based on a legal fiction, such an explanation has not been put forward by scholars working on rabbinic Judaism, in spite of the attention paid to legal fictions in rabbinic thought in general. I shall contend that there is an analogy between Paul’s view and those of the rabbis, and that the rabbinic idea according to which the converts (gerim) receive a new father in Abraham cannot be fully understood without taking into account the Roman imperial context.

A number of scholars have read the book of Qoheleth from various queer hermeneutical perspectives (see, e.g., Stone 2005; Koosed 2006; Stone 2007; Lavoie 2009; Hügel 2014; see also Wernik 2005; Lyons 2015). Common themes in these works include the instability of Qoheleth’s gender, possible homoeroticism in the text, and the book’s challenge to wisdom conventions. No one as of yet as read Qoheleth alongside the antisocial trend in queer theory, and given the biblical book’s proclivity for pessimism, queer negativity might make an ideal conversation partner. In this paper, I read Qoheleth in dialogue with Lee Edelman’s work, especially his book No Future (2004). Edelman’s strong critique of queer politics argues against “reproductive futurism” (2004, 2), the (heteronormative) investment in the future that necessitates the sacrifice of (queer) present. For Edelman, queerness opposes politics itself, as politics maintains the existing structures that justify and maintain this present sacrifice. Qoheleth’s worldview is shaped significantly by the lack of a future—the finality of death awaits everyone (8:3). His perspective does not invest in the figure that Edelman calls “the Child” because all of one’s investment in the future is ultimately futile anyway (even his instruction to the “youth” of 11:9—12:8 is an admission of such). Thus, Qoheleth’s wise advice for his audience is simply to enjoy the present while they can (8:15). This ethic of living for the present leads Qoheleth to reject many of the normative values that other biblical authors celebrate: wisdom produces vexation (1:17–18), the heir exists merely to benefit from the predecessor’s labor (2:18), and goodness still leads to death (7:15). In recognizing the limitations of what is elsewhere in the HB so dearly valued, Qoheleth sees the dangers of the current social structure and the sacrifices it makes (e.g., the oppression of the poor in 5:7–8). This is not to say that Qoheleth rejects all parts of the existing order (in significant ways, he maintains misogyny, royalty, and slavery), and the author, depicted as a king, is far from the abjection that Edelman embraces. However, Edelman’s negativity can help elucidate the queerness of Qoheleth’s pessimism.

A strange and oft quoted passage at the very end of tractate horayot of the Babylonian Talmud depicts Mesopotamian rabbis of the early 4th century in a quandary. The two candidates for ascending to the leadership of their scholastic fellowship had different talents. One possessed vast numbers of received oral traditions, whereas the other was more skilled at legal analysis. Not knowing whom to appoint, they write to their peers in Palestine for council, and receive in response that the former should be appointed over the latter. This text is full of anxiety about authority and power. It is ironic that those who would appoint a new leader of their community depict themselves as without the authority to make such a choice. The act of sending and receiving written letters to Palestine rhetorically subordinates them to the other center of Rabbinic Judaism. Yet it also calls to mind traditions of letter writing from their own mythic past. A Tannaitic tradition found in Tosefta Sanhedrin and in multiple other places in the corpus of rabbinic literature depicts the mythic 2nd temple-era figure Rabban Gamaliel ordering the writing of three Aramaic letters, echoing the language of Daniel 6:26, one to residents of the North, one one to residents of the South, and one to residents of the Babylonian exile, informing them about matters of tithe and calendar. This paper will seek to situate the letter writing of the first text both into the political concerns of its own period as well as in light of the history of Rabbinic sources which concern the composition of letters. I will argue that despite the pervasive orality of Rabbinic culture, letter writing continued to confer notions of religious and communal authority.

In response to the proposed topic, “How does the theoretically sophisticated work with the bible…become impactful outside of the academy,” this paper will narrowly dodge the, “It doesn’t” conclusion in order to offer some pedagogical examples of how it can; a bit of storytelling for the sake of telling stories, which have the power to transform the way people thinkabout the bible, themselves and how they see the world; and some critical reflection on the nature and purpose of graduate biblical studies.

Having outsourced control of the coastal cities to Phoenicians, the Persian kings are said to have ruled the maritime centers of the Levant with a light touch. Ashkelon, refounded in the 5th century B.C., offers an excellent archaeological case study by which to assess this view, and to consider the relative impact of Phoenician and Persian political and cultural forces on the urban landscape. This paper presents an overview of the Persian period city, and focuses in particular upon recent work which demonstrates a dramatic shift in Achaemenid strategy during the 4th century.

This paper will examine how the book of Job reflects melancholic identity formation, arguing that Job as a character exhibits a melancholic condition, which is reflective of the post-exilic Israelite community. This paper will first explore how the character of Job exhibits melancholia. Melancholia, as described by Freud, is a response to trauma that is contrasted with mourning. In mourning, one who has experienced loss finds a replacement for the ‘lost object’ and can move beyond the trauma. Melancholia, however, becomes pathological as the one who suffers loss refuses any substitution of the ‘lost object’ and remains fixated on the trauma. Job as a character exhibits two key aspects of Freud’s melancholia: 1) the association with un-reality; and 2) an extraordinary diminution in self-regard. This paper will explore the nature of the ‘lost object’ that is at the core of Job’s melancholia – the loss of the unmitigated love of Yahweh. There is a shattering of trust in Yahweh, yet also an unwillingness to blame Yahweh, a condition that leads to an unresolved melancholia. In a second section, by understanding the book of Job as literature that represents the post-exilic Israelite community’s struggle to understand their identity, this paper will explore how ‘chosen trauma’ as defined by Vamik Volkan can a helpful lens through which to understand the post-exilic Israelite community.

John the Baptist in the Gospel of Mark is identified with Elijah (9:11-13). For some this identification is understood as symbolic or representational, so that John represents Elijah, or fulfills the “Elijah-Function.” However, for others this identification is ontological, so that John is Elijah redivivis. This paper will side with the latter in arguing that Mark narrates the ancient prophet Elijah as returned in the person of John. Using narrative criticism (specifically the assumption that the Marcan narrative is coherent), this paper will explore the relationship between John the Baptist as Elijah, and the Elijah of the Transfiguration. Scholarship typically treats these two “Elijah’s” as distinct, even though this makes the narrative of Mark less coherent. The reader learns of John’s death in 6:17-29. Later, the reader sees Elijah (with Moses) talking to Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration (9:4). While the reader could have concluded that John is identified with Elijah from earlier material in Mark, she is left without doubt in 9:11-13, which follows immediately after the Transfiguration. If the implied reader identifies John as Elijah ontologically, then the natural conclusion that is to be made when she considers these three narrative events together is that John/Elijah has been raised from the dead. What other conclusion can be made, given John’s death, the revelation of his “secret identity” as Elijah, and the appearance of a “non-dead” Elijah at the Transfiguration? The implications for a distinct Marcan theology of resurrection are significant, and will be explored.

When politicians behave in unseemly ways, King David often comes up. Not surprisingly, his name has been recalled quite recently in connection with our new president. After the recording was released in which then-candidate Trump outlined his power over women’s bodies, conservative political commentator Sean Hannity remarked on in October, 2016, “King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud,” in an interesting conflation of David’s sexual error and his famously excessive son Solomon (Carusone). This kind of picking and choosing from biblical text is familiar (one might think of the prevalence of psalm material in political speech-writing), as is the sense that that these excerpts and references refer metonymically to the Bible as a contained and tidy narrative. Mentioning “David” conjures it all: Young upstart makes good; strong leader errs but founds dynasty. Even “500 concubines” might sound sort-of all right, or at least is quickly drowned in further rhetoric or new facts which must be disputed. And the Bible retains its status as stable referent. In this time of alternative facts and fake news, however, it seems all the more important to reconsider the histories we tell – biblical and otherwise—and how they are constructed. This paper will re-read GDR novelist Stefan Heym’s 1972 The King David Report as a biblical, historical, and political fiction. Heym’s novel retells David’s famous narrative, but through the stylus of Ethan, a historian, scholar, and redactor tasked by Solomon’s court with creating a new authoritative version of David’s life, a report which would confirm Solomonic succession. According to the novel’s conceit, this ‘King David Report” is the one we read in 1 and 2 Samuel, but the novel itself is structured as a composite series of documents gathered and manipulated by Ethan himself. As this paper will argue, Heym’s novel performs an aesthetics in which editorial composition and the process of compiling—complete with concomitant disjunctures, fissures, and interpolations—take on more narrative power than any false sense of wholeness or continuity. Rather than confronting “true history” with “fiction,” and rather than simply instrumentalizing the bible for allegorical means, Heym’s novel presents an alternative to the demands of a prescribed univocal history like those of the modern and ancient régimes Heym critiques by enacting a philological historiography newly relevant for our current political climate. For today, too, Heym’s novel presents a crucial alternative means of reading, one applicable both to the ‘versions’ circulating about our own age as well as to the imagined Bible so often invoked to buttress them.

Historians studying “the ancient economy” all work to some extent under the shadow of the history of the field of economics per se. The field of economics has a long history of restricting its purview to encompass only exchanges that occur within the context of the marketplace. Although it was developed to account for the institutional factors that affect economic activity, New Institutional Economics (NIE), which is currently a dominant paradigm in the study of ancient economies, likewise tends to focus on governmental activities and policies that most directly affect market activity (e.g., setting interest rates and establishing tax policies). However, extramercantile transfers of currency, goods, and services (e.g., tribute, the taking of booty in war, patronage, and forms of euergetism) must have amounted to a substantial proportion of the wealth in circulation in the imperial period, perhaps rivaling the scale of mercantile activity. This paper proceeds in three steps: (1) it briefly describes the historical process by which “economics” was increasingly restricted to the market economy; (2) it describes the emergence of NIE within the field of economics and its subsequent adoption in studies of Greek and Roman economies; and (3) it provides reasons why economic historians of ancient Greece and Rome should consider the significant role of extramercantile transmissions of goods and services as they develop and elaborate theoretical models of “the ancient economy.”

A recent uptick in studies on Elephantine have shown great promise for not only drawing renewed attention to an relatively underappreciated corpus of materials but also for attending to the persistent need for Hebrew Bible scholars to incorporate newer theories and methods for the study of ancient Israelite and Judean culture. Although the Elephantine materials present a limited slice of an ancient Judean community, a historical analysis of their political and social dimensions has significant advantages over the biblical materials that are so far removed from their ubiquitously disputed provenances and dates of origin. Nevertheless, it is my contention that the general approach taken by biblically-trained scholars to these Persian-period materials has continued to rest on methodologically shaky grounds. Nearly all of the studies, including Granerød’s most recent and welcome contribution (Dimensions of Yahwism, 2016), take “religion” as an operative category for investigating the character of the ‘Yehudeans’ at Elephantine. In light of current conversations about the study of religion, especially Nongbri’s unavoidable Before Religion (2015), I argue that attempts to describe Judean religion are built upon unhelpful presumptions about the meaningful ways in which the ancient groups carved up their world and, in particular, imagined themselves as separate from those with whom they interacted. This is an especially problematic issue in the multi-ethnic, imperial environment of Achaemenid-controlled Egypt. Instead, I propose that a more useful, heuristic model for understanding Judean identity can be found by turning to recent social-political theory, namely the “multi-level process theory” outlined by Andreas Wimmer. In this regard, we may more fruitfully analyze and describe the Judean documents from Elephantine as a reflex of “ethnic boundary making.” After a brief introduction to Wimmer’s model, this paper will survey some the specific insights that such an approach can provide to an analysis of the Judean materials from Elephantine. I will conclude with some comments on how such an investigation can offer a much broader recalibration of Judean identity in the Persian and Hellenistic periods.

This paper discusses Philo of Alexandria’s complex reading of Greek and Jewish myth and explores how he negotiated myth within his own philosophical and religious system. Philo (ca. 20 BCE - 41 CE) felt challenged in multiple ways in his interaction with both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman traditions. Deeply rooted in Greek philosophy as well as in the Law of Moses, Philo sought out strategies which would allow him to integrate religious and “secular” or philosophical convictions. In spite of his persistent critique of Greek mythology, Philo makes use of mythical narratives as an integral part of the arguments of his Jewish philosophy and theology. Thus, in Philo’s reading, the myth of Pasiphae – the wife of Minos, king of Crete, who wanted to mate with a bull sent by Poseidon, had Daedalus build a wooden cow for this purpose and then gave birth to the Minotaur – stands for a warning against unlimited lust (De Specialibus Legibus 3.43-45). In a sense, then, Philo takes these myths seriously and certainly believes in the power of these stories. In one tractate he even defends their importance against the critique by others (Philo, De Providentia 2.34-41). Philo believes in the significant insights conveyed by these stories (ibid. 2.40). His usage of pagan myth reflects a “secular” reading of a religious tradition. A similarly complex approach to Greek myth can be observed in Philo’s reading of difficult passages in the Hebrew Bible. In apparent contradiction to his fierce denial of Jewish myth, Philo at times falls into mythical language himself when writing about miraculous stories from the Bible. He seems to admit that stories like the one of Eve and the snake in the book of Genesis are “mythical” (muthodes), but, Philo insists, the mythological aspects of such episodes can literally be removed (ekpodon oichetai) with the help of an allegorical reading (Philo, De Agricultura 97). As in the case of Philo’s comments on Greek myth, his appropriation of Jewish myth is thus characterized not simply by rejection, but by a process of re-readings. The history of religions has taught us that various components of religion, such as myths, rituals, individual beliefs and other conventions, are always culturally constructed in complex ways which set them apart as “true” or “sacred.” When we study a myth, then, we are studying the process of mythmaking, that is, the strategies by which a story becomes authoritative. Philo is a mythmaker par excellence. He not only emends scripture, he actively engages the mythical narratives as more than mere stories, whether “true” or not, but as a means of evoking and creating an authoritative Jewish practice and thought. For the study of religious myth and mythmaking, then, Philo offers important examples of the practice of adaptation and reproduction of myth in Jewish Hellenism.

Developing further the classical approach of Martin Noth, the paper decidedly defends the idea that Deut 1-3 was designed from the outset both as the beginning of a comprehensive deuteronomistic composition ("Geschichtswerk"), as well as of a torah-book which represented a 'quotable' unit within the greater work.

Jeremiah 24 comes as something of a surprise in the overarching narrative of the book. Those in exile are identified as “good figs”, the ones upon whom the future of Israel rests. The Jerusalem community, by contrast, are branded as “bad figs”, those upon whom God’s judgment will come. The identification of the exiled community as good figs interrupts the inevitable conclusion that those who remained behind were the favoured ones. Pointing to the shift in focus to the exilic community, as well as the message of future hope being based in the fate of this community, the text has been identified as emerging from the exilic community after either the first (597 BCE) or second (586) expulsions. There is little consensus, however, with regard to the provenance of the passage. Rather than attempting to argue in favour of one or other of these dates, this paper explores how this text might have functioned both for those exiled in 597 and for the exilic and post-exilic communities in the wake of 586 BCE. Drawing on the insights of both Jeffrey Alexander and Vamik Volkan, I will argue that this passage constructs the exile as a “chosen trauma”, contributing to the formation of a trauma narrative which helps to define communal identity. The paper will explore the usefulness of this interpretive approach for understanding the theological function of Jeremiah 24 within these fractured communities.

A recent treatment of the “King David Story” mentions Abishag by presenting her as “David’s hot-water bottle.” I hope to show that this common characterization of Abishag is hardly doing her justice. Comparing the Hebrew term sokenet in 1 Kgs. 1:2,4, that describes Abishag’s office at David’s court with its Akkadian cognate šakintu, that appears in Assyrian documents in order to designate the female chief administrator of the royal women of the Assyrian kings in Nimrud, in this paper I try to present Abishag as David’s chief administrator of his household and of the women’s quarters. She is a key figure in resolving an acute political crisis about David’s succession. Her importance is underlined by the fact that she is mentioned twice. She is first introduced in v. 3 and again in v. 15 when Bathsheba asks for audience to the king’s chamber. Without Abishag as the administrator or king’s quarters the pro-Solomon party would not have had an easy access to the dying king. She is a key figure in the final drama around Bathsheba facilitating Salomon’s accession to the throne as David’s successor in extremis. Though placed in 1 Kgs chs 1-2, the story of Abishag and Bathsheba connects these two chapters to 2 Samuel 11-12 where Bathsheba entered David’s court provoking a major crisis in his political career, and is part of the broader Deuteronomistic History. The Abishag episode illustrates the acute political difficulties in continuing the “House of David” after and ultimate crisis. The final crisis in David’s career is overcome owing to Abishag’s timely presence at David’s court.

The biblical character of Hannah in Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum is a telling example of how Pseudo-Philo reworks his heroes into models of radical trust in God. And yet, the magnitude of L.A.B.'s rewriting of her story has not received the attention that it warrants. Hannah's characterization in L.A.B. is remarkable for the fact that she is an oppressed woman in a narrative dominated by prominent male figures. Hannah's circumstances as portrayed by Pseudo-Philo exceed even the dire situation of the biblical Hannah in 1 Samuel 1 and 2. Indeed, her situation demands greater trust than any of the male figures in the narrative, with the possible exception of Abraham in L.A.B. 6. In terms of Israel's social spectrum, Hannah lies at the complete opposite end of the male leaders in L.A.B.; she is sterile, a childless second wife with no leadership role whatsoever. Yet the multifarious vindication she receives from God, without ever hearing a word from him, warrants her a place of unexpected honor on the list of Israel's greatest exemplars of true faith in God. Whilst previous interpreters have noticed Hannah's importance to the narrative, my paper seeks to offer a more comprehensive account of the pattern of faith that Hannah models. This pattern is evident in the other male leaders in L.A.B., but Hannah's pattern is different in one significant aspect; she never hears a word from God. Given that Pseudo-Philo's narrative literally hinges on divine speech, this indicates the theological gravity of the author's removal of a divine word for Hannah prior to the birth of Samuel. Thus Pseudo-Philo delivers a poignant message to a Jewish audience awaiting deliverance from Roman oppression: Hannah stands as the preeminent example of complete trust in the God who is so often silent.

This presentation analyzes the choices I made in writing a commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah for readers outside of the academic field of biblical studies. The historical and literary problems of Ezra-Nehemiah are particularly intractable, even for the Hebrew Bible. The commentary had to negotiate a balance between how much information was necessary to present in order to give readers a sufficient awareness of the complexity involved but without overwhelming readers with details and theories that are, to be honest, sometimes tiresome for scholars to wade through. At the same time, I needed to use the exegetical problems in Ezra-Nehemiah as a way to introduce the principles of historical-critical and literary methods to readers unfamiliar with them. The presentation allows us to think together over the question of where (or if) the commentary succeeded in achieving any of these goals and where it failed.

The rise of the Achaemenid Empire in the mid-sixth c. signaled a new world order in ancient Near Eastern geopolitics. Cyrus the Great not only established a sprawling empire, but he also instituted a kinder, gentler approach to imperial control than his Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian predecessors. While it is debatable whether the famous edict of Cyrus was truly a “humanitarian document,” there is no doubt that Cyrus showed some degree of tolerance for the customs and religions of the people he conquered. Nevertheless, Cyrus and the Achaemenid kings that followed were no less interested in asserting and maintaining dominion over their empire. Indeed, Cyrus’ successors instituted a sophisticated and extensive program of iconography that, in the form of visual rhetoric, sought to assert royal control throughout the empire. The aim of this paper is to introduce and describe two of the most prominent motifs in the Achaemenid art of control—the king on high and the heroic-combat scene. Special emphasis will be placed on tracing the imprint of these iconographic motifs on postexilic biblical literature, including how these motifs are redeployed in literary form as a way of asserting Yahweh’s future control over and against earthly empires.

The first volume of the “Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint” (HTLS, www.htlseptuagint.com) will soon be published. It will contain about 160 articles from letters alpha to gamma. The aim of this paper is to give some basic information about the project and its methodology, to present some sample articles to be published in the first volume, and to give some preliminary information about the second volume.

The Byzantine prologue found in manuscript group f of the Sibylline Oracles in many ways follows conventions for introducing a particular performance of knowledge. It praises the subject matter covered within the text, emphasizes the demands the work put on the compiler, and provides a summary of some of the knowledge that might be accessed within the text. There are even ways in which the prologue can be seen to conform with what Markus Dubischar and Francis Borchardt have recently shown to be a special type of prefatory writing related to so-called auxiliary texts. While it notes the underlying value of the knowledge passed on by the text, it notes the problems in accessing that knowledge, and offers solutions to those problems. The result is that the prologue presents this performance of knowledge as the most appropriate for its current situation. However, despite being largely conventional, there is one way in which this prologue breaks with convention. On three different occasions in the prologue (Pr. 29–50, 51-74, and 75-91) the knowledge transmitted by the speakers is framed by reference to other figures. Especially notable in this case is that the speakers of knowledge, the sibyls, are all female, while those who frame, and even give value to their knowledge are all male. Whether it is the notable male figures who provide a guarantee for the identity of the sibyls (29–50), the male king who underpays and then preserves the knowledge communicated by the Cumean sibyl (51-74), or Firmianus who is said to have written a previous commentary on the oracles, their knowledge and even knowledge of them is consistently filtered through male figures. This paper argues that this filtering reflects a discomfort with female speakers of knowledge in the late antique context which is only pacified by various literary devices employed to support the claim to value.

People often turn to a deity as a relationship partner with whom they seek help regulating their emotional lives, whether calming anger or anxiety, or enlivening a sense of gratitude and joy. Three research traditions within psychology point toward prayer as a means of emotion regulation. First, attachment theory describes how children use caregivers to help them co-regulate their emotions. Parental images of deities and psychological studies confirm that deities function for many people as caregivers who help people regulate their emotions. Second, research on the social sharing of emotions finds that adults frequently share their emotional experiences with trusted others in order to help make sense of the experience, elicit emotional and practical support, and co-regulate emotion. Prayer reflects social sharing directed toward a deity. Third, research on the “inner voice” (the silent voice[s] in our heads) finds that it develops in a social context and often takes a dialogic form and often serves emotional regulatory functions. Even silent, private prayer that appears to be self-regulation is a social behavior in which co-regulation is happening. The paper will draw on these areas of research to describe how prayer often serves to regulate emotion with reference to the Psalms and Akkadian prayers to show how the modern psychology can inform the interpretation of ancient prayer texts.

Josephus briefly reports a tragic incident involving a mentally disturbed person (Josephus BJ 6.300–309). Analysing this text from the perspective of the rhetoric of disability, a number of ideological interests can be identified. This brief episode thus becomes a window on the politics of mental illness: the oppression and abuse of a person with mental disability and how his personhood is obliterated by those interested in telling only their own stories.

A wide range of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages reveal a persistent interest in the fate of the ritual implements from the Jerusalem Temple. These vessels, which had served various ritual functions within the sacrificial cult to the god Yahweh, were taken to Rome in 70 C.E., at the time of the destruction of the city and its temple, were paraded in the triumph celebrated by the victorious Flavian emperors, and were placed on display in various public buildings. But in the period after their transfer from Jerusalem to Rome, these items were liquidated for their metallic value, destroyed by fire, or otherwise lost to history. The present paper explores how this concern with remains from the Jerusalem cult, which circulated both as discursive objects and as iconographic representations, came to be invested with symbolic capital by multiple communities in late antiquity, thereby fostering both contact and competition across religious boundaries. In particular, I consider how, despite their physical dislocation and obliteration, the Temple vessels served as a broadly shared rhetorical and iconographic idiom for sanctifying specific locales within the shifting and contested religious geography of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.

This paper will be a case study of reading the Bible through the lens of moral injury. I will examine key aspects of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The war of Gen 14 will be considered as laying a foundation of MI. The actions of the men of Sodom against Lot's family can be described as going berserk, in the language of Jonathan Shay. I describe the death of Lot's wife as a successful suicide attempt. The scene of Lot and his daughters is the final aspect of MI. Finally, I will consider how the story of Ruth might be a counter story of moral repair. (And all in 20 minutes!)

A review of The Art of Visual Exegesis

In Sargon II’s Dûr-Sharrukîn cylinder inscription the king boasts that he quelled various rebellious peoples speaking in foreign tongues and made them settle in the new capital city. As a part of this passage, he uses the phrase pâ išten ušaškin to describe the manner in which these foreign people were subjugated. This phrase has been understood as a statement of language ideology, often connected with the spread of Aramaic as a lingua franca and the process of linguistic unification of Aramaic as an administrative language in the Assyrian empire. Such an interpretation of this phrase has occasioned the thesis that the linguistic unification of Aramaic as a lingua franca, therefore, began as early as the late eighth century BCE. In this paper, I argue that the phrase pâ išten ušaškin does not refer to language policy or ideology, but rather has a different rhetorical use in royal inscriptions referring to a fractured political reality with competing agendas and strife due to the diversity of people groups, synecdochally described through “strange tongues.” These groups are then made to agree with one another and live peacefully. It is this political process (not a linguistic agenda) that is set forth in this inscription. Finally, I compare the use of the phrase pâ išten ušaškin with the narrative of the Tower of Babel in Gen 11. This biblical text has already occasioned much comparison with pâ išten ušaškin as well as foundation inscriptions from Neo-Assyrian times. A revised understanding of pâ išten ušaškin provides a new datum for understanding the rhetoric of Gen 11.

This paper attempts to identify particular paradigms of Temple referencing in late antiquity, looking particularly at the synagogues of Dura Europos and Sepphoris, and the Christian Theotokos Chapel at Mt. Nebo. Instead of reducing the evidence to a single mode of “Temple imitation” or “Temple memory,” the paper asks what nuanced and complex ways the Temple and its vessels have been strategically co-opted, appropriated, exploited, misread, repackaged, and reimagined within artistic and religious settings. Whether employed to create a sacred pedigree for later traditions, or set up as an exemplar to be eclipsed, the Jerusalem Temple has been used as a powerful vehicle to forge identity, power, and legitimacy among historical groups.

More precisely, Why the Pythia No Longer Speaks in Verse, is a work probably composed during the time of Trajan, after the spoliation of the shrine by Nero (Pliny, Natural History 34.36: Scott 2014, 210-211) and before its restoration by Hadrian (Jones 1971, 31-32; see also Kindt 2016; McInerney 2004; Schröder 1990, and Scott 2014). Still, Plutarch’s main speaker, Theon, speaks of a tremendous revival of “affluence, splendor, and honor,” not seen in 1,000 years after “a drought of earlier desolation and poverty” (409A-B). Augustus showed no interest in Delphi, but Domitian restored the Temple of Apollo (Spawforth 2012, 165; 238). Undoubtedly much reinvention of tradition was involved in the oracle’s “3,000 years” of existence (408D) (on reinvention, see Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984, esp. 4-5). The principal question is that of tradition, continuance, and reinvention. Plutarch’s main speaker, Theon, and presumably Plutarch, a priest there, needed to affirm the legitimate continuation of the famous ancient Oracle. Yet it had gone through hard times and was considered only a shadow of its former self (409C-D). Visitors went away disappointed, expecting something more grandiose both from the monuments and from the Pythian priestess (e.g. 409C-D; for earlier period, see Arnush 2005; Galli 2004 for the Second Sophistic). The Pythia was an uneducated peasant girl who could not speak in verse, and most of the interrogations were on “slight and commonplace matters,” or if by states, concerning crops, herds, and disease (400D-E, 405C-D, 408C, 408D-E). The line of attack is to challenge the imagined, ancient tradition (on this point see Johnston 2008, 39-44; Struck 2008) while in the end exalting the present condition as better and as a sign of the god’s power and continuous protection (406B-C, 408F-409B). The responses had gone through great changes and innovations (pa?a??a?a? ?a? ?a???t?µ?a?) (413?), but they are for the better. Plutarch’s speakers did not believe the famous oracles were forgeries, but Theon, cites specific testimony to the effect that most of the ancient oracles actually were in prose, just as in his own time, and that even now some are in verse (reinventing the tradition?) (403E-F) (on reconfiguration, see Alcock 2001, esp. 329). By undermining the verse tradition, the main speaker, Theon, can present the present as not only equal to the past, but superior, since verse and prose are irrelevant (406B-C), and in fact, prose is better (406E-F, 409C-D). Moreover, the claim to fame of the past is problematic, since most of the monuments were trophies erected for murderers and plunderers in the internecine strife of the Greeks, which brought their country to its knees (401B-D) (see Kousser 2015, 38-39). Thus the cultural memory of the tradition is turned on its head, while also trying to reinvent the tradition. The present Oracle, embodies the real tradition, and the present age is better. The monuments are being restored to a greater glory than ever (409A-B), and in place of perpetual war, peace and prosperity reign (408B-C).

Revelation’s language is a broadly discussed issue: Why does it exhibit so many peculiarities? What does it reveal about John and his background? In my paper, I deal with different exegetical views on Revelation’s language. I differentiate between three main approaches: Some estimate that John simply didn’t know Greek well enough and conclude that he couldn’t hide his Jewish identity. Some estimate that John intentionally included solecisms to express a certain message or content. Based on this assumption, some stress Revelation’s anti-imperial impetus and show that this supposed intention doesn’t work out. The discussion of different approaches to Revelation’s language based on postmodern literary theory leads to the conclusion that intention is not present in language structure. Language rather undermines an author’s intention than to promote it. Intention is viewed as a construct applied to Revelation’s language by the exegetical discourse, not as something to be reconstructed from the text.

This paper explores the well-known issues of the mismatch of the historical information given by the book of Daniel with our knowledge of the ancient world. Typical cases rehearsed in most commentaries include the wrong date for Nebuchadnezzar’s arrival in Jerusalem; portraying Belshazzar as a king rather than a high official (a second-in-command?); picturing Nebuchadnezzar as beast in a way that seems derivative on the traditions concerning Nabonidus; and misidentifying ‘Darius the Mede’. Despite a long interpretive stand-off between conservative and critical commentators regarding historical accuracy of the book, it seems more productive to read such wide-ranging narratives as effecting deliberate disinformation, for whatever mischievous and/or postcolonial reasons. The question raised is: how far is such interpretive pay-off plausible as a recovery of any deliberate strategy of the book? In dialogue with David Valeta’s satirical reading of chapters 1–6, I argue that while a ‘deliberate disinformation’ reading is not provably a reliable historical conjecture, it is certainly a plausible one, indeed arguably the most plausible one. It is further noted that had such an approach been provably reliable, there would have been a certain irony in the nature of the case.

Until recently, commentators who have undertaken the task of reading the Hebrew Bible theologically have focused largely on the centrality of covenant within the Hebrew Bible. In light of the recent work of scholars like Fretheim as well as growing concerns over contemporary ecological issues and an accompanying interest in ecotheology found in projects such as the Earth Bible, however, creation has taken on a more prominent role in the theological study of the Hebrew Bible. In spite of the increasing emphasis on creation theology, many scholars either ignore or read against the book of Ezekiel when discussing creation and ecotheology due to its alleged ‘strangeness’ and the harsh portrait of Yahweh’s treatment of nature. In light of this situation, in this paper provides a close reading of the lexically and thematically connected texts of Ezek 6:1–14 and 35:1—36:15, which portray Yahweh’s dealings with the mountains of Israel and Mount Seir of Edom, both of which passages have troubled contemporary ecologically-oriented readers of Ezekiel. Through this reading, this study contends that these passages demonstrate Yahweh’s concern with issues of order, land and its ownership, and the pollution of creation. These texts in Ezekiel provide a portrait of the land of Israel and its mountains as Yahweh’s and Yahweh’s alone, which humans, whether Israelite or Edomite, are not to pollute through idolatry of any kind, nor to claim as absolutely their own. These human actions violate God’s intended order of creation and the relationship between God, humans, and nature, bringing about the destruction and devastation of the natural world and the necessity for divine response. Despite its harsh rhetoric, Ezek 6:1–14; 35:1—36:15 has important implications for the contemporary field of ecotheology, speaking against the practices of ‘big agriculture’ businesses that pollute the land through releasing toxic substances into the earth, ruining its soil, and claiming ownership over creation by placing patents on crops and ruining the livelihoods of small farmers. As such, Ezek 6:1–14; 35:1—36:15 challenges scholars and practitioners to develop a more robust ecotheology that affirms the importance of creation and challenges its misuse.

Emperor Julian’s attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem temple is justifiably one of the more famous appropriations of religious tradition in Mediterranean antiquity. From the Jewish point of view, for which there is regrettably scant evidence, the project, which ended in failure at about the time of Julian’s death in June, 363, must have seemed a clear case of re-establishment of ancient tradition, albeit with the curious, and some must surely have thought, problematic, involvement of a pagan emperor. From the Christian perspective, too, the attempt to rebuild the temple would have seemed straightforwardly the re-establishment of ancient tradition—and highly problematic. By the mid-fourth century, Christian apologetic tradition had been firmly established with regard to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE by Roman soldiers under the command of Titus. This tradition exalted in the fact that Jesus’ prophecy regarding the impending destruction of the temple (Mk 13:1-2, Mt 24:1-2, Lk 21:5-6) had been proven true, and that the Christians, no longer the Jews, were God’s Chosen People. The rebuilding of the temple would have done irreparable harm to this tradition. Julian’s attempt was remembered by his contemporaries Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephraem of Nisibis, and John Chrysostom, and by the various Christian historians down through the fifth century, as the most heinous of the emperor’s assaults on Christianity. Their vehement attacks quickly helped to establish another firm tradition: of Julian “the Apostate,” enemy of Christianity. Julian’s own intentions for rebuilding the Jerusalem temple point to yet another tradition, this one an “invented tradition” in the sense that Eric Hobsbawm et al. use this term in The Invention of Tradition (1983). Julian clearly envisioned the rebuilt temple as a venue for animal sacrifice in honor of the god of the Jews—a god whom Julian identified as a form of the Neoplatonic demiurge. He endeavored to appropriate the ancient tradition of the Jewish cultic rites and their sacred site in order to further along the invention of his own tradition, which can best be labeled Neo-Hellenism. It combined the fourth-century Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and contemporaries with a strong dose of Homeric religion, and it put great emphasis on animal sacrifice, even relative to traditional religion of the Roman state. Julian’s attempt to rebuild the temple thus provides a lens through which to consider a complex interplay of various traditions. A close reading of the evidence suggests that Julian was motivated to further the establishment of his invented tradition of Neo-Hellenism, but that he was not necessarily motivated by anti-Christian sentiment—although his Neo-Hellenism was in some ways fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. Nor did Julian attempt to rebuild the temple in order to restore ancient Jewish tradition primarily for the benefit of the Jewish community. Rather, he appropriated their ancient tradition so as to nurture his own archaized tradition, thus threatening the Christian apologetic tradition and, in the end, fueling the rise of a new tradition altogether, of Julian “the Apostate.”

If we concentrate on evidence in the Gospel of Mark, with support from the early part of Acts, about the associates and first disciples of Jesus, we discover several people of means, connected by kinship or economic interest. Jesus' five disciples were from the business world: Peter and Andrew as shore fishermen, Jacob and John Zebedee as prosperous boat fishermen, Levi as the collector of tolls for the commercial traffic (much of it dried fish) that went through Capernaum. They were probably acquainted before Jesus came along. Among those said in Mk 15:40-41 to have been supporters of Jesus were three women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of "Jacob the less," probably referring to the other Jacob on the Twelve list, namely Jacob of Alphaeus, Levi's brother; and Salome, identified elsewhere as the mother of the Zebedees. Others who provided for the movement included Peter's wife's mother in Capernaum, whose house was seemingly the headquarters of the movement in Galilee, and whose wealth allowed Peter's wife to travel with him on mission (resented by Paul in 1 Cor 9:5); and Mary, the mother of John Mark, whose house in Jerusalem was a meeting place for movement members in that city, including Peter when fleeing execution (Acts 12:12). There was also Barnabas, John Mark's uncle, who sold a field to provide for the poor (Acts 4:36-37). Jesus may have preached to the poor, and recommended divestment to the rich as necessary for salvation (Mk 10:21); according to Mk 10:19, he added to the ethical half of the Mosaic Commandments a provision against fraud, thus holding landowners accountable for their obligations to their workers. But the tone of the original movement itself was one of wealth rather than poverty.

#rhodesmustfall, #feesmustfall, #shackville, and other student movements of 2015-2016 were the most recent iterations of organizing by the South African Black majority, in the hope of procuring justice and equality. Unlike the social justice movement during the “Struggle,” which was primarily concerned with dismantling Apartheid’s systems of racial segregation, recent movements on University campuses encompass an intersectional agenda that engages issues of racial discrimination, decolonization, economic inequality, patriarchy, and gender bias. Many in the mainstream, particularly those who identify as Christian, deemed the occurrences of physical violence that erupted during these movements as affronts to the purity of the movements’ ideologies, often with the consequence of a withdrawal of public support for the student movement. However, history discloses that, from Frantz Fanon of Martinique to Nelson Mandela of South Africa to Maurice Bishop of Grenada, once-colonized subaltern activists have legitimized the use of violence in acts of protest and/or (pre-) revolutionary struggle. Focusing on the South African context, this paper will argue that the texts of influence penned by radical agents of resistance reveal the value of various violences to revolutionary struggle. Further, that these texts of violent revolution may be understood as teleological and grounded in a Christian hermeneutic of freedom and human dignity. The paper will examine the writings of Steven Bantu Biko and Nelson Mandela, whose ideas have been integral to movements for social justice both in former years as well as in the present. After presenting a robust conceptualization of violence, I will show that Biko and Mandela espoused a philosophy that legitimated violence, not only for tactical effect, but also under existential warrant. Drawing from the work of philosopher Cynthia Nielsen, I will then argue that the imperative to physically resist oppression is grounded in the Christian conception of telos, and of the human, as articulated by pre-modern theologian John Duns Scotus. This paper will conclude by arguing that violent acts of protest on South African university campuses present an opportunity for re-imagination of public and political engagement by South Africa’s Christian-majority communities.

In Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector Lucian accuses an opponent of collecting valuable books for want of fame, while being incapable of engaging those books as a proper pepaideumenoi. Interestingly, while Lucian accuses the man of possessing insufficient education, he does not accuse him of lacking entirely: the man possesses enough education to slowly read the book, but not enough to read fluently or recognize the book’s grammatical, rhetorical, or philosophical intricacies. Lucian’s portrayal of the ignorant book collector is as one who somewhat educated, and recognizes the cultural capital associated with high intellectual culture. In doing so Lucian hints at the existence of a pseudo-intellectual field; a field populated by moderately educated people. Both documentary evidence, and evidence from ancient schools supports the existence of this field: we have exchanges of literary texts between non-elites witnessed in papyri (such as POxy 2192), we have book collections in towns too small to support members of the intellectual elite, and the fact that the vast majority of those who began their literary education never finished points to a relatively large (compared to the intellectual elite) population of partially educated people. My argument here is that attacks against figures like the ignorant book collector represent an elite witness to the pseudo-intellectuals present in the papyri and other non-literary sources. It is within the field of pseudo-intellectuals that our earliest texts about Jesus most comfortably fit. This is supported by the discourses of the texts themselves, as well as the ways in which contemporaries such as Galen and Lucian grouped Christians in with other pseudo-intellectuals in their commentary.

The celebration of a Jewish feast is a zikaron, a “memorial,” of God’s past active presence in the lives of his chosen people (Lev 23:24). Celebrating the liturgy of the feast manifests that past presence among the people in the current age. If the Johannine Christians had been, or even just felt, marginalized from the synagogues, they were not simply being excluded from these celebrations, they may have felt that they were losing contact with the God of creation and God’s saving action in history. As believers in the saving action of the Christ event, they had been taught that relationship with God is engendered through the Word of Jesus. This presents the problem at hand: what about these festivals and the experience of God’s presence they facilitate through their rituals? Not only must the Fourth Evangelist care for the community members pastorally, he must also show God’s fidelity to them and continuing presence in their lives as members of a new community. Reshaping the experience of God in the life of the community is therefore the particular background for the so-called “feasts section” in John 5–10. The Fourth Evangelist renders “christological” the feasts of Judaism; i.e., he teaches that God has sent Jesus the Christ to complete and embody these ritual acts. All of John 7:1–10:21 takes place in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles and the ritual celebrations of the festival not only form the sensory backdrop of this lengthy passage but also provide the interpretive key for its exegesis. Originally an autumn celebration of the grape and olive harvest, Tabernacles was later historicized and associated with the Sinai covenant and God’s care and guidance during the wilderness experience. By the later prophetic age and into NT times, the feast had also been eschatologized, and the celebration included explicit hopes for the coming of the Messiah and messianic age (see Zechariah 14). In the late Second Temple Period, Tabernacles became an eight-day pilgrimage observance held at the temple in Jerusalem. The festival worshippers looked expectantly to God for a time when life giving waters flowed from the temple which served as a beacon of light to the world through three daily rites: the Water Libation Ceremony, the Ceremony of Light, and the Rite of Facing the Temple. This paper explores how John 7–8 forms a unified whole in terms of Jesus’ teaching and his very being viewed through the lens of the Jewish feast of Tabernacles, while John 9–10 narrates how Jesus is what he teaches about himself in John 7–8: he is the living water that gives light to the world and sight to the blind through the waters that come from within. Jesus is presented as the embodiment of the ritual activity of Tabernacles for a fledgling Jewish Christian community struggling to reconstitute the presence of God in its liturgical life.

The study of virtue ethics has been, and continues to be, a staple of interdisciplinary research in the biblical wisdom corpus. While this has been a fruitful direction, the sheer diversity and scope of the literature also reveals its limitations. The wisdom literature continues to invite new modes of ethical (and theological) engagement.

Heliocentric zodiac mosaics found on the floors of Palestinian synagogues from the fourth to sixth centuries CE present several puzzles. The fact that the sun god (at Sepphoris, the sun disk) drives his chariot across the sky, ringed by the twelve constellations, in a large, central design on the floors of synagogues seems to violate what are understood to be biblical prohibitions, in the Decalogue and Deuteronomy especially, against idolatrous images. Roughly contemporary rabbinic strictures guard against idolatry and idolaters—avodah zarah, worship of strange gods, and ovdei kokhavim u-mazzalot, worshipers of stars and constellations. Further, the design is concentrated in Byzantine Palestine, not found in diaspora synagogues and rarely in non-Jewish public spaces from slightly earlier Roman centuries. In addition, the heliocentric zodiac usually appears between imagery relating to the Aqedah, a foundational story locating Israel’s covenant and its worship in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis, and the Temple façade flanked by lampstands and offerings. Despite local variations, many suggest reading these sets of images together as an ensemble, along with the torah ark or niche that reflects the image of the Temple doors in the register nearest the bimah (frequently). Variable and multiple meanings notwithstanding, the repeated cluster of images invites reading the sun-god in the synagogue in light of the Aqedah-zodiac-Temple, yet no one has explained the heliocentric zodiac on its own or as part of a sequence or series of images having to do with sacrifice. I propose a reading of the heliocentric zodiac that satisfies some problems with current proposals and unifies several. Archaeological and textual precedent for cosmological interpretations of the Tabernacle (e.g., Ben Sira, Josephus, the Qumran Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice) and the divine throne-chariot (from Ezekiel to Enoch to merkavah-mysticism) develop scriptural associations of Israel’s twelve tribes with the heavenly “hosts.” This reading sets the tribes in a historical-biblical narrative between the ancestral Aqedah and the Temple service, as well as the late-Roman/Byzantine context. The appearance of the sun-god image in the later fourth century may arise from simultaneously accepting and subverting Julian’s propaganda that was more pro-pagan and anti-Christian than pro-Jewish. The concentration and persistence of this image in specifically Palestinian synagogues in the centuries following Julian’s failure to rebuild the Temple may likewise serve to appropriate and resist the Roman-Byzantine transformation of Palestine into a Christian Holy Land through the architecture and iconography proclaiming christus victor in the image of sol invictus. Finally, the disconnect between the rabbinic discomfiture with, and gradual accommodation of, figural imagery and the flourishing Jewish art at the time of the heliocentric zodiacs may add to the diversity and complexity of Jewish responses to the Christianization (and under Julian, brief de-Christianization) of the empire and its effects on Palestinian Jewish life.

Yahweh's Condescension in the Psalter, a Theological Cradle of the Incarnation

This paper explores how Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Zell, two female first-generation reformers, use the Bible in their earliest writings to construct public, female identities that allow them to participate in the theological debate of the early 16th century. It offers a comparison with the use of the Bible in A Journal of The Reformation Years 1524-1528, written by the Abbess Caritas Pirckheimer. Caritas Pirckheimer writes from the socio-theological context of the convent and speaks out forcefully against the reformation. It is widely acknowledged that both Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Zell appeal to the examples of biblical women in order to justify their own written participation in the debates of their day. My paper builds on this insight by carrying out a detailed analysis of the gender perspectives in Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Zell’s early exegetical practice, and by comparing these perspectives with those found in the journal of Caritas Pirckheimer. I focus on two aspects of the two reformers’ writings in particular: First, their use of male figures from the biblical writings to shape their defense of the public role of women, and second, the gender perspectives in their Scripture-driven discussion of Roman Catholic practices. Here, the comparison with the journal of Caritas Pirckheimer illustrates significant differences in the interpretive possibilities available to Protestant and Roman Catholic women, and enables us to better understand the resulting differences in their construction of female public identities.

In the field of empire studies, Mark 11 and 15 are considered key texts for analyzing the Gospel of Mark in relation to the imperial power of Rome. It is argued, on the basis of a comparison between the Gospel texts and various Roman sources, that Mark co-opts the language and motifs of Roman imperial ideology to narrate Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and crucifixion. This research has contributed to our knowledge of Mark’s social and historical situation in the Roman empire, but has not accounted for other aspects of Mark’s kingdom language and their relation to Roman imperialism. As a result, the relationship of Mark’s Jesus to the power structures of Rome remains underappreciated. In this paper, I argue that not only Mark 11 and 15, but several other kingdom texts as well, suggest that Mark’s narrative of Jesus challenges Roman discourses of authority in order to negotiate the imperial dominance of Rome. Specifically, I show that Mark, with subtle force, contests Rome’s ideology of power by asserting that the alternative values of the virtuous king are modeled in the teaching and passion of Jesus. Mark’s memorialization of Jesus’s kingship at the expense of Rome preserves Jesus’s identity as the superior one, thus providing an interpretive alteration that has social ramifications for the Markan community. Mark’s critique of Roman hegemony can be observed in at least five key texts: 3:23-30; 6:14-29; 10:13-31; 11:1-11; 15:1-39. I examine each of these texts to show, by comparison with pertinent Roman era sources (i.e., literary texts, inscriptions, and artifacts), that the structures of Roman leadership (3:23-30; 6:14-29), social balance (10:13-31), triumph (11:1-11), and punishment (15:1-39) are overturned from below by the inverted logic of Jesus’s kingship. By creative use of kingdom language, Mark presents Jesus as one who embodies the characteristics of an upright king, while critiquing the power frameworks of Rome. Although the Gospel is neither fixated on nor unaware of Roman rule, it does poke at Rome’s imperial supremacy by presenting the kingship of Jesus with subtle and ironic potency.

This paper will first survey the wider context for revision in the 1970s-1980s that compelled all major Bible publishers to prepare revised editions of their translation texts: the rapid shift in spoken English that was making the masculine-heavy English of all the major Bible translations feel antiquated to readers and hearers. The GNT NT was first published in 1966 and its OT in 1976, but already by the mid-1980s revision of the GNT text was being contemplated as a necessity by the ABS. From texts like Ps 37 one can see clearly how natural it still seemed in the late 1970s for Bible translators not just to reflect, but even to overextend the masculine grammatical gender forms in text of the Hebrew Bible. The GNT revision process itself will be delineated as thoroughgoing, complex, and globally collaborative with all other English-using Bible Societies beyond ABS participating fully. At a time before internet exchanges were possible more than 6,000 revised texts were proposed, then reviewed, analyzed and sifted to arrive at about 2,500 that met consensus. By far most revisions related to gender-exclusion, but there were a few that were exegetical (examples are given for both types). Even though the massive UBS HOTTP recommendations on almost 6,000 textual cruxes in the Hebrew Bible were published in preliminary form by 1979, the GNT revision process was not able to incorporate the HOTTP data due to the already heavy constraints on staff time. This remains a possible desideratum for future revision.

The much-discussed apocalyptic type scene of 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 features the enigmatic narration of Paul's ascent to the third heaven, which includes an angel of Satan being sent to torment him. In the immediate context of the so-called "Fool's Speech" (2 Cor 11:21b-12:10), there is a rhetorical move highlighting the apparent opponents appeal to their identity in ascending order as "Hebrews," "Israelites," "seed of Abraham," and "servants of Christ," all to which Paul climatically asserts he is "a better one." This is an ironic proposal as a narration of an apocalyptic ascent to the third heaven is placed in the midst of a listing of weaknesses and the claim that an angel of Satan is sent to torment him. This paper will seek to draw out an implicit connection between Paul's appeal to being the "seed of Abraham" and the ascent narrative by way of juxtaposition of early Jewish apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions concerning the ascent of Abraham which allude to the victorious usurpation of hostile heavenly forces (e.g. Apoc. Abr. 20:3-5; Genesis Rabbah 44:12) with an alternate ascent that results in torment from an angel of Satan. This would result in a Pauline apocalyptic re-appropriation of an existing victorious ascent tradition around the crucified Messiah, which serves as a kind of reorientation of the Corinthians' ethics, perception of the Christ tradition, and the rehabilitation of the image of Paul as apostle of the crucified Lord.

This paper explores the gendered language of and interconnections between two primary strains of the reception of the figure of Nehemiah in the contemporary English-speaking world. In one of these trajectories, Nehemiah becomes a hyper-masculine leader whose persona is associated with power, conflict, and action. This vision of Nehemiah is most prominent among some subcultures of Protestant Christianity, and can be traced in blogs, sermons, and devotional and self-help materials produced by religious publishers. The second trajectory emerges out of the suggestion, traced though a minority tradition in the reception history that includes the Septuagint and Origen, that Nehemiah was a eunuch. These readings take up the figure of Nehemiah as eunuch to create restorative readings of the Hebrew Bible that can help imagine more fluid models of gender performance. These two trajectories together show that Nehemiah is a figure who can simultaneously shape a vision of masculinity that strongly differentiates between male and non-male and another vision that interrogates these purported lines.

The song in 1 Chronicles 16:8-36 presents a medley of psalm selections, including Psalms 105:1-15, Psalm 96:1-13 and Psalms 106:1, 47-48. The resulting compilation opens with an abbreviated recital of Israel’s history, moves into praise, and concludes with a responsorial led by the Levites. The seemingly odd selection of psalms for this particular context has frequently been observed: the selected psalms are not traditionally associated with David or Asaph, were altered by the Chronicler to omit references to the temple, and conclude with a plea to the Lord to “Save us… from among the nations,” a strange request to make within the Chronicler’s constructed narrative. In this paper, however, I will argue that the use of historical recital within this key cultic scene is part of a social strategy which highlights the public performance of abbreviated recitals of key events in Israel’s history, and the people’s enthusiastic participation in and assent to this presentation. I will appeal to recent theories of socio-cultural theories of literacy which highlight the role of public performance in establishing not only shared bases of common knowledge but also serve to accrue social capital to figures who are “literate” in that knowledge. There is an increasing consensus among this group of scholars that, while technologies and resources are an important component in creating shared knowledge bases, a far more influential variable is the respective social value ascribed to literate pursuits and the knowledge that can be acquired through them. The social role of knowledge relates to its public (and very often oral) display, and in Chronicles, the requisite oral “knowledges” required for participation in the public sphere are repeatedly presented. This psalm will be used as a test case to identify this significant cultural juxtaposition in Chronicles between oral performance and textual knowledge.

Popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, a MacGuffin is something that the characters in the film care a lot about but in the grand scheme of things becomes an object that propels the real objective(s) of the narrative. This paper argues, through a narrative perspective, that the wall in the book of Ezra-Nehemiah is a MacGuffin. Although the wall may have been thought to be imperative for the protagonist Nehemiah (as described by first-person narrations, otherwise called the Nehemiah Memoir [NM]), it is dissolved into the background by the narrator (the events described by third-person narrations). Some have thought that the wall was an extension of the Temple, and others have suggested that the completion of the wall symbolized a mixture of the establishment of the Temple community and grounding of the community’s identity. These proposals are reasonable, yet they cannot be thought as comprehensive to the whole of the narrative. This is due to the fact that studies concerning the wall deal with the first-person narrations and not the third-person narrations. This paper proposes that within the whole narrative sequence, the wall, though important, is not the central concern but is an object which the character finds imperative. Furthermore, the wall propels the more important thought by the narrator: the community’s faithfulness to the Torah. Thus a focalization by the narrator towards the Torah. This proposal will be substantiated by assessing the stylistic transitions between the first-person into the third-person narrations as well as the occurrences of the use of the Torah. This proposal then adds to the wider debate on the relationship between the NM and the rest of the third-person segments and also how the Torah was understood by the author(s) of Nehemiah.

Recent efforts have been made to restore agency to the lives of slaves in Greco-Roman antiquity. Laudable as such an irenic (if not apologetic) corrective may be, the question of the degree to which slaves might express their own independent judgment and exert their own will becomes critical when the primary class binary of slave and free is acknowledged. This dualism is pervasive in the economic structure and ideological defence of the first century Empire. These two critical facets of the ancient mode of production establish and entrench the fundamentals of the social relations that are labeled “class”; they are also standard reference points in the interpretation of Paul’s letter to Philemon, though usually exposited in isolation from each other. Moreover, the dominance of the appeal to Roman jurisprudence and economic operations begs the primary question of whether Roman law and commercial practice is the most pertinent resource for understanding the class dynamics in Paul’s letter. This paper proposes to problematize not only the interpretation of the shortest member of the Pauline corpus, but also the ways in which class relations might be constructed in an ancient Greek polis, one constantly negotiating the ubiquity of the Roman presence but seeking to maintain a measure of reality within the fiction of city independence. The line of exploration suggests a greater complexity to the intersection of economics and law in the socio-political relationships and language frames related to slavery than has usually been admitted — with considerable consequences for how class might be recognized in Paul’s writing.

This paper focuses on texts and iconography from Syriac books of charms from 18th- and 19th-century (C.E.) northern Iraq, including those published by Hermann Gollancz in The Book of Protection (1912), as well as an unpublished example from the Congregation of the Chaldean Daughters of Mary Immaculate in ‘Aynkawah, Iraq. The iconography of these books includes ancient motifs of Mesopotamian and Levantine origin, the human figures being turned frontally instead of the ancient profile form. These motifs coincide with texts that appeal to ancient mythological precedents for the charms (a literary form that, again, goes back to ancient antecedents). After detailing these ancient connections, I will discuss their significance for understanding the Syriac magical tradition. Based on a close analysis of the Syriac texts and iconography, I will argue that these connections are not just evidence of the tradition’s ancient origins, but are also the product of strategic shaping by those who developed the tradition. In effect, they presented these texts as primordial revelations from which other traditions derived and became fragmented. The frontal turn and performative function of the iconographic figures reinforce this presentation of the tradition, as the figures appear as if speaking powerful words directly out of the past. The Syriac magical corpus, viewed in this way, can be placed in context with Middle Eastern Christian and Islamic traditions that view revelation as a key by which to decipher a fragmented past.

From the opening of 1 Thessalonians the topos of the ekklesia of the Thessalonians is located in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I will illuminate how, by the deft employment of familial imagery, the author/s of this letter visualise/s the relationships of Paul and his co-workers with the believers at Thessaloniki in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of familial bonds. This visualisation acts as a rhetorical tool to strengthen the believers in their mutual relationships and so strengthen the topos of their ekklesia, shoring up their identity in God and Christ in the face of persecution (1Thes 1:6; 3:4). The visual texture situates the members and their teachers in aesthetically emotive family relationships of love and care for each other, maintaining all in God’s care and in relationship with Jesus Son of God who rescues them from the wrath that is to come. The emerging discourse for this community in Thessaloniki is grounded in the reconfiguration of familial relationships which bind them together and describe their identity in the ekklesia.

Even as Islam began to spread farther into the mainland after Kenyan independence in 1964, many villages held to their traditional beliefs and practices. Specifically among these traditional beliefs is the widespread cult of ancestor veneration. Yet, in many cases, Islam was conceptually compatible with certain indigenous religious structures—among them those that stressed humility, self-control, charity, chastity, and the promotion of the common good of the community over the individual. This exchange of culture and religious understanding created a highly complex and socially conditioned sense of being Muslim in post-colonial Kenya not only along the coastal region but also in areas more distant into the mainland and in cities such as Nairobi. This paper analyzes certain indigenous religious practices—chief among them ancestor veneration and praying through objects—as complementing Islamic religious worship in Kenya during this period of post-colonial independence.

This paper seeks to explain the puzzling devolution of 2 Maccabees 11 from straightforward narrative in the first half of the chapter to disjointed epistolary collection in the second. The citation of four discrete letters in 2 Macc 11, I will argue, is not evidence of a historiographer’s incompetence or carelessness. Rather, it moves this work into an alternative generic register: one that resembles a textual collection more than a linear story. Drawing evidence from the early chapters of 2 Maccabees and antecedent texts such as Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther, I will argue that citing such collections, to the detriment of narrative coherence, is a critical act of recovery in an imperial age. Though 2 Maccabees is not trauma literature in the sense that it is (defensibly) the product of individual psychosis, its disjointed narrative in chapter 11 can be read as a shield against the threat of large-scale “amnesia” through the loss and destruction of documents. The breakages in 2 Maccabee’s story, in other words, construct resilient spaces of memory preservation. In this way, I will argue that the compiled letters and narratives of collecting in 2 Maccabees makes it a major player in the this period’s poetics of collective loss and recovery.

Demonization of one's opponents is a common rhetorical trope which serves to create strong boundaries between insiders and outsiders. This tendency is a recognizable feature of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, where Jews have been demonized through direct association with Satan. Though it reached fullest expression in the medieval era and subsequent centuries, this trope stretches back to the New Testament and Apostolic/Patristic writers. While scholars have long noted this trend, one writer has often been left out of the discussion: Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius is rarely or only coincidentally noted when treating the issue of the diabolization of Jews in early Christianity. Yet, in Phld. 6.1-2 Ignatius connects “Judaism” with the machinations of Satan, while in his letter to the Magnesians, where judaizing appears to be the primary problem, it is correlated to the sphere of the world and unbelief where Satan reigns (Magn. 1.2; 5.2; 10.1-2). Though these connections between "Judaism" and Satan are scant, they are of great significance. Satan looms large in the theological imagination of Ignatius. The Devil is mentioned in every letter to the churches (Eph.10:3; 13:1-2; 17:2; 19:1-3; Magn. 1.2; Phld. 3:1; 6:1-2; Rom. 7.1-2; Smyrn. 9.2; Trall. 4.2; 8:1-2) and plays a particularly dramatic role in the vision of the stars in Eph. 19:1-3. Such references suggest that to fully grasp Ignatius' diabolization of "Judaism," one must locate it within the broader context of his “Satanology.” As I will demonstrate, such analysis qualifies Ignatius' attitude toward "Judaism" in a very particular way. Ignatius' demonization of "Judaism" is almost exclusively defined with respect to insider/outsider distinctions, for Satan is figured as the divider par excellent. This point is best illustrated by Ignatius' remarkable statement in Eph.13.1. Here he states that the very act of gathering for Eucharist is a battle fought and won against Satan, revealing that Ignatius' diabolization of "Judaism" coincides with and is possibly a direct corrolary of his weighty ecclesiology. The present study, then, fills in a gap in the current scholarship surrounding the diabolization of Judaism. I will show that, alongside other early Christian writers, Ignatius also participates in such diabolization though in a very qualified sense. Such conclusions make an important contribution to discussions of anti-Judaism in early Christianity as they add an ignored voice to the issue of the diabolization of Judaism in early Christianity. Ignatius represents a direct link in the attempt to articulate Christianity's relationship to Judaism, ultimately deciding that it is a diabolical threat. To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, I will first sketch the nature of the judaizing heresy in Magn. and Phld. Then, I will explore the dualistic worldview of Ignatius and Satan's place therein by examining the non-judaizing letters (Phld.; Rom.; Smyrn; Trall.). Following this, I will illuminate the Satanic references in Magn. and Phld. by relating them to the demonic data gleaned from the non-judaizing letters. Finally, I will conclude with some qualifying remarks to Ignatius' diabolization of Judaism.

This paper explores, from the inside, plausible challenges to the traditio-historical approach as it has unfolded in Europe and North America.

What do Latino/a immigrants want to remember, and forget, about their journey to the United States and why? Are there things that they should remember? If so, how? Engaging issues related to memory in Deuteronomy, this paper explores the complex matters of faith and historical memory among Latino/a immigrants. The exhortation to remember (and not to forget) is an important theme in Deuteronomy. Latino/a immigrants often are conflicted on what it is that they want to remember of home and the trek to the United States, as they live within a new and quite different majority culture. Reflecting on the material in Deuteronomy could help facilitate processing these memories within Latino/a faith communities.

Attention has been lavished on the Esther scroll in a way that is not true of any other Scriptural manuscript. Its name highlights its materiality, ‘the scroll’, and its status as a letter is performed in the synagogue service as it is folded and read out. The Esther scroll is often illustrated in the margins and it will nearly always contain one single image: a tree or gallows upon which hang a single man or eleven men. This image draws attention to the execution of Haman and his ten sons at the same time as turning this execution into an object of beauty. It is in the art of the megillah that the centrality of the execution to the Purim story becomes apparent. The illustration of Haman’s death proclaims the importance of this moment of execution to invoke a sense of justice and just deserts. This paper will read the execution image as aesthetic spectacle and consider the importance of the visualization of Haman’s death. Taking Jacques Derrida’s notion of the mutual relationship between execution and sovereignty in The Death Penalty, I will argue that this illustration trope is crucial to a performative outworking of Jewish sovereignty within diaspora.

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Like many feminist biblical scholars of her generation, Jo Ann Hackett began the process of reclaiming women’s histories in the Hebrew Bible by broadening traditional fields of inquiry about ancient Israel to include women. In the 21st century, 3rd and 4th wave feminist scholars must now build upon the groundwork laid by these pioneers to create nuanced interpretations concerning gender and sexuality. In this paper, I examine one particular character, Delilah in Judg 16, whom conventional scholarship frequently maligns and more recent feminist readings attempt to valorize. Rather than these superficial interpretations, Delilah’s various social identities, such as her gender, ethnicity, and economic standing, indicate the intersecting systems of power which careful feminist scholarship takes into consideration. Such an intersectional reading of Delilah, grounded in a historical critical approach, allows for a refined interpretation in which she is neither an opportunistic prostitute nor an independent businesswoman, but a complicated female character navigating the intricacies of ancient Israelite life.

This paper will investigate the portrayal of revelation in James (i.e. s?f?a ????e?) and 4QInstruction (i.e. the ???? ???? and the ?? ????). The exhortation of James 1:5 does not conform with the sapiential tradition generally, and in fact, the revealing of wisdom resonates more with the apocalyptic sphere. Likewise, the portrayal of revealed wisdom in 4QInstructions is best characterized in apocalyptic terms (e.g. 4Q417 1 i). The language used to describe revelation will be investigated, and key questions relating to it in both compositions will be explored. For example, why is revelation needed and what purpose does it serve in either composition? This is especially complex because James 1:5 considers the idea that a human being can ‘lack’ as a real possibility, and it is thus necessary to establish what it means for a human being to ‘lack’ in James, and how the purpose of revelation may be understood in relation to this. While similarities exist between the portrayal of revelation in these two writings (e.g. both emphasize revelation as being God-given, and both convey it as being necessary for living a wise life), notable contrasts also arise (e.g. the revelation of James helps one lead a wise life, whereas revelation in 4QInstruction seemingly guides one in understanding why this is the right thing to do). Moreover, how this revealed wisdom is to be understood in relation to the revelation of Sinai (i.e. Torah) needs to be established. Is Torah being replaced (cf. 4Q416 2 iii 15-19), or presented as being secondary to revelation, and hence being nevertheless necessary (cf. James 2:17)? While the significance of 4QInstruction for James has already come into view, predominately in terms of eschatology, it is surprising that revelation has not received more attention. Indeed, ‘apocalyptic’ is defined by revelation, and as this paper will make clear, the sapiential teachings of both compositions take as a focal point the notion of revealing wisdom.

Benedict Anderson's theory on imagined communities and how prejudices shape them provides an important optic through which to interpret the strength of the Bible as a religious-cultural symbol relevant for renegotiating the dominant Western, and Judeo-Christian, discourse, a dichotomized discourse, on the identities of immigrants, refugees, and foreigners--a discourse that has been largely suspicious of the "other." Reinterpreting the symbolic value and role of the Bible will permit one to *re*-imagine community as a body constructed through relational discourse and not fashioned in subordination to a preexisting or objective ideal or object--an assumption at the heart of the insider-outsider dichotomy. The value of that revised strategy is a better understanding of how borders are defined and enforced. Yet that strategy also requires an understanding of the historical context that provides the foundation for the biblical texts--it explains the values and agendas that shaped the texts and that have largely become adopted in Judeo-Christian insider-outsider discourse. This paper will focus on that foundation by setting Anderson's theory into conversation with 6-5^th^ century BCE biblical literature--literature that both wrestled with the realities of immigration and set the tone for resistance against imperial authorities. And in the light of that clarification, it will offer a strategy, one shaped by pluralist and humanist sentiments, for renegotiating the role of the Bible in defining communities and their borders.

Calgary, Alberta, has been a center for oil and gas production and engineering service in Canada. Therefore, it has attracted many Mainland Chinese professionals, who have been influenced by Chinese tradition and culture, dialectical materialism, pragmatism, modernism, and traditional education method. They bring to the West with them much ideological baggage and well-seated prejudice toward spirituality besides their professional skills. On the one hand, when the East meets the West, lives become intense and insecure. When they turn depressed and hopeless, they come to church for emotional support, social relationship, and practical help. This opens a door for teaching them about biblical values, but they also bring in a different agenda from that of the church. On the other hand, as professionals, they have a lot of potential to thrive in the West. Once settling down, these immigrants will have a positive impact on society. How can the church conduct Christian education to equip immigrants from Mainland to melt to and serve the Canadian society? This is the research question of this study, which includes dialogues between the West and the East, dialogues between theology and education, Christian church and society. In this paper, I first discuss the complexity of the topic of teaching in church and situate my study in a way that I can dialogue with other disciplines. I then approach the study from a theological perspective and ask, what makes teaching in church Christian? I argue that teaching in church is Christian when we, being united with Jesus, share in His ministry through the Spirit to make known the revelation of God and transform human lives. Drawing on Purves’s methodology of hermeneutical process, I conduct a conversation between theology and ministerial experience with Mainland Chinese in Calgary. At the first step, I will articulate some theological and educational principles of teaching. At the second step, I will describe the profile of the adults I taught and reflect on my experience of teaching in that context. Based on the theological principles and the critical reflection, I then propose discipling as a model of teaching in Mainland Chinese churches in Canada. Discipling begins with a new identity. No matter what culture or background we come from, all of these should be re-orientated to our new identity as Jesus’ follower. Besides, discipling intentionally attends to one’s way of life instead of sole transmission of head knowledge. Therefore, discipling, as a model of teaching, seeks to involve the whole person through helping him or her learn to live out biblical values while walking with him or her for an extended period of time. This model consists of five basic components: discipling in one-on-one time, in small group, in classroom, in life crisis, and discipling to reproduce.

The Samaritans are a Torah-observant group who trace their origins to ancient Israel, and whose worship of God centres on Mount Gerizim. A polemical target in ancient Jewish writings, such as those of Josephus and the rabbis, they receive relatively little attention from contemporary scholars beyond specialist circles, and presently exist as a religious minority in the modern Israeli state. In late antiquity, the Samaritans also faced tight religious regulation under Roman law, related to their potential for large-scale violent revolt. This paper proposes a two-part approach. First, I will map Samaritan precarity in late antique legal and polemical sources related to the best—attested Samaritan revolt, in 529CE. Second, I will interrogate the mismatch between the Samaritans represented in the late antique archive and their precariousness as a historiographical artefact in scholarship. The three main sources for the 529CE revolt present it as an outburst of sudden violence. The Samaritans, chafing under the yoke of Christian control of the region, rampaged through Samaria, even (in one source) slicing off the fingers of the bishop Terebinthus. No fewer than three imperial novellae targeted Samaritan status in Palestine in the aftermath. Contemporary scholars usually present the Roman suppression of these revolts (rightly or wrongly) as a primary cause of declining Samaritan fortunes, narrated diachronically. Taking an alternative route, I re-approach the related archive to suggest a more ambivalent synchronic story. That story includes visceral violence, but also examines the rhetoric of violence as an attempt to create difference. This rhetoric comes bound up with revealingly calculated imperial responses, Samaritan-Christian collaboration in negotiating the imperial court, and (reading against the grain) the importance of Samaritans in the imagined and real landscape of late antique Palestine. With respect to the sixth-century historical context, I will deploy precarity largely as an analytic surface on which to plot Roman interactions with the Samaritan ethnos in Palestine. As well as contributing to important ongoing conversations about religious identity and change in late antiquity, particularly in Palestine, I will also take the Samaritans as a historiographical case study for the experimental deployment of “precarity”. With respect to the historiographical stakes, the constituting of a historiographical artefact and the ordering of an archive, I will consider precarity in a second sense: the Samaritans’ susceptibility to the archival violence of becoming unmentioned. What happens when the precarity of a group as a historiographical artefact masks our engagement with their presence in the historical archive? And what habits might we helpfully cultivate in ensuring we pay closer attention to the Samaritans (and to other “Others”) made precarious, despite their archival presence, by the priorities of European historical scholarship?

Instead of treating Paul as a disembodied, systematic reasoner, this paper attempts an embodied exploration of the way in which ritual practice and experience might have fueled a significant development in Paul’s conceptualization of resurrection. Relying on “conceptual metaphor theory,” F. S. Tappenden provides a starting point for this paper through his analysis of resurrection as embodied ideas. According to the theory, a more concrete conceptual domain supplies an “image scheme” by which a conceptual metaphor emerges that allows a more abstract domain to be understood. Applying this theory to Paul, the idea of resurrection is grounded in patterns of human embodiment and imagined and expressed through conceptual metaphors. For example, based upon an image scheme of “verticality,” which is recurrent in human bodily experience, resurrection is conceptualized through metaphors like “resurrection is being awake” and “resurrection is being raised up.” Building on Tappenden’s schematic analysis, I will further argue that baptism should not be treated merely as the enactment of the verticality scheme. Rather, the experience of baptism itself had generated innovations in Paul’s conceptual schemata of resurrection. Previous approaches to baptism have largely downplayed its generative role in the development of Paul’s thought by treating it merely as an enactment of the idea of “realized resurrection” (either literally or metaphorically). This is the case even though, as A. J. M. Wedderburn indicates, there is no evidence indicating any Christian understanding of baptism as such before Colossians. Thus, focusing on key passages of the Corinthian correspondence and Romans 6, I will treat baptism as bodily practice and as fundamental to the early believers’ bodily experience, which was able to supply recurrent image schemata and so contribute to the formation and articulation of ideas. In particular, the practices of being immersed and raised up supplied a “reversal scheme” (rather than a verticality scheme as seen in 1 Thess 4:13-18), which was then creatively blended with another image scheme emerging from believers’ bodily experience of spirit possession. Thus, relying on “conceptual blending theory” and the study of altered state of consciousness, I will demonstrate explicitly how a conceptual blend of the schemata of baptismal practice and spirit possession gave rise to a new image scheme of “somatic in-out cyclical affectivity”—the somatic interior affects exterior and vice versa. This new scheme was vital to Paul’s idea of ongoing bodily transformation inaugurated by the indwelling spirit. In other words, it will be shown that, fueled by ritual practice and experience, a significant change had occurred in Paul’s imagination and conceptual schemata of resurrection.

The How as Well as the What: Canonical Formatting and Biblical Theology

Theological treatments of Deuteronomy have focused on monotheism, election, and covenant. Prior work on Deuteronomy and violence has investigated the activities of the Israelites (what did they in fact do?) and sometimes explicitly denied God's actual involvement (i.e., they only thought it was God). But Deuteronomy not only understands Israel's occupation of Canaan as divinely willed, it views the twin act of people-formation and land dispossession as a distinctive divine attribute. The logic of dispossession within Deuteronomy reveals an overlooked but crucial aspect of the book's portrait of God.

Christians through the ages have had recourse to the psalms as a source of personal and communal prayer as well as the basis of a wonderful variety of liturgical music, ranging from Gregorian chants to the 1965 commission of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. The Judaic reception of the psalms presents a rather fascinating contrast. In antiquity, the psalms were part of ritual practice at the Jerusalem Temple. But after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the place of the psalms in Jewish religious practice was unsettled. In fact, psalms ended up at the center of disputes among competing Judaic sects, as described by Susan Gillingham and before her by Uriel Simon. Judaic disputes over the psalms were articulated most explicitly between the ninth and twelfth centuries as leaders of Rabbanite and Karaite sects translated the Book of Psalms into Arabic with polemical commentaries airing their opposing points of view. Karaite Jews—whose views did not ultimately prevail—treated the psalms and other scriptural material as the only legitimate texts for prayer. The Karaites viewed the psalms as divinely inspired—and thus prophetic—but also as human efforts to interact with the divine, efforts that might be renewed in similar situations later in history. The Karaites' goal was to challenge the dominance of Rabbanites, who over the centuries had been developing the Talmud and their own forms of liturgy and observance. In response, Rabbanites went to extraordinary lengths to define the psalms as other than prayer. For Saadiah Gaon, the very nature of the psalms as poetry betrayed their divine rather than human origin. Drawing on Islamic and Greek theories of poetics, Saadiah used topical, thematic, musical, sequential, and linguistic criteria to classify the psalms as sacred poetry. Performance of psalms per se was deemed appropriate only by authorized singers in the context of a fully functioning Temple in Jerusalem. For ordinary Jews in the diaspora, psalms might only be read for guidance, or recited but not prayed, let alone performed with instrumental accompaniment. While the Rabbanites included about fifty psalms in the prayerbook (the siddur), their place was peripheral. In most cases, psalms were used as preliminaries to set the mood for Jews to engage in "real" prayer. In a few specific cases, processionals before and after reading from the Torah scroll and the festival singing of Hallel, psalms enabled Jews to re-enact some form of Temple practice. In this talk, after sketching out the arguments of Rabbanites and Karaites, I will focus on their disputes over performance. In the context of a prayer service, are psalms to be read aloud or silently? chanted, recited, or sung? pronounced individually, antiphonally, collectively, or by a prayer leader? with or without musical accompaniment or even dancing? For both Rabbanites and Karaites, restrictions on the performance of psalms and the use of psalms as prayer led to the introduction of original poetic liturgy that was not subject to the same limitations.

The paper will (1) propose a set of concepts and categories for describing institutionalized representation of the divine as opposed to literary; (2) use that basis for comparing ideas of divine representation in the Elohistic and Priestly histories; (3) argue that [a] the Elohistic history banned all direct representation and some forms of indirect representation for political, not theological reasons, and [b] the Priestly history advocated for those forms of indirect representation; and (4) show how in narrative terms each history situates Yahweh's whereabouts accordingly.

Ennead 4.4.41: "The prayer is answered by the mere fact that part and other part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also."

In this presentation, I will explore the connections between trauma and language in the Book of Job as mediated by the themes of destruction and recreation. As many have noted, traumatic experiences can result in the loss of language: the shattering of core human assumptions that renders the old language of the old world incapable of describing the new world after trauma. One might say that trauma destroys language itself, understood as the meaning-making tool of both individuals and groups, and that recovery from trauma requires its rehabilitation. I shall argue that the Book of Job can be read as a drama of the loss of the old language and the discovery of a new language that moves from Job's verbal destruction of creation (Job 3) toward God's recreation (Job 38–41). If Job is a book about trauma, it is also a book that imagines a world after trauma for both the individual Job and all creation that is at first nightmarish but finally almost paradisal. (I will draw on the work of a number of theorists of trauma, including Jeffrey C. Alexander, Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, and Bessel van der Kolk.)

In this paper, I read Origen’s De Principiis 3.3, the locus of the most sustained and substantial discussion of prophecy in De Principiis, along with Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis 3. My reading is that Origen, alongside someone like Iamblichus engages in a broad and complex conversation regarding prophecy, divination, and possession as a means to communicate with the divine. Sharing elements of Middle Platonic philosophy, both texts engage the contested notions of prophetic activity and extensively discuss the practices that lead to prophecy and divination. Origen maintains that a person adopts a specific program that prepares him/her to “earn the grace of prophecy” (Princ. 3.3.3). In order to “earn the grace of prophecy” and “assume a portion of divinity,” it is important to “preserve oneself free from all contagion of evil spirits,” and “[be] purified by lengthy abstinence,” and “[be] imbued with holy and religious training” (Princ. 3.3.3). Iamblichus similarly explores a diviner’s ritual preparations by explicating rituals as mechanisms that help the souls of the diviners to become more receptive to divine inspiration. The ritual preparation —Iamblichus repeatedly uses paraskeuazo —includes practices such as fasting (associated with the Oracle at Branchidai), withdrawal into a sacred, inaccessible place and abiding there (at the Oracle at Colophon). Just as Origen discusses that the purpose of this practice is to be united with God (at least for Christians), so too does Iamblichus suggest that through these preparatory rituals, diviners “partake of God” (Myst. 3). While Origen and Iamblichus agree upon the importance of practices that lead to prophetic experiences, they have different understandings of possession. Origen rejects a positive evaluation of possession in relation to prophecy and constructs possession as an aberrant condition that is characteristic of his opponents. On the other hand, Iamblichus privileges possession as an ideal form of divination. By discussing preparations that lead to prophecy, both Origen and Iamblichus ultimately debate the issue of the prophetic self, that is, what it means to be a prophetic person, one who communicates with the divine. Both of them would argue that a prophet and a diviner is not like being a radio transmitter that just passively receives the revelation of the divine. To use the common topoi employed by Origen and Iamblichus, it is important to become an appropriate vessel and instrument to harbor the divine, or a clean house where the divine may dwell. Thus Origen and Iamblichus deploy similar rhetorical strategies when they emphasize the cultivation of a religious self by encouraging the audiences to participate in disciplined trainings so that they may submit themselves to the divine.

Among the wide variety of gospel literature, Mark, Matthew, and Luke abound with references to monetary sums and denominations. Indeed, these gospels display the kind of economic knowledge that circulated among commercial types in the Roman empire. Yet where this demographic has been called everything from “sub-elite,” to “middling,” to “middle class,” I imagine how it – and the gospels I examine – belonged to a broader “mercantile culture,” which encompassed a rather diffuse population of literate and numerate individuals steeped in the language of a monetized society.

The Qur’anic text (re)introduces various ritual practices, including those around the Ka?ba. However, the Qur’anic descriptions of these rituals are often general, leaving the development of the Islamic ritual complex to later traditions. The Qur’anic rituals also vary in detail. Where e.g. the fast in Rama?an (Q2:183-87) is outlined in some detail, the ritual prayer (Q17:78-79) or almsgiving (Q31:1-4) are only indicated. Thus, the question remains: why does the Qur’an contain so little information about the central Islamic rituals? There are two answers to this question: 1) Because the rituals were already known to the Qur’anic milieu and did not need any further clarification. They go, so to speak, without saying; 2) Because certain aspects of the rituals worried or even generated some ideological uneasiness in the Qur’anic community. See e.g. Q2:158: “so whosoever makes hajj to the House, or performs the ?umra, it is no fault in him to circumambulate them”. In this regard, the Qur’anic strategy seemed to be to ‘not to say too much’. In this paper, I will argue that both answers are relevant regarding how the Qur’an negotiates the practice of circumambulation. The circumambulation (?awaf) can be defined as a type of demonstrative and participative procession (Lang 2015). It is mentioned several times in the Qur’an, but only once in a polemic distancing from an earlier practice: “And their prayer at the House is nothing but a whistling and a clapping of hands” (Q8:35). Is this one polemic note an example of ?saying too much’? Does the Qur’an here indicate what its community really thought of the pre-Islamic practices around the Ka?ba? The Qur’an is in other contexts outmost articulated when taking a polemical stance against e.g. the Jews and Christians (Q5:12-13). Is it possible that when it comes to ritual practices, the Qur’anic strategy was not to utter its criticism too loudly and by that, attract as many adherents as possible? According to Robert Bellah, processional practices are in particular bound to religious orientations before Late Antiquity (Bellah & Joas 2012). However, to walk in a procession seems also to be a basic human need. In this paper, I will demonstrate that the Qur’an, as a late antique text, had to negotiate a solution between an ideal of anti-procession and the feasibility and long-term durability of its ritual practices. A circumambulation with particular gravitas and without clapping and whistling is the pragmatic result of such a negotiation (cf. Halevi 2007, chapter 4). Here, the most important thing, according to the Qur’an, is to pray and address one’s action to God, but if circumambulation is needed, then that can also be accepted (cf. Maghen 2005). Robert N. Bellah & Hans Joas, ed., The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2012). Leor Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Bernhard Lang, “Processions”, Religions Past and Present, 2015. Ze ’ev Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh: Purity and Passion in Early Islamic Jurisprudence (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

Biblical Authors and Biblical Scholars as Activist Translators

Recent studies on Daniel 1–6 have sought to elucidate the various sources and traditions upon which the author of the court narratives drew, arguing persuasively that the author depended upon and alluded to the Joseph novella, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Nabonidus’s Harran inscription (Henze, 1999; Newsom, 2010; Gardner, 2011; Henze, 2012; Ron, 2013; Lester, 2015; Angel, 2016; Dempsey and Pace, 2016). But the author’s use of Deuteronomy has often been overlooked, with few exceptions (Novick, 2012). To begin addressing this lacuna, this paper identifies and analyzes an extensive and representative set of deuteronomic allusions within Daniel 3:31–5:30 (MT). As is typical for this author, deuteronomic word pairings function as allusive markers that evoke deuteronomic texts. Specifically, the author evokes and weaves together three base texts pertaining to an “exalted heart” (Deuteronomy 8:11–20; 17:14–20; Ezekiel 31:1–14), as well as employs an oft-used deuteronomic idiom, “signs and wonders,” in order to craft a morally fraught illustration of arrogant Gentile kings. This case study demonstrates both how the author of Daniel 1–6 employed the deuteronomic lexicon in order to render persons and actions ethically intelligible, as well as how this author augmented laws particular to the Israelites in their covenant with YHWH to apply to non-Israelites outside the covenant. The court narratives of Daniel 1–6 will prove to be fertile ground for further research on the ethical functions of deuteronomic legal texts in the Second Temple period.

A concise summary of investigation into usages of pistis, pisteuw, pistos, apistia, apistew, pistos, an apistos from select corpus of Hellenistic Greek (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. CE), including Philo, Strabo, Josephus, select papyri, et al. (along with "LXX") will be followed by spirited engagement with both most influential secondary lit. (from Bultmann to Barr) and more recent treatments (e.g., Morgan, 2015; Bates, 2017), concluding with by significant new applications to Pauline usages, such as: any usage of pisteuw locates pistis not in its agent but in its patient.

This paper will consider the implications of the material characteristics of the Jedaniah collection at Elephantine. What is often referred to as an “archive” is composed of 10 documents, originating over the course of at least 20 years, including copies of letters sent, memoranda drafted by community members, and letters received from outside parties. Since these texts were published in 1907, many scholars have discussed their content in relation to their Jewish themes, but few have considered the material nature of the documents and their archaeological context. Using resources available at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin, this study will examine the original papyri of this “archive” in order to pursue the question of its purpose. Does the nature of the materials confirm whether the individual papyri originate in Elephantine? Does the physical state of the documents reveal whether they were consulted as records following their assemblage as a collection? What does the locus of their discovery indicate about their usage and storage? How does the material evidence compare to other letter “archives?” The data available from the original documents will be integrated with knowledge of the socio-political context reflected in the Jedaniah collection and the legal parameters of Persian period Egypt. This social analysis of the materiality of the texts will be informed by categories derived from semiotics, in order to examine the temporal and spatial characteristics of documents whose primary role is to traverse geographical locations while addressing a temporally imminent event. The time-sensitive nature of a missive implicitly bears tension with the definition of a private, long-duration “archive,” leading to questions regarding the socio-political purpose of the collection: Were these letters stored in order to record the events leading up to the destruction of the temple, followed by the authorization of its rebuilding? If so, at what point and by whom would these letters and notes have been kept, since knowledge of the rebuilding was certainly not available prior to the destruction? And from what is left of this collection, can we determine if it would have asserted any legal power in the matter of the temple? This collection is not a library from which a public could borrow items, nor an intermediary space in which texts waited for validating signatures, nor the legal records of a particular family, but rather a documentation of a specific community discourse from an entire remarkable era of its community life. The maintenance of such a collection memorializes a public event and conversation, carrying its impact into the future. Simultaneously, it also limits its future access to those who oversee and control the material documents. Inter-disciplinary investigation of the material evidence through the lens of social semiotics should illuminate understanding of this letter collection from a fresh perspective. If this is merely a private collection, its record of a very public matter remains curious.

This paper presents several sets of facts and figures about the vocabulary of Classical Hebrew that are not generally known. Topics include: (1) Byforms. A set of byforms, which may be either verbs or nouns, are differently written words that mean the same thing (e.g. tsedeq and tsedaqâ, righteousness). There are over 2,700 such words, but their existence seems to be largely unknown to dictionaries and grammars. A set may contain between two and nine items. (2) New words. Words that are not in BDB, being either found in texts discovered later than 1906, or else proposed by scholars on the basis of Hebrew and the cognate languages. There are over 5,300 such words, adding an extra 60% to the Classical Hebrew language as represented by BDB. (3). Qumran vocabulary. The vocabulary of the non-biblical Qumran texts can be quantified and the frequency of occurrence can point to characteristic Qumran language (e.g. serek, order and tikkun, measurement, neither used in Biblical Hebrew). (4) Parts of speech. Nouns outnumber verbs almost 4 to 1 (7,326 nouns, 1,978 verbs). But the 7,326 nouns include 882 place names and 2,061 personal names, so the number of common nouns is 4,383, a little more than twice the number of verbs. Though Hebrew is often thought poor in adjectives, it has 397. (5) Denominative verbs. Though not systematically researched since 1896, a critical review of verbs formed from nouns would suggest a figure of c. 400. (6) Frequency. The most frequent words, apart from some prepositions and particles, are Yhwh, ben, ’mr, hyh, ‘sh, bw’, Yisra’el, yôm, ’elohîm, ’ere?, ’îš, melek, ntn, bayit, ‘am. (7) Homonyms. The new words contribute only a modest increase to their number, from 20.8% of BDB’s 8,443 to 28.1% of DCHR’s 14,076.

In this presentation we consider what historiolae from late antique Aramaic bowls can suggest about the practice of pseudepigraphy and religious experience, with attention to implications for early Jewish Pseudepigrapha. Formulae of the so-called magic bowls which evoke visionary contexts via first person narratives are examined as is the purpose of such formulae within ritual practices. The motifs common to texts of the bowls and early Jewish literature, especially as these relate to the experience of the seer, are highlighted. While this paper does not attempt to establish a genetic link between the historiolae and second temple pseudepigraphal texts, it argues that the assumptions of the literature around the practice of pseudepigraphy and construction of texts are related and that the presumed ritual use of the magic bowls should urge scholars to reconsider visionary texts and their duplication in early Jewish literature.

This paper is part of a larger project which explores the role of the Jezreel Valley as depicted in the Hebrew Bible, and as supported by archaeology of the Iron Age, specifically as relates to the politics of food. In this essay, I am interested in the relationship between the highlands which reach to the border of the Valley and the lowlands in the basin, and how populations manipulate their environment to make room for settlement and food production (both cropping and animal husbandry). To better grapple with the relationship between the wild forest and the cultivated field, this paper analyzes the semantic ranges of Hebrew Bible terms for forest, field, crop, produce (n.), garden, vineyard, grain, orchard, harvest (n.), and others, as well as their function in metaphor and biblical ideology. The results shed light on how the terminology of various food products contribute to our understanding of the region.

"The Kingdom of Christ and of God" (Eph 5:5): Kingdom in Ephesians and Philippians

What does theory have to do with practice—or does it? This is a critical question for biblical scholars who are more theory oriented. Is the use of theory to engage biblical texts simply a fun/playful enterprise or does it have important practical implications? The answer to that question is “yes”! For the purposes of this paper, I will concentrate on the second part of that question. Whether biblical scholars who engage theory in their reading practices use theory to leverage the weight of the Bible for liberation or whether they show how the Bible itself is caught up in oppression and subjugation, the vast majority of these “theory” focused biblical scholars are concerned with ethics. This underlying ethical impulse has important implications for the practical side of the academy. Together for Hope is a rural development coalition partnering in rural communities in the United States of America for holistic development. This coalition started over fifteen years ago as a rural poverty initiative that made a twenty-year commitment to the twenty poorest counties in America. In every county of persistent rural poverty (there are 301), race and class are major cultural factors that contribute to and help alleviate poverty. It is in this intersection of race, class, and religion that theory oriented biblical hermeneutic has immediate and important practical implications for alleviating rural poverty in America. Specifically, Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory have been helpful tools to engage the Bible for transformational outcomes in these rural communities across America

Jeremiah 17:5-8 is a relatively well-known biblical passage which draws parallels between the curse of a tree planted in the wilderness and those who trust in mortals, and the blessings of a tree planted beside water and those who trust in God. In this poem Land-based imagery is drawn upon to contrast the polarities of approved-of and disapproved-of human behaviour. Underlying this sapiential teaching appears to be a dualistic division where the parched and barren wilderness is portrayed as an instrument of divine curse, and is negatively set against the fertile Land of fruit, which reflects God’s blessing. Using an ecological hermeneutic and a rhetorical critical methodology, this paper explores the depiction of the wilderness as the ‘Other’ against which the human identity is defined. As the symbolic amalgam of curse, punishment, drought, infertility and death, the wilderness epitomizes the subordinate side of the dualistic hierarchies and typifies that which the human consciousness finds abhorrent. By paying close attention to the text’s language and imagery, I will argue that the wilderness is not portrayed as an ultimate symbol or goal in itself, but rather a liminal place that presents a barrier to both God and garden. The wilderness is thus made vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation as transformation of this space becomes a moral imperative. It is my contention, however, that this perception of wilderness is merely a human perception. By moving beyond the binary opposites that traditionally determine meaning in this text, the wilderness can be perceived in an entirely new light: as the ultimate end, as home. The wilderness is the habitat of the shrub (v 6) and, by extension, the dwelling place of additional, other-than-human communities. This shift in interpretive perspective challenges the anthropocentric assumption that because the wilderness is unfit for human habitation it is utterly ‘uninhabited’. Far from being withered and lifeless, the wilderness is a place where other-than-human ecosystems flourish according to their own order, and is a place of wholeness and life. Instead of being perceived as empty due to the absence of human inhabitants, the wilderness is understood as being full with the presence of long-evolving biotic communities and animal species that know this place as home.

The study of class in early Christianity has long been shaped by larger geopolitical debates around Marxist and Capitalist forms of politics and sociality.  Ancient historians working on the broader contours of the ancient economy have felt similar tensions.  The study of class in early Christianity has generally stripped away Marxist concerns about the relation between the means of production and the formation of economic classes to focus on questions of “status.”  In his recent monograph, Emanuel Mayer has sought to find ways to bring back class analysis of the Roman “middle classes” by turning to Weber’s work on social classes, which attempts to bridge the social and the economic.  In this paper, I think that we might find help in thinking through the complex questions related to social, economic, and political inequality; identity, both individual and group; and cultic practice, by thinking with Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour.  Deleuze and Latour offer ways of thinking about “assemblages” that shaped the landscape of the Mediterranean in ways that were more local and contingent than the broad categories of class and society can capture with any specificity.  At the same time, they allow for a return of Marxist materiality, not in the form of attention to the ownership of the means of production, but to the role played by objects in assemblages of peoples and things.  Thinking about the Pauline communities with Deleuze and Latour offers a way of returning to the materialist concerns of class analysis without requiring the broad, essentializing categories of traditional Marxism (e.g., proletariat, etc) or sociology (society, culture, Stand, etc.) and allows to explore the contours of ancient networks that came together and fell apart along the shores of the Middle Sea.

The issue of a general resurrection was, in second and third century Christian thought, a source of intense debate. When and how would such a resurrection occur? Would this resurrection involve the flesh as it exists during life, some other type of body, or no body at all? While proponents of a bodily and/or fleshly resurrection sought to deny the validity of alternative understandings of resurrection, they also struggled to describe the nature, appearance, and function of this resurrected body— a body that would be the same as it was during life and also totally different, defined simultaneously by undeniable continuity and profound transformation. What would such a body look like? What would it be able to do, and what— if anything— would it need to do? Since the resurrection body would be unrestrained by the necessary limitations of mortality, early Christian thinkers were free to answer these questions in whatever ways they saw fit. The hypothetical resurrection body was therefore both an idealized body and a site around which various theological, philosophical, social and political controversies played out. Questions concerning the role of food and drink in the resurrection provoked a uniquely diverse and charged set of responses: Some sources insist that eating and drinking will be unnecessary and even impossible for the resurrected body, while others describe a resurrection characterized by lavish feasting. The diversity of these responses is indicative of the wide range of persuasive projects within which they are designed to function: rhetorical analysis and historical-cultural contextualization of arguments pertaining to food, drink, and the resurrection body suggest the various influences of contemporaneous conversations around theology, philosophy, and medicine, as well as dietary and burial practices and the realities of food availability. In this paper, I offer a rhetorical-critical analysis of Tertullian’s 'De resurrectione carnis', paying particular attention to the ways in which themes of food and drink function within the text. This analysis reveals Tertullian’s profound ambivalence concerning the flesh, and suggests a similar ambivalence concerning its alimentary functions: eating and drinking are crucial for the maintenance of the relationship between flesh and soul (a relationship that Tertullian argues must be reconstituted in the resurrection), but Tertullian argues for a resurrected flesh that will absolutely not eat or drink, although it will retain the anatomical “parts” that would allow it to do so. I suggest that Tertullian’s emphatic exclusion from the resurrection of food and drink should be understood in the context of his anxiety around funerary sacrifices and banquets. Using material evidence for food-related burial practices in second century CE Roman North Africa, as well as literary evidence from 'De resurrectione carnis' and other texts in Tertullian’s corpus, I argue that Tertullian – wishing to create rhetorical difference between Christian and “Gentile” conceptions of afterlife, as well as to discourage actual Christian participation in funerary sacrifices and banquets— advances a vision of resurrection in which eating and drinking have no place.

The Savage Sword of Jesus Christ (2016) opens with a tableau of the biblical crucifixion; a blood-soaked Jesus glares fiercely between the two equally bloody thieves. If one squints hard, this comic book splash page could be portaying a traditional crucifixion, but the devil here is in the details. Beyond the over-the-top gore, this performance of the text offers the reader shock after shock. The art by the Molen brothers and text by Grant Morrison presents a hyperreal Aryan Jesus. If not images of the thieves’ exposed brains, Jesus’s violent demands, or the buxom Mary Magdalene, then the reveal of the narrator to be an obviously unhinged Adolf Hitler titillates even in the context of the dark, hypermasculine, and erotic fantasy found in Heavy Metal magazine. This grotesque use of the Bible is designed to provoke an additional visceral reaction in its reader. “Shock” is an established concept in literary studies, but it is not often addressed freely, especially in the literary study of the Bible. My use of the term follows literary critic Rita Felski; she uses this everyday word for that which elicits a startling, painful, or horrifying reaction. In our current U.S. climate, where politicians are applauded when they shock their hearers, understanding how shock works with the Bible is more important than ever. Rather than finding that we are world-weary postmodernists that nothing can impress, the power of shocking audiences has (in part) won a U.S. Presidential election. In this paper I will show how the Savage Sword of Jesus Christ succeeds at shocking with this near-biblical material. By succeeding, it does not fall into the usual traps: neither failing to provoke a reaction nor causing its audience to turn away in disgust. Either result can cause the reader to disengage with the material. However, when shock works it can change the view of the original text or ossify one’s already-held beliefs about the text. By showing that the comic can both change and solidify the meaning of the biblical text as it shocks, I will theorize shock as a use of the Bible. Using the biblical material for shock value is best studied through underground comix like these because they are well-established shock-makers. Grant Morrison and the Molen brothers are working within a familiar genre that relies on disturbing and surprising their readers. Morrison, a colorful religious figure himself, edits Heavy Metal where Savage Sword is an ongoing series. By showing how this type of shock works, I can further apply this theory to other groups that use the Bible to shock and gain some sort of power over their readers. Internet trolls use biblical images to shock their readers and gain followers. In contrast, when used with care, shock can be a useful pedagogical tool for students who have deeply ingrained assumptions about the biblical text. To theorize the continuum upon which both internet trolls and meaningful teachers lie is to find the core of what this disturbance means in relationship to the text.

The Biblical Hebrew distributive expression is? is?, "each man," with syntactic reduplication, is translated several different ways in the Peshitta, also with syntactic reduplication: gvar gvar, gavra gavra, nas? nas?, and had had. This presentation will consider whether the Syriac expressions are chosen to convey different shades of meaning or whether they represent different stages in the evolution of the Peshitta text. The exemplification will mainly be drawn from the Book of Numbers, which the presenter translated for the Antioch Bible project.

Pious Eli? The Characterization of Eli in 1 Samuel 3:18

The concept of four senses of Scripture in Jewish biblical commentary, eventually signified by the acronym PRD”S (pardes), was a late 13th-century product of Christian influence coupled with kabbalistic innovation. In this paper, after a brief review of the development of both the concept and the acronym, I will discuss some of their aftereffects on later medieval and early modern commentary, including examples of commentators and homilists who attempt to reify the concept in actual interpretation as well instances of resistance to it.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born to be a preacher. But unlike her father and brothers, she preached with her pen. Her text was most often the Bible, but on occasion she used her pen to preach doctrine. This paper will argue that Stowe used her novel, The Minister’s Wooing (1859), to discuss a variety of hermeneutical approaches to the Bible- which is referenced more than thirty times in the book-together with the strict and inflexible Calvinist doctrines of election and damnation. According to Elaine Showalter, the novel was “the essential instrument of female participation in the male monopoly of theological debate” (A Literature of Their Own, 1977: 144). Stowe’s novel appealed to anyone, particularly women, who had lost loved ones who were considered spiritually lost and unrepentant. Her message was one of grace and compassion as she contrasted the pastoral “sermon” offered to a mother grieving the loss of her unrepentant son by a scholarly Calvinist minister whose theology was peppered with proof texts with that offered by a compassionate illiterate black slave who pointed the mother to Jesus for comfort in the midst of crisis: “Now honey, …I knows our doctor’s a mighty good man, an’ larned, — an’ in fair weather I ha’ n’t no ‘bjection to yer hearn’ all about dese yer great an’mighty tings he’s got to say. But, honey, dey won’t do for now; sick folks mus’nt hab strong meat…Look right at Jesus. Tell ye, honey, ye can’t live no other way now. Don’t ye’ member how He looked on His mother, when she stood faintin’ an’ tremblin’ under de cross, jes’ like you? He knows all about mothers’ hearts; He won’t break yours…Look an’ see what he is! –don’t ask no questions, and don’t go to no reasonin’s, — jes’ look at Him, hangin’ dar, so sweet and patient, on de cross! ...Dar’s a God you can love, a’nt dar? (The Minister’s Wooing, 1859; repr., Boston: Osgood, 1875: 348-49). The callous treatment of women in mourning was an important issue for Stowe. In The Minister’s Wooing, the venerable Rev. Dr. Hopkins is portrayed, as most male ministers were perceived – mathematical, abstract, and doctrinal –“more inclined to tell a grieving parishioner how she should feel than to sympathize with her distress.” (Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, 278) Like every good preacher, Stowe identified the gap between the divine ideal and harsh reality, thus seeking to lead her readers to a spiritual maturity that could enable them to deal with that gap. This was born out of the fact that Stowe herself had wrestled deeply with questions about death and the afterlife: her sister Catherine’s fiancé had died at sea in 1822, and her son Henry drowned in 1857.

This paper explores the possibilities of the concept of moral injury as an interpretive lens for interpreting biblical texts. I explore a particular instance of war memorialization in Judges 5, the poetic account of the death of Sisera at Jael’s hands. Embedded within this poem is a brief portrait of Sisera’s mother at the window longing for her son’s return. Though the narrator quickly distances the reader from Sisera’s mother, the humanity of Sisera and his mother is anchored in the reader’s mind and complicates the narrator’s attempt to create that distance. Moral injury, the psychological and spiritual trauma associated with committing acts that betray one’s ethical commitments, provides a lens through which to interpret the narrator’s desire to recognize the humanity of the enemy even as he directs the reader toward affirmation of Jael’s act.

Many recent scholars have turned to the conceptual category of “lyric” for thinking about the nature of biblical Hebrew poetry. Phenomenologically, much of the Bible’s poetry conforms to this category: it is short, non-narrative verse that appears to be rooted in oral, musical traditions. But how far can this general sense be stretched? Can all biblical poetry be categorized as lyric? The poetry of the Latter Prophets raises particular issues. On the one hand, prophetic poetry displays many features associated with lyric. It is clearly non-narrative, and many prophetic poems adopt an emotionally extravagant tone, both in their lurid depictions of sin and judgment and their dazzling portrayals of future salvation. Due to the nature of prophecy, moreover, prophetic poetry typically features a highly developed speaking voice, namely that of the deity. On the other hand, despite a broad association of prophecy with music and the identification of specific poems with musical genres, it is not clear that prophetic poetry was typically sung. While still considerably less paratactic than most biblical prose, prophetic poems use logical connectors like conjunctions and adverbs with greater frequency than other biblical poems. And much of the content of prophetic poetry is grotesque or, to use Yvonne Sherwood’s term, “scatological,” which is a marked departure from the more refined themes typically associated with lyric. This paper will explore how reading prophetic poetry through the lens of lyric can highlight important features of these poems, but also create inappropriate expectations that obscure equally distinctive aspects of their literary art.

Several recent studies have called attention to the intertextuality between classical tragedy and the Pauline letters, especially 1 Corinthians (Friesen, JBL 2015) and Philippians (Cover, HTR 2018). These studies suggest that Paul presents both the Christ event and his own ministry as dramatic acts on a world stage (1 Cor 4:9; Friesen 2015, 814). In the Corinthian correspondence, the intended recipients of Paul’s letter(s) are constructed not as passive viewers, but as “actors in the audience” (cf. Bartsch, 1994; Winkler and Zeitlein, 1990) with tragic voluntary potential (Friesen 2015) to either refuse or accept the new God, Christ. Drawing on this analytical framework, the current paper advances the DRAMATIC PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL by asking how Attic comedy—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—influenced 1 Corinthians. Whereas Friesen has emphasized the “tragic” depiction of Corinthian unbelief and schism in the earlier part of the letter, this paper begins with the comedic resolution of those tensions in the discussion of the Resurrection in chapter 15. Its focus is a close reading of 1 Cor 15:29–34, in which Paul combines prophetic and comedic voices in an attempt to change the minds of those who do not believe in the Resurrection. Paul quotes an aphorism from Menander’s Thais—his only use of an iambic trimeter in the undisputed epistles (1 Cor 15:33b)—to frame his rhetoric within the ambit of Greek household “situation comedy,” with its concern for multi-generational well-being (baptism for the dead), violent exchanges (beast-fighting), and the potentially tragic—i.e. fatal—consequences of misunderstandings. Menander evinces similar aphoristic argumentation and concerns with “family matters” in another his comedies, the Woman from Samos (see, e.g., Sam. 460–465). Like Menander in the Samia, Paul explicitly develops his speech as a discourse between different family members; brothers (1 Cor 15:1, [31] 50), father and sons (1 Cor 4:15) and slaves and masters (1 Cor 9:19)—donning various comedic roles for the sake of building up the household (1 Cor 14:1–5). Paul’s construction of a new comedic rhetoric is not merely for literary diversion, but resonates, at the social and theological levels, with 1 Cor 15’s emphasis on the Resurrection. Like Menander, Paul hybridizes tragic and comedic elements (cf. Sam. 495–500; Petrides 2014) in his construction of a new dramatic mode to inflect the comedy of the Christ narrative with the tragic potential of human misapprehension and the hope of familial reconciliation.

With the publication of his doctoral dissertation, Die Mitte der Zeit in 1954 (English: The Theology of St Luke, 1960), Hans Conzelmann introduced an understanding of salvation history that has profoundly shaped Lukan studies. This paper seeks to illuminate how his historical context significantly contributed to his interpretation, and to reassess enduring features of his hypothesis. On Conzelmann’s account, Luke responded to the parousia’s delay by distancing his narrative from imminent eschatological expectation and focusing instead on the time of the church as a new salvation-historical period. For Conzelmann, this separation of history from eschatology reflected the Evangelist’s distortion of the primitive kerygma. While some features of Conzelmann’s schema of salvation history have lost currency and many have received forceful challenges, assumptions associated with the delayed parousia and a diminished emphasis on eschatology continue to lie behind significant strands of contemporary Lukan scholarship. After noting the continuities and innovations of Conzelmann’s approach to Luke, this paper is divided into three major sections. Firstly, I consider mid-twentieth century treatments of the nature of history. Reflecting on wartime experience, numerous writers expressed deep suspicion about claims that meaning or divine providential care can be identified in the events of history. Such approaches are perhaps exemplified by Löwith’s Meaning in History (1949) and his autobiographical writings about his experiences before and after 1933 (published 1986). I argue that Conzelmann’s interpretive critique of Luke shares important features with other post-war reflections on history, and suggest that his account must be considered among these. Secondly, I consider the immediate reception of Die Mitte der Zeit and ways in which interactions with Conzelmann’s work also reflect post-war concerns about salvation history. The significance of Conzelmann’s contribution was immediately recognised. Cadbury referenced pre-publication summaries from Conzelmann in support of his delayed parousia hypothesis (1956), and Dodd is reported to have commented, “I suspect we shall have to give (the Lukan writings) over, so to speak, to Conzelmann” (Talbert 1976: 383-4). But responses like that of Cullmann (1962) demonstrate that the reception was far from uncritical. And, though Käsemann suggested Pauline interpreters’ attitudes to salvation history demonstrated a reaction against the Third Reich’s ideology of history, I note that such questions arising from the context have not prompted a re-examination of Conzelmann’s approach to Luke. The paper’s third section addresses key Lukan passages. Noting the redaction-critical conclusions Conzelmann drew about Lk 21:5-36 and 22:69, I highlight the ways these stem from his assumptions about Luke’s schema of salvation history as a distortion of the original kerygma, and suggest an alternative reading that recognises the continuities between history and eschatology in Luke’s text. Thus, by considering Conzelmann in his historical setting, alongside contemporaneous reflections on the nature of history in the war’s aftermath, this paper reappraises aspects of Conzelmann’s hypothesis that are still frequently assumed in Lukan studies and provides a new perspective from which to view Luke’s portrayal of history and eschatology.

The Priestly Source calls for the sprinkling of ritually prepared water on two occasions. Once, for purifying the recovered ???? (cf. Lev 14:1-13) and a second time for the purification from corpse contamination (cf. Num 19). In scholarly literature, the Priestly rite is frequently likened to magic and traced back to foreign influences or an unknown Canaanite antecedent. This paper challenges the common designation of this rite as ‘magical,’ or ‘pre-Israelite’ by focusing on the principles and authorities appealed to in the production and utilization of purifying water. To gain a better grasp of the relationship between the Priestly Source and the larger world of the ancient Near East, I will turn to Assyro-Babylonian sources that utilize ritually prepared water including Namburbi, canonical Udug-hul Incantations and Šurpu. Analyzing the manipulation of water within these contexts demonstrates that Priestly and Assyro-Babylonian customs were integrated into different operative frameworks even though they both draw their efficacy from the authority of deities and the power of sacred spaces. Consequently, the Priestly rite is neither specifically foreign nor is it particularly magical. Rather the comparison between P and the Assyro-Babylonian sources illustrates how a universal rite is adapted to serve different ritual goals.

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The Coptic Gnostic treatise known as the “Untitled Text” of the Bruce Codex is witness to one of the most complex and convoluted system in Gnostic literature. Confronted to seemingly countless heaven-containing heavens inhabited by innumerable entities with interchangeable epithets, the reader is often at lost before such an intricate system. This paper aims to demystify the cosmology of the treatise by carefully studying and analyzing all of its heavenly spheres. Guided by the analysis of what we have left of the text, we will also look to reconstruct its cosmogony. Doing so, we finally hope to better understand in what way the “Untitled Text” connects with—and departs from—its closest literary relatives, namely the so-called “Platonizing Sethian Gnostic” treatises of Nag Hammadi: Allogenes (XI,3), Zostrianos (VIII,1), the Three Steles of Seth (VII,5) and, to a lesser extent, Marsanes (X,1).

The overarching thesis of this paper is that the metaleptic echoes of Abel in the NT consistently present him as a protological figure of Jesus Christ and his followers but not in a monovalent way. The interplay between Abel as he stands in Genesis 4:1–16 and references to him in portions of Matthew, Luke, and Hebrews regularly present Abel as a kind of “first” exemplar for the righteous actions that Jesus and his followers ultimately embody and exceed. However, while various NT writers link Abel to Jesus and or his followers, they accentuate different righteous actions. Therefore, the metaleptic echoes of the protological Abel are polyvalent and indicate that early Christians had the ability to view OT figures of Jesus and the church as round rather flat characters. This conclusion is based upon the results that emerge from the metaleptic examination of the NT’s four explicit references to Abel. First, the result of the interplay between Abel and Jesus in Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:35 is that Abel functions as the first exemplar of subsequent righteous martyrs whose blood finally finds its vindication through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Second, the result of the interplay between Abel and the original auditors in Hebrews 11:4 is that Abel functions as the first exemplar of the faith that God regards as righteous but a faith that must ultimately be redirected towards Jesus to be regarded as righteous. Third, the result of the interplay between Abel and Jesus in Hebrews 12:24 is that Abel’s death functions as the first exemplar of a priestly sacrifice that speaks a word, but that word is exceeded by the speech of Jesus’ sacrifice. Fourth, the result of the interplay between Abel and the original auditors of 1 John 3:12 is that Abel stands as the first exemplar of a righteous victim that suffers at the hands of Satan’s offspring, Cain, but his death is exceeded by the greater righteous victim Jesus whose death is in place of his brethren and the example of love par excellence to them. In light of this metaleptic treatment of the interconnections between Abel, Jesus, and followers of Jesus, the paper concludes by suggesting that other figures from the Pentateuch which are echoed in the NT may share a similar protological and polyvalent quality. Consequently, it may in fact be a defining quality of Early Christian intertextuality.

Known famously as being the one of the shortest verses the Bible, John 11:35 consists of two words, “Jesus wept.” There are a couple of things that make this verse an oddity. First, the Gospel of John arguably demonstrates the highest Christology among the four gospels. Jesus is the son of God, having been present at Creation, originating with the Father, and eventually returning to the Father. So in a Gospel where Jesus existence spans eternity, and his relationship with the Father combined with his miracles suggest power and control, Jesus weeping seems out of place. Furthermore, the context of John 11 makes clear that the situation is of Jesus’ own making. He deliberately delays going to his sick friend, allows this friend to die for the sake of displaying Jesus’ Glory, and when he finally sees Lazarus in the tomb, Jesus weeps. It seems though that this weeping is not incidental but is essential to the Gospel message. This paper will argue that the odd insertion of this emotional display in John 11 not only stresses the humanness of Jesus (in a Gospel that tends to stress his affinity with the divine), but more importantly this event strategically placed at the peak of the chiastic framework of the Gospel provides a climax whereby the God-man connects emotionally with humanity allowing him to feel the direness of their situation because of sin, and in his empathy and compassion, He makes his way to the cross to die for their redemption.

Diachronic analysis of Jeremiah suggests a significant change in the conceptualisation of Judah over the course of the period covered by the book’s development. More specifically, the book attests to an originally territorial conceptualisation of Judah, in which the term referred to the state centred on Jerusalem, that was later superseded by an idea of Judah in which the term referred to a group of people—not the place where certain people live, but a name for the people themselves. Recent work in the social sciences offers several useful heuristic models for understanding these multiple Judahs and, in particular, for understanding the ways in which ideas about Judah may have changed or been contested in response to social, political, and economic stimuli. The present paper uses the book of Jeremiah’s manifold references to Judah and, in particular, the concentration of the term in chs 40-44, to argue that the change in the meaning of Judah from place to people occurred as a result of the destruction of the Judahite state in 586 BCE and may be accounted for in terms of the identity implications of colonial domination and internal displacement, two phenomena which especially characterised the experience of Judah’s post-586 population.

Over the last century, our grasp on Israel’s origins and history has progressively deteriorated, leaving a disjointed multiplicity of biblical Israels whose unifying thread and historical counterpart(s) continue to elude. Recent work in the social sciences offers several useful heuristic models for understanding the variety of Israels preserved by the biblical texts and, in particular, for understanding the ways in which ideas about Israel changed or were contested in response to social, political, and economic stimuli. Especially productive are discussions of ethnic identity and its formation in response to exposure to outsiders; research on the social and psychological effects of involuntary migration; and analyses of the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of colonial domination on subject populations. This paper is an exploration of some of these issues from the perspective of the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Though generally considered to speak to a similar historical moment, the conceptualisations of Israel in these books reflect notable differences, in addition to their significant similarities. Ezekiel, for example, has a much stronger interest in Israel’s past history and a much more sustained focus on the homeland. The paper argues that these differences may be accounted for in terms of the experience of involuntary migration, which especially characterises the experience of the author and audience of the book of Ezekiel.

Between the lengthy Deuteronomistic narratives about Manasseh and Josiah is the brief but important story of Amon and his failed struggle to continue his father’s pro-Assyrian policies. As Amon continued Manasseh’s policies he was assassinated by his servants. This factional dispute inside the royal court of Judah prompted a popular uprising to install Amon’s son, Josiah, on the throne. This brief but under-studied narrative provides significant insight into the various factions and imperial interests that develop while empires weaken and local social and political interests become viable alternative views of society. Employing the recent analyses of the sociology of empire by George Steinmetz and others, this paper will explore the tumultuous reign of Amon as a product of an “imperial crisis” on the periphery of a declining empire and the inner-societal fracturing that occurs as empires fail.

The plural imperatives that open Deutero-Isaiah’s speech to his Babylonian community in 40.1–2 have long challenged interpreters. Whom is the deity addressing through the prophet’s speech? Because ch. 40 constitutes the beginning of a new composition, Isa 40–48 (following Haran), the apparent lack of a clear addressee presents an interpretive crux for how the work as a whole should be understood. Both the translators of the LXX and the Targumin were troubled by this absence and so interpolated explicit addressees–priests and prophets, respectively–to remedy the problem. Against the standard interpretation, which problematically takes the members of the divine council as the addressees of these imperatives, I present a new reading that argues that the deity is in fact addressing the members of Deutero-Isaiah’s Babylonian community. Verses 1–2 serve to commission this community, identified throughout the composition as Jacob/Israel, to the role of royal herald, charged with announcing Yahweh’s victory over Babylon and his triumphant return to his capital city. This interpretation makes better sense of these verses’ immediate literary context–a royal procession from Babylonia to Judah–and the greater composition of which it is a part, as well as the prophet’s historical context. The new evidence from Al–Ya?udu suggests communities of displaced Judeans could find themselves quickly adapting to their new Babylonian surroundings. Members of these communities owned property and slaves, participated in local commerce with Judeans and non-Judeans alike, and conformed to Babylonian custom in social practices like marriage. This degree of economic, political, and social embeddedness helps to explain Deutero-Isaiah’s strong rhetorical efforts to persuade his audience to leave their homes in Babylonia throughout the composition. The commissioning in 40.1–2 therefore functions as an extraordinary motivator for an embedded audience; the deity tasks his people–addressed as ‘ammî in v. 1aß–not only with returning to Jerusalem; he also charges them to announce the good news of Yahweh’s victory and return to the fallen city.

Cognitive linguists underscore social and cultural dimensions of conceptualization. That said, a majority of studies focus on cognitive models and mechanisms within individuals more than they develop ways to integrate sociocultural bases and situational contexts into language description. Linguists like Ari Verhagen (2005), William Croft (2009), and Peter Harder (1999, 2010)—drawing from psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and developmental psychologists—flesh out approaches to language that make strong and explicit connections between individual and other minds in linguistic explanations. Central to their projects is the idea that cognitive coordination among individuals—including intersubjectivity, joint attention, convention, and joint action—is fundamental to language use. In this paper I draw mainly from Verhagen’s notion of intersubjective grounding but am equally motivated by, and reach conclusions on the basis of, the broader social turns prescribed by Croft and Harder. Bible scholars who study Proverbs often seek to isolate and characterize literary devices that make its sayings persuasive. Contributors to a JSOT Supplement (2004) devoted to this question offer the suggestions of metaphor, attention-getting devices, and rhetorical enthymemes. I seek to show that five arguably more pervasive and deeply related features of sayings in Proverbs must be added to this list: alternativity, conditionality, causality, prediction, and intersubjectivity. Verhagen argues that in the grounding scene of every utterance, a speaker and addressee work to coordinate conceptualizations. Speaker, addressee, and knowledge they share (which includes models each has of the other and the communication situation) are therefore all given and available whenever people use language—even when the speaker and addressee are not present or known to one another, as when people write personal diaries or read ancient texts (Verhagen 2005, 7). The Basic Communicative Spaces Network (BCSN) is another elaboration of ground that relates a content space network to a complex ground network (Dancygier and Sweetser 2005; Sanders, Sanders, and Sweetser 2009; Ferrari and Sweetser 2012). Like Verhagen’s sense of the grounding scene of utterances, spaces in a BCSN are built up automatically in communicative uses of language. The complex ground network in a BCSN consists of base, epistemic, speech-act, metalinguistic, and meta-discourse spaces, the “minimum basic structures” inherently available to speaker and addressee when they process utterances. The BCSN provides a way to model intersubjective persuasion and meaning structures associated with conditional, causative, and predictive properties of sayings in Proverbs. Persuasion and meaning derive from the whole BCSN associated with a saying. Neither is fully conceived if limited to the content space. Material in sayings is presented as content in the world, but speaker epistemic judgments, speech-act goals, and efforts at cognitive coordination impact reader construal. Readers are aware of, and construe in light of, social and cultural dimensions of the unknown producers of sayings in Proverbs. I demonstrate such construals in this paper and in doing so corroborate observations made by Dancygier and Sweetser (2005) that third-person and-conditionals typically involve a writer’s positive interest and/or advice, encouragement, or threats to an addressee.

While there are no shortage of studies on the Apostle Peter, both the historical and literary figure, few focus on how and why he functions successfully in a given pseudepigraphon. For example, why would a pseudepigrapher choose Peter over Paul, James, Thomas or any other early Christian leader as the originator of his or her text? This paper investigates the reasons why Peter alone was chosen as the recipient of the visions and teachings of the Savior in one particular Petrine pseudepigraphon, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII, 3)

The stories of the children of the Bible have lived on to affect American children in the post-biblical world. For over 250 years, Jewish and Christian religious educators in America have drawn upon these stories to teach children in their own time a variety of beliefs and values. This paper engages biblical scholarship on several stories of children with special attention to emerging childist readings and other readings that focus on the role of children in the ancient world. It then offers a reception history of the diverse ways in which these stories have been appropriated by American religious educators through the years. Seeing how these stories have been illustrated, adapted, embellished, and edited in children’s Bibles and other religious education materials can help index America’s diverse and changing views of childhood, virtue, and religion and observe how these materials reflect and reinforce those views. Each story of children in the Bible is appropriated by authors and artists in a variety of ways and different trends emerge for each era of US history. Still, one finds revealing examples of how each of these stories have been presented to children. For example, according to many versions of the story of the binding of Isaac, the young strapping lad Isaac could have easily escaped old Abraham, but knew that is was better to obey one’s father even if he was going to kill you. Likewise, Jephthah’s daughter is the model of daughterly submission when, given every chance to escape, she submits to death at the hand of her father. The child Samuel and Namaan’s Israelite slave girl do not resent their masters, but happily carry out their many chores. Likewise young Jesus knew he was the ruler of the universe, but provides children an example by happily accepting his family’s lowly station and always obeying his parents immediately and without complaint. God was right to condemn the children of Bethel to their brutal deaths because they disrespected their elders. Finally, the retellings of the stories of young David often serve as an outlier. Instead of representing a meek and submissive ideal, David is often presented as an action hero and model of bravery and self-agency. The paper is based on my study of hundreds children’s Bibles and other religious education materials from throughout American history, with special attention to volumes with titles such as Children of the Bible and Boys and Girls of the Bible. It will draw upon research conducted at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts for materials pre-dating 1876, at the Library of Congress for late 19th and early 20th century volumes, and at a variety of public and seminary libraries for children’s Bibles from the 20th and 21st centuries. Please note that this paper is based upon a broader study. If it is helpful, I can adapt my paper to focus on certain stories or certain eras in U.S. history in order to avoid overlapping content with other papers that may be chosen for the session.

This paper, part of a larger project focused on land in Matthew’s Gospel as a contested site of imperial dominance, argues that variations of the phrase “God with us” (Matt 1:23; 17:17; 18:20; 28:20) points not only to spiritualized divine presence but also to Jesus’ reclamation of the land, Judea to the ends of the earth, under God’s rule. While previous work has identified various Christological and spiritual manifestations of God’s presence in the Gospel (e.g., Davies and Allison; Kingsbury; Kupp), I argue that the phrase also connotes God’s sovereignty over the land. Through methods of imperial critical work and postcolonialism, spatial and geographical theories, and intertextuality, I build on Carter’s analysis that Matthew’s Jesus imitates and reinscribes imperial strategies by claiming the reassertion of God’s sovereignty over the land. I demonstrate that Matthew’s post-70 CE context engages numerous yet unsuccessful Jewish attempts to regain control of the land (Jewish War 66-70 CE). I examine Hebrew Bible declarations of “God with us” to show that divine sovereignty over the land frequently accompanies assurance of divine presence (e.g., Gen 48:21; Ex 3:12; Josh 1:9, 17; 2 Chr 13:12, 32:8; Isa 8:7-8, 10; Zeph 3:17). I elaborate the links between God’s presence and land acquisition in Matthew’s Gospel, noting other evocations of God’s covenantal land promises in Matthew’s Gospel [e.g. Jesus’ genealogical links to Abraham and David (Matt 1:1-2, 5, 17)]. I argue that though the Gospel anticipates land being released from Rome’s oppressive grasp, Matthew’s Gospel envisions an alternative landed empire governed by God’s sovereign rule or colonial control.

Scholarship has long recognized the importance of family rituals in exilic and post-exilic Judaism. Discussions focus on the rise of circumcision, food laws, and the sabbath as identity markers once the temple is destroyed and a large section of the population exiled. What is recognized less often is the opposite trend – the extent to which national religion is portrayed as “domestic” or popular in the biblical text. While it is possible that biblical literature may preserve some aspects of actual domestic religious practice from Iron II Israel, rituals portrayed as such in the biblical record are not always what they seem. Instead of assuming the bible provides an accurate portrayal of domestic religion, each passage must be weighed individually rather than being taken at face value. Using examples like idols and especially the teraphim, this paper suggests that (1) many of the rituals the bible portrays as domestic were actually national in character, that (2) some of these may reflect actual domestic ritual but many do not, and that (3) the depiction of state-level ritual as if it were domestic or family religion was intentional on the part of some biblical authors owing to multiple factors, including the exilic and post-exilic contexts in which the biblical texts were assembled.

The two long pluses in 3 Kgdms 2 (MT 1 Kgs 2) are among the most difficult cruces in the septuagintal text. This paper focuses on v. 2:46c, specifically the word dunasteumata. This hapax legomenon has significant ramifications for the history of the text of 1 Kgs / 3 Kgdms. Since 2:46c have no clear counterpart in MT/LXX to chapters 3–11, all the scholars who dealt with it to date look for its parallel via the following verse (2:46d) and the similar passage in MT 1 Kgs 9:17–19. While former proposals have suggested that it renders the local name Baalath (MT 1 Kgs 9:18), the Hebrew root hsq / ?sq (9:19) or the word memshalto (ibid), I suggest another solution based on the minuses in the parallel verse in the Septuagint to 1 Kgs 9:19, i.e., 10:22a. This suggestion can better explain the growth of the text and the textual relationship between 2:46c–d in the Miscellanies and 1 Kgs 9:17–19 / 3 Kgdms 10:22a.

Review of Heidi Marx-Wolf, Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority: Platonists, Priests, and Gnostics in the Third Century C.E. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

Papyrus manuscripts represent fourteen percent of the Qumran corpus of Dead Sea Scrolls. Recently published editions of Judaean Desert fragments belonging to private collections contain no papyri, but there are several papyrus fragments in The Schøyen Collection and the collection housed at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth TX. The SWBTS fragments—including two papyri—are still being vetted for publication, but it has been recently revealed that the three scraps of papyri in The Schøyen Collection are likely modern forgeries. These fragments have been determined to be forgeries from a battery of elemental and multi-spectral analyses, which confirmed suspicions of the manuscript editors that were based on scribal and codicological anomalies. The situation this presents suggests an increased probability that other unprovenanced Judaean Desert papyri in other private collections could also be forgeries, but this stems from a somewhat impressionistic survey of scribal features in the Qumran papyri. This paper will put forward a codicological analysis of the unrpovenanced papyrus fragments in private collections in close conversation with observed features from the entire collection of papyri in the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls.

Over three decades ago, Edgar Krentz argued that grace (?????) did not play a major role in Second Thessalonians. He held that the non-formulaic use of ????? in 2 Thess 1:12 and 2:16-17 indicated that the concept of grace was “set in a future eschatological context” and that grace in the letter was understood as a characteristic of God. The end time would be a display of God’s grace in making the Thessalonians worthy of their calling. More recent works, such Witherington’s 2006 commentary, interpret the reference to grace in 2:16-17 as deriving from God and Christ and referring to a past event, the death and resurrection of Christ. I will argue that the time orientation of grace in Second Thessalonians is three dimensional: past, present, and future. The present orientation of grace is demonstrated not only in the extended prescript (1:1-2), which states that grace and peace come from God and Christ in the present, but also in 3:18, which closes the letter with the statement that the grace “of the Lord Jesus Christ” is currently with the Thessalonian Christians. In agreement with Witherington and others, the past orientation is derived from the Christ event as indicated in 2:16-17. The future orientation is highlighted in the discussion of the day of judgment in 2 Thess 1:5-12, which again derives from God and Christ. It is via the presence of the grace of God and Christ in all three time orientations that the Thessalonian Christians will be worthy of their calling.

This paper studies the different Hebrew phrases for ‘the end(s) of the earth’ in light of ancient geography and iconography. Studies of the ‘biblical world view’ and its visual reconstruction usually focus on vertical cosmography; but how extended was the horizontal cosmography in the Hebrew Bible’s historical context(s)? In order to approach this question, the present paper shows awareness of the diversity in the biblical writings and explores associations with, e.g., the sea, coastlands/ islands, and Tarshish ships through ancient visual sources and thus puts the ends of the earth on the (biblical world) map. In a final step, the paper briefly reflects on the theological implications of references to 'the end(s) of the earth'.

Repentance features prominently in the Gospel of Luke, as well as Acts. As Guy Nave (2002) has observed, for example, only Luke among the Gospel writers expands upon John the Baptist’s call to repentance, and only in Luke does Jesus provide instruction about repentance. Nave’s monograph on repentance in Luke-Acts makes the case that Luke depicts repentance (metanoia) apart from traditions associated with turning (shuv) in the Jewish Bible. My paper revisits Luke’s vocabulary of repentance (metanoia) and turning (strepho, with various prefixes), arguing instead that Luke merges this vocabulary, so that the two words convey a single narrative motif. This analysis lays the foundation for a broader line of inquiry when seeking to understand the narrative motif of repentance in Luke's two volumes, and it sheds light on Luke’s position within traditions of translation and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.

In this paper, I will discuss some hexaplaric readings in the Book of Joshua, compare them with the early jewish revisions, and contrast them with Antiochian readings.

The area of the tribe of Judah as described in Josh 15:21–62 is divided into twelve districts. Towns and villages are listed for every district, concluded by a summary of the settlements. (The only exception is 15:45–47.) However, we can detect a thirteenth district within the list. It is hidden in the second (vv. 33–36) and the third district (vv. 37–41). There are towns listed at the end of both districts that cannot be located within the area delimited by the positions of other towns and villages in the district in question. Together, the five towns, after having been localised, delineate a coherent area: a further district. In my paper I will, firstly, show that is possible to conduct literary critique in lists with mere names of settlements. Secondly, I will discuss theological reasons why the author(s)/redactor(s) of the town list adhered to the number twelve for the districts of the tribe of Judah.

The history of interpretation concerning women, particularly women’s bodies, within the history of Christianity must include an examination of Tertullian’s writings. Tertullian’s views on the Trinity, heresies, the persecution of the Christians have garnered much attention. Yet, his writings concerning modesty constitute a vital part of Tertullian’s theology. Using particular bible passages Tertullian sought to derive principles in order to address social issues of his day. He argued that there were certain things a modest woman should not wear if she wanted to be sacred. Tertullian reached for credibility and authority by claiming that Scripture, nature and ecclesiastical teaching were the sources upon which he derived his work. Yet, we see that his private life prior to conversion, his cultural context and the challenges faced by the church were all crucial influences on his theology. In particular the treatises addressing modesty may highlight the tension of an individual who was a product of his time. Living between the two realities of indigenous and colonized culture would have further intensified the tensions betrayed in his writings. By examining Tertullian’s writings on modesty we may gain deeper insight into the ways in which cultural and social anxieties are brought to bear on biblical interpretations and how these interpretations become entrenched in the thoughts and practices of a community.

The compilers of ancient Israelite wisdom literature embraced the international tradition of collecting proverbs and arranging them into anthologies. In his essay, “Wisdom and the Anthological Temper,” James Kugel argued these ancient Near Eastern sages saw wisdom as a body of knowledge that, though too large to be known in full, could still be approximated through these collections. Although scholars have recognized the validity of Kugel’s basic insight regarding the anthological quality of wisdom literature, I believe that insufficient attention has been given to the implications that this literary form has on the process of interpretation. In this paper, I will examine several passages from the book of Qohelet in order better to understand the way in which the anthological form establishes a body of ambiguously related intertexts, presenting interpretive difficulties that frustrate readers’ attempts to make sense of the collection. In particular, I will show how the loose literary structure of the wisdom collection shapes the reader’s interpretation of the text, and how this interpretive process generates new text as part of the ongoing development of literary culture. The paper will be comprised of close readings from Qohelet, including 8.16–17, 10.8–11, and 7.1–3. In each of these passages, we will examine both philological and literary ambiguities, starting with close readings of individual verses, before rereading them in light of their uncertain relationship to their present context. We will also examine places where our reading of a verse or passage might change depending on other passages from the book of Qohelet through which we might choose to interpret them. As we explore different possible interpretations, we will do so by drawing attention to parallel passages from Qohelet, Proverbs, Job, Ben Sira, and texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this way, I will argue that our process of reading necessitates re-reading, as the center of gravity in our interpretive process continues to shift as we encounter additional text. The paper will conclude with observations on the role that this dialectic interaction between text and reader plays in the development of interpretation. The anthology is a fragmentary collection of intertexts, composed of incongruous lines; we must use our own creativity to find coherence. At the same time, the text is not merely an occasion for our free invention. Qohelet’s words provide a framework to which we try to fit our ideas. The problems in the text drive us back to the text, as ambiguity undermines the certainty of any one reading. In this way, the process of interpretation mirrors the experience of searching for wisdom that Qohelet describes. However long we seek after it, we can never find it out. Our own search for understanding never ceases; each reading necessitates a rereading. The shards of the text reflect an array of possible meaning. As we move through the book, our focal point in collection of images and sayings changes, and the kaleidoscope of our interpretation continues to shift as the fragments appear in new patterns of significance.

This paper builds on my previous work on the countercultural gnostic. How did gnostic deviance and transgression compare to the counterculturalism of Christians at large, especially in the mid-second century when apostolic catholic churches begin to form and distinguish themselves from other Christian movements? Sociological models for the study of deviance and the emergence of new religious movements suggest that as new religious movements form and sustain themselves they either push toward accommodating to the larger society or they resist accommodation and become more isolated in ways that protect their deviance. It is within this frame that I examine how the emergent catholics use a variety of accommodation strategies to better fit into Roman civil society as they construct a public face for their worship and naturalize their religious way of life. In this process, emergent catholic communities begin to mark gnostic Christians as too transgressive. They deny gnostic groups Christian identity, considering their deviance too much of a liability to their own survival as Christians. Gnostic Christians begin to be distinguished for these differences and criminalized by other Christians. At the same time, this creates for the catholics the circumstance necessary to shore up their own group distinctiveness, cohesion and locomotion. Second, I examine how gnostic Christian groups respond by resisting accommodation to the expectations of “good” religion among fellow Romans, who value public ceremony and are highly suspect of private rites, revelation, and freelance dealers in religion. Gnostic communities unapologetically continue to emphasize their countercultural critique of traditional religiosity, whether pagan, Jewish or catholic. In this resistance, they use various strategies to insulate or isolate themselves from the pagans, Jews and other Christians. Rather than construct public rites, they continue to meet in private closed communities or develop public fronts where they initiate converts into their gnostic catechisms and experiences, and compose “hidden transcripts” of their critique of traditional religiosity. They use this secrecy to control revelation and provide sanctuary for their deviance. While this esotericism may have functioned successfully at first to foster their critique, as their deviance continues to be stigmatized by other Christians, they find themselves more and more isolated. They are faced with obscurity and the failure to grow through recruitment, a sociological trend that goes a long way to explain the transience of many of gnostic movements, and on the flip side, the durability of catholicism.

tba

This presentation will share new information about where we find the tombs of Jews in Ancient Rome, the chance circumstances of their recovery, and what the fractured contents of these grave sites contribute toward a broader understanding of the positioning, layout, and lifespan of burial areas on the outskirts of Rome in the Late Roman and Early Medieval periods (third through sixth centuries CE). The discovery and exploration of nuclei of burials of Jews in Rome’s ancient necropoleis goes hand in hand with the history of scholarship of the Christian patronage of these sites. Consequently, the original parameters for identifying and contextualizing funerary artifacts pertaining to Jews were based on a very small number of visual signs and linguistic expressions of Jewish identity, applied repetitively – as one scholar described it, “obsessively” – to the materials employed in the making and marking of a tomb. These items included clay lamps or glass vessels decorated with Jewish emblems, and inscribed or painted epitaphs bearing one or more of the same distinctive motifs or verbal expressions of a Jewish affinity. Until the mid-19th century, the find spots of the sixty or so Jewish artifacts from Rome were not known, but the objects themselves fit well within the specialized collections of artifacts of similar manufacture believed to have belonged to Christians. There was little to separate one group from the other, apart from the “signs” and “symbols”, verbal and figurative, that the items in each category contained. The situation took a dramatic turn in the 19th century with efforts to map out and record the “Roma Sotterranea Cristiana” ahead of the city’s industrialization and suburban expansion after 1870. Ancient cemeteries now were distinguished from one another, not only by literary tradition, but also by the close study of their layout and design. Once again, the situation of the ancient Jewish tombs mirrored, to a high degree, those of grave sites seen as Christian. Between 1859 and 1919, six Jewish cemeteries came to light, all in the broader context of urban necropoleis abandoned for well over a millennium. Scholars finally able to study the Jewish tombs in situ concluded that the burial arrangements largely represented methods not exclusive to any one facet of local society. This opinion on the Jewish cemeteries' physical appearance still prevails, but has become somewhat of a blanket statement, due to major difficulties in accessing these sites. In consequence, justice has not been done the interesting solutions arrived at in a number of the Jewish cemeteries to develop and customize individual tombs or even entire regions. This talk will identify singular elements of tomb creation in the Jewish sites in Rome, and, to the extent possible, address what roles cultural variables like religion, ethnicity, and other types of group affiliation could have played in their formation, and whether or not such details help explain the conscious effort on the part of many Jews to seek burial near other Jews.

The work of John Rist (Basil's Neoplatonism: Its Background and Nature) has led many English-speaking scholars to downplay the influence of Plotinus on the thought of Basil of Caesarea (e.g. Ayres, Radde-Gallwitz, Sarisky; but not Hanson). Most of the discussion has centered on Basil’s writings related to the (Holy) Spirit, yet, references to Plotinian influence can also be found in the more detailed studies of Basil’s Homiliae in hexaemeron (e.g. Henke, Torchia, Köckert). The strongest cases have been made for hex. 1,7, 2,2, and 2,7. Furthermore, if Plotinus is not prematurely dismissed, other echoes of his thought can be found in the Homiliae in hexaemeron. By critically evaluating the assumptions and methodology of Rist’s work and assessing the strength of the proposed parallels to Plotinus in the Homiliae in hexaemeron, this paper seeks to more firmly ground our understanding of Basil’s reception of Neoplatonism and its importance for his understanding of creation.

Scholars routinely claim that the Hebrew word minut as used by the (tannaitic) rabbis and the Greek word hairesis as employed by early Christian authors are functionally synonymous or even “exact equivalents” (Heinrich Schlier). This notion is a constitutive element of the more general claim that early rabbinic and patristic sources exhibit “striking overlap in heresiological perspectives” (Michel Desjardins) and are “strikingly similar in form” with respect to their heresiologies (Daniel Boyarin). These purported commonalities have been variously explained in terms of influence by Jews upon Christians (or vice versa) or as evidence of an undifferentiated Judeo-Christianity. Consequently, they have played a significant role in scholarly hypotheses about early Jewish-Christian relations. This paper questions the claim that rabbinic and patristic discourses about “heresy” were remarkably similar. It argues, first, that too little attention has been paid to the considerable differences between rabbinic and patristic responses to deviance, and, second, that the similarities identified by scholars are to a significant extent based on statements in early Christian literature that may be better interpreted as apologetic projection rather than social description. This double realization necessitates reconsideration of what (if anything) the notion of “heresy” can tell us about the nature of “Judaism” and “Christianity” in the second century.

The scope of this paper concerns the artistic exchange between Greece and Rome in the Early Imperial period, particularly how it manifests in the material culture of the Greek East. Using the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias as primary material evidence, this paper will begin to explore the multiple layers of influence and how the architecture, sculpture program, and placement of the building within the urban plan illustrate an innovative and iconographically sophisticated declaration of a complex cultural identity. The Sebasteion does not simply imitate the visual language of imperial Rome, but translates it into a local dialect which publically advertises the place of Aphrodisias in a new, Roman cultural context. The form, images, and placement of the Sebasteion all work to situate the new religion of the Imperial Cult seamlessly into the pre-existing ritual fabric of Asia Minor. The Sebasteion complex was constructed in the Roman city of Aphrodisias, located in modern-day Turkey, during the reign of the Julio-Claudian emperors. The main purpose of this complex was to honor the Julio-Claudian Imperial family and serve as a site to celebrate the Imperial Cult. However, the underlying ideological function of the structure within the cultural fabric of early imperial Aphrodisias was more of a multi-faceted spectacle of identity negotiation which took place in public view, rather than a singular celebration of the emperor in Rome. The Sebasteion is a dense and problematical building. The architectural and artistic identity of the structure is highly varied, which can give the impression of a chaotic and uncertain combination of forms. This paper seeks to expand upon the extensive existing literature on the structure to examine how it functioned in the socio-religious-cultural context of early Aphrodisias and how these forms were used to construct Aphrodisian identity.

This paper discusses the classical question of whether or not Philippians 3 attests to the fact that Paul experienced conversion. The question of conversion, however, is viewed from an unconventional perspective. The analysis does not focus only on the reconstruction of Paul’s biographical narrative and his ongoing transformation but also on patterns of continuity between his pre-conversion life and the new reality in Christ. At this point, we compare the way Eastern-Orthodox Fathers and the advocates of the New Perspective on Paul understand the continuity between Law and Christ with regard to Phil 3. The survey also engages impulses from interdisciplinary conversion research, which help to reevaluate the coexistence of patterns of continuity and discontinuity in reflections of religious transformation experiences.

One mechanism for invoking divine action on one's behalf is the vow. The supplicant promises to provide something desirable to one's god(s) in the future in exchange for assistance in the present. This sort of offering represents the baldest expression of a do ut des (or, more basely, quid pro quo) offering, since the only thing that the individual gives in advance is a promise of future benefit. In the Hebrew Bible, children are often bound up with vows in a variety of ways. In some instances they are the thing desired from the deity, while in others they are the thing offered in exchange for some benefit. In those instances in which the child is the thing promised, there are a variety of ways in which this promise is fulfilled. Sometimes the child is devoted to temple service, while in others the child is sacrificed. In yet other cases, monetary payment is accepted in lieu of handing over the child itself. This paper examines the variety of ways in which vows and children intersect in the Hebrew Bible, with special attention to the assumptions concerning the value of children, their degree of agency or lack thereof, and their place in the Israelite household that are revealed by the practice of making vows in relation to children.

This paper proposes a reading of Second Temple period literature which suggests that, regarding gentile reclamation, Paul and his compatriots stood in a theological movement already well underway. Less an organized agenda, the eventual redefinition of gentileness as a category of value within the Jewish Weltanschauung was rather sketched into place over centuries prior to Paul’s halakic instruction to the scattered gentile converts. It was the product of a series of apologetic responses to specific historical exigencies which left midrashic handholds for later apocalypticists to exploit in an effort to rationalize the longevity of gentile political supremacy. This study will trace the evolutionary arc of speculation concerning gentiles through the books of Isaiah, Ruth, Jonah and the Book of Dreams which eventually and reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that gentiles must possess an independent value to God. It was a school of eschatological expectation which had likely already begun experimenting with alchemic processes of gentile qua gentile redemption in the century before Paul became persuaded of the efficacy of the resurrection of Jesus to that end.

“Young viper! Rager! Who raged among the large huts!” This cry, shouted in a booming voice, was a praise to Shaka, the great Zulu king. Can indigenous Zulu praise-poetry inform the translation of biblical praise-psalms? The Zulu people, even today, are oral in their communication preference, and Zulu youth continue to enjoy composing and performing oral poetry. Most of them are not aware that the Bible has poetry, and even those who read the psalms, find them difficult to understand. But given the opportunity, volunteers are pleased to learn more about Hebrew and Zulu poetics as well as the process of Bible translation, and make their own translations and performances of biblical praise-psalms, following the Literary-rhetorical approach of Ernst Wendland. The results show a strong Zulu imprint from the source to the receptor text, although the original message is retained. The literary and rhetorical power of the Hebrew is transformed into images and thought patterns that come alive to the Zulu mind, using features of artistry and orality/aurality that make the text accessible to the audience, while still being acceptable (to them) in terms of biblical accuracy. The performance of the translated texts takes the form of rap, song, spoken poetry, or a mix of these. The performers utilise the different media, pace of delivery, rhythm, gestures, and other non-verbal features to complement their words in delivering the message. The audience, in turn, enters into the experience with clapping, ululating, and humming along. Their response impacts the performers, motivating them to continue. The isiZulu translations can be said to be “translation for performance” in that they pay attention to aural features of communicating the message, and also “translation in performance” in that certain surprises become apparent as the performers and audience interact with the translated text. Each step along the way adjusts the text – first the translator choreographs the script in his/her particular way, then the performer adds his/her personal style, and lastly, the audience enters into the experience with encouragement and participation. A rich texture of cultural beauty emerges as the Hebrew and Zulu horizons merge in a panorama of literary beauty and rhetorical power.

In an undergraduate liberal arts program, many students take core courses in the bible or other religious areas. In such a required core course, it can be difficult to engage students in reading and analysis of the Bible when they did not choose to register for the course and don’t feel connected or interested in the material. In my undergraduate introductory courses, students major in a variety of areas--business, biology, political science, engineering, writing, etc—while few major in theology/religion. Therefore, providing connections between the Bible and my students’ major fields, or between the Bible and their own experience and issues that matter to them is of utmost importance to engaging them in the course material. Oftentimes, this necessitates flexibility and creativity on the part of the professor to develop and offer new thematic courses that engage biblical texts and concepts with contemporary issues. To this end, the course “Food, Hunger, and the Bible” is offered as a model course designed to engage every undergraduate student, regardless of background, major, etc. This course investigates these issues related to food and hunger in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament texts and how these biblical concepts relate to modern ethical and social justice issues including: poverty, hunger, and food access; food production and GMO’s; ethical labor practices in agricultural and food industries; sustainability; ethical treatment of animals; community and hospitality; etc. Students investigate biblical principles and apply them to current and issues—local and global. The course also involves a significant experiential component, both through participation in service learning activities and weekly reflective exercises. Such exercises involve students: cataloguing their food consumption or how much they spent on food or drink; attempting to live within a daily food budget and tracking changes in diet; tracking waste (paper/plastic) produced at meal times; sacrificing from their diet; preparing/providing food for others; etc. Such activities would actively engage each student in the issues and dilemmas raised by the course material and encourage them to reflect on their own connection and impact to such topics.

The Nag Hammadi Codices (NHC) have generated enormous interest in American culture. Studies of the NHC have resulted in popular documentaries (Finding Jesus 2015) and New York Times best-selling books (Pagels 2003). However, scholarship tracking the reception history of the NHC as religious documents in the contemporary period is in its infancy. Scholarship thus far includes analysis of religious commentaries and biographical studies on neo-Gnostics (Burns 2007, 2017; Dillon 2016, 2017). This paper extends the reception project by examining the (re-)invention of ritual from the NHC, specifically the bridal chamber. Within the NHC, the bridal chamber is found primarily in Valentinian texts. It is uncertain what it meant in the ancient context. Interpretations of the bridal chamber range from a symbol for ascetic practices to sex acts in which the couple focuses on the image of God to imprint the foetus (DeConick 2003). Consensus is building towards an interpretation of the bridal chamber as an extension of the Valentinian ritual of initiation and not a separate rite (Thomassen 2006). The ambiguity of the ancient referent makes this an especially interesting site for reception analysis. I offer three cases studies from the contemporary period. Rosamonde Miller, priestess of the Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum in Palo Alto, CA, regards the bridal chamber as an initiation accomplished through completing the sacraments in The Gospel of Phillip 67-27-30: “The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber.” In her reinvention of each of these sacraments Miller incorporates the bridal chamber. Her “Gnostic Eucharist” is a dramatization of the Sophia-mythos culminating in the bridal chamber. That is, each soul (Sophia) plunges from the Pleroma, becomes enamored with their senses and appetites, and comes under the rule of the demiurge. The Logos (Christ) then awakens Sophia from her nightmare and weds the soul in the ingestion of the eucharist. Best-selling comic-book author Grant Morrison conceives of the bridal chamber as the psychodynamic result of extended magical practice. Specifically, it is the individuation of the psyche accomplished by bringing unconscious, inferior functions (e.g.femininity) into consciousness. To accomplish this, Morrison wrote The Invisibles (1994-2000) as a Gnostic myth of individuation. Each character in the comic represents an inferior function of Morrison’s psyche. To bring these functions to awareness Morrison became the characters in life, often performing chaos magic as their avatars. In 2010, Mercedes Kirkel began to channel Mary Magdalene. Through Kirkel’s book Sublime Union we are told Mary was a priestess of Isis and lover of Jesus of Nazareth. Mary instructs Kirkel in a program of sexual magic that blends Hindu Tantra, breathwork, and astrological speculation. The program culminates in an act of ritual coitus where each partner projects the kundalini serpents from their own subtle body into the body of the other, resulting in spiritual androgenization: the bridal chamber. I will conclude by analyzing how the bridal chamber has become a site for contemporaries to reimagine gender, sexuality, and the body.

This paper examines the effects of a particular type of simulation activity in the classroom—students’ use of ancient avatars—on student learning in an introductory New Testament course at a private research university. In three separate avatar activities in this course, students assumed the identities of fictitious people living in the early Roman Empire. The goal was to help students think, on an anthropological and granular level, about how inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean would have reacted to early Christian ideas and practices. At the start of each activity, each student was assigned an ancient avatar. The following information came with each ancient avatar: name, age, sex, social status (freeborn, freed, slave), literacy level (literate or illiterate), as well as varying degrees of elaboration on the avatar’s profession, interests, social relationships, and infirmities. Students were then presented with a historically-based scenario in which their avatars were asked to make a decision regarding their participation in the early Christ movement. In Activity #1 avatars were members of a Galatian assembly faced with following Paul’s circumcision-free gospel, joining the opposing Christ faction, or abandoning the Christ movement altogether. In Activity #2 students imagined they were in mid-second century Rome, determining whether they would accept various second century Christians’ ideas regarding the authority of the now-canonical gospels. In Activity #3 students pretended that they were in Ephesus at the start of the third century CE, and they were asked to determine whether they would accept Marcion’s canon or craft their own. There were many ways in which these ancient avatar activities promoted student learning about early Christianity’s spread throughout the Roman Empire. These activities helped the students understand the importance of historically contextualizing the early Christ movement, and they began to better see the cultural differences between themselves and ancient Romans. Because of these activities, students also seem to have understood the spread of Christianity on a more granular level: rather than treating early Christianity as a monolithic entity, students began to see how individuals’ multiple social positions might affect their interests in the nascent Christ movement. Students also reported that, by embodying avatars, ancient people became more human to them. The use of avatars energized many students, who by the third activity were adept and excited about embodying these avatars in the classroom. But there were obstacles that inhibited student learning during these activities. Though students tried to inhabit ancient mindsets, they did not always have enough knowledge of Roman cultural context to do so in historically accurate ways. For example, students often based their avatars’ decisions on the modern ideals of tolerance and equality, and they often brought modern ideas about religion to bear on their activities. After describing and assessing the three avatar activities with regard to their benefits and the obstacles encountered, this paper concludes by reflecting on what can be done to improve these interactive simulations in the future.

The body is an inherently visual topic. In this paper, I conduct an illustrated iconographic exploration of the way Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern media constructed heroic bodies. I go beyond past work by systematically collecting many of these visual references in one place, displaying them, and then discussing their visual features and connecting that discussion to selected textual presentations of the heroic body--in particular, to presentations of heroic features (such as hair, arms, and weaponry) and heroic stature (e.g., height) in the Hebrew Bible (for characters such as Saul, David, Absalom, and various figures in Judges). Other iconography under consideration includes heroic bodies in victory parades, hunting scenes, in battle, and with animals. Though little of this archaeological evidence comes from within the borders of Iron Age Israel (though there is some), other ancient materials--from the Near East as well as archaic and classical Greece--provide a glimpse into the heroic bodily cultures that existed geographically near and chronologically before and parallel to ancient Israel (Assyrian art, for example, is replete with heroic and monarchic iconography). In this comparative mood, the bodies of the divine warrior, specifically in the deity’s heroic-battle capacity (e.g., the Assyrian “mirror worlds” of the king and deity), will be examined.

Disaster, in late antiquity as today, affected most thoroughly and immediately a society's most vulnerable populations. The latter included those at the demographic margins of the Roman and Sassanid Empires: the elderly, the socially unmoored, and, still more seriously, the very young. War and disease, famine and earthquake -- these quasi-quotidian aspects of late ancient life posed a graver threat to children than to almost any other group. Moreover, for late ancient communities the very individuals most vulnerable to disaster were also the ones whose suffering was most difficult to explain within a theological framework of divine power and goodness. When thus news reached the Christians of sixth-century Antioch that an earthquake that had devastated Alexandria had had many children and infants among its victims, the community reacted with anxiety: such "acts of God" could serve as punishment for the sins of their adult victims; indeed, in this capacity earthly suffering might even expedite a person's journey in the afterlife. Children, by contrast, were regarded as innocent, and their suffering raised concerns for congregations’ central narratives. Different writers, homilists, and epistolary interlocutors formulated different approaches to justifying the large-scale tragedies that affected children among their communities, modeling their responses in conversation with different biblical intertexts. Their strategies ranged from exonerating both children and parents by drawing on the image of the blameless Job and his equally blameless offspring, to placing fierce blame on families whose faulty tutelage and poor moral example both merited their suffering and turned disaster into a kind of divine rescue operation for the children. The stories they wove had implications not only for Christians' understanding of the divine -- their sense of theodicy -- but also for their communities' "disaster mythologies," the narratives that helped them to make sense of their surroundings and to show resilience when faced with catastrophic events. Drawing on the work of Frank Furendi and Marcío Seligmann-Silva, this paper examines late ancient homilists' strategies for reinforcing community tenacity in the face of disaster with a particular focus on writers' (in)ability to address the fate of children.

This paper contributes to a developing conversation in NT textual criticism: the relevance of manuscript evidence to the debate on canon formation. Scholars debate when and how the NT canon was established. On one extreme, Trobisch argues that complete NTs were common from soon after the last books were written. Watson and Hahneman, on the other hand, suggest that, prior to the fourth century, there was little to suggest that the four currently canonical Gospels were any more significant than the alternatives. Similar arguments could be made about the other corpora within the NT. In the paper, I consider the way manuscripts combine different works and investigate to what extent, even before canon lists became widespread, manuscripts combined only the works which were later affirmed as canonical. My method is to establish the works contained in all Greek NT manuscripts, dating from before the end of the fourth century. I survey all the relevant artifacts, including ostraca and amulets, using the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB). The virtue of the LDAB is that it is thorough and comprehensive. I check every manuscript against another authority, in order to verify the LDAB and add depth to the LDAB’s admirable breadth. There are a number of cases where only a fragment survives, containing a small part of one work, but where there are also page numbers which enable us to estimate what else might have been present. One can approximate how many characters each page of a manuscript contained and also how many characters there are in each book of the NT. There are needless to say many potential inaccuracies in this method, which I discuss in the paper, but I argue it also has the potential to shed light on the contents of ancient manuscripts and inform other text critical debates. I discuss a number of particular manuscripts, which combine works in interesting ways. For example, P18 may represent a deliberate combination of a NT passage with a Septuagint one, on a particular theme. P99 appears to be some sort of dictionary of Pauline terms and it is noteworthy that its producer drew his or her lemmata exclusively from this source. My results demonstrate that the works which are now considered canonical were rarely combined with works now considered non-canonical. For example, no extant manuscript contains one or more of the now canonical Gospels together with a now apocryphal Gospel. This challenges Watson’s view that it was only in the fourth century that the four Gospels were considered especially significant. However, my findings also challenge the views of scholars such as Trobisch. The large number of fragments which have pagination indicating that they contained only single works makes it highly unlikely that all, or even most, of our fragments originally came from complete NTs. I thus argue for a rejection of both extreme positions regarding the origins of the canon.

Debate about the interpretation of the pistis Christou construction in Ephesians, just as in the undisputed Paulines, long ago devolved into a stalemate between the subjective and objective genitive camps. Almost all participants in the debate agree, however, that if pistis is seen as an action or attribute of Jesus Christ himself, then Christ’s pistis is demonstrated in his suffering and death upon the cross. For instance, Paul Foster has advocated for a subjective reading of Eph 3:12, where believers enjoy salvation “as a consequence of Christ’s obedience in going to the cross, his own act of faithfulness” (“The First Contribution,” 75). This paper, however, argues that Jesus’ faithfulness in Ephesians is not primarily his faithful obedience in going to the cross, but rather the faithfulness of the exalted Christ who proves faithful to believers in providing access to God and securing salvation. Part of a forthcoming monograph on the faithfulness of the risen Christ, co-authored with Benjamin Lappenga, the reading offered in this paper is supported by at least three observations: 1) the resurrection and heavenly enthronement (1:10, 20–23; 2:5–7) play a key role in the narrative christology of Ephesians; 2) as a pithy summary of the discussion of the co-resurrection and co-enthronement of believers together with Christ in 2:4–7, the construction dia pisteos in Eph 2:8 is most naturally taken as a reference to the faithfulness of the risen Christ; and 3) given that the life-bearing blood of a sacrifice (not its death) effects atonement, “access” to God (2:18; 3:12) is made possible not through Christ’s obedience on the cross but “through his faithfulness” (3:12), that is, the fidelity of the risen, ascended Christ whose union with the saints makes them pistos (1:1).

While generally represented as a singular textual entity, the Gospel of Nicodemus stems from a complicated manuscript tradition—composed of over 500 manuscripts in a variety of ancient languages as well as medieval Western European vernaculars—which preserves a number of textual variants that reflect, in part, the manifold social, theological, and polemical interests of the text’s transmitters. This paper examines a set of disparate and competing Christian visions of the soteriological status of the Jewish dead, as illustrated within the variant readings of the earliest versions of the Gospel. These competing positions on Jewish postmortem access to redemption are placed in conversation with the interpretive efforts of other Christian authors of the first five centuries CE as they likewise seek to make sense (and use) of an enigmatic, and potentially distressing, canonical proclamation to the imprisoned dead (1 Peter 3:18-20).

Due to his knowledge of Platonism, Augustine was familiar with several types of ascent models. These models were circumscribed by spatial and temporal categories. The idea of spiritual progress was deeply linked with ascetic concepts. Such concepts attracted him already in his Manichean period. Later on, he felt increasingly uncomfortable with optimistic views of spiritual progress and ascent. He developed three strategies in order to limit the optimism of ascent models: a) the consequent "eschatologisation" of the goal of any ascent, namely the pax that can be reached only in the end of any (universal or individual) history by a special action of God, b) the contextualisation of any belief in the broad social context of the ecclesia peregrinans that denies real purity of individuals, c) the interference between sin and grace on every step of human life. The latter idea was not only important in the face of Donatism, but caused also Augustine’s refusal of Pelagianism. The interpretation of Rom 7 as a description of the sinful, stumbling believer cannot be interpreted any longer as only last step of this anti-Pelagian struggle, but is already present in his early writings. Though some scholars take Augustine for a mystic, he considered a lucky ascent to be impossible. From his perspective, the hope for a successful ascent is a kind of hybris that cannot be aligned with Christology. This is confirmed by Augustine's use of ascent models in the Confessions.

The Qur’an stipulates that belief in angels is a key characteristic of ‘believers’ (Q2:177.285; 4:136). That angels were well-established figures in the qur’anic world is clear from the fact that no attempt is made to explain what they are or the meaning of the term malak (????). The Qur’an includes no angelic creation story but details various roles played by angels: guardians of heaven and hell (e.g. Q74: 30); God’s servants who carry his throne and worship him unceasingly (Q4: 172; 43: 19; 21: 27; 69: 17; 16: 49; 21: 20); guardian angels who record every man’s rights and wrongs (e.g. Q82: 10); advocates between men and God (e.g. Q42: 5); God’s messengers (Q22: 75); soldiers who fight alongside Muhammad against his enemies (e.g. Q3: 123f); escorts to those entering or journeying to heaven and hell (Q16: 28ff), and in an eschatological context (Q8: 50; 89: 22). Qur’anic concepts of angels undoubtedly drew on the (wider) biblical tradition and the Qur’an accepts many Jewish-Christian “norms” about angels: their ability to act as messengers; appear in human form without having human needs; that they are not to be venerated. At the same time, it reinterprets some of these “norms”: they are denied freewill and their presence in narratives familiar from the biblical tradition appears to have a different purpose. Any attempt to understand the qur’anic view of angels must thus take this background into account whilst allowing for further development. How the qur’anic portrayal of angels in narratives familiar from biblical history differs from both biblical and extra-biblical versions, and what this tells us about the Qur’an’s message, will be the subject of this paper. Following an overview of the qur’anic understanding of angels in general, the following episodes involving angels from biblical history that feature in the Qur’an, will be analysed in detail: 1.The Visitations to Abraham (Q11:69–81; 51:24–37) and Lot (15:51–77; 26:160–161) 2.The Annunciations to Zechariah (Q3:38–41; cf. 19:2–15) and Mary (Q3:42–48; 19:16–19) This close reading of different versions of the same stories will allow both for the way in which the Qur’an interprets and employs the figures of angels in narrative to be examined in context and for the extent to which material from the wider biblical tradition was disseminated and reinterpreted within Late Antique, Near Middle Eastern, monotheistic circles, to be assessed more fully.

In this paper, I will examine the succession rules in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the light of the succession rules as preserved in Mesopotamian Chronicles and, in particular, CM 5 that reports the succession of Assyrian kings. Comparing CM 5 with succession reports, partially preserved in other Levantine texts, I will argue that the new succession rules, put into the mouth of David in 1 Kgs 1:28-30, adjusted the succession rules in Judah to the widespread ancient Near Eastern tradition that was governed by patrilineal succession.

Due in part to John Chrysostom’s influential Homilies on Hebrews, most interpreters have argued that the author of Hebrews distances Jesus from the Levitical obligation to offer a sacrifice for personal sin (cf. 5:2-3, 7:27, 9:7). Since Jesus never committed sin (Heb 4:15), Jesus had no personal sins for which to atone. This interpretation of Hebrews, however, appears to conflict with the author's argument in Heb 7:27. Here the author appears to state that Jesus currently has no need to offer a sacrifice for personal or corporate sin since he offered a sacrifice for both (t??t?) once for all. A number of recent studies have acknowledged this difficulty but appear unable to reconcile why a sinless saviour (Heb 4:15) would require a sacrifice for personal sin (7:27). A few scholars throughout history, however, have attempted to reconcile these two verses. In this paper, I review recent interpretations of Heb 4:15 and 7:27 and recount the attempts of Origen, Nestorius, and Faustus Socinus to retain Christ's sinlessness in Hebrews while attaching a self-designated sin offering to his new covenant sacrifice. Socinus’s reconciliation in De Jesu Christo Servatore is the most extensive and suggests that Jesus's "sins" should be understood as his human weakness unto death. This proposal is employed as an argument against John Calvin’s advancement of penal satisfaction, an advancement complicated by a self-designated sin offering. Socinus’s argument was condemned as blasphemous by John Owen but encouraged a stream of interpretive tradition that remains unaddressed in recent literature. This stream appears to illuminate a debate that is currently bifurcated between studies that suggest Jesus committed sin (e.g. George W. Buchanan and Ronald Williamson) and studies that argue Heb 4:15 must distance Jesus from a self-designated sacrifice.

Several different interpretation and translation options have been offered for the phrase "raz nihyeh," but this discussion has seldom been placed in the context of a detailed syntactical study of the use of the Niphal of "hyh" elsewhere at Qumran. After summarizing previous research on the subject, I will first examine how the Niphal of "hyh" is used in the Hebrew Bible. Then, I will examine all significant examples of its use at Qumran, but will postpone discussion of its occurrence in the phrase "raz nihyeh" until this analysis has been completed. In the course of this study, I will argue that the Niphal of "hyh" usually refers to events rather than entities, and is best translated as “to happen” or “to occur.” I will argue that the Niphal participle of "hyh" should be understood to have no inherent temporal reference, but derives its time from context – just like the Hebrew participle in general. I will call attention to the use of the Niphal participle of "hyh" in the context of general statements to refer to a totality of events. Based on these observations, I will propose a new translation for the phrase "raz nihyeh": “the mystery of what happens.” I will argue that the phrase refers to the general sequence of acts and consequences knowable by the wise, as well as the whole sweep of God's secret plan for history.

Whether his Apologies are best understood as petitions submitted to the Roman imperial court or as elaborate literary fictions, Justin Martyr was a savvy user of contemporary media. In contrast to the Apologies, however, Justin’s other major treatise, the Dialogue with Trypho, has received only limited attention in relation to ancient media. This lacuna in scholarship is particularly apparent in the long-standing debate about the Dialogue’ s addressees. Adolf von Harnack inaugurated a long tradition of identifying Justin’s target audience as “pagans,” and more recently many specialists have returned to (a modified version of) the even older view that identifies the primary audience as “the Jews.” Among the difficulties such theories face is that they fail to account for the practical realities that governed communicative media in Justin’s Roman world. In light of the social-media-like characteristics of ancient book production, presentation, and distribution, as well as overlooked evidence within the Dialogue itself, this paper argues that Justin must have known that his immediate audience would lie within his own social circle, which was presumably primarily made up of other Christians. This conclusion has significant implications for how we understand the intellectual and rhetorical work that the Dialogue is doing.

Having worked with a variety of contextual biblical interpretation for perhaps twenty years at this point, and, as an editor and a colleague often participated in the process of evaluating contextual readings and establishing (fluid) criteria on which to do so, I would like in this paper to formulate what might be key concerns for the contextual method. In particular, I will look at the problematic relationship of the contextual interpreter to the community for or from whom he or she reads. Our identity as biblical scholars means that we are always somewhat estranged from our reading communities, and the purposely broad way in which contextual reading is defined has meant widely varying relationships with what is offered as context. From reading that simply emerge from the interpreter’s community of origin, to “reading with” methods of Gerald West, to less formal, distinctly outsider relationship to the community context, to interpretations so specifically close to the scholar’s life experience as to be autobiographical, our relationships with the places from which we read demand a good hard look. I would offer my own analysis as a starting place for a discussion of the method’s rigor and its ethics.

This paper seeks to address the social function of questions in the New Testament. For this purpose, I will employ a sociolinguistic model of discourse analysis called Appraisal Theory, which is rooted in Systemic-Functional Linguistics, as a means of interpreting how questions function socially to position hearers/readers with regard to certain value positions and the ideologies they support. In defining my model, I will make a distinction between expository, rhetorical, and leading questions, and demonstrate the instrumental effects of each. I will draw upon a number of sample texts from the New Testament and, perhaps, some from further afield. In order to situate the research in an appropriate social and cultural location, I will also draw upon insights gained from researches in the discipline of social-scientific criticism. It is my contention that in the documents of the New Testament it is rare that questions serve the simple purpose of requesting information. They are, rather, often a means of entering into some sort of social action, such as challenging another’s honor or providing riposte to such challenges.

The Catholic Reception of the Pauline Law-Grace Dichotomy in the Light of Krister Stendahl’s Interpretation, as part of a panel on the legacy of Krister Stendahl.

In the process of writing an article on 19th Century Mormon Biblical Interpretation for Mormonism and the Bible (forthcoming OUP), I have been struck by the vacuum of information on how Mormons have used and interpreted the Bible in nineteenth-century America post Joseph Smith. After extensive searching, I have realized that although scholars have studied Joseph Smith’s use of the Bible and to a lesser degree other Mormons’ use of scriptures in the 1830s and 1840s, with the notable exception of Philip Barlow in Mormons and the Bible, scholars have virtually ignored how Mormons have used and interpreted the Bible in the later part of the nineteenth century. Barlow in his seminal work offers an excellent contextualized analysis of major strands of LDS biblical interpretation as demonstrated by such notable figures as Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, B.H. Roberts, Joseph Fielding Smith, and William H. Chamberlin. The weakness of Barlow’s study is that it focuses solely on leading figures and does not engage ordinary members who were not a part of the hierarchical elite—expect to make the important acknowledgement that most members would not have been aware of the higher criticism ideas that some of these individuals were working with. Consequently, a significant gap currently exists in our understanding of how Mormon laity used and interpreted the Bible post-1840s. This is where my extensive primary study enters the conversation. To gather a more representative sample of how LDS members (both laity and those called to positions of authority) used and interpreted the Bible, I am currently categorizing and analyzing all references to the Bible found in the Millennial Star (1870-1900), Juvenile Instructor (1870-1900), Contributor (1879-96), and Woman’s Exponent (1872-1900). I have chosen to focus on the last three decades of the nineteenth century because this was when higher criticism began to influence how American Protestants understood and interpreted the Bible. My study will offer both specific and contextualized insights. First, I will identify and analyze leading assumptions that govern LDS biblical interpretation—such as, possibly literalist, common sense rationalism, or static, unchangeable truths—within the context of Protestant use and interpretation in the later part of the nineteenth century as well as Mormons in the 1830s and 1840s and Barlow’s findings on key LDS figures in the 1870s-1890s. Second, I will identify and analyze the major uses and doctrinal themes underscored by the passages they quote and interpret. For instance, in my previous study on how LDS women used Biblical women within the Exponent, I identified that they used Biblical women primarily to promote their ideals of Christian womanhood, their arguments for the expansion of women’s sphere, and their defense of polygamy. Third, I will more specifically look at how Mormons’ attitude towards and interpretations of the scriptures are being influenced by ideas coming from higher criticism. My initial findings suggest that individuals were more receptive to and aware of some of these ideas than Mormons’ twentieth century approaches to the Bible would indicate.

The literary attribution of Deuteronomy’s opening chapters as relecture of the preceding “books” or as opening of a new composition is highly disputed. The paper investigates, if Deut 1–3 can bear the burden of being the Deuteronomistic History’s programmatic opening by analyzing some of the used terms and concepts often mentioned in the current debate, the other peoples’ role and the ban-concept. In addition, the question of a possible end – in Joshua and in the Book of Deu-teronomy itself – of a text dealing with the paradigm of successful and failing conquest will be discussed. Furthermore, the paper illuminates the gradual shift of the chapter’s horizons by the insertion of linking elements even reaching back to Genesis.

The structure the Qur?an, the thematic unity of its Suras, and the significance of their titles are sites of recurring debate and contestation, inviting an array of approaches and perspectives from Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike. While historically the Qur?anic exegetical tradition has tended towards an atomistic hermeneutic in its commentaries, and while the majority of exegetes have held that the Sura titles were a later discretionary addition that does not strictly constitute a part of the “revelation”, there has been nonetheless a latent recognition, that is increasingly the focus of more recent Muslim scholarly approaches, of an overriding meta-narrative to the Quran’s structure and content that can only be explored and appreciated, it is argued, through a unifying intra-textual approach to the Qur?an (tafsir al-Qur?an bil Qur?an). This paper explores the question of thematic unity at the level of the Sura by examining the recently published work of the Jordanian Muslim intellectual ?Ali Ra?i Abu Zurayq Mu?jizat Asma? al-Suwar al-Qur?aniyya, where he upholds the controversial view that Sura titles are indeed an integral part of the “revelatory experience”, arguing that their significance as a unifying theme for each Sura can only be appreciated upon a careful examination of the meanings of their triconsonantal roots (al-jadhr al-thulathi). The paper provides a close analysis of Abu Zurayq’s theory with respect to the following five Suras: al-Sajdah, al-Mulk, Ya Sin, al-Waqi?ah and al-Kahf. The objective in doing so is two-fold: i) to subject Abu Zurayq’s theory to a close scholarly critique and ii) to illustrate how his insight affirms the thematic unity and interconnectedness of these five Suras specifically, which I argue are prototypical of the four-fold process of spiritual transformation that is a ubiquitous overarching meta-narrative throughout the entirety of the Qur?an. The four key components of this transformative process are eloquently summarized in Surat al-?A?r as follows: i) submission to God (Islam or al-tawa?i bil ?aqq), ii) belief in the Unseen (Iman), iii) patience or perseverance (al-tawa?i bil ?abr), and iv) spiritual perfection (I?san or ?amal al-?ali?at). The first four Suras, highlighted for daily recital in the ?adith literature in the above order, are argued to thematically mirror each of these four components as follows: i) al-Sajdah (Islam); ii) al-Mulk (Iman); iii) Ya Sin (?abr); and iv) al-Waqi?ah (I?san). Finally, Surat al-Kahf, highlighted for weekly recital in the ?adith literature on the holy day of Friday, is argued to fully mirror this four-fold process as a thematic unity via its four anecdotes or narrative stories: i) the tale of the sleepers of the cave (Islam); ii) the tale of the owner of the two gardens (Iman); iii) the encounter of Moses and al-Khidr (?abr); and iv) the story of Dhul Qarnayn (I?san).

There are two tendencies in early Christianity with respect to exclusive calendar observance. On one hand, Tertullian and others reject any overlap with pagan and Jewish celebrations as a way of maintaining religious boundaries. Further, differing views of the emerging Christian calendar are treated as boundary markers within the Christian communities. On the other hand, for (e.g.) Irenaeus, differences in calendar observance within Christian communities are not allowed to rise to the level of boundary definition. It is regularly overlooked that these views are part of the afterlife of Pauline writings, particularly in the ambivalence of Col 2. Further, ambivalence about the value of calendrical observance in Col 2:16 is itself anticipated in non-disputed Pauline letters (Galatians, Romans and 1 Corinthians). From Tertullian back to Paul and then forward again to Irenaeus, I trace two tendencies with respect to ordering calendrical practice and demonstrate their relation to a Pauline ambivalence, embedded deep in early Christian tradition.

The Epistle of Barnabas is an enigmatic early Christian letter, probably written in the early second century within an Egyptian provenance. Most recent scholarship has discerned a polemical purpose for the epistle. The author is engaged in a dialogue--with partners real or imagined--concerning ownership of the one covenant and proper interpretation of the one law. Because Barn.’s bizarre salvation-history model makes Jesus inconsequential for determining Israel’s fate, the many Jesus traditions flowing through the epistle have received less attention. This essay argues that Jesus is a crucial component to the epistle’s polemic. The author of Barn. receives Jesus as the great divider between “us” and “them.” Jesus’ name is the essential rhetorical tool for dividing “their law” from the “new law of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and “their covenant” from the “covenant of the beloved Jesus.” For “them,” Jesus’ suffering completes a long march towards a self-inflicted damnation, but for “us” it brings salvation. For “them,” the messiah is a son of man, but for “us” he is the pre-existent Lord and Son of God. Far from being peripheral, Jesus is central to the polemic of this early piece of Adversus Judaeos literature.

S.R. Driver famously stated that words should be weighed, not counted (quoting a Yiddish proverb). Driver said this over 100 years ago, and since then a great deal of solid work has been done on biblical Hebrew by philologists relying more on intuition and qualitative analyses, and less on quantitative measures and a strict linguistic framework. However, during the century or so since Driver wrote those words, massive changes have taken place in the methods historical linguists use and the degree of robustness of their results. Earlier, scholars were forced more often to argue on the basis of specific instances, but with the rise of corpus linguistics, the linguist now has extensive access to large-scale trends in linguistic usage. Within biblical Hebrew studies, this quantitative aspect is incipient in the work of B.E. Dresher, J.A. Cook and R.D. Holmstedt, more prominent in the work of D.-H. Kim, R. Rezetko and I. Young, and even more profound in research and publications by J. Jacobs, M. Naaijer and colleagues as seen for example in a recent issue of Journal of Semitics. The paper will address this development and will illustrate it by a case study of the historical drift from qal to piel verbs. Z. Ben-Hayyim, A. Bendavid and A. Hurvitz have convincingly argued that there is a trend in early Hebrew, particularly in the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Mishna, for the piel to take over for the qal without a change in meaning. The paper will present an analysis of the issue, seen both from a traditional qualitative perspective and from the perspective of more rigorous modern historical linguistic methods that incorporate corpus linguistics and variationist and quantitative analysis, presenting a complete dataset of verbs undergoing this shift. Furthermore, it will look at the case of this shift in the root HLK where the piel form is sporadically present in biblical writings traditionally assigned an early date.

Studies on Amos 7:1-8 + 8:1-2 have often adopted a biographical approach. Commentators have mined these four vision reports in search of information about the eponymous prophet’s personal experiences. Based on the observation that there is a development within this series of visions, from intercession and mercy to uncompromising judgment, scholars have made elaborate, but speculative reconstructions of Amos’s life and career. In this paper an alternative approach is outlined. I argue that the vision reports need to be studied as theological texts, rather than as autobiographical documents. An intertextual investigation shows close affinities with some passages in the book of Jeremiah. Contextual considerations indicate that 7:1–8:2 has a pivotal position within the macrostructure of the book of Amos. Composed in the exilic or the postexilic era, this part of the book addresses questions raised by the catastrophe that struck against Judah in 586 BCE. Portraying Amos as a prophet like Moses, the vision reports introduce notions of intercession and forgiveness into a discourse dominated by a harsh message of doom. Hence, they pave the way for the book’s hopeful epilogue.

Interpreting Apocalyptic Texts from an African Perspective: Revelation 21:1-4

The Hellenistic Jewish narrative Joseph and Aseneth never cites or quotes an antecedent text. There are only two references to writing in the narrative. But this is not to suggest that Joseph and Aseneth does not exhibit familiarity with other textual traditions. On the contrary, the pseudepigraphon is peppered with echoic references to the Septuagint, frequently evokes tropes from the Greek romance novels, and is itself within the generic range of rewritten Bible. In this paper, I investigate Joseph and Aseneth’s taciturn and echoic mode of intertextual recall and compare it with the intertextuality of Mark’s Gospel. While the latter is more self-conscious about its engagement with antecedent texts than the former, there are numerous instances where Mark’s intertextuality is echoic in a manner akin to Joseph and Aseneth’s. Both narratives frequently recall textual traditions with key themes, lexemes, and phrases rather than by embedding discrete texts into their narratives verbatim. To expose their similarities, I investigate Mark’s “mis-citations” and “misquotations” in Mark 1:2–3, where Mark attributes a composite citation to Isaiah, and Mark 2:23–28, where Mark ostensibly confuses the High Priest Abiathar with his father, Ahimilech. I compare these two texts with Jos. Asen. 1:3, which intertextually evokes Gen 41:46–49, and Jos. Asen. 6:1–8, which thematically resembles two Greek romances, Xenophon’s Anthia and Habrocomes and Chariton’s Callirhoe. I then compare how Joseph and Aseneth 27–29 recalls and subverts the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17 with the way that Mark 4:35–41 evokes the story of Jonah from Jonah 1 and Mark 5:1–20 recalls the watchers tradition from 1 Enoch 6–16. I suggest that Mark and Joseph and Aseneth’s similar mode of intertextual recall in these passages can be illuminated methodologically by John Miles Foley’s concepts, “communicative economy” and “metonymy.” According to Foley, tradents can recall an entire wellspring of tradition by evoking a familiar theme, phrase, or scene. Once a “communicative node” metonymically activates the wellspring of tradition, it continues to reverberate in the audience’s mind, affecting the reception and meaning of the text that recalls it. Significantly, this metonymic mode of intertextual recall is characteristic of orally performed texts and oral traditions. I conclude the paper by suggesting that Mark and Joseph and Aseneth’s similar mode of intertextual recall is not the result of direct influence in one direction or the other. Rather, the two are similar with respect to their mode of composition and medium of reception, and this is reflected in their echoic intertextuality.

Since Graetz (1871) most scholars have located Canticles’ composition in the assumed cosmopolitan city of third century BCE Jerusalem. Following Finkelstein’s analysis of the archaeology of post-exilic Jerusalem and Ben-Ami’s recent localization of the Acra in the upper part of the City of David it is argued that Jerusalem remained a small village until the Seleucid period, and only grew substantially in Hasmonean times. For the first time in post-exilic times there is a real polis in Judea, a cosmopolitan city with active interaction with the Graeco-Roman world. Graeco-Roman culture and customs permeate many of the songs. The dramatic expansion of Judea in the period 129 – 90 BCE provides the background for the romantic relation to the land with its orchards, gardens, plantations, and grazing fields reflected in many Canticles songs. The book’s idealization of the pastoral life has its forbearers in Greek pastoral poetry such as Theocritus. The toponyms in the book also reflect the new “Greater Judea.” With a library in the city from the time of Hyrcanus, Greek literature would easier influence Jerusalem scribes. Some of the Psalms of Solomon criticize libertine customs in Hasmonean Jerusalem of the early first century BCE, and may constitute a negative mirror of scenes depicted in Canticles.

The need for attention to be paid to exegesis is perhaps not surprising: preaching of a lectio continua sort was the backbone of the marching body of Reformation movements. It allowed the overlapping agendas of Christian humanism and Word of God theology to combine to great effect. But what if these sermons had never been preached, if commentaries had never been written, and their energies had been devoted to furthering the Reformation in a more direct way, through writing tracts of a polemical, doctrinal and persuasive nature? I will produce evidence from commentaries on Isaiah 36-39 (the Hezekiah story) by Johannes Oecolampadius, Johannes Brenz, Tommaso de Cajetan, Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin. I will argue that such interpretation seeks to reassure doubts that might not have been prominent but were nonetheless real and pressing.

Abstract: The reasons early Christians placed gold glass medallions into mortar covering catacomb burials or within loculi are still not fully understood. In a recently published study Daniel Thomas Howells surveys various explanations that have been proposed—glasses as markers identifying the deceased, as apotropaic devices, or as mementoes of funerary meals carried out at the grave. After discussing the problems with each proposal, Howells concludes that the most we can currently say is that the glasses constituted grave ornamentation that was inexpensive but pleasing to viewers and expressed affection for the deceased; some medallions might have been purpose-made for burials, while others came from vessels owned and cherished by the deceased, and thus were particularly suitable as grave goods. This paper argues that an additional factor in the use of certain gold glass medallions was their ability to commemorate deceased individuals and express hopes for the afterlife. Gold glasses with portraits often bear inscriptions that, in the vessels’ original domestic context, represented convivial toasts at special occasions (like weddings) and dining, such as PIE ZESES and VIVAS CVM TVIS (“Drink! May you live!” and “May you live with your [loved one(s)]”). Such medallions, when translated to the funerary context, acquired new meanings as commemorations of the deceased and expressions of hope for the afterlife. Glass vessels were indeed affordable to a greater proportion of the population than the much more expensive sarcophagi, and their funerary use represented an alternative means of commemoration. Some medallion inscriptions encircle double portraits of married couples—e.g., VIVATIS IN DEO or SEMPER GAVDEATIS IN NOMINE DEI (“May you two live in God,” “May you two rejoice evermore in the name of God”)—or of family groups. These and CVM TVIS formulae, translated to the tomb, could have expressed hopes for reunion with loved ones in the hereafter. This fourth-century phenomenon of funerary art corresponds to increased attention fourth-century Christian authors gave to the subject of reunion with loved ones in the afterlife (e.g., in texts by John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Paulinus). These texts and tomb decorations figure in late-fourth-century “competitive commemoration” between Christians and non-Christians in Rome (Trout). They also nuance the oft-repeated claim that familial identity among early Christians was dissolved in favor of community identity (MacMullen, Yasin).

Africans seem to give attention to diseases which western trained physicians often ignore. That might be attributed to Africa’s metaphysical worldview that does not draw a line between the body and the spirit. For this reason, the therapeutic methods of diviners/prophets are receiving more attention even by those that had previously rejected it. For Africans, health does not merely mean a healthy body and disease is not just a physical or mental condition without the religious component. Sickness implies that there is an imbalance between the metaphysical and the human world. This accounts for the holistic emphasis in healing. This paper examines the role of repentance in procuring healing among the Roho Churches. First, I will look at the qualities of the spiritual healer for the purpose of legitimacy. Secondly, I will look at the expectations with which the client brings as this often has a remarkable influence on the outcome.

Intertextuality constructs Revelation’s Jezebel as one of the Bible’s most hated anti-heroes. Not only does John, the text’s implied author, throw the Thyatiran on a bed for allegedly committing fornication—a punishment akin to sexual assault—but also subsumes this rival prophet in the Jezebel of 1 and 2 Kings. While the scholarly consensus is that John uses name substitution as a means by which to strip the Thyatiran of her self-proclaimed prophetic status, this paper argues that the Apocalypse’s “Jezebel” may plausibly be conceived as a rival male prophet instead. Revelation would not be the first ancient text, or even the first biblical text, to blur gender lines as a form of attack or polemically feminize an opponent. The “pornoprophetics” of the Hebrew Bible, for example, repeatedly represent (androcentric) Israel as a dissolute female deserving of sexual abuse. Revelation scholars have already recognized this feminizing trope at play in their investigation of Rome as Whore. By decking Rome out as a “Great Whore” and hence a sexual object of disgust, Revelation's John makes a mockery of the empire, subjects it to vicious humor, having recourse to gendered strategies of lampooning that both writers and consumers of Roman humor would have found familiar. Rather than celebrating Rome as a hypermasculine militarized superpower in the manner of Roman imperial propaganda, John satirizes the State as a prostitute who has had too much to drink (Rev. 17:6). Given the extensive textual parallels between Revelation’s Babylon and Jezebel—the texts “two Whores,” as many would have it—it is hardly too much to imagine that a parallel pornoprophetic feminizing strategy is in play in John's representation of his Thyatiran rival. Can we not read John’s name substitution in his letter to the Thyatiran community as a means by which to satirize a competing male leader? In this paper, I will not only unpack the scholarly conversation surrounding Revelation’s intertextual Jezebel, but, in doing so, will argue that “Jezebel” might function as a comic (albeit problematic) name substitution for an anatomically male opponent.

The expanding scholarship on honor and shame in the context of the New Testament offers an opportunity for a contextualized reading of Luke 15:11-32. After a discussion of the influence of honor on Luke’s narrative, this paper examines the actions of the parable’s characters. The paper concludes that the collectivistic value of the honor-based culture was being preserved, but the scandalous nature of the Jesus movement lies in the redefinition of the boundaries of the collective. An honor-based culture bases ideals in view of the collective, as honor is linked with one’s reputation. Shame comes from failing to meet expectations, and can be either ascribed or attained. Furthermore, a sense of shame is a virtue. One who refuses an adulterous affair displays a sense of shame. On the other hand, a shameless person does not follow the patterns of proper behavior. In the ancient Mediterranean world, groups were strongly structured and exclusive. People were ostracized if their actions were considered shameless. In Luke 15, Jesus puts forth a riposte to the Pharisees’ challenge, a notable honor-based interaction. In the parable, the younger son brings shame on the family and on the Jewish people. He dishonors his father by (1) demanding his inheritance and (2) assuming control of it, both before his father’s death. In losing the family fortune among Gentiles, he shames the Jews, falling to the lowest status. The father violates convention in welcoming his son back to full status. Although expected to punish his son, he grants his demand. He shames and defiles himself by running to his son and embracing him. Some say that he ran to spare his son from the shame of the qetsatsah, a disowning ceremony. The father returns his son to status and celebrates extravagantly. One cannot minimize the shocking nature of the father’s actions. He is expected to disown or stone his son to death, but he honors him. The older son’s tirade laments his father’s lack of propriety, and effectively says to him: “you are being shameless!” However, the older son’s actions are ironically shameful. He does not take a leadership role in the celebration and humiliates his father. The older son, despite claiming loyalty, demonstrates that he is unconcerned with kinship. The older son’s complaint mirrors the Pharisees’ complaint, and the father’s response parallels the message of Jesus’s ministry. Notably, the father does not challenge the older son’s collectivistic value, but upholds it by re-incorporating the younger son. Likewise, Jesus’s riposte does not challenge the Pharisees’ group-first mentality, rather the boundaries of who is included. While values of the collective, Jesus and his followers “turned the world upside down,” challenging the boundaries of who is included. Thus the parable gives the reader a glimpse into the social interaction of the Jesus movement, as outsiders are continually included in Luke-Acts, until even the Gentiles are incorporated.

Baruch, who has been singled out already in Jer 36, plays an even more important role in Jer 45, where the scribe’s mere survival prefigures nothing less than the salvation of Israel. The importance of Jer 45 is highlighted by it holding a key position within the structure of the book of Jeremiah closing the prose texts. The announcement of Jeremiah’s survival thus closes both the biography of Jeremiah, the prophet, and the history of Judah’s fall, ending with Jeremiah’s and the land’s seemingly last inhabitants’ disappearance in Egypt. In the Septuagint, the chapter closes the book, followed only by an appendix dealing with the fall of Jerusalem taken from 2 Kgs. The deuterocanonical book of Baruch picks up the Baruch tradition and makes Baruch the reader or even the author of a(nother) book, which has been either identified with the book of Jeremiah or with the book of Baruch read among the immigrants in Babylon – and eventually subsequently in Jerusalem. This paper focuses on Jer 45 as a key chapter within the book of Baruch and an anchor point for the Baruch tradition and reevaluates Bogaert’s idea of reading the book of Baruch as its continuation. The shifting contexts of the versions of the book of Jeremiah and its continuation in the book of Baruch mirror the shifting shades of Baruch, the scribe’s role, who presents himself as the advocate of a tradition whose author he does not pretend to be, but increasingly becomes. As a literary figure, Baruch stays a protagonist of its own book and thus a personification of textualisation.

Unlettered and Amateur: Early Christian Authors On the Value of Not Reading

No abstract

SBL Kristeva proposal Intertextuality was a term first coined by the French literary theorist Julia Kristeva (b. 1941) in her 1969 book, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Moved by what she perceived as a crisis in meaning within Western literature, Kristeva sought to mediate the ideas of Mikhail Mikha?lovich Bakhtin (1895-1975), to the Western world. Consequently, in order to understand meaning in any given literary text, a reader needs to be aware of the myriad influences, cultural and intertextual, that are represented in any text. Throughout the Old Testament, there are reminiscences of the Exodus event again and again. The lexical, conceptual, and influential allusions to this founding event of the ancient Hebrew nation resonate throughout the Bible: in the Psalms, Prophets, and the postexilic literature. Kristeva introduced the concept of intertextuality into debates in the fields of linguistics and literature, but it has steadily gained importance beyond these disciplines. As a practicing psychoanalyst, Kristeva utilized the findings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, weaving the disciplines of linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy into an integrated approach and bringing it to bear on literature, art and poetry. Her simple recognition is that any text is a mosaic of quotations from other texts. For Kristeva, it is not just a matter of what text influenced another; rather, the author has intruded herself into a complex dialogue that includes the writing subject, the addressee and a whole series of exterior texts. For Kristeva, this means the text is transfinite. That is to say, it is a plural dialogue between multiple factors: the subject that enunciates his own identity, the addressee (i.e., the reader), and the whole realm of language in all that it takes for granted. An important proposition for Kristeva was what she wrote in her ground-breaking book, “tout texte est absorption et transformation d’un autre texte.” [ET = “Every text absorbs and transforms another text”]. It will be my claim in this paper, that if biblical scholars, already engaged in the cut and thrust of debate over intertextuality and its methods, can pause to recognize terminological distinctions and different questions being asked by respective approaches, then they may recognize that Kristeva and her followers have a point worth listening to. We need to recognize not only do texts interact with other texts, but also that texts have an interactive relation to various kinds of cultures of various kinds. This can be noted with the biblical exodus motif. Sermons, song, verse, and iconography from cultural analysis of the 16th century to the present demonstrate that Kristeva’s insights apply not only to the Hebrew Bible’s use of the exodus motif but also to cultural resonances through several centuries. This is especially the case with the rhetoric of liberation and deliverance in social movements from the period of the Reformation to the present.

The eighteenth century was a time of contradictions and counter-movements in Jewish-Christian relations. It was an era when Jewish and Christian philosophers could investigate together the mysteries of the universe owing to the purported victory of reason and enlightenment, while blood libels, forced conversions and Talmud burnings persisted, like gruesome echoes from a past age. This paper will examine this history of boundary crossing and boundary preservation between Jews and Christians via an unorthodox path. Two men, a Swedish Lutheran natural philosopher, and a charismatic Polish Rabbi, give their accounts of ascents to the heavens, both in the 1740s. Their lives did not intersect, but their other-worldly experiences tell related stories of strife between Jews and Christians while betraying something of a shared horizon concerning the interpretation of sacred texts and the future of their religious communities. Their conversations with angels and departed souls are revealing, not for their descriptions of transcendent realities, but because they betray the contours of religious landscapes on the ground. Within these accounts we find articulations of the role of private and communal religious activity, intra-religious and inter-religious conflict, the bestowal of authority to interpret, and shifting messianic expectations. Both men witnessed the opening of gates once closed, signaling a new access to divine truth, which is then imparted to their respective communities. And yet their differences are as significant as their similarities. In Swedenborg’s case, celestial dialogues with and concerning Jews in the other world bring to sharp focus the “phantom Jews” that populated the European imagination from ancient times. As David Nirenberg articulates in his history of anti-Judaism in the West, the figurative Jew has been conjured time and again as a constitutive idea in Christian thought, regardless of the presence or absence of actual Jews. The Baal Shem Tov, conversely, goes to heaven to witness and repair the suffering of the Jewish people on earth and to renew the connection to Oral Torah, manifesting the anxieties of a people and a tradition at risk of endangerment. With the methodological guidance of Martin Jay and Steven Katz, this paper will explore what we have come to call “mystical experiences,” for the sake of their relevance to our understanding of particular historical locations. It does not deny the interior realities of the experiencing subject, but probes the symbolic potential of the visions for their relevance to external circumstances. These two sets of experiences, in particular, though they span Europe east to west, help us understand Jewish-Christian relations and biblical interpretation in an age of historical import for both Jews and Christians. It is a moment shaped by the European Enlightenment and Haskalah, Deism, pietism, Hermetic undercurrents, the fall of Sabbatai ?evi, and other social, religious and political forces. But it also illustrates a chapter in a much bigger story: the fraught history of two ancient and interconnected traditions whose depths of pain and heights of ecstasy seem only to be pronounceable in the words of angels.

Conventional scholarly wisdom often holds that a dualistic worldview undergirds the Gospel of John. However, this paper argues that modern scholars have often read philosophical viewpoints into what is actually a rhetorical problem: John’s Gospel does not use dualistic language, but instead uses paradoxical language as a means of furthering its rhetorical goals. To set the stage, I will survey the arguments for dualism in the Fourth Gospel with an emphasis on the history of interpretation from Johann Herder to present day, showing the weaknesses therein; then, I will survey the use of paradoxical language in the Greek tradition from Heraclitus to the first century with emphasis on Zeno, Eubulides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, deuterocanonical literature and Paul. Turning to the Gospel, I will cite examples of paradoxical language (both logical and rhetorical) in key areas such as the prologue and the epilogue. The paper will show evidence of how in each case the logic and rhetorical function of paradox in John echoes the paradoxical language from the Greek tradition. The remaining part of the paper will focus on the light/darkness motif, as it is the most cited example of dualistic language in John, yet it too is often misunderstood in modern scholarship, as it derives not from a dualistic worldview but from paradoxical language meant as a rhetorical argument for John’s readers. Overturning conventional wisdom about dualism in John and the potential use of paradoxical language as a rhetorical feature has significant implications for the future interpretation of the Gospel.

When most students of Church history think of conflicts over salvation, faith and baptismal regeneration, their minds almost always turn to the sixteenth century, when Lutherans, Anabaptist, Reformed and Catholics disagreed over these and related soteriological questions. Conflicts over the Christian doctrine of salvation, many believe, began during the Reformations of the sixteenth century. Reformation scholar, Scott Ickert, for example, expressed this idea, stating that before Luther, “the concept of justification did not cause any great stir.” Although not as radical, but along these same lines, Alister McGrath and Krister Stendahl claimed that Paul’s doctrine of justification was virtually unknown in the West between Paul and Augustine. If one is looking for any discussion of the topic, maintains McGrath, the pre-Augustinian era is not the place to look. Few scholars are aware, however, of the fact that one of the earliest conflicts over these soteriological questions occurred in early third-century North Africa. Tertullian’s De baptismo recorded a heated debate between the famous North African theologian and a group of otherwise unknown, but numerically formidable, Christians residing near Carthage. (Scholars remain uncertain about the name of this Christian group; Tertullian merely states that they were founded by a certain Caius). Tertullian aimed to persuade his readers that these Christians were in fact misled in their interpretation of the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles. Whereas this community appealed to Jesus’ act of refraining from baptizing, which is mentioned in John 4:2, and most likely the Gospel of John’s numerous statements about believing for the attainment of eternal life, Tertullian appealed to Jesus’ statements in that same Gospel about spiritual rebirth through water (Jn 3:1-5). Instead, readers, maintains Tertullian, should harmonize not only the Gospel of John with itself but also the various seemingly conflicting testimonies in Paul’s Epistles in this manner: they should conclude that without baptism faith alone is insufficient to save and that human beings must now be baptized in order to attain salvation. How does one explain this third-century North African conflict over the meaning of the Gospels and Paul? I will argue, following the general thesis set forth by the Second Vatican Council’s Redintegratio Unitatis, which was later adopted by James Dunn and David Steinmetz, that like sixteenth-century Christians, these North African Christian groups were united and divided by a shared patrimony of sources. They disagreed over the Christian doctrine of salvation precisely because the Gospel of John and the Pauline Epistles suggested both polarizing positions on these and other related soteriological questions. These two New Testament corpora, I argue, contain various statements which can be used to either substantiate or falsify the belief that baptism is or is not necessary for salvation and that salvation does or does not come through faith alone. This debate was significant because it showed readers that a case could be made from the most authoritative sacred Christian texts for either rejecting or defending the role of baptism and the sufficiency of faith alone in the attainment of salvation.

Among the targums, Pseudo-Jonathan has an enormous and distinctive vocabulary. On the one hand, it contains the majority of the vocabulary of both Onqelos and the Palestinian Targums. On the other hand, it contains many words that only appear in later and/or eastern sources (e.g. LJLA and JBA), as well as words that are only attested in TPsJ itself. In this paper, I will provide an analysis of the approximately 1200 hapax legomena occurring in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. Words occurring in other targums will be identified, as well as words occurring in no other targums (i.e. words unique to TPsJ). More importantly, the targumic hapax legomena occurring only in TPsJ will be compared with other Aramaic dialects. Agreements of this sort will be highly useful in considering the date and geography of the dialect of TPsJ.

This paper examines the use of the Bible in case studies of the possessions of “Anna U” and Magdalena Grombach that appear in Accounts of the Modern Possessed (1834), a work authored in part by the romantic poet and medical researcher Justinus Kerner (1786-1862). Kerner had observed Grombach and Anna U in person, and his accounts blend religious speculation and romantic medical theory with detailed observation of his subjects’ “demonic paroxysms.” Like many of Kerner’s writings, the Accounts occupies an ambivalent position in the history of medical science, psychology, and the critical study of religion. He claimed that instances of possession confirmed the truths of orthodox religion and offered evidence of a hidden spiritual order within nature. But he was also a strict empiricist who helped to establish standards of natural scientific analysis, and his work drew approval from the likes of Friedrich Schleiermacher and David Friedrich Strauss. Kerner's complicated, fraught position in the history of science is reflected in the ways that the Bible shapes and is constructed in these accounts of possession. To an extent, The bible serves for him and his subjects as an authoritative medical and religious text. Biblical narratives establish frameworks through which they subjects make sense of, experience, and treat possession. At times, gospel stories appear to determine the way that possessions and exorcisms operate at the level of the patients’ and physician’s very bodies. But the Bible also functions as a religious and scientific object in its own right. Kerner’s case studies refer to a number of instances in which possessed women blaspheme against the Bible, and these and other transgressive behaviors come to characterize the condition of “demonomania” for both the women and the religious and medical professionals who treat them. For Kerner, they serve as empirical evidence of the paranormal quality of his subjects’ illnesses. Radically profane and unprecedented actions against the Bible testify to the scientific facticity of the extraordinary spiritual events in question. Nevertheless, these transgressive actions also press at times beyond his interpretive and medical claims. I draw, in the final section of the paper, on cross-cultural studies of spirit possession to examine the implications of this tension. I consider how Anna U and Grombach’s possessions suggest novel models of patienthood and interpretations of the Bible, including altered visions of the gospel narratives, that contest Kerner’s account from within.

This paper proposes to look at the ends of the Christian Bible (Genesis and Revelation) and Christian invocations of the ends as justification for their ecological practices. The paper seeks to read the ends of the Bible, and its Christian invokers’ ends, in conversation with theory for the anthropocene. First, I will summarize common texts Christians invoke to justify their ecological practices (from activism to indifference to outright rejection of concern for ecology). Second, I will schematize models of human relations to ecology at the ends of the Christian Bible. In Genesis 1-11 and Revelation 17-22, the writers provide possible alternatives for the relationship between ecology and humanity. The biblical writers portray God punishing those who choose alternatives the writers view negatively. Thus, when the simplistic answer that in the end ecology does not matter because God will take care of things in the end, they neglect the punishment upon those who cause the ecological harm. In the third and final part of the paper, I address the Christian invokers’ attitude towards ecology in terms of the models from part two of the paper. I also suggest how looking at ecology and the ends of the Christian Bible may help to address the question of anthropocene.

When it comes to Marcion, Tertullian was a liar. Unless Pontus was the most horrid (and confusing) place on earth, it is clear when reading even just the opening paragraphs of Adversus Marcionem that Tertullian was not telling the truth. Although this kind of exaggeration is clearly part of a common heresiological strategy, because there are no surviving first-hand or unbiased sources by or about Marcion, scholars have been forced to wade through the hyperbolic chafe of the heresologists in the hopes of finding a kernel of historical wheat in which to understand who Marcion “really” was, what he “really” thought, or what he “really” wrote. To a greater or lesser extent, this is indeed what scholarship has attempted to do, from Harnack’s methodological winnowing to find a proto-protestant Marcion, to Lieu’s more complex theory of “antithesis and attraction” to a “historical” Marcion, or the various (re)constructions of the Euangelion (most recently by BeDuhn and Roth). But serious questions regarding the reliability of the heresological sources—such as where the truth may start and the falsehoods end—have always coloured any scholarly work on a “historical” Marcion. So the question needs to be asked: despite a variety of methodological strategies used, can a “true” or “historic” Marcion be found anywhere? Or perhaps put another way, should scholars stop looking for a “historical” Marcion in sources that have no interest in understanding him as a historical figure, and instead focus on what the conceptual tasks the cipher “Marcion” served for the heresiologists, and how the exaggerations and falsehoods about him shaped Christianity more than any “real” figure could have done. Should scholars forget looking for the truth and instead embrace the lies? By first taking as a starting point the notion that in redescribing early Christianity the “historical” Marcion is unimportant, this paper will attempt to first map out what conceptual tasks the cipher “Marcion” accomplished for writers like Tertullian, and second make the claim that it is this rhetorical or “mythical” Marcion that impacted the development of early Christianity, and that the need to find a “real” or “historic” Marcion is, like the quest for the historical Jesus, more about modern preoccupations than a way of better describing the second century.

At the intersection of Qur'anic textual criticism and historical issues, there remains the understudied problem of relating the traditional qira'at literature to the qira'at as witnessed by the manuscript record. Approaching the diachronic development of the qira'at in this way can provide a clearer picture of the impact of the “canonization” reforms culminating in the first half of the 4th/10th century. To confront this problem on a limited scale, the present study focuses on a distinctive phenomenon that occurs in manuscripts from the third/ninth century until the fourth/tenth century, namely, the superimposition of polychrome diacritical marks and consonants over the rasm to indicate variant reading traditions in certain Early Abbasid Qur'anic masahif. By examining such masahif in light of traditional accounts that specify how they work, the pioneering studies of Estelle Whelan, Yasin Dutton, and Alain George have confirmed the phenomenon in several manuscript samples to date, yet none of the studies conducted thus far were concerned with the diachronic development of variants in these manuscripts and what they could tell us about the impact of the fourth/tenth-century reforms on the textual transmission of the Qur'an. Toward these ends, this paper reviews the application of these variants in the documented folio samples along with another mushaf hitherto unattested, LNS 65 MS of Al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait, as a case study for the classification of the transmission of superimposed variant readings. This study is limited to the degree to which the colored variant readings conform to the established readings recorded in the official readings of the traditional qira'at literature. Several important patterns have emerged from the operation of the color codes of these masahif, reflecting the broader impact of the standardization reforms on scribal practices in the Early Abbasid period.

Jewish sapiential tradition first of all aims at ethical instruction to improve human behavior, which also is the case in the Wisdom of Solomon. However, the text elaborates other interesting aspects such as (1) hypostasization of the Wisdom figure, (2) salvation history based on Genesis, and (3) epistemology based on observation of the cosmos. These themes are readdressed centuries later in a remarkably similar form in the Nag Hammadi text entitled the Wisdom of Jesus Christ (NHC III,4; BG,3). During this time span, the three sapiental themes were filtered through the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Paul of Tarsus, and additional Christian texts from the Nag Hammadi find.

This paper applies the method used by such scholars as Theodor Nöldeke and, more recently, Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, in analyzing Qur’anic manuscript variants. The former compared ‘Uthmanic copies from Medina, Damascus, Basra, and Kufa, noting which copy most often corresponded with others and which ones in many cases were isolated, concluding that the Medinan manuscript was most likely the original of the four. Sadeghi and Bergmann used a similar method to compare the ‘Uthmanic textual tradition with that of Ibn Mas‘ud and that of the San‘a’ palimpsest, determining that the ‘Uthmanic textual tradition, of the three, most likely gives an accurate reproduction of a presumed Prophetic prototype. This paper applies the same method to examine variance in Qur’anic verse counting. The principle sources used for this study are Anton Spitaler’s Die Verszählung [verse-numbering] des Koran nach islamischer Überlieferung and the classical work al-Bayan fi ‘add ay al-Qur’an by al-Dani (d. 1052 CE). The first part of the essay compares the seven systems that had emerged by the second century AH: Medina I, Medina II, Mecca, Basra, Kufa, Damascus, and Homs. As is known, while there is indeed agreement on the way many suras are counted (28 suras show no differences in numbering), there is disagreement about the majority (Sura Taha, for example, includes no less than 24 differences). The first part of this study looks at: 1) the overall range of verses counted in the Qur’an (from 6204 to 6236) and considers which systems are outliers and which median; 2) the number of times a system is unique in counting a verse (from 6 times in one system to as many as 65 times in another); and 3) the correspondence between systems and which ones fall most often in the majority. The second part of the paper examines two suras in detail, al-Fatiha and al-Rahman, to determine if any one counting system seems to be more satisfactory from a literary perspective. Specifically, it observes whether the systems may support or clarify the structure and highlight internal symmetries. In addition, the six occasions where one system is unique in counting (or not counting) a verse in the Qur’an are analyzed, to see if these divisions are acceptable from a literary angle. As a result, one counting scheme (significantly, not the Kufan scheme that is used for contemporary printed Qur’ans) is proposed as most likely to be original, with the others occurring as variants.

The Iron Age I settlement in the periphery of Philistia, for example in the northwestern Negev, was interpreted as Philistine since the inception of modern archaeological scholarship. This was based on the biblical references to Philistines in this region on the one hand, and on the presence of what was regarded as Philistine markers, and mainly Philistine (bichrome) pottery on the other. This interpretation was later extended to other regions in the periphery of Philistia, for example the Yarkon basin (and especially Tel Qasile). Over the last few generations, as research advanced, additional material and behavioral traits were associated with the Philistines, and were shown to have been extensively used by them, while avoided by others. Many of these, however, are absent from most sites in the periphery of Philistia, leading a few scholars to question the Philistine identity of the inhabitants of these site. Still, despite the growing disparity between the finds in these regions and these in the main Philistine sites, most scholars continued to identify the sites' inhabitants as Philistines. The paper will examine the relevant sites, will show that the identification of their inhabitants as Philistines was based on an error (understandable at the time) that was simply repeated in later scholarship, and that the evidence suggests that they were settled mainly be descendants of the Canaanite, indigenous population of the region. This suggestion also solves the recent confusion over the Philistine nature of some traits, like pork consumption; the absence of these traits from many sites in the periphery of Philistia led a few scholars, who implicitly took the Philistine identity of these sites for granted, to conclude that the traits are not Philistine. Once the non-Philistine nature of these sites is acknowledged, these distributional problems are solved.

An amusing midrashic story that appears in Leviticus Rabbah relates an encounter between Emperor Hadrian and an old man planting a tree. The Emperor accuses the old man of being idle in his youth, and challenges him over the apparent futility of planting in his old age. The man answers the challenge, and from here the story develops on. The story has a very similar parallel in Ecclesiastes Rabbah, however, the two versions differ on some details, primarily with relation to the content of the old man's answer. Previous scholarship on this story read it as a rabbinic story, detached from its midrashic context, and applied philological-historical tools in its analysis. One of the results of this reading is the interpretation of the change in the old man's response in the later, post-talmudic source, Ecclesiastes Rabbah, as a deterioration of the story, due to faulty transmission, which was caused by confusion with a somewhat similar Talmudic story of Honi in bTa'anit. This paper suggests a new reading of the stories, which takes into account their literary and biblical contexts. Reading each story in its midrashic and biblical contexts suggests a new understanding of the difference in the old man's response as a deliberate and calculated alteration of the story in Ecclesiastes Rabbah, due to its new context. An important aspect of the suggested interpretation is the original, even revolutionary, reading that the story applies to the biblical verses. In the case of Leviticus Rabbah, the story as a whole serves as an original and innovative reading of the commandment of Orlah – the prohibition on the fruit of a new tree during its first three years, that presents the reader with a new understanding of the commandment. This understanding of the commandment differs from the common and widespread understandings that can be found in other rabbinic sources as well as medieval commentaries such as Nahmanides, and Jewish thought such as Maimonides and the 'Hinukh'. Finally, this paper attempts to make a more general methodological claim, beyond the scope of the specific example discussed in it. This paper claims that the analysis that it demonstrates calls for a more general methodological reconsideration of the analysis of rabbinic stories that originate in midrashic compositions, many of which were analyzed without due consideration of their literary and biblical contexts, while overlooking intriguing aspects of the interpretation of the stories themselves, as well as new innovative readings that the story assigns biblical verses and passages.

As recent research has shown (mine included), no biblical story has dominated Israel’s cultural imagination as has the story of the Akedah. In contrast to popular expectations however, the ‘Israeli Akedah’ – as represented in Israel’s arts and letters -- does not usually refer to the victims of the Shoah, but rather to the heroic self-sacrifice of Israel’s fallen warriors. This dialect tension raises two intriguing questions: 1.How did the Akedah, traditionally read as a divine prohibition of human sacrifice (hence binding rather than sacrifice) come to symbolize precisely its opposite – loss of life on the battlefield? 2. How was Isaac transposed from a reticent participant in his father’s test into a glorious hero in his own right? This paper consists of 1. A brief survey of the historical and cultural sources of this transformation, arguing that since the early 20th century the new Israeli ‘national Akedah’ has gone through a painful dialectic of acceptance and rejection, yielding a broad range of attitudes to ‘Isaac’: stoic heroism, ideological martyrdom, passive and fearful victimhood… or its obverse - fanatic (even aggressive) resistance to the leadership, often identified with the oedipal conflict. 2. An argument suggesting that this dialectic has both intrinsic and extrinsic roots: a. the Modern Hebrew word KORBAN stands for both self/sacrifice (‘good’) and victim (‘bad’). b. the Sacrifice of Isaac, the most popular Hebrew-Bible motif in Christian art, exhibits a similar dialectic, at least since the early 15th century (as will be demonstrated by a ppt presentation). 3. A demonstration of my argument through the analysis of the images of Abel Pann, the trail blazer of this innovation in Jewish art since the 1920s, as well as the art of several of his contemporary Israeli ‘descendants.’

There has been a long and vigorous scholarly debate regarding the identity of the antagonists in 1 Timothy. John Gunther has listed 19 possible identifications for the opponents that scholars have proposed, and there are more that could be added to his list. In this paper I seek to advance the debate with a proposal that is attentive, not just to the identity the antagonists, but also to their agenda; and by means of a fresh consideration of an integral piece of the puzzle, 1 Timothy 4:3. In the course of this paper I will, firstly, outline a brief sketch of the antagonists as they are depicted at the outset of 1 Timothy. In this I will consider their depiction as people who are treated as 'insiders' to the church, and yet are nonetheless described as 'spiritual outsiders'. Moreover, I will address their concern with 'myths and endless genealogies' (1:4) and their desire to be 'teachers of the law' (1:7). Drawing upon this preliminary sketch, I will, secondly, put forward and defend my specific proposal regarding the identity and agenda of the antagonists in 1 Timothy. In brief, my proposal is that the antagonists were a number of ethnically Jewish Christian believers within the church who were insisting that other Jewish Christians within the church must uphold and maintain their Jewish ethnicity. Thirdly, I will discuss how my proposal relates to the depiction of the antagonists in 1 Timothy 4:3a as those who 'forbid marriage and demand abstinence from food' (NRSV). This will involve a consideration of both the historical background and the exegetical foreground of 1 Timothy 4:3a.

The resounding praise of 1 Chronicles 16.8-36 is the climax of the ark narrative in Chronicles (chs. 13-16). This hymn, composed from parts of three psalms (Pss 96,105 and 106), is not found in the Chronicler’s main source text, Samuel-Kings. Much of the scholarship on the hymn has focused on ascribing meaning to the discrepancies between the Chronicler’s text and the original psalms or assigning the psalm to a particular stage in the development of Chronicles. While these are interesting and indeed important inquiries, scholarship on this psalm needs to move beyond these questions in order to consider some of the larger contextual issues. As a result, the focus of this paper is on how the psalm functions as its own distinctive and legitimate literary unit and its place in the ark narrative, particularly chs. 15-16. 1 Chronicles 16.8-38 offers scholars a rare opportunity to investigate how a psalm is utilized in worship, even if the historicity of the narrative is suspect. I employ literary tools in order to interpret the Chronicler’s psalm, paying particular attention to the psalm’s structure and how its form provides unity and meaning, both within itself and in the larger context of the ark narrative. My focus is on the final form of the text and on how this psalm can be understood as its own composition in this particular context. This psalm, combined with its placement within the ark narrative, offers a paradigm of worship which includes not only song and sacrifice but also the king’s blessing of the people and petitions for YHWH’s assistance.

This paper revisits Hans-Joachim Schoeps' approach to "Jewish-Christianity."

Recent excavations near the Assyrian (and later Egyptian) palaces at Megiddo, revealed layers from the Iron IIC – the first such finds to be unearthed during the renewed excavations at the site. Notable among the finds in a late 7th century BCE structure was a significant number of East Greek sherds. This is the first time that such items are being uncovered at Megiddo. East Greek pottery is generally associated with Greek mercenaries who served in the army of the Egyptian 26th dynasty. These finds, retrieved near the administration center which must have served Egypt after the withdrawal of Assyria from the region, draw attention to the chronistic verse in 2 Kings 23: 29 regarding the confrontation between Josiah King of Judah and Pharaoh Necho of the 26th Dynasty in Egypt.

Rethinking Israel? A Proper Answer

If we recognize the polemical tradents in the Gospels and later New Testament (and beyond), of a tortuous post-mortem existence for some, then the more muted musings of the apostle Paul on the afterlife are of great interest and, in some senses, are comparable with those found in the book of Daniel, which stands towards the chronological end of the Hebrew Bible. The writings of Daniel and Paul have some kind of afterlife in view—post-mortem scenarios which are positive for the righteous and negative for the wicked, even if they are uncertain as to the exact shape that this may take. At the same time, the notion of a tortuous afterlife for those opposed to God’s people in the Gospels can be compared with the Maccabean literature; these are polemical discourses in the service of oppressed and persecuted minorities. This paper will reflect on the general shape of Jewish and Christian thought on the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament (and other related literature), with particular reference to the writings of Paul and Daniel. It will investigate the polemical nature of other texts on post-mortem existence which have perhaps tended to drive a wedge between Jewish and Christian understanding of post-mortem existence. In emphasising the commonality between Paul and Daniel this study will seek to encourage interreligious dialogue and irenic relations.

The wounds of Jesus offer a visceral and psychic haven for those experiencing embodied trauma such as racial or domestic violence, homelessness and displacement, war, rape, stillbirth, and cancer. When a traumatised person can barely think, pray or feel, crawling into the wounds of Jesus can be a helpful way to approach God, ‘I like lying calm, gentle, and quiet and warm. What shall I do? I crawl to you’ (Litany of the Wounds, in Atwood, 2006). The tradition of hiding in the wounds of Jesus finds its biblical basis in Exodus 17.6, Song of Songs 2.14, Isaiah 51.1 and 1 Corinthians 10.4 and stems from a long history of interpretation from John Chrysostom to Bernard of Clairvaux. This tradition continued into Protestantism and is found in Protestant hymns such as ‘O Sacred Head Sore Wounded’ and ‘Rock of Ages.’ Crawling into the wounds of Jesus became a key image for eighteenth century Moravians (Atwood, 2006; Vogt 2009), and the Mohicans of Shekomeko, Dutchess County, New York found the experiential wounds theology of the Moravian missionaries more accessible than didactic approaches to God presented by other missionary groups (Wheeler, 2013). This paper reviews the Biblical background of this tradition and works with an understanding of trauma based on Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1992, 2015) and Bessell Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014). Building on Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace (2009), it grounds the imagery of crawling into the wounds of Jesus in Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. Luther invited people to meet ‘a God with holes in his hands, feet and side’ (Kolb, 2009), a tradition also found in Bonhoeffer (‘only a suffering God can help’) and in Moltmann’s ‘post Auschwitz’ theology (Bauckham, 1984). From Isaiah 45.15, Luther used the concept of deus absconditus, the God who hides himself but whose ‘back’ (Exodus 33.23) can be seen in the sufferings of the crucified Son (Theses 19-20 of the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518). Luther drew from the language of Isaiah 28.14 to invite his listeners to trust God in their suffering, by distinguishing between God’s ‘alien’ work of allowing suffering and his ‘proper’ work of healing and salvation. Using illustrations from Christian tradition and contemporary experience, the paper then considers practical ways the imagery of crawling into the wounds of Jesus can be offered to the imagination of the wounded through music, art, poetry, creative writing, contemplation and conversation. Critiques and cautions about using this imagery are addressed in the paper. Jesus did not require conversion before healing, so an invitation to this experiential approach to receiving God’s comfort may also be acceptable and appropriate for some who may not yet identify as ‘religious’ or ‘Christian.’

Post-modernity has made a cottage industry of breaking down categories. The categories of "Jewish," "Christian," and "Pagan/Gentile" are frequent targets of such deconstruction. As much as scholars hedge their work with scare quotes, the classic trifold distinctions of Jews-Christian-Pagans/Gentiles for antiquity still reigns in modern understandings of these social groups. The goal of this paper is to explore the hegemonic domains of these categories within the academy and critique the equivocation that gives lip service to terminological sophistication while reproducing that which it claims to dismantle. That historians are too quick to categorize ancient people as "Christians," "Jews," "God-fearers," etc., is also implicated in the modern debates about "religion" and its reality. This leads to a circular mapping of these categories onto those such as Paul, the evangelists, and ancient "monotheists" generally. This "religion" of antiquity functions as modern capital both in institutions funded to train people in the study of religion and for scholars whose work capitalizes on the perpetuation of such categories. I contend that the conservation of the socio-academic capital is perpetuated by the uncritical acceptance of the histories as expressed in Jewish and Christian literature such as the Talmud, the New Testament and the church fathers. More sophisticated and cross-disciplinary analyses of antiquity such as those of Daniel Boyarin or Paula Fredriksen can help us move beyond the institutional barriers that sustain our fantasies about antiquity. The hegemonic maintenance of such fantasies continues to fuel the debates such as the "New Perspective on Paul," the "Radical New Perspective on Paul," the "Parting of the Ways," and the paradigm of "World Religions" (among others). These debates are destined to repeat themselves so long as they continue to happen within the discursive confines of the academy. This paper makes no claim to solve the problems it identifies, but it attempts to push against the repetitive cycle of repackaging and reconstituting categorical terms in post-modern guises that we misrecognize as ingenuity.

Divine Judgment and the Missio Dei in the Book of Revelation

Revelation 18 is a highly literary text. Yet as D.H. Lawrence points out, “the best poetry is all the time lifted from Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Isaiah, it is not original” (1974: 117). His point is a valid one: Revelation 18 is very similar to Hebrew Bible texts. Whilst commentators frequently defend this similarity, pointing out that this is not “mere imitation” and “slavish copying” but “fresh” and “original reworkings,” this paper will argue that this ignores what Revelation 18 is: highly imitative, at every level. Therefore, this paper sets out to re-read Revelation 18 as imitation and to offer the interpretative insights this can reveal. Through case studies on its language, characters and forms, it will begin by showing how a sense of “the already seen” infuses the text. This paper will then present scholarship on imitation theory, particularly the work of film scholar Richard Dyer, in order to bring Revelation 18 into dialogue with other highly imitative texts. In doing so, Revelation 18 will be brought into a world where imitation can be viewed as a valid artistic production, and where a post-romantic fear of similarity can be left behind. In light of this theoretical examination, this paper will argue that Revelation 18 shows its difference not through fresh injections of originality, but through a creeping sense of being almost like something else, but not the same. In the tense space between “similar but not the same,” we will see that Revelation 18 presents a double-voiced experience in relation to past textual experiences. Ultimately, the paper will argue that Revelation 18 does not resemble any one Hebrew Bible text. It is lacking in many ways, and that is alright. In fact, that may well be the point.

Modern historical criticism was born in opposition to the traditional allegorical/typological interpretation of the church and synagogue, arguing that this was imposing onto the text a sense that it did not originally have. But what if the text is designed so as to invite the elaboration of its allegorical/typological sense?

Attachment theory is widely accepted in psychological circles for explaining a person’s—and especially a child’s—interactions with other people. It is particularly helpful in determining whether or not a child has been abused based on how they relate to their primary attachment figure, normally the mother. Throughout the last several decades, attachment theory has also been applied to biblical scholarship and often the Psalms. Walter Brueggemann and Brent Strawn, through attachment theory and the closely related object relations theory, have both demonstrated that God plays the role of object of secure attachment for Israel and “good enough mother,” respectively. In this paper, I will examine Psalm 22, one of the psalms they both treat in their approaches, in order to demonstrate that God functions as an object of insecure attachment, specifically insecure-ambivalent attachment, for the speaker of Psalm 22. This Psalm serves as an insight into the Psalter because it neither moves consistently from lament to praise nor consistently from praise to lament. Instead, it moves abruptly back and forth between the two, conveying the sense that the speaker experiences a lack of certainty/security in their relationship with God. Because insecure-ambivalent attachment and secure attachment are both valid readings of Psalm 22, it is better to privilege a reading that provides positive representation for real people for whom representation is lacking both in biblical scholarship and broader media. I will begin by first offering a concise explanation of attachment theory as conceived of by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth before transitioning into an analysis of Psalm 22 through the lens of attachment theory. I will then offer conclusions by discussing the potential benefits of such a reading of the Psalms as well as some of the inherent limitations that result from a psychological approach to a biblical text.

The dependency relation—central to traditional dependency grammars—holds asymmetrically between various adjacent word pairs. While these constraints are reasonable for configurational languages, the adjacency and lexical constraints are problematic for non-configurational languages such as Biblical Hebrew. However, when dependency concepts are extended, they can be grafted onto a discontinuous constituency grammar, increasing its coverage. Thereby it is possible to represent succinctly the dependencies between small-scale subject/object complements and their heads. As this paper documents, tightly-bound dependent pairs appear routinely in Biblical Hebrew, in verbless clauses, hyh clauses, and quasiverbal clauses. On occasion, they appear loosely bound in finite verbal clauses.

The inconsistent facts and inherent contradictions concerning the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua are well known. But even if one moves beyond reading Joshua in the style of a historical report, the theological implications of reading Israel's violent tale of conquest still leave the reader troubled. If read within the context of the trauma of the exile, when Joshua was most likely written, I propose that one method of approaching the text is through the lens of revenge fantasy, wherein the events of history are not presented with the goal of recounting historical fact but of constructing a strong, unified identity for Israel in its fragile, fractured state. This paper compares Joshua 8 with Quentin Tarantino's film Inglorious Basterds as a prime example of modern revenge fantasy, whose objective, like the book of Joshua, is not to report history as it happened, but, as Lori Rowlett puts it, to release its subjects from “eternal victimhood” by using “history… to construct an identity for its own context out of the past.”

This paper will consider how globalization theories can elucidate the travel, economics, and interconnected networks of people in the 1st century. How are the activities of the earliest Christ-following communities reflective of and dependent upon global networks of economics, trade, and cultural exchange? How do 1st century practices of letter writing, benefaction, and hospitality function as globalizing practices? To what extent do women, slaves, and children participate in these networks within the early Christ communities? This paper will investigate these questions by focusing on archaeological records and the letters and communities associated with Paul. In particular, I will look at discussions of the collection for Jerusalem and the related questions of patronage and hospitality within various early Christ communities. In Galatians 2:10, 1 Cor. 16:1–4, 2 Corinthians 8–9, and Romans 15:25-27, Paul solicits these ekklesiai for donations to support the poor saints in Jerusalem. This collection takes place within a globalized world in which competition and economic power are dependent upon the travel of a select few individuals via networks of support and exchange. Indeed, it could be argued that the church-wide collection in support of the Jerusalem poor, while potentially offering life-giving resources for suffering individuals, also enables the continuation of the Roman Empire’s globalizing and oppressive techniques. While the archaeological record shows that standard Roman practices celebrate benefaction in building dedications and monuments, how is benefaction celebrated or incentivized within the Christ communities as they are portrayed in Paul’s letters? Using the recent work of Katherine Bain, this paper explores how women’s benefaction regarding the collection or other economic activities in Christ communities can be envisioned. These collection activities depend upon and require networks of individuals willing to host churches and show hospitality to traveling ministers. Patronage practices would assume that these hosts and benefactors may have some measure of control regarding the meetings taking place in their homes. How does the globalizing impulse within Christ communities facilitate the erasure of particular hosts or benefactors? Furthermore, what are the gendered affects of such globalizing practices on the formation of various theological visions and practices? This paper will investigate these questions across various Christ communities.

Historical-critical scholars since the 19th century have rightly identified the Babylon of Revelation 17-18 as ancient Rome. In their search for the historical context of the oracle against Rome and its empire, readers attuned to Revelation’s reuse of early prophecies have focused on the recollection of oracles against Babylon in Isaiah 47 and Jeremiah 25 and 51-52. Supplementing the Babylon-cum-Rome interpretation, commentators have also recognized prophecies against Samaria and Jerusalem their harlotry in Hosea 4 and Ezekiel 16 and 23, and against Tyre and its mercantile empire in Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 26-28. The historical-critical impulse to refute medieval and Reformation-era interpretations has over-emphasized Babylon in our interpretation of Revelation’s oracle against Rome. The field, correspondingly, has paid insufficient attention to subtle allusions to the destructions of Nineveh, Edom, and Sodom in Revelation 17-18. Through a cluster of brief allusions, Revelation depicts Rome as being a “Great City” like Nineveh through recollections of oracles against the Assyrian imperial capital. Similarly, Revelation evokes the internecine conflict with Edom and God’s vengeance in Isaiah 34, Obadiah, Psalm 137 and Lamentations 4. Sodom appears as Rome’s Scriptural antecedent by considering how, even if Sodom appears only faintly in Revelation 17-18, Revelation reused prophecies against Jerusalem, Babylon, and Edom that themselves allude to Genesis 18-19. These neglected allusions do more than supply biblical language for Revelation’s oracle against Rome. Rome is more than Babylon: it is the summation of all the cities and kingdoms that God has already defeated. In a battle for prophetic authority regarding acculturation to Rome and imperial cults, the author establishes through both overt and subtle allusions that Rome is like Babylon, Jerusalem, Samaria, Tyre, Nineveh, and Edom. In doing so, he gives his oracle the authority of his prophetic predecessors. Like the cities and nations which preceded it, Rome will fall; God will destroy the Great City. Those who, like Balaam and Jezebel, would align themselves with the Roman Empire are consigning themselves to destruction.

Ninety years ago P.L.O. Guy excavating at Megiddo on behalf of the Oriental Institute of Chicago discovered Solomon’s Stables, basing his identification on passages in I Kings 9 and 10. Fifty years ago Yigael Yadin excavating at Megiddo on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem revealed a palatial building immediately below the stables which he attributed to Solomon, and so the stables now became Ahab’s stables. Fifteen years ago Israel Finkelstein excavating Megiddo on behalf of Tel Aviv University down-dated the palatial building to Ahab’s time and the famous stables then became Jeroboam II’s stables. This paper will examine the construction of Megiddo (Stratum IV), a city designed for horses, rather than people, and consider the role the city played in its revised historical context.

As an alternative to the term “placebo,” typically understood as an inert substance, Daniel Moerman has proposed the term “meaning response” to refer to the ways in which meaning impacts illness and brings healing to the afflicted. Following the work of Justin Meggitt, this paper will examine the exorcisms of Jesus as instances of “meaning response,” which were successful on the basis of Jesus’ powerful reputation as a healer and exorcist. While the exorcism accounts preserved in the gospels are rather terse, recording very little in terms of formal ritual or incantation, this paper proposes that in light of the significant role played by formal rituals in most exorcism accounts across disparate cultures, such culturally constructed performances likely provided the context for these “meaning responses” effected by Jesus’ exorcisms. Further, it shall be argued that the Parable of the Return of the Unclean Spirit attests to a further element commonly observed in healings achieved via “meaning response,” namely the phenomenon of relapse or recurrence.

How does one love another who suffers without overwhelming or infantilizing the other? How does one forgive without minimizing the injustice of an offence? How does one repent without hidden self-satisfaction? Without presuming easy answers to these questions, this paper first looks to the ancient concept of mimesis in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (On Imitation), Heliodorus (An Ethiopian Story), and several other ancient writers. Why study mimesis? I argue that it was not an emotion per se but the weak structure of the self-other relation in which emotion takes place. I then turn to passages from Galatians, Philippians, and 2 Corinthians in which mimesis, not necessarily as a word but as a concept, threads its way through Paul’s discourse about compassion, forgiveness, and regret.

In his extant letters, Paul addresses ethnic others, usually lumped together as ethnê, generic non-Jews. His message to them, with his corresponding demands for commitments and behaviors, actively advocates what contemporaries would identify as “Judaizing,” that is, urging them to adopt behaviors associated with (the ancestral practices of) Judeans. Traditional theological vocabulary, especially as it grows out of the rhetoric of Galatians, fights against our seeing this. But in urging his audiences to worship only the god of Israel, to avoid idololatria, to receive and to enact the reception of holy pneuma and thus to fulfill the Law, Paul is teaching them to act like [idealized versions of] Jews. His evangelion is no less ethnically-specific than is, e.g., Peter’s.

This paper examines the issue of gender in traditional Christian crucifixion iconography through a visual exegesis of Arthur Boyd’s Crucifixion, Shoalhaven 1979-80. Painted by one of Australia’s most famous modern painters, Crucifixion, Shoalhaven, has as its centerpiece a woman crucified against the backdrop of the Australian landscape. In the light of this painting, this paper examines the challenges and theological questions modern artists pose by the deliberate subversion of traditional Christian iconography and gospel narratives at the heart of the Christian salvation narrative.

Identifying chiasmus in the Hebrew Bible is a well-established tool of literary analysis that has been used by biblical scholars for decades. This paper will examine recent examples of chiasmus which scholars have identified in the book of Deuteronomy – examples which seldom agree with one another, and in fact overlap to create such a dense fabric of intertwined symmetrical structures that one’s credulity is (or at least ought to be) taxed beyond the breaking point. These observations will lead me to highlight some fundamental methodological problems with this tool and its implementation, both in the book of Deuteronomy and beyond.

A commentary on an ancient text must enable the modern reader to reach out across the chasms of space and time, language and custom, to grasp the life of the ancient writer. It must enable the reader to understand the writer’s historical context and his goals, objectives, preconceptions, and world view. Ezra-Nehemiah provides special difficulties for the reader, since there were many authors, writing over a long period of time. Moreover, they disagreed on the chronology of the events and on the roles of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Persian province of Yehud. The commentator must make these various points of view, and the historical contexts in which they are embedded, clear and transparent.

The violent response to Jesus’ first sermon in Luke’s Gospel (4:16-30) has long been recognized as an emphatic rejection of Jesus’ use of the Elijah text to question divine favoritism toward the Jewish people. Jesus’ jubilee-like announcements were favorably received until he reminded the crowds that God’s benefactions had been extended to non-Jews, like a widow from Sidon and Naaman the Syrian (vv. 26-27). In spite of Luke’s casual report on the executioners’ plan, the mode of execution in this story was quite unusual in the Greco-Roman world (and the rolling hills around Nazareth are completely ill-suited for a fatal plunge off any local cliff). This paper suggests that the urge to cast Jesus off a cliff to his death should be read in light of the treatment reserved for blasphemers. Toward the end of Aesop’s Life (130-42), the Delphians concluded that the fabulist’s misuse of the traditions of their ancestors has blasphemed their homeland and threatened their temple. Aesop is condemned as a blasphemer (against Delphi) and a temple thief (against the temple) at Delphi and sentenced to death. Aesop’s death sentence was to be carried out by the crowd throwing him off a cliff. In the context of Luke 4:16-30, the unsuccessful attempt to cast Jesus off a cliff should probably be read as the crowd’s verdict that Jesus was a blasphemer who threatened the Jerusalem temple through his inappropriate use of the traditions of their ancestors.

In this paper I will question the madness of kings, and specifically that of Saul, in the light of the Hebrew Bible, ANE text and archaeology, and Classical sources paying particular attention to the use of food and drink.

The lyric poetry of the Song of Songs portrays an extended conversation between and about a female and a male lover. They have no particular names or identities. Little back story and historical context provide scant information about them. Readers have only the words of and about the two lovers. Most of the Song takes place relatively outside of time and flits from one location to the next as the lovers’ dialogue flows. The majority of the characterization of the lovers depends upon metaphorical comparisons and pronouncements of love. However, the lyric poetry incorporates two significant sections of narrative and descriptive elements that serve to present an alternative source of material for characterizing the two lovers in terms of their dependence upon one another. Song 3:1-11 and 5:2-6:3 encompass the two night scenes in which the woman searches for her lover. Here the poetry is more narrative than elsewhere, allowing the actions of the two lovers to demonstrate their interrelated character development. Even when the two are separated, they conceptualize themselves in relation to the other. The woman describes wanting to find him, calling him, searching for him, and asking others about him until finally finding him (3:1-4). Following each of the night scenes of searching are lavish descriptions. The first (3:6-11) details a royal procession surrounding Solomon’s bed. Seemingly unrelated to the rest of the Song, it actually echoes previous images and functions to provide a deeper glimpse into the lovers’ self-constructed world. The second description (5:9-6:3) outlines the contours of the lost lover, detailing his exquisite appearance though she has not found him. This is the only sustained description of the male lover and serves to answer the questions posed about him by the daughters of Jerusalem. These two sections of the Song that differ significantly from the rest of the lyric poetry by including more narrative and descriptive aspects provide an alternative source of characterization for the two interdependent lovers.

The current flourishing of commentaries on Ezra and Nehemiah is a welcome change after a period in which very few commentaries on the subject have appeared. Such a change is particularly good news for the scholars of post-exilic literature and is necessary in light of the proliferation of scholarship in the past several years that offer new interpretations on the subjects of composition, authorship, as well as the archaeology of the post-exilic period. Currently, I am writing a commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah with the Word Biblical Commentary series. A daunting task, to be sure, since this commentary will technically replace the seminal work by H. G. M. Williamson, published in 1985. My current project aims to honor the work of Williamson in tone and scholarship, but also address more current scholarship on the subject.

Among Paul’s most famous proclamations is Gal 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” It has sparked numerous debates. All are agreed that it grants spiritual equality between these varied groups, but many additionally press its social implications (e.g., Kahl, “No Longer Male”). Questions about its origin crop up, particularly whether it is Paul’s own phrasing or, more likely, preserves a pre-Pauline baptismal formula. The background, likewise, has occasioned disagreement, with some seeing in it the Hellenistic myth of the primordial androgyny, found later in certain Jewish and Gnostic writings, in which male and female are eschatologically reunited (esp. Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne”). Others turn to the (also) later “three blessings,” in which rabbinic Jews thanked God that they were not made a gentile, slave, or woman. Adding to these complexities, Hogan’s recent monograph, No Longer Male and Female, demonstrates that the early church of the first four centuries employed Gal 3:28 in ways much different than these. In the midst of these investigations, an important point has gone little noticed. Paul’s “no male and female” declaration undoes the original creation of Gen 1, not the fallen creation of Gen 3. Now we have to be wary of hastily imposing onto the first century the theological storyline of a pristine creation marred by the “fall.” That said, Jews of the Second Temple period did appeal with some regularity to Gen 1–2 as an ideal paradigm to be replicated, in matters such as marriage (Tob 8:5–7; CD-A IV20–V.1; Mark 10:2–12 par.), Sabbath-keeping (Jub 2; Josephus, Ant. 1.13), and even purity regulations (Jub 3:8–14; 4Q265 7.II.11–17; Philo, QG 1.25). Paul himself, if infrequently, alludes to patterns from Eden as binding (1 Cor 6:16; 11:2–16). As for the fallout of Gen 3, on that there can be little doubt: Rom 5:12–21 and 1 Cor 15:21–22, 42–49 are more grave than anything else written at the time. So pre-fall/post-fall categories are native to Paul’s thought. Why then would he state, or record secondhand, words that abolish God’s creative act in Gen 1:27? Reassessing the Pauline “image of God” language, the apostle clearly sees the image of the Last Adam to be preferable to that of the First (1 Cor 15:49), but more than that, in Rom 8:3 Christ takes on the “homoioma of sinful flesh.” It seems that, for Paul, sin has leeched back from Gen 3 into the imago of Gen 1, leaving it defective and in need of repair. It is in this light that Gal 3:28 makes the most sense: no unsullied old-creation image remains, but believers, by their participation “in Christ,” are being conformed to the new image (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18), and this identity takes priority over all those that the world has to offer (cf. Col 3:11).

From the first excavations at Ramat Ra?el, and from the early publications on the site, it was clear that Ramat Ra?el is an archaeological and historical "riddle" with no answer, especially in regard to the Persian period. Yohanan Aharoni, who excavated at the site, has noted the unique presence of hundreds of yhwd stamped jar handles and many other finds from the Persian Period. This anomaly was one of the main reason initiating new excavations at the site. In this paper the results of the renewed excavations at the site and the final publication of the architecture and finds from Aharoni's excavations, will be presented. The renewed exploration demonstrate how Ramat Ra?el reached its zenith during the Persian period, serving as an imperial administrative center. We will also demonstrate that the site declined towards the end of the Persian period only to regain some importance toward the later part of the Hellenistic period.

This paper will discuss consent as a concept in biblical narrative, studying the expectations for sexual consent and the consequences for rape and other body violations. Special attention will be paid to consent as it relates to the class, status, and gender of both the attacker and the victim. The investigation begins in the redacted Pentateuch, where Abraham and Sarah twice find themselves sojourning in a foreign land where they fear for their lives. In both cases, Abraham seeks to avoid danger by pretending that Sarah is his sister rather than his wife. In one instance (Gen 20:1-16), Sarah agrees to participate in the scheme. In the other (Gen 12:10-20), the matriarch does not consent explicitly, either because she truly does not speak or because the narrator found it unnecessary to discuss her consent. Can silence imply consent in a biblical text, or must consent be “affirmative”? Source criticism suggests that the former story reworks the latter, filling plot holes and “correcting” misinformation. If so, then Sarah’s lack of consent to likely sexual acts was noteworthy or problematic enough for the later author to change it. To arrive at a broad understanding, the paper will also discuss episodes that involve consent where a woman rapes a man, either through deceit (Tamar tricking Judah, Gen 38) or because of a man’s diminished capacity to consent (Lot’s daughters, Gen 19); where God rapes a man—at least metaphorically (Jer 20); where men attempt to rape divine beings (the story of Sodom, Gen 19); and where men rape a woman (the Levite concubine, Judg 19). These case studies show a hierarchy of consent, with the severity of the body violation correlating to the rank of the attacker and the type of victim.

Judaism’s fundamental creed is stated in Deut. 6:4-9: “Hear (Shema) O Israel, HaShem our G-d, HaShem is One.” Its declaration of the oneness of G-d and Israel’s undivided loyalty to Him is viewed with the Decalogue (Aseret HaDibrot) as the major foundations of the Mosaic faith. The Synoptic Gospels proclaims the Shema and “ Love your Neighbor” (Matt. 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28) as the great commandments. Nonetheless there are variants in the received Torah and Synoptic texts. Why the incongruity, how to explain the difference, what was and is at stake in the life of the people then and now is the focus of this teaching presentation.

This paper will survey traditions on the fate of the Temple vessels from the Hebrew Bible through the Second Temple period, and into late-antique rabbinic literature. It will focus on the menorah (lampstand), with particular attention to its function as a lamp. Sources from the ancient world depict lamps as loci of performance, tactility, visuality, and sensation. As a purveyor of and container for light, lamps are ascribed a great deal of symbolism in biblical and post-biblical texts. This paper will demonstrate how studying the menorah within the context of research on lamps and material culture, will bring to light new dimensions of material religion in biblical and post-biblical literary trajectories.

Throughout the Pentateuch, the land of Canaan, promised to Abraham’s descendants, is described as a “land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3; Lev 20:24; Num 13:27; 14:8; 16:13, 14; Deut 6:3; 11:9; 26:9, 15; 27:3; 31:20; cf. Josh 5:6; Jer 11:5; 32:22; Ezek 20:6, 15). Despite the frequency of its use and the centrality of its referent, commentators have paid relatively little attention to this recurrent phrase, often dismissing it as merely a clichéd or hyperbolic metaphor. As a result, there has been very little consideration of this characterization’s metaphorical meaning and associations. In this paper, I will suggest that this ubiquitous characterization of the promised land is a metaphor that understands the land in terms of a fertile female body, a regular emitter of liquids throughout her childbearing years. While this fluidic physiological reality of the female body is depicted throughout the Hebrew Bible, from Leviticus’ bodily impurity laws (Lev 12, 15) to the regular association of women, water, and wells (especially Prov 5:15-20), it is in the poetic text of the Song of Songs that the details and delights of the female body are explicitly associated with milk and honey and repeatedly described as flowing and fragrant. Through a close examination of the metaphorical descriptions of the female body in the Song of Songs as liquid landscape (Song 4:12-16; 5:2-5) and fragrant foodscape (Song 4:10-11; 5:1; 7:3), this presentation will argue that the woman in the Song of Songs, who is herself figured as flowing with milk and honey, exemplifies and augments the metaphorical logic at work in the pentateuchal association between fertile female bodies and productive landscapes. Conceptual metaphor theory, which asserts that metaphor is not mere decorative language but rather structures our understanding of the world, is an essential methodological tool for this project. By exploring how the conceptual domains of female body and landscape are mapped and manipulated, metaphor theory helps reveal both the poetic complexity and cultural prevalence of this underlying metaphorical concept: THE LAND IS A FEMALE BODY.

In this paper, I examine the exegetical strategies of Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Augustine, and Cassiodorus as they encounter the darkness and despair of Psalm 88. Cyril is the first of these four Church Fathers to read Psalm 88 as the voice of Christ as he suffers in his passion and crucifixion. His reading inaugurates a strategy of interpreting the morning prayer of 88:14 (MT) as a key turning point in the text—a turning point noticeably absent (and famously remarked upon) in form-critical considerations of the psalm. For Cyril and Jerome, 88:14 signals resurrection. Emphasizing a clue in the superscription of the psalm that directs it to be read “antiphonally,” Augustine and Cassiodorus, in turn, transform the explicit resurrection read by Cyril and Jerome into an implicit one, a strategy that allows them to read the resumption of despair in 88:15-19 (MT) more adequately than their predecessors: what follows the resurrection in 88:14 is now another voice, Christ’s body, the Church, responding in imitation. As the exegetical readings of these Church Fathers coalesce around the fulcrum point of 88:14, the antiphonal motif also provides a significant theological imperative to the contemporary audience: Christ's voice calling out in suffering demands an increasingly drastic and concomitant response by Christ's body, the Church, such that the circumstances of the psalm become something to be embraced, not avoided. Thus, the “story of Job half-told” becomes the drama of Christ’s death and resurrection, with an attending ethical imperative for those who read it faithfully. This strategy of reading the voice of the psalmist as the voice of Christ represents what I'm calling, following Yvonne Sherwood's own reading of Jonah and the Church Fathers, a Christological ventriloquism wherein the Church Fathers project a Christological voice into the text that overwhelms and overtakes other possible voices, and indeed, the text itself. In the particular instance of these four Church Fathers, this interpretive move also has the effect of both redeeming the circumstances within the psalm and providing a positive resolution where form criticism has found it wanting. This suggests that Psalm 88 has long been a distinctively challenging text that compels interpreters to develop creative readings that mitigate and alleviate its darkness. Ultimately, this paper explores the strategies of these Church Fathers and thinks through the theological implications of Christologically alleviating a text that formally resists such curative measures.

Biblical wisdom recommends charity for its theological benefits rather than, say, its social utility, its role in justice, or its ability to cultivate the favor of the poor. In the case of Sirach, the author counts charity––in the forms of almsgiving and generous lending––as a loss, at least materially speaking (Sir 29:10). One who lends generously should not expect it back. But there need be no despair over the “lost” silver, for while the generous person may never see direct repayment, charity becomes an investment in a heavenly treasury that will “profit you more than gold” (vv 11–12). The funds that the generous person deposits with God may be drawn upon to “rescue you from every disaster” and “fight for you against the enemy” (vv 12–13). This paper argues that the developed theology and imagery of charity we find in Sirach has a certain kind of precedent in the wisdom literature of Babylon, specifically as seen in the Akkadian Dialogue of Pessimism, lines 70–78 (BWL, 139–49). Concretely, both compositions speak of a theological destination for material assistance: generosity itself resides with the divine, either in a heavenly treasury as in Sirach, or, in the Dialogue, in Marduk’s “basket” (qappatu). Thus this paper claims that the rationale for generosity in both compositions is a function of the telos of charity: it is an act oriented, ultimately, to a deity and is thus of great worth. Absolutely no reason exists to suppose direct literary contact between the compositions. Yet certain features related to generosity in Sirach and the Dialogue crystallize the connections between sapiential thought-worlds. In discussing the advantages of economic generosity, both highlight the difficulty of getting someone to repay a loan, and consider generosity in terms of its ability to protect a person from an ill fate (Sir 29:12–13; Dialogue, lines 76–78). One significant question will be the nature of Marduk’s basket in the Dialogue, and the possibility of its relation to collection boxes for sacred donations known from Neo-Babylonian temples. If Marduk’s basket may be connected with a temple treasury, then––as with Sirach’s heavenly treasury––generosity retains its “financial” character even when it enters the company of the divine. Finally, in Sirach, the theological benefits would seem to arise out of a deeper theological reality: the close association between Israel’s God and the poor, between sacrifice and charity (cf. Sir 7:31–32). Thus a second major question will consider the possible role of divine identification with the poor in the Babylonian wisdom.

This paper examines the cogency of the arguments made by Joan Taylor, Karlheinz Müller, Ulrich Mell, Bernhard Lang, Clare Rothschild, and J.K. Elliot in support of the claim that the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13//Lk. 11:1-4) might not have originated not with Jesus but with John the Baptist. It will show that none of them stand up to critical scrutiny and that anyone who tries to make the case that the Lord's Prayer does go back to John will have to offer arguments other than the ones these scholars have advanced in defense of this contention to do so.

Luther and Calvin with Jacob at the Jabbok

Most discussions of Mark 7:1–23 revolve around questions of purity, and rightly so, for it is indeed the one occasion in the Gospels in which Jesus discusses purity, but does this exhaust the narrative significance of 7:1–23 in the Gospel of Mark? The aim of this paper is to argue that Mark 7:1–23 is also a perception text by drawing attention to the perception features within the text, and its connection to other perception texts in the Gospel, especially 4:12; 6:52, and 8:17–18. In common with these texts, 7:1–23 employs a cluster of perception vocabulary such as listen, understand, see, and heart. Furthermore, inability to understand the parabolic function of the bread because of hard human heart connects 7:1–23 with 6:52 and 8:17–18, highlighting the ignorance of Jesus’s opponents’ question in 7:2. As a parable passage (7:17), 7:1–23 picks up the imagery and themes of 4:12/Isa 6:9, the purpose of parables. The citation of Isa 29:13 confirms that the leaders are under the curse of Isa 6:9–11, as blind as the pre-exilic leadership, but Jesus’s exhortation to the crowd to “hear and understand” (7:14) and explanation of the parable to the disciples (7:17–23) presents the positive purpose of parables to reveal the kingdom of God. In Jesus’s explanation of the parable, the cause of impurity is the heart, and the leading example of impurity is evil thoughts (7:21) with the list of impurities closed by foolishness (7:22). Thus, Jesus explains impurity in terms of imperception, combining two themes. Mark 7:1–23 is a purity and imperception text which identifies the root problem as the human heart. A comparison with the parallel in Matt 5:1–20 finds these same themes, but strengthened. This paper employs a narrative approach which attends to the repetition of themes and vocabulary, and assumes the importance of the OT, and particularly Isaiah, for understanding Mark’s Gospel.

There is a growing body of literature—academic and popular—exploring the place of animals in biblical and theological traditions with attention to human moral responsibility toward them. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. Writers like Albert Schweitzer and C. S. Lewis did the same in earlier generations but, for the most part, their ideas about animals remained on the margins. What we see emerging today goes far beyond those occasional, at times eccentric attempts to promote animal welfare in theological perspective. Instead, it constitutes a serious effort to mine biblical literature for resources in support of advocacy initiatives. This paper examines reasons for this new direction in biblical interpretation and considers some of the potentials and pitfalls it faces.

This paper interprets the story of the outbreak of God against Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6 as an act of “divine violence.” In previous interpretations of 2 Samuel 6, the violence against Uzzah has been understood either as a punishment for a transgression, or as a capricious act of God’s power. In his 1921 essay, “Critique of Violence,” Walter Benjamin distinguishes between “mythical violence,” which includes law making and law preserving violence, and “divine violence,” which is violence that is beyond the law and resists meaning (not necessarily violence stemming from the divine). It will be shown using details from the MT that the violence against Uzzah in the Samuel account resists meaning and should not be interpreted as a punishment for any kind of transgression. Furthermore, Slavoj Žižek takes up Benjamin’s distinction and highlights that divine violence typically irrupts from a position of vulnerability and impotence, not of power. By exploring these insights, it will also be argued that the violence of God in this particular story stems from the vulnerability of his presence in the ark rather than from the capriciousness of his transcendent power.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, which encourages the Thessalonian believers to work and threatens them if they refuse has drawn several scholarly explanations. Much previous scholarship tended toward an eschatological explanation, wherein Thessalonian Christians changed their behavior based on Paul’s earlier predictions of an imminent end. Recent scholarship has differently tended to explain the Thessalonians’ supposed indolence in terms of Greco-Roman patron-client relationships, in which some persons abdicate work responsibilities in favor of social-climbing and favor-seeking. While not discounting the importance of these perspectives, this paper seeks to establish a third vector in explaining the threat “if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess 3:10). In particular, it will be argued that specific lexemes link 2 Thess 3:6-15 to passages of 1 Corinthians having to do with eucharistic communion and ecclesiastical censure. The imposition of ecclesiastical separation (2 Thess 3:6, 14) frames the central warning. In addition, the casuistic structure of 2 Thess 3:10 grammatically parallels other Pauline exclusion statements. Rather than making a mere statement of principle, threatening to take away food support from needy members, or exercising social coercion through removing daily sustenance from able-bodied members who ought to be working, 2 Thess 3:10 is threatening instead to remove indolent community members from eucharistic table fellowship.

Exploring the implications of a distinction Aristotle draws between bios (politically qualified life) and zoe (natural life), Giorgio Agamben develops the notion of bare life, life stripped of political protections (Homo Sacer, 1998). To exemplify the precarity of bare life, Agamben turns not to the ubiquitous figure of the ancient slave but to homo sacer, an obscure figure of Roman law, a choice for which he has been justly criticized. Agamben’s selection of homo sacer to illustrate his concept of bare life is especially problematic because the passage in the Politics where Aristotle distinguishes bios from zoe continues with a discussion of natural slavery. Agamben returns to that passage and its treatment of slavery in the final volume of his Homo Sacer project, The Use of Bodies (2016). There, however, rather than deepening his genealogy of bare life, Agamben pursues a line of argumentation he had pursued in The Time that Remains (2005) and The Highest Poverty (2013), the “elaboration of a theory of use.” Agamben stipulates messianic dimensions for his “theory of use.” Quoting 1 Cor 7:21 in The Highest Poverty (“ Even if you can gain your freedom, rather make use’ [mallon chresai]—that is, of your condition as a slave”), Agamben contends, “The messianic call…consists first of all in the capacity to ‘use’ the factical condition in which each one finds himself.” In The Use of Bodies, Agamben fixates on Aristotle definition of slavery in terms of the “use of the body.” Conceiving the ancient slave as an icon not of bare life but of the destituent power of inoperativity, Agamben speculates that “the use of the body” in slavery “preserve[s] the memory or evoke[s] the paradigm of a human activity that is reducible neither to labor, nor to production, nor to praxis.” He even imagines an originary “community of life” between master and slave, a remarkable elision of the brute force fundamental to despotic relationships (i.e., relationships between slaveholders and enslaved men and women). Following Agamben’s philological lead, I investigate Paul’s use of chresis and cognates in passages involving either slaves or metaphorical invocations of slavery and freedom. I argue that Agamben’s take on “use” is belied by standard Greek idioms. Still more problematically, Agamben’s conception of slavery in terms of mutual use obscures the precarity inherent in the lives of enslaved persons, a precarity both implicit and explicit in Paul’s allusions to slaves and slavery. Work on this paper was supported by a 2017 Summer Stipend award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The BibleOL has received significant updates through the last years. The site is available in different languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Danish), the implemented Hebrew ETCBC database has been enriched with new verbal tenses (cohortative, jussive, emphatic imperative), and verbal classes (I-Aleph, I-Nun, II-Waw/Yod, III-Hey, etc.) have been added. In 2016 a new BibleOL research project has been launched and funded by Andrews University. Two major goals are pursued. On the linguistic side of the project MQL queries are written to detect all ambiguous verbal forms in the Hebrew ETCBC database. E.g. the form tiqqah is either analyzed as 2sgM-Yiqtol/Impf-Qal form (Gen 7:2) or as a 3sgF-Yiqtol/Impf-Qal form (Gen 38:23). While they are graphically the same, the morphological interpretation is disambiguated in the ETCBC database based on syntactical observations (congruence between an explicit subject and its predicate) or contextual information. However, often clauses do not contain explicit subjects and at times a lot of contextual information must be provided before a successful disambiguation can be carried out. In addition, at times, databases consult advanced knowledge of Hebrew grammar and insights form comparative linguistic studies in order to settle specific morphological interpretations. In Jer 2:20, for example, the form shavarti is not analyzed as 1sgC-Qtl/Perf-Qal forms but as 2sgF-Qtl/Perf-Qal. In this case the form is seen as having an archaic 2sgF i ending. Consequently, when a Hebrew database is brought from a research environment to a learning environment inevitable problems arise: How can a student be able to analyze the form tiqqah or shavarti correctly, if his/her paradigmatic knowledge cannot disambiguate the form? Thus, our research project works on enriching all potentially ambiguous forms with alternative morphological interpretations that correspond with student’s paradigmatic knowledge. This allows BibleOL to accept different answers of students as correct as long as they make paradigmatically sense. Unless this problem is solved, BibleOL cannot be used for official examinations where grades are determined based on right and wrong answers. This brings us to the programming side of the project. The aim is to produce an advanced examination mode for BibleOL in which language instructors can define the difficulty level, and the knowledge fields (e.g. vocab, morphology, syntax) that the student is to encounter in his/her exam. For the instructor, this would mean (a) that he/she does not regularly have to write new exams. Once a BibleOL exam has been put together, BibleOL will create its own set of questions and texts in accordance with the instructor’s defined difficulty level and knowledge fields. This creation will take place each time the exam is used. Thus, no student should every get the same exam, but all students will be exposed to the same predefined difficulty level. In addition, it means (b) that the instructor does not have to spend any time on grading exams anymore. Once the instructor has defined a grading key, BibleOL will use that key for automatic grading. In my presentation, I intend to demonstrate and discuss the new Exam Mode.

Although the Book of Proverbs attends liberally to the topic of eating and drinking, it might seem like an unusual corpus to consider for a panel on "Gluttony, Intoxication, and Feasting." When it comes to consumption, the book has a well-earned reputation for moderation. The sages frequently warn against drinking alcohol to excess (Prov 20.1; 23.29-35; 31.4-5), and in general they discourage overeating (Prov 21.17; 23.1–3, 6–8, 20–21; 25.16, 27; 30.8–9). These commonsense guidelines form part of the sages' gastrosemantics, that is, their use of food and eating customs to symbolize and transmit their cultural values. Nonetheless, in a number of passages, the sages encourage inebriation and voraciousness. These examples stand out against the larger backdrop of moderation and beg for examination. In this paper I draw on anthropological approaches and comparative studies to interpret these encouragements to excess. I show how the sages' instructions link the consumption of food and drink to speaking and listening, and thus to their notions of wisdom and folly, and I argue that their recommendations to indulge in certain limited cases makes sense within the larger system in which they symbolize and communicate their notions of wisdom through food and food practices.

This paper examines the power dynamics between the oppressed and the oppressor, in particular how the former, after the latter is defeated, can reify the history and power relations between the two into a “us” vs. “them” opposition. This inquiry comes from my social location in Taiwan, where the newly-elected government (the Green Party or “Democratic Progressive Party”) portrays itself as the victim of the previous government (the Blue Party or “Kuomintang of China”) and has launched, in the name of “transitional justice,” a series of legal acts to redress past injustice committed by Kuomintang. However, if some of the Green Party’s leaders benefited from the Blue Party’s policies in the past, can we implement remedy without being self-critical? This self-critical stance comes to the fore in my interpretation of Revelation 18 at 18:4b, which I find, seeks to prevent the audience-enunciatee from being self-conceited. In speaking of the Fall of Babylon/Rome, John reported that he heard a voice from heaven urging “my people (ho laos mou)” to “come out of her (ex autes)” so that they “will not share in her sins” and “will not receive any of her blows” (18:4; cf. Isa. 52:11; Jer. 51:6, 45). While such a “coming out” may refer to leaving the place, it is more likely to mean not to have anything to do with Babylon/Rome, in particular its political and economic exploitation of others. However, to “come out of her” may imply that “my people” were part of her, not just spatially speaking. That is to say, even if “my people” did not accommodate and corroborate with Babylon/Rome, or were even oppressed by Babylon/Rome, could “my people” nonetheless benefit from the sins and injustice of Babylon/Rome (Rev. 18:5)? This question is not without warrant, in particular given the content of the seven letters addressed to the seven messengers of the churches (2:1–3:22). The descriptions of three groups of characters alongside “my people” – that is, those oppressed by Babylon/Rome also oppressed others: “the kings of the earth” (18:3, 9), “the merchants of the earth” (18:3, 11), and “every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea” as well as “all who had ships on the sea became rich through her [Babylon’s/Rome’s] wealth…” (18:19) – seem to suggest that “my people” are not innocent of the sins and injustice of Babylon/Rome (cf. 18:4-5). Thus, the command to “come out of her” is not just a command or a triumphant declaration, it is also an admonition to “my people” not to do the injustice of Babylon/Rome (anymore). This warning is important to my context because if in the face of oppression, the oppressed committed injustice or benefited from the oppression of others, then when liberated, the oppressed must be careful in their judgment of the oppressor, lest they forget that God remembers the oppressor’s injustice (cf. 18:5).

As participants in the widespread ascetic culture of late antiquity, Augustine and the early rabbis both engaged with questions of self-control. One significant mode of this practice, valued by both Jews and Christians, was the pursuit of humility. In this paper I examine the similarities and differences between the nature of humility as envisioned by Augustine and the rabbis. I argue that while there are a number of relevant parallels, ultimately their conceptions diverge with regard to the proper orientation of the self necessitated by this quality. Augustine understands humility as a disposition in relation to God while the rabbis are primarily concerned with humility as an interpersonal practice. I suggest that analyzing these parallel (yet competing) visions of humility in tandem allows for a more refined conception of the “self” which stands at the core of efforts at self-control. When it comes to humility, both Augustine and the rabbis describe this quality as the epitome of achievable virtues (Letter 118; BT. BT Avodah Zarah 20b). Moreover, Augustine and the rabbis also both ascribe humility to God as a model for imitation (Confessions 7.9.13; BT Megilah 31a) and view humility as the human path toward approaching God (Sermon 73:3; Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Yitro 9). Yet, despite these important similarities, a close examination of these somewhat analogous sources reveals a crucial distinction which reorients the ways in which we understand how each of these parties participates in the broader discourse of humility as a form of self-control. The ostensibly parallel discussions of humility in Augustine and the rabbis fundamentally diverge in their core understanding of the true orientation of this quality – for Augustine humility is primarily about the self with respect to God while the rabbis understand humility first and foremost as an orientation toward the human other. This key distinction allows us to reconstrue these seemingly parallel trajectories as divergent conceptualizations where Augustine concentrates on the vertical (human-divine) axis while the rabbis follow the horizontal (interpersonal) axis. However, such as distinction should not be mapped onto common tropes of Christianity as theological and Judaism as legalistic as Augustine is also largely concerned with humility in the social sphere and the rabbis align their understanding of humility with their conception of the Divine. Rather, this difference informs our understanding of the nature of the self in late antiquity as a Janus-facing posture between other people and the Divine. These analogous discourses on humility as a form of self-control thus allow us to better understand the ways in which both human and divine factors contribute to the construction of the religious self.

Philippians is not typically noted for its intertextual links to earlier Jewish texts; it boasts no direct quotes and only a handful of thematic and textual allusions. One allusion recognized only recently is Daniel 12:3 LXX in 2:15: “then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.” Though commentators now acknowledge this final allusion, no scholar has yet suggested a Danielic influence on Philippians more broadly. This paper will argue that, though at first blush a textual dependence seems non-existent, the case can be made for a much broader relationship between the Greek texts of Daniel and Paul’s letter to Philippi. Thematically, Philippians and Daniel unequivocally share contexts of persecution and suffering. They also share a challenge to their recipients to live as wise and faithful people of God in the midst of persecution, as they await their final vindication. Given the political composition of Philippi, the possibility of a thriving emperor cult in the city, the persecution and suffering of those in Philippi, and Paul’s own imprisonment under Nero, it is not unthinkable that Paul contrasted the situation at Philippi with the historical and political circumstances of Daniel and other faithful Jews in the years just previous. Textual links exist, as well. In Philippians 2:9, Paul uses hyperypsoo to say that Jesus was exalted to the highest position. Hyperypsoo, a hapax legomenon in the New Testament, is found in the LXX almost exclusively in the Greek versions of Daniel. Moreover, hyperypsoo is found in close association with tapeinoo in Daniel (TH) 4:37 within the parallel context of kingship, as it is in Philippians 2:6-11 and very similarly in 3:21. The identity and activity of Jesus in Philippians reflects the notions of kingship presented in Daniel—notions which cannot be separated from Daniel’s visions of the conquering Kingdom of God by the Son of Man in Daniel 2 and 7. In Daniel 7:13 the Son came “on the clouds of heaven” and was given all authority, power, glory and dominion, and in Philippians 3:21 he is the Savior who will come “from heaven” and “bring everything under his control.” Additionally, in both texts the people of God are challenged to demonstrate lives of maturity/wisdom and of blamelessness/righteousness, and in both texts the people of God are identified by their suffering as a result of their faithfulness to God. Here Daniel’s prophecy of a future exaltation (12:1 LXX)/salvation (12:1 LXX [TH]) and resurrection (Dan. 12:2) of God’s people may stand behind Paul’s references to his own hope of resurrection (Phil. 3:7-11) and the transformation of believers’ bodies from humility to glory (Phil. 3:21) by the Savior (Phil. 3:20; see Dan. 12:1 LXX [TH]). The names of those resurrected will be included in “the book,” representing “everlasting life” in Daniel 12:2, and in “the book of life” in Philippians 4:3. This closer inspection of Philippians and Daniel will reveal an overlooked thematic and even perhaps textual relationship, and will thus expand the hermeneutical context of Philippians into new interpretative territories.

In the past half century, the qibla has become a subject of controversy in the study of Islamic origins. Several western scholars have attempted to revise the traditional Islamic narrative regarding the change from facing Jerusalem to facing the Ka’ba in Mecca during the lifetime of Mu?ammad. They read archeological and literary evidence with creative hermeneutical tools to either protest that Mecca was originally the sacred center, that geographic prayer-direction was not originally intended by the term “qibla,” that the change occurred much later, or some variation on these themes. Such interventions pose varying degrees of challenge to the traditional Islamic narrative, and each demands reckoning on its own terms. However, most of these studies originate from the questions: “What direction was the qibla?” and “where was it changed to?” and “when?” This paper retreats from the grand project of positivist reconstruction to consider the Qur’an’s presentation of the qibla and its role within that text. Rather than the positivist “where” of the qibla, this paper explores the “why” and “what.” “Why do religious communities choose to face in a particular direction?” and “What does that direction signify?” and “What work does orientation do?” Ultimately, my goal is to articulate answers to these questions for the Qur’an with reference to intra-Qur’anic linguistic analysis (and limited reliance on early reception history). However Comparison with the orientation-practices of religions of Late Antiquity is essential and sheds light on the ritual koiné in which the Qur’an participates. Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity receive the most attention in this regard with brief reference made to Zoroastrian, Samaritan and Jahili liturgical alignment. My study of the three traditions in conversation employs lenses of analysis that consider the 1) authority, 2) symbolism, 3) function and 4) identity-expression that each tradition deploys to depict the practice of facing their qibla. These lenses help to shed light on the phenomenological experience of bodily orientation for religions of Late Antiquity. Ultimately, considering religious traditions of the Late Antique Near East in comparison suggests that sacred direction held a special role as an expression of socio-religious identity in that context. This paper lays out the field of discourse around orientation into which the Qur’an emerged as well as its unique participation in the religious milieu of Late Antiquity.

In this essay I propose an experimental Christian reading of Deuteronomy 4.15–20 via a transformed application of the four-fold sense of Scripture. I begin by identifying four fundamental presuppositions: Scripture is located both within 1) the overarching economic work of the Triune God and 2) the history of human culture, and both 3) the human histories of Scripture itself and 4) the intelligible content of Scripture serve instrumental purposes within that economic work. The final presupposition reflects the premodern Christian assumption that the God of Scripture uses it to teach (paideusai, LXX) as a parent teaches a child (Deut 8.5). What follows offers an account of the divine pedagogy of this text for today by identifying its potential transformative effects in readers/hearers. My account of “the letter” of the text locates these words historically and literarily. Even if its ostensive historical context—i.e., as a refresher before entering Canaan—is fictive, even that context assumes that the God can modulate revelation. Both its canonical place and Greek name (deuteronomion) indicate its location in the history of the revelation of the God of Scripture to the people he calls. Whatever the letter teaches about historical events, it teaches—and contemporary readers must recognize—the historical locatedness and historical modulation/development in God’s revelatory work. The theological point of the passage, that God ought not be depicted or pictured because God has revealed Godself as beyond depiction, is as relevant for us as in its original sitz im leben. The revelation of the Father by the Son (in the Holy Spirit)—“allegoria” theologically nuances this prohibition. The Father permits the mediation of his [sic] image in the Son (Jn 1; Heb 1; Col 1.15–20). Despite such “permission,” the text still witnesses against fetishizing any images, concrete or intellectual, as if those images could capture Godself. Even the divinity of the Son can only be “perceived,” i.e. “understood” through the grace of the Holy Spirit at work in the reader(s)/hearer(s). The text, in its canonical location and modulated through the witness of God’s work “in these last days” invites the reader to a transformed perspective which holds such images—including the cherished products of our reflection on God—loosely. Such discipline is sorely needed in a context beset by spectacles and the optics of the market. The liturgical or communal setting of the text and its prohibition against images contrast sharply: it would take great concentration to listen to or read Deuteronomy in toto. The text therefore leads tropologically towards growth in discipline and patience. I conclude by invoking other texts (Matt 22.37–40; 1 Jn 4.20; 1 Cor 13) to elaborate how readers/hearers are commanded to love this God we cannot see (Dt 6.5), which is impossible if we cannot love our neighbors, and even our enemies, who we can see. On the anagogic way towards seeing God face-to-face (1 Cor 13), this moral task, and the transformations through grace it requires, is more than enough for us.

Targum Studies as a field deals with the Jewish Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible. These Aramaic translations are commonly regarded as one group of texts. However, scholars know that this group displays quite a degree of disparity. Targums may differ one from another in dialect, style, rigorous or free literal adherence to the Hebrew Vorlage, as well as in other categories. This should be no surprise as the Targums are the product of different authors, living in different periods of history. Many centuries separate between the composition of some of the Targums. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that some Targums are later than others by more than a millennium. It is helpful, then, when scholars are able to indicate defining characteristics of various Targums, which help understand each composition on its own and the group of Targums as a whole. In this paper I wish to introduce a tool I have developed that I call “Growth Percentage” and that helps define such a characteristic. I will explain how this tool may be used, what its advantages are, but also what it cannot be expected to do. I hope it will provide students of Targum with another way of becoming familiar with the general contours of particular Targums.

The trafficking of foreign women is not a new phenomenon in Jewish history. Among rabbinic commentators, throughout different periods, there is a mixed record on trafficking in women. There have been both those who were matter of fact about the human need for commercialized sex and those who denied the fact that Jewish men use sex services. Among those who condemned it, some blamed the women, the moral fabric of society, or pointed to difficult economic conditions as the cause of prostitution. Some expressed tolerance if foreign prostitutes provided these services to men. One can conclude from the description of slavery, women captured in war, pimping, that women were treated as goods and commodities from ancient times. Even the prophetic metaphors concerning the foreign/adulterous women support this view (Hos. 2, Ezek. 16, 23). This paper will look at trafficking as a human rights issue. In many Biblical texts, starting from Genesis, it is clear that all men and women are of equal value since they are created in God’s image. Slavery is allowed, yet the gentile slave of a Jew seemed to enjoy better conditions than other slaves since s/he did not work on Shabbat, was released if his master injured her/him and s/he could not be sold to a gentile. Among the various biblical texts that we will look at that exemplify the attitude towards trafficking in women is the law of the beautiful captive woman in Deut. 21: 10-14 which emphasizes that when “you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will of her, you must not enslave her”. This primary text will serve as an exemplar for rabbinic attitudes towards the use of a woman’s body.

In both the P text of Numbers 31 and the Dtr text of Judges 6-8, Israel makes war against the Midianites. Midian is portrayed in starkly different terms in these two texts, and the justifications given for Israel’s warfare are also quite different. In Numbers 31, and the texts leading up to it, Midian is portrayed as an enemy scheming against the people of Israel, planning to separate them from YHWH through seduction. In contrast, Judges 6-8 portrays Midian’s warfare against Israel as primarily involving economic attacks, with Israel’s idolatry as the underlying cause for the temporary loss of YHWH’s protection. By examining the methods each source uses to construct Midian as an Other worthy of genocidal eradication, this paper offers a contribution towards a greater understanding of the overlapping yet distinct views of warfare held by P and Dtr.

In this paper, I propose that much of the debate surrounding the yiqtol form is based on a false dichotomy between what has been labelled “modal” and “imperfective”. In addition, I suggest that an alternative definition for imperfective based on (Altshuler 2014) better accounts for yiqtol’s aspectual interpretations, and in place of “modality”, I suggest that yiqtol patterns with “irrealis” forms rather than modal forms cross-linguistically according to the pattern laid out by (Cristofaro 2012). First, I compare the yiqtol form to three other irrealis/subjunctive forms to show that it belongs in the same cross-linguistic category as these other verbal moods. In particular, I compare it to the subjunctive in Koine Greek, the potential mood in Kayardild, and the irrealis mood in Amele. The remarkable similarity between the distribution of these forms suggests that yiqtol should be labelled an irrealis form rather than a modal (contra Hatav 1997; Joosten 2012) because its range of meaning includes modality, but is not limited to it. For example, the forms are also shown to occur in subordinate contexts marking purpose or apprehension as well as in the future and as past habituals. These represent the major functions of the irrealis forms analyzed, and the distribution of the other forms is almost identical to that of yiqtol. Second, I present a modified definition of grammatical aspect to distinguish between perfective, imperfective, and progressive aspect based on (Altshuler 2014). The basic distinctions between the three are based on whether the maximal stage of the situation must be reached (perfective), may be reached (imperfective), or may not be reached (progressive). These definitions show that an imperfective form may sometimes have an identical interpretation to a perfective form, but they can be distinguished on the basis of how they combine with states. Likewise, imperfectives and progressives may have an identical interpretation, but they can be distinguished on the basis of how they combine with achievements. I compare yiqtol to the participle to show that yiqtol combines with achievements like an imperfective form and the participle like a progressive form, and then I compare yiqtol to weqatal to show that yiqtol combines with states like an imperfective form and weqatal like a perfective form. Thus, I conclude that yiqtol is not only an irrealis form, but is an irrealis-imperfective form, though this is based on a definition of imperfective that has (to my knowledge) not been applied to the BHVS before. Third, I show how these two components of meaning can account for a well-known problem in the BHVS, namely ’az + yiqtol used in past narrative contexts. I show that its aspectual interpretation is perfectly normal given the definitions explained above—the construction ordinarily receives a “perfective-like” interpretation. I then compare the use to Latin’s subjunctive, which can also be used in narrative contexts with a circumstantial meaning, similarly to ’az + yiqtol (as analyzed by Rabinowitz 1984), and I briefly explain how yiqtol’s irrealis component of meaning can account for this.

The senior capstone course typically functions to assist students in integrating studies within a major, but it also casts an eye toward their progression to the next stage – advanced education and/or a career. At Appalachian State University, a regional public comprehensive institution, previous conceptions of this course in our religious studies program pulled together students for an interactive seminar experience that required demonstration of the knowledge they acquired over time in the department. More recently, the course kept the seminar format, but became a specialized study of a select topic usually correlating to faculty research interests. As an exclusively online professor living and working at a two-hour distance from the campus, the religious studies department faculty did not support my many proposals to offer this course until Spring of 2017. The resistance centered around contentions that the online format did not correspond appropriately to the goals of this course and would not be a fitting finale for students in our program. My colleagues, however, finally agreed to let me take a turn at the privilege of working with our majors in an area related to my own research, but with the goal of creating a genuine capstone as traditionally defined. The course I delivered deliberately tested the potential for an asynchronous virtual learning experience with, -- in this case -- all on campus students, to achieve several distinct goals: (1) to conduct collaborative undergraduate research requiring student skills in project conceptualization and design, archival investigation, data gathering and analysis, and communicating results clearly and concisely; (2) to develop in students individually and as a group the facility for, and the content knowledge necessary to, generate multimodal digital artifacts for a range of different audiences; (3) to increase student confidence in professionally interacting with persons both internal to and outside of the university; (4) to clarify individual career goals as they relate to the major and acquire the ability to produce items appropriate to a showcase portfolio at graduation. This presentation will begin with a brief overview of how the course was set up and operated while sharing some of the notable products created. I will then reflect on how this process utilizes the uniquely interactive possibilities of an online educational platform for meaningful mentoring and community building. Most specifically, I will focus on establishing faculty presence as both a colleague and a guide, promoting student responsibility for learning, generating individual student capacity for conducting varied tasks while simultaneously tapping into best practices in collaborative research, and wedding conceptual academic research with practical transferable competencies. Finally, I will give a considered assessment of the successes and the weaknesses of this first- time effort based on more than a decade of online teaching experience as well as research in the field of online education. I will also have a strategic guide for adapting this work to a variety of settings in biblical studies/religious studies classrooms.

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An Assessment of Jacob Milgrom's View of the hattat Offering Using a Text-Immanent Approach to Reading the Priestly Texts

Speech is attributed to the “heart” (leb, lebab) in the Hebrew Bible in a number of passages, using a variety of verbs that denote vocalization. A talking heart is a conundrum in biblical philology. Most modern lexicographers and translators regard any attribution of speech to the heart as figurative. Either the speech is not physical—it is thought—or the heart is not physical—it represents the mind. And yet, the understanding that “heart” can serve as an immediate organ of speech finds support in such verses as Qoh 5:1 [English: 5:2], where both the NJPS and the NRSV render the speech of the heart literally. However, virtually no one has identified the heart as a direct source of speech. Ginsberg (1967) located the origins of speech in the leb but then interpreted leb in such contexts not as “heart” but as “throat.” There is no basis for such a thesis except the difficulty the scholar has in attributing speech to the heart. In the present paper a different approach is taken. It will be shown that in the Hebrew Bible speech originates in the heart and then makes its way through the organs of the throat and mouth in order to emerge. Speech can be predicated of any of the organs involved in the physical chain of vocalization, beginning with and including the heart. Accordingly, at least metonymically, the heart can literally speak. Such a conception and usage can be traced to the cultural and linguistic background of Biblical Hebrew.

While many would agree that there exists a relatively distinct “Priestly” corpus within the Pentateuch, the relative date and provenance of this source or stratum remain elusive. Within this context, this paper considers the descriptions of the tabernacle/temple “altar of burnt offering” in the Priestly traditions of Leviticus in light of recent archaeological work in the southern Levant. It will be suggested that the literary traditions concerning the direction of approach and the location of the yesod align most closely with an example of an altar from the northern 9th - 8th c. BCE Israelite temple at Tel Dan in contrast to two archaeological examples from southern Israelite temples from the same time period (those from Arad and Motza) and later literary descriptions of the Jerusalem temple(s) (those from Kings, Chronicles, Ezekiel, and the Mishnah), thus suggesting a reconsideration of traditional perspectives that assume P is postexilic and Jerusalem-oriented.

“In the year 472 A.D., under the Consuls Marcianus and Festus. Vesuvius, the burned mountain of Campania boiling by inner fires, spewed burned bowels obscuring the light of day and covered all the surface of Europe by fine dust. This terrible dust is remembered every year at Byzantium, the 6th day of November.” Marcellinus Comes, Chron. LXVIII

Much of the research in Ecclesiastes concerns Qoheleth's rhetorical strategies, especially his overwhelmingly use of the term "???" as a negative descriptor of the world. Recently, however, scholars have shifted attention toward the socio–historical context of the book, especially the volatile economic climate of its likely provenance, as well as the constructive function of Qoheleth's seven commendations. This paper argues for a politically, economically, and socially subversive reading of Ecclesiastes; that is, the book of Ecclesiastes functions as literature of resistance as eating, drinking, companionship, and (especially) enjoyment of one's work are presented as communal practices that counteract the social fragmentation of living under hegemonic bureaucracy. This paper first argues for a fresh understanding of Qoheleth's use of ??? that is reflective of the sage's own socio–historical context as evidenced in the bureaucratically and economically evocative language employed by Qoheleth. Moreover, this paper claims that Qoheleth's seven commendations function to deconstruct the audience's perceptions of the world and reorienting them toward a life of enjoyment. In this way, Qoheleth summons his audience away from a life dominated by the hegemony of ??? and the systems of economic accumulation, calling them toward simple practices that contrast imperial values. Using rhetorical and literary-critical approaches, especially the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, this paper constructs a politically subversive lens by which to interpret Ecclesiastes. Whereas imperial power functions to construct an oppressively disordered world of ??? in which human pursuit has become misguided (as Qoheleth sees it), eating, drinking, and working, all done with joy, illustrate a properly ordered world in which human activity is situated within the context of communal enjoyment. This renewed life demonstrates that the pursuits of the people will no longer be dictated by the policies and procedures of the empire. Instead, the people will live with joy.

The life in print of the Greek version of Daniel is a case-study in the ways in which editors and printers mediate notional texts into particular material objects shaped by their own contingencies. From antiquity onwards all MSS of the Greek Bible naturally have the ‘Additions’ which distinguish the longer Greek text from the shorter Hebrew and Aramaic tradition, and this continues into the age of print: the Greek pluses are integral in the Complutensian Polyglot of 1522 and in the first printed Greek Bible, the Aldine edition of 1518-19. This all changes with Johannes Lonicerus’ 1526/4 Septuagint: in the first printed Bible to fillet its base text, Lonicerus excises the ‘additional’ material in the Greek text-type of the book of Daniel. Lonicerus’ Bible is thus a totally synthetic Greek version: a Greek Bible laid over the template of the Hebrew and trimmed to fit it, yielding a Greek text that had never previously existed in Greek. It is a great irony that the first Bible to mutilate the Book of Daniel in print in this way is, of all things, a Septuagint, yet one which is a new Greek shadow of the Hebrew Bible. This practice continues right into the modern scholarly study of the Septuagint: a Greek Daniel cut to fit the Hebrew text-type appears in Roger Daniel’s 1653 London Septuagint; in John Field’s 1665 Cambridge edition, which forms the base text for the first Bible translation into English published in America, Charles Thompson’s 1808 English Septuagint; in Walton’s London Poyglot of 1657; in John Ernest Grabe’s edition based on Alexandrinus, 1707-1720; in F. Field’s 1859 Greek Bible; and in Holmes and Parsons’ Septuagint published in Oxford in 1798-1827. It only finally ends with Henry Barclay Swete’s The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint, 1887-94. For most of its life in print, then, the Greek version of Daniel was an artificial confection of publishers and printers, giving material form to a fiction of scholarly creation and feeding its Greek manuscript base through a Hebrew filter. All this draws attention to the power of patrons in cultures where ‘books’ are not bound at the point of sale: while these printed Greek Bibles tended to collect the apocryphal material together in an appendix, the notional text of the Septuagint could actually be realized in a material form which altogether excluded the Apocrypha when the buyer so instructed his bookbinder. Lonicerus’ ‘Ratio Partitionis’ invites owners of his sheets to ‘banish in a private book’ the Apocrypha, if they wished. Differently, the case of Daniel is particularly interesting because Lonicerus’ excision is fractionally incomplete: it leaves behind two part-verses which preserve the tradition of the three Hebrews walking around and singing in the fire, and this fragment of the older Greek material also persists through the whole printing history of the trimmed Septuagint, as an example of how story-motifs leach around textual boundaries.

I have argued previously that the author of Acts employs Lydia of Thyatira’s Lydian ethnicity to challenge conventional physiognomically-centered social logic that would categorize Lydia as a contaminant to the gospel. In this paper, I will discuss how a topos derived from Lydian ethnography: that of “Lydian disease,” functions rhetorically in a broader context in Acts to contrast how social/religious bodies fragment or cohere.

This paper aims to examine, using historical criticism and a re-evaluation of diachronic intertextual concepts, how the authors of the Book of Job reshape the trust in YHWH found in the Psalms of Lament. It will analyze both the pre-exilic Psalm 13 as a model of an individual lament and Job 16:18-22. Furthermore, it aims to shed light on the thought-world of the authors of the Book of Job by demonstrating how this biblical book can be regarded as a (critical) evaluation of theological concepts in the Psalms, which highlights their ambiguities and tensions and interprets them. This presentation will read the Book of Job in the light of the Psalms. It focuses on the personal relationship of the literary figure Job with God and the psalmic language this figure uses in order to illuminate how the authors of the Book of Job interpreted theological concepts in the Psalms. One of these concepts is the trust in YHWH of the individual laments. In these laments, exemplary supplicants turn to God in the midst of suffering. They place their trust in him, expect him to turn aside their afflictions through direct intervention, and address pleas to him. In contrast, the Book of Job tells the story of a (paradigmatic) man whose trust in God is deeply shaken. Job is no longer capable of speaking directly with or addressing pleas to God, both of which are at the heart of the Psalms of Lament. His image of YHWH is shattered. In his anguish, he has difficulty finding words. The concepts of God found in the Psalms no longer help him. Hence, his speeches consist mainly of laments and accusations against God in which he inverts multiple psalmic motives. All the more surprising is Job 16:18-22. In these verses he proclaims trust in God in the midst of his suffering by using declarative language. He states that YHWH is his witness in heaven who will speak up for him during his lifetime. Reading Job 16:18-22 in the light of the individual laments demonstrates that the Book of Job is engaging with a concept prominent in the Psalms of Lament: trust in YHWH. Job’s proclamation reveals that this trust is not a standard and unquestioned response to suffering or unexpected events. On the contrary: in context, his words show that hope and trust in God require a conscious decision and can be a last resort.

The book of Revelation has been interpreted in light of its mythic structures (e.g., Combat Myth), and in light of the material culture of Asia Minor (e.g., Roman imperial cultic iconography). But interpretations of Revelation's images as mythemes focus nearly exclusively on literary myths, and iconological interpretations have typically focused on categories of "use" or "local reference." Both suffer from methodological missteps. Through a series of comparisons of material images and artifacts--such as the reliefs from the Great "Altar" of Pergamon, the famous image of Artemis of Ephesos, and images of the god Hosios kai Dikaios--with select verbal images from Revelation, this paper argues that analysis of Revelation as myth must take into account the religious visual culture of Asia Minor; a thorough grounding in literary myth is not sufficient. At the same time, the paper argues that identifying mythological images across the verbal-visual media divide is a difficult and fragile undertaking, making categories such as "use" or "representation" far too cumbersome for such work. Here myth theory can help to act as a bridge, opening up comparison beyond formal resemblance, analogy without identity.

This paper challenges traditional readings of Genesis 12:10-20, which primarily focus on redeeming Abram and explaining (or mansplaining) his action of selling his wife to the harem of the Egyptian pharaoh. My reading, based on the principles of feminist and womanist hermeneutics, brings forth Sarai, an exotic foreigner in the rich country, and her experience of being sold into pharaoh’s palace by her own husband. I argue that Sarai’s experience exposes the androcentric nature of the passage, challenges many assumptions about the character of Abram, God and Sarai’s faith and still speaks today to the tragic lives of women who are used as sexual objects and exotic sex toys by men. Exploring the ugliness of Abram’s actions and the complexity of Sarai’s character as a courageous prophetess, a powerful deliverer, and a survivor could empower many women, who can see their reflection not only in the famous whores of the Bible, but also in the mother of the holy and chosen nation of God.

It is well documented that the Book of Daniel was an influential text both in the Gospel of Matthew and among the Dead Sea Scrolls. At a textual level Daniel’s importance at Qumran is attested by the eight manuscripts discovered in Caves 1, 4, and 6, its direct literary influence on distinct Qumran documents (e.g., 4Q242; cf. Dan 4; 4Q243 – 245; cf. Dan 5; 4Q246), and the long shadow it casts upon matters such as the Qumran sect’s self-understanding and conception of eschatological warfare. By contrast, the Gospel of Matthew, as a singular document, rather than a vast collection of texts, has only a few allusions and fewer still quotations. Most scholars rightly recognize that other texts from the Hebrew Bible were more important for Matthew, and scholarly discourse on Danielic influence in Matthew is typically limited to coming of “son of man” (Dan 7:13; e.g., Matt 24:27, 30, 37, 39, 44; 25:31; 26:64) and the “desolating sacrilege” (Dan 11:31; Matt 24:15). Discussion of Danielic influence on both the Scrolls and Matthew likewise place their shared “son of man” language at the center. The present paper aims to consider the matter more broadly. By examining the influence of texts throughout Daniel upon documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Matthew, I hope to elucidate the ways in which Daniel informed and shaped the eschatological outlooks of the respective texts.

Death is both omnipresent and fleeting in Revelation. It functions as a judgment for sinners, a respite for the weakened, a legitimation for the Messiah and his martyrs, and a mechanism of sovereignty for the Divine. The ambivalence of Revelation’s community toward violence, sacrifice, and death has been explored in post-colonial scholarship; that the text is as violent as it is because of the community’s longing for retribution. But I will argue that the violence and brutality of Revelation also negotiate political theology, presenting the violent de/legitimation of the subject that Adriana Cavarero terms horrorism and François Debrix and Alexander Barder term agonal sovereignty. These theories of violence find the creation of the human specifically at the moment of human-made-casualty; this is especially helpful and relevant in relation to the absent, abstracted sovereign figures of asymmetrical warfare. The absent sovereign at the moment of violence is critical for theorizing new forms of power “beyond biopolitics” (in the ways that Debrix, Barder, and Achille Mbembe all point to the limitations of the category), since the violent excesses of warfare challenge the premise of biopolitics itself. These theorists agree that sovereignty’s limits do not fall at the limits of life or even death, but master the liminal spaces of violence, injury, and horror. Thus, Revelation’s threat of eternal suffering becomes sovereignty par excellence, a perfected violence to demonstrate perfected sovereignty. Death has a certain impermanence and permeability in Revelation, after all: the sovereign Christ is the “firstborn of the dead” (1:5) and “a lamb standing as if slain” (5:6) while the enemies of God will be punished with deathlessness and a persistent state of injury: “they will long to die, but death will flee from them” (9:6). A binary of living and dead cannot be mapped onto power and powerlessness as expected; rather, proximity to violence becomes proximity to agonal sovereignty itself within the breakdown of the difference between life and death. A regime in which “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (21:4) creates a crisis for sovereignty, particularly for such an absent and asymmetrical sovereign as Revelation’s God. Re-defining sovereignty in terms of persistent precarity, rather than the teleology of life or death, allows us to critique the apolitical nature of totalitarianism, when violence persists without purpose, opposition, or the boundaries of death itself.

The rebuilding of the Temple described in Ezra includes a series of controversies with the people of the land. Issues of who is allowed to participate in rebuilding, who authorized the rebuilding, and whether it should be done at all run throughout the book. Although the text references physical interference with the rebuilding project, the bulk of the attention to the arguments between the returned exiles and the people of the land focuses on a series of letters and decrees sent back and forth between those in Jerusalem and the king of Persia. These letters employ rhetoric that resonates with characteristics of masculinity, including issues of power, wealth, hierarchy, and authority. Gender analysis provides a fruitful lens to investigate the passive-aggressive triangulation of the conflict between the two parties in Jerusalem and the king.

Covenant, Sacrifice, and Divine Action in Hebrews

Many New Testament scholars have claimed that the majority of the population in Galilee lived permanently at or close to subsistence level. The historical Jesus is often presented as the spokesperson of the oppressed tenants, and his words about the poor and poverty are taken as a direct reflection of the socioeconomic realities in Galilee. However, it has recently been demonstrated that the available archeological and literary evidence does not support the portrait of Galilee as extremely poor and exploited. The present paper suggests a reevaluation of Jesus’ references to the poor in light of ancient representations of poverty. The paper reviews both Jewish and Greco-Roman sources that show how diverse discourses of poverty were used as instruments of self-definition and exclusion. In some Psalms (Ps 9:19; 37:14; 40:18; 86:1), the poor occasionally represent the faithful and the righteous who anticipate their vindication. The Dead Sea Scrolls repeatedly associate the elect members of the community with poverty and use the term “poor” to construct a positive group identity (1QM; 1QpHab; 1QHa; 4QpPsa; 4QInst). Many late republican and early imperial Roman sources provide an idealized portrait of the laboring rural life and evaluate poverty positively as the best defense against the corrupted life in luxury. Individual teachers such as Anazagoras, Democritus or Crate of Thebes were admired because they had given away their property and chosen poverty in order to devote themselves to philosophy. Renunciation of property and simple life was valued by Cynics and Stoics, and, in a Jewish context, Josephus ascribed these values to Essenes and Philo to Therapautae. The paper argues that Jesus’ references to the poor should be understood as a variation of ancient discursive practices that attached various cultural meanings to poverty. Jesus and his earliest followers were not necessarily the poorest of the poor in the Galilean society but, like many other ancient groups, they adopted the language of poverty to construct an affirmative self-image. The historical Jesus already laid the foundation upon which many later Christian writers built a positive evaluation of poverty and in this way enhanced their social identity.

Mark's account, if nothing else, fits the description of "loud"! Indeed, from a statistical perspective, 1 out of every 3 verses contains some sort of scream or acoustic intrusion. Most certainly, one function of these dramatic devices was that they served to grab the attention of ancient Markan audiences. These increases in volume, however, are often staggered with jarring but critical moments of silence embedded in and throughout the text. Identifiable by both implicit and explicit oral-textual cues, silence in this work becomes golden and pays rich dividends to observers who tune into it. In this paper, I aim to help readers do just that as I explore the pragmatic effects of quietness in Mark. I show how they aid in structuring the performative ebb and flow of this intense antique drama.

Job 30:2-8 has been a crux interpretum, enticing interpreters to propose a case of interpolation, transposition, or outright removal. These verses introduce a Job who turns uncharacteristically harsh and vindictive in a manner in which more about him is revealed than any reader of the book of Job may wish to know. Nor does his riposte fit the context neatly, for the antecedent of the third person pronounces in this pericope can be satisfactorily identified neither with the young nor with their fathers of v. 1, who are far from destitute. The exposé Job offers for the group he targets includes their deplorable diet (vv. 3-4). He first frames their hardship with ?eser (“lack” or “want”) and kapan, an Aramaic loanword that signifies either the individual experience of hunger or communal famine. He metaphorically compares their deprivation with that of galm?d “barren” (or “hard” like a stone; cf. Arabic jamada), although this lexeme galm?d is an attributive (kapan galm?d “hard hunger”) or a predicative that denotes the effect of starvation. The paucity of provision is underscored with the verb ‘rq “gnaw” (v. 3), but it is the object of consumption that harbors a surprise. They gnaw ?iyyah “the dry” (an ellipsis for “the dry ground”; see Ps 78:17), which reveals that the picture is not one of subsistence. They masticate the inedible or even a harmful substance. Their deplorable state is further elaborated as ’emeš šô’a? umešô’a?, which has been variously interpreted and extensively emended, but few proposals for the phrase would be able to escape A. Guillaume’s curt rating of “little short of nonsense.” Alternatively, Job may be stringing words with the hissing sibilant shin and the guttural ’aleph to mock them. The jumbled shibboleth still manages to deliver the semantic punch by conjuring their ruinous situation. Two of the three words in ’emeš šô’a? umešô’a? are built on the root šw’ “to be empty,” let alone that ’emeš (“yesterday” as the Arabic and the Ethiopic cognates suggest) may hint at their time bygone, if it is not in the processing of going down (’emeš “evening”; cf. Akkadian mûšu “night”). Verse 4 continues the food talk, in which the poor pick (qtp) to gather mall?a? (“batis saltwort”), sia? (“wormwood”), šoreš retamîm (“the roots of the broom”). These are supposedly their le?em (“bread” or “food”), but none seems to be palatable or even tolerable, though they may be to voles and moles. Some construe šoreš retamîm as fuel used to generate heat, deriving l?mm from the root ?mm “to be warm” (assuming the warmth has nothing to do with a fever [?umma in Arabic]), which bolsters up the notion that these items are hardly fit to be consumed as food. Job employs their despicable diet to present them as reprehensible as their foodstuff is.

“Let there be no heavy charge for burying people in the cemetery/tomb, for it belongs to all the poor.” The exhortation of the so-called Traditio Apostolica (Apostolic tradition) puts the communis opinio on the main function of the “Christian” catacombs of Rome in a nutshell: they are originated as graveyards for the poor and, in their homogeneous appearance, reflect uniformity: a visualization of the Pauline ethos (Gal 3,28), an expression of the “equality-principle” of the new faith. The red-brownish monotony of endless galleries might create such an impression. But what kind of story do the graves of these subterranean cemeteries really tell? The present contribution aims to “dig deeper” and offers a unique insight into the social structure of the catacombs. One of the oldest and relatively well preserved nucleus of the Catacombs of Priscilla, the so-called arenario centrale, dated approx. between 210 and 240 serves this endeavour. A systematic data collection, supported by the techniques of a survey, was carried out in the entire region and focused on the tombs and their immediate context. Recorded is the tomb typology, size, allocation, decoration, and if any traces remained, the cover material. These little yet significant features reflects (financial) efforts made for the preservation of the defunct’s body and memory. In this context, the epigraphic evidence is essential. Although the inscriptions are shaped by “archaic brevity”, they bear essential facts like name, sex, potentially the most frequently used language of the deceased, indicators of religious attitude, and occasionally also the age, donor and profession. The analysis combines newly compelled evidence with already known materials, such as epigraphic collections or topography. The combination of these data does not only facilitate the contextualization of an individual tomb or text within the funeral complex, it also opens a new perspective on social structure of the defuncts. Calculating proportions, supported by methods of descriptive statistic, helps to emphasize tendencies and provides new information on general demographic figures such as child mortality, (average) age of death, life expectancy and so on. The newly collected data also open the door for the investigation of particular aspects, e.g. that of gender: Were man and woman equal in their death or is there an observable disparity between both sexes? Another advantage of taking a descriptive perspective is that typological economic and sociological differences are more easily comparable at a statistical level. Based on new evidence, the current contribution sheds some light on the mysterious beginnings of the subterranean complexes, provides insights on the economical potential of the occupants and brings more differentiation into their alleged “poor” and “egalitarian” social reality.

The Jubilees Palimpsest Project is working to advance technologies for the recovery of text from illegible manuscripts through the phases of capture, processing, access, and scholarly collaboration. The project takes its name from the only copy of Latin Jubilees, which is joined by the only copies anywhere of the Testament of Moses and an Arian commentary on the Gospel of Luke. After the successful imaging of these erased texts in January of 2017, the scope of objects of interest broadened to other significant palimpsests at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, such as Origen's Hexapla and a fourth-century translation of biblical books into Gothic. A long-term plan to systematically digitize illegible manuscripts is underway. A major advance in capture and processing technology created by the project is Spectral RTI, which combines the advantages of spectral imaging in color processing with the advantages of RTI in texture and interactivity. The addition of texture imaging can aid the recovery of text-for example if now-missing ink left an outline of corrosion on the surface of the parchment-and much more information about scribal practices from the creation and use of the manuscript. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project is working to make the images and tools accessible to a wide range of scholars. Everything is free for non-commercial use and compliant with standards for discovery and access, such as the International Image Interoperability Framework. Free training will be available for scholars learning to utilize the image repository and for digitization projects learning to implement Spectral RTI.

This paper addresses the marginalization of Islamic feminist hermeneutics in academic scholarship. Through a close reading of academic engagements with Muslim feminist scholarship, I illustrate the tendency among male scholars to marginalize feminist hermeneutics of the Qur’an through the omission of such works in broader conversations on Islam. Surveying a sample of the latest scholarship on Islam reveals that female scholars are rarely cited and feminist concerns are rarely acknowledged. This is even the case when these voices are crucial to the broader objectives of important academic projects, such as in Shahab Ahmed’s What is Islam? (2015), Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age (2012), and Tariq Ramadan’s Radical Reform (2008). This bias exists due to an outright rejection of gender concerns. The problem is not that feminist hermeneutical thought has nothing to contribute to other scholarship on Islam; in fact, Muslim feminist hermeneutical strategies are shared among non-feminist scholars as well, including Muslim reformers. The reluctance to engage Islamic feminism and the works of feminist scholars who specialize in gender and the Qur’an stems from the assumption that gender bears no relevance in most scholarship about Islam. I argue that scholars of Islam see gender as irrelevant to their work, which they might perceive as genderless, a position that reveals a rejection of the very real problem that gender inequities presents in the lives of Muslim girls and women. This assumption also leads to the devaluing of work in Qur’anic studies that relies on gender as an analytical category. Considering the wider implications of the tendency to marginalize feminist works on the Qur’an, I ask how such a reluctance to acknowledge feminist scholarship influences assumptions of authentic and authoritative interpretations of the Qur’an.

Scholars working on the Greek versions of Esther (LXX and AT) tend to share two assumptions about these versions’ divergences from the Hebrew (MT) text, especially with regard to plot and characterization. First, that these divergences (especially in the so-called “additions”) reflect a sensitivity to the norms of Hellenistic literature. Specifically, the Greek additions are usually believed to conform the character of Esther “to an ideal favored in the popular romantic and melodramatic novels of the late Hellenistic period” (Michael Fox). Second, that these divergences reflect Jewish discomfort with the behavior of the story’s protagonists. For instance, Mordecai’s insolence toward Haman and Esther’s sexual encounter with the king are specifically addressed in moral terms in these character’s prayers in the Greek Addition C. In other words, it is claimed, both Hellenistic literary ideals and traditional Jewish piety exert considerable pressure on the Greek version of the story. This paper nuances and advances these scholarly convections by analyzing a single motif that is developed in both the so-called “primary” story and the “additions.” Accordingly, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the motif of “doxa” (i.e., glory/esteem), which is only latent in MT/Hebrew Esther, has been literarily developed in both Greek versions so as to bind the additions and main story together into a coherent narrative arc. Specifically, Greek Esther’s use of “doxa” and a small constellation of related equates the honor of pagan royalty with Jewish humiliation. The narrative arc of Greek Esther, conceived as a literary unity, includes the divine transformation of this pagan royal “doxa” from a source of Jewish humiliation into a source of Jewish honor.

In Galatians 4, Paul offers the Galatians a stark choice: they can be his “children” under his supervision, or they can be slaves. Their previous status was slavery, and in not choosing Paul, they will become slaves again: “You are no longer a slave but a child” (4:7), “you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods” (4:8), and “how can you want to be enslaved to them again?” (4:9). Paul presents himself not as a protector of these children, but, rather, as their authoritative mother. He has conceived them in Christ while also being in Christ himself, and thus, presumably, he has been slowly transferring Christ to them inside his theological uterus. He writes, “my little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you” (4:19-20). The implication here is that Paul is forever their mother, and now, again, is forced to deliver their reluctant and infantile souls to salvation. So what work is this metaphor doing for Paul and why would he choose it? In what ways is pregnancy fruitful for Paul? I argue in this paper that in Galatians, and in Paul’s writings more generally, the language of maternity and adoption is a means to claim ownership of and authority over other adults. Adoption, rather than being about the creation of familial bonding and inclusion, is used to direct, judge, and control other people’s salvific destinies. In this way, adoption becomes about infantilization and dominance. Moreover, taking over women’s parental role speaks to an anxiety on Paul’s part about his place in the process of new believers being included in god’s grace. Rather than simply being the mechanism of delivery, through language of maternity and adoption Paul claims the locus of creation, of gestation, of first connection with another, greater, being, and of actual deliverance into the kingdom of god. But, crucially, in usurping this role, Paul’s rhetoric disenfranchises women, and it lays an ideological groundwork for claims on the “true” ownership of children and on the “vessels” that carry them. He is wresting female autonomy and reproductive agency from women and taking them for his own ideological purposes. His language would become foundational for the disenfranchisement of women for two millenia and counting. The final part of this paper examines the contemporary legacy of his ideology and its repercussions for women and their reproductive rights in the context of the United States.

Paul the Apostle is not among the possible figures in classical antiquity for whom there is sufficient evidence to write a biography. In this regard, the caveat that prefaces Robin Lane-Fox’s popular book, Alexander the Great (1973), bears repeating here: “It is a naive belief that the distant past can be recovered from written texts, but even the written evidence for Alexander is scarce and often peculiar. ... Augustine, Cicero and perhaps the emperor Julian are the only figures from antiquity whose biography can be attempted, and Alexander is not among them. This book is a search, not a story, and any reader who takes it as full picture of Alexander’s life has begun with the wrong presuppositions...” If we lack sufficient sources to write a biography of Alexander the Great, we face analogous obstacles in attempting a biography of Paul the Apostle. Such problems of evidence have, of course, never stopped anyone. In Pauline biography, the guiding principle of horror vacui persists as justification enough to write his “real” life story. My paper offers one historian’s solution to this problem, which takes up the unconventional and revisionist form of antibiography. In contrast to a traditional biography, an antibiography abandons the traditional quest for the essential self (a fixed identity) in a linear chronology (the typical march in narrative from birth to death), in favor of decentering the subject into multiple selves and developing more open-ending narrative structures. My thesis holds that conceptualizing Paul as a human being, a social actor within his cultural context, best begins with the recognition of multiple “Paul’s” under study, rather than a single life story.

Classical scholarship has promoted the idea that the altar served as the heart and focus of all ancient Greek religious activity. Its occupation is presumed so essential to ancient worship that the temples accompanying them have even been rendered functionally unnecessary by many researchers. Nevertheless, despite the theoretical importance that scholarship has placed on altars when talking about ancient religion more generally, this idea is often ignored when turning to the practical study of extant archaeological remains on specific sites. Instead, the study of individual monumental temples, and the phenomena of temples in general, have been given priority over the study of individual altars. In the Ionian city of Priene, two Hellenistic, in situ altars were found: one in the bouleuterion and one in the theater. No extant altars have been found in situ within either of these ancient building types at any other city in Asia Minor, nor in the rest of the Mediterranean world for that matter. The fact that altars served as central ritual foci in these non-­temple buildings has not been adequately related in the scholarship. These altars are just two of several in a rare collection of in situ altars strewn throughout Priene, many of which intriguingly functioned independently of any temple. Altars have, for so long, seemed inextricably linked to the noteworthy temples with which they are often associated. Although it is often difficult to find altars in their original contexts, it it key to emphasize that the majority of extant altars in our archaeological record would have been untempled. That is, they existed and were originally established without any connection to a particular temple complex. What difference would it make to theoretically uproot these ritual objects from the explicitly religious temple environments in which we are accustomed to see them? What happens when you place ritual objects, like altars, in buildings that we do not consider inherently religious? What happens when you do not place them in particular buildings at all? This paper analyzes how each of the untempled altars in Priene operated in their ancient discursive contexts, examining where they were situated, how they were used, and how meaning was negotiated in the interaction between individual altars and their specific spaces. The category of untempled altars presents us with a strikingly overlooked body of data that may help us to revise traditional notions of sacred space in antiquity.

The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993), issued by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, recommended that Christian scholars have recourse to Jewish Traditions of Interpretation. “Jewish biblical scholarship in all its richness, from its origins in antiquity down to the present day, is an asset of the highest value for the exegesis of both Testaments…”. In the history of interpretation both Catholic and Jewish Scripture scholars referred to a fourfold sense of Scripture. Augustine of Dacia, O.P (+1286) is considered the author of a distich which succinctly yet eloquently expressed the four senses of Scripture, which seemingly influenced Nicholas of Lyra, O.F.M., whose work has been thoroughly researched by Deeana Klepper. Though oft-quoted, some scholars such as J.A. Fitzmyer critique the expression and question the enduring value of the couplet. Very few Jewish exegetes applied a 4-fold system: Nahmanides, Ba?ya, and the Zohar. The PaRDeS acronym is used only in the latter. To be sure, scholars such as Mordechai Cohen argue that “one would be hard pressed to find a text that is interpreted similarly in a fourfold way in both faith traditions”. Furthermore, A. Van der Heide argues that the “theory of the four senses results from an inner development of Jewish exegesis”, and not from contacts with Christianity. Yet, W. Bacher and with some modifications, G.G. Scholem, “assume that the PaRDeS acronym (used in the Zohar to connote a fourfold exegetical scheme) emerged in Jewish exegesis under the direct influence of the Christian theory of the four senses”. An important Jewish commentator, Ba?ya ben Asher, in late 13th Century Spain manifests a fourfold exegetical scheme. Likewise, the hermeneutical innovations of his predecessor Nahmanides in 13th Century Girona suggest some influence of his Christian intellectual milieu with parallels to the hermeneutics of Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, et al. as Cohen notes. Could it be that Jewish exegetes “adopted formal elements from Christian interpretive strategies, such as the fourfold sense of Scripture”, though not content (Cohen)?

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This paper provides a brief literary-theological interpretation of three narratives: Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son at Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:17-24); Jesus’ raising of the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17); and Jesus’ own resurrection in the four gospels. The latter is normally sharply distinguished from the former two as being different in kind, and thus treated in isolation, but this paper argues that it is only in relation to them that certain elements of its significance can be seen. Drawing on premodern exegetes, such as Bonaventure (1221-1274) and Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558), and literary features of the texts, Elijah emerges as a fervent, labouring prophet utterly dependent on God’s work, whereas Christ speaks commanding words of life as the Lord. The literary features common to these two resurrections are either absent or differently portrayed in Christ’s own resurrection, pointing up its uniqueness in ways not otherwise perceptible. Elijah, dependent on the word of the Lord, is a prophet of God; Christ, both in raising the dead and being raised, is himself the Lord.

The rhetorical genre and conceptual background upon which Paul draws in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12 for his self-presentation as an apostle to the Thessalonians remains a contested area of scholarship. A. J. Malherbe (1970) situated the pericope within the social milieu of the wandering Cynic-Stoic philosopher, proposing that the apostle is depicting himself as the ‘gentle philosopher’ in handling his converts, as opposed to the ‘harsh philosopher’ who excoriated his students for their moral failings. Paul’s genre of defence against his critics, Malherbe argues, is an apologia, distinguishing himself from contemporary peripatetic ‘hucksters’ who exploited their audience city-by-city. By contrast, K. P. Donfried argues that the pericope is an expression of epideictic or consolatory rhetoric (2000), neither being apologetic or polemical in intention. Rather the narratio recounts the friendship between the apostle and his converts and distinguishes Paul’s gospel and ethos from its false counterparts. Last, T. D. Still (1999) opts for the genre of apologia, but he argues that it has been carefully crafted in response to unbelieving Jewish and Gentile detractors of Paul. No substantive suggestion regarding the Graeco-Roman background to the pericope has been advanced since these pioneering pieces of scholarship. This paper will argue that an important but neglected area to explore is the benefaction backdrop to Paul’s language in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12. After briefly exploring the epigraphic evidence regarding the culture of divine and human benefaction at Thessalonica, the paper will concentrate on key phrases and words from the pericope that resonate with the honorific inscriptions of Thessalonica, as well as those from northern and central Greece and Asia Minor more generally. While Paul may be pastorally adopting the tone of the 'gentle philosopher' with his converts, he is also presenting himself, along with his co-workers, as their selfless and endangered benefactor in Christ.

The centre-and-periphery model has been very influential in the study of the Roman Empire and the development of local cultures. In recent years, however, this model has been challenged for paying insufficient attention to the complex interplay and mutual dependence of Roman and non-Roman cultures. As an alternative, scholars have proposed to think of the Roman Empire in terms of a globalised entity, in which global and local cultures and traditions are intricately intertwined. In this paper I assess this globalisation model by studying how Philo constructs Roman and non-Roman spaces in his Embassy to Gaius. As this work describes how Philo headed an embassy to Rome to plead the cause of the Jews in Alexandria after riots had broken out between Greek and Jewish inhabitants of that city, it provides an excellent basis to study Philo’s views on the relations between Greeks, Romans, and Jews. More specifically, Philo’s Embassy negotiates Jewish and Roman spatial claims: the pogrom in Alexandria is described as a problem of space (Leg. 127: d?s????a, “want of room”); among Augustus’ praiseworthy achievements is his respect of Jewish spaces in Rome (Leg. 155–157); and Gaius’ plan to set up a statue of himself in the Jerusalem Temple is both a violation of Jewish and a claim to Roman space. A study of Philo’s construction of space in the Embassy will yield insight in his attitude towards the Romans. I intend to argue that Philo’s appreciation of the Romans cannot be considered merely negative or positive. Instead, Philo’s display a more ambiguous attitude: though criticising Gaius for his impiety and his imposition of Roman space on Jewish spaces, Philo acknowledges the value of Roman citizenship and portrays the Jews as faithful Roman citizens inhabiting Roman spaces.

My goal in this paper is to examine the reception of the “apocalyptic Abraham” in Genesis Rabbah. Several first century texts such as 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, the Gospel of John, and the Apocalypse of Abraham provide evidence of a robust corpus of extra-biblical traditions depicting Abraham’s visionary experiences during the enigmatic “covenant between the pieces” (Gen. 15). Some of these traditions depict temporal revelations, where Abraham views the periodization of history up until the eschaton, while others depict Abraham’s ascent to heaven to see the secrets of the divine realm. Interestingly, many of the motifs from these texts find their way into Genesis Rabbah. This is especially noteworthy since, as previous research has shown, many Amoraim seem to have had a vested interest in refuting the extensive apocalyptic traditions concerning the biblical figure of Enoch. While scholars have previously noted the presence of these visionary motifs in Genesis Rabbah, I argue that they have not illuminated the degree to which these apocalyptic traditions have been altered and expanded in order to “sanitize” them and bring them into the rabbinic fold. Thus, while Abraham does ascend to heaven in Genesis Rabbah, he does not view unseen realities that explain the cosmos. Rather, his ascent is symbolic, intended to communicate to his descendants that they are “above” speculation concerning the heavenly realm. Abraham’s vision of the temple is, upon closer inspection, a “visual mishnah,” where the patriarch views a standard rabbinic taxonomy of the different atonement offerings. Additionally, Abraham’s vision of the periodization of history is not a wholesale acceptance of the determinism found in apocalyptic literature. Rather, the patriarch’s vision is presented as a confirmation of standard Deuteronomic theology: if the Jews follow the mitzvot they will be rewarded, and if they stray from them they will be punished. Thus, far from validating the traditions concerning the apocalyptic Abraham, the rabbis appear to be undoing the very legacy they seem to be adopting. This realization leads us to ask why the redactor of Genesis Rabbah chose to focus on the visionary Abraham in the first place. I contend that the literary conceit of the visionary experience serves the same function for the Amoraic authors as for those of the Second Temple period: allowing a character to transcend physical and temporal boundaries to view an unseen reality. Thus, it was a useful tool by which to update the moment of covenant making between God and Abraham. For the Second Temple authors, Abraham’s covenant was accompanied by a revelation of divine secrets. For the rabbis, the moment of covenant making was a confirmation of the theological truths that they themselves held most dear. Thus, while the apocalyptic Abraham looked to the heavens and saw the mysteries of the cosmos, the rabbinic Abraham looked to the heavens and saw the rabbis and their Torah.

This paper will examine portrayals of water in the Book of Genesis, drawing upon the insights of Islander Criticism that result from reading in and from contexts dominated by water. The fluidity of texts will accordingly be emphasized in this reading, alongside the attention of narrative criticism to inner-textuality. Whereas water flowed from the garden in four different directions (Gen 2:10-14), this paper draws four bodies of water into the same reading. Hence the underlying question of this paper: What might happen if four bodies of water inter-flow? (1) Waters of Life: both the Priestly and Yahwist narratives in Gen 1-3 present the events of creation as taking place in, and requiring the life-giving gifts of, water (from above, below, and the deep). (2) Waters of Death: the Flood narratives in Gen 6-9 present water (from above) as a tool of punishment and destruction. (3) Waters of Sex: a patriarch who meets a female relative at a well (Gen 24 & 29) of water (from below) finds a prospective wife. (4) Waters of Protest: the stories of Hagar (Gen 16) and Joseph (Gen 37) offer different well-experiences, which i propose to read as prompts for protest. These four bodies of water flow beneath the texts of Genesis and inter-flow in this reading to invite (a) attention to bodies and traces of water in Genesis, (b) appreciating the different kinds and diverse qualities of water in Genesis, (c) anticipating the roles of water in the exodus and wilderness narratives, and (d) protesting the "troubling of waters" in our climate changing time.

The interrelationship between metonymy and metaphor is an often under-analyzed in biblical interpretation. One example of this compound feature is found in the book of Psalms, where the speaker directly addresses God using phrases such as ‘your hand’, ‘your right hand’, and ‘your holy arm’. Such references are often paired with statements regarding God’s victory on behalf of his people and his role in their deliverance. This paper will examine these references and seek to explain the way metaphor and metonymy interweave to create memorable images for the reader.

Recent advances in the study of Hebrew diachrony offer additional data for the dating of Hebrew texts. These data have recently been marshalled by Aaron Hornkohl for the study of Jeremiah, and by the author (in an exploratory manner) for Isa 24-27. The present paper extends this analysis to the rest of Isaiah 1-35 and reflects on methodological prospects and limitations of linguistic dating for understanding the formation of complex prophetic books.

Good sermons address the situations and questions of the audiences to whom the preachers will speak. The traumatic events of the Babylonian exile created a situation in which the Hebrew community was grasping for reorientation. The mainstays of their religious system—the Davidic kingship and the Jerusalem temple with its priesthood and sacrifices—were gone, so the people were forced to reassess both the God they worshipped and their own relationship to this God. A critical aspect of this process involved the reconsideration of where to turn for answers about how to live in the world and engage with its divine creator. Unfortunately, few sources give details about religious formation of the conquered Judahites during this period (ca. 587-539 BCE), which renders necessary extrapolation from biblical material. In this presentation, I will argue that the sermons of Ezekiel—at least portions of which seem to reflect an exilic setting—can provide valuable insight about the community during this period because the sermons reflect the eponymous prophet’s attempts to address this community’s questions. A careful reading of these sermon texts (especially Ezek 12:21–28; 18:1–4; 21:5[Eng. 20:49]) points to a situation in which at least some segment of the exilic community has embraced wisdom and rejected prophecy as a source of insight, guidance, and reorientation after the fall of Jerusalem. The available materials and methods make definitive conclusions about the theological questions of exile impossible, but working backwards from the issues Ezekiel’s sermons address can help biblical scholars know more about the audiences to whom these sermons first spoke.

The interjection of a first-person greeting from Tertius, the writer of the letter, is unique in the Pauline corpus (although there are indications in other letters of Paul’s use of a secretary). Commentators on Romans have taken various positions on the role and significance of Tertius (especially on the questions posed by the prepositional phrase ?? ?????, and the proposal of Jewett that Tertius, identified as Phoebe’s slave, would have a role in interpreting the letter for the Roman recipients). But commentators have not noticed that first-person greetings from someone other than the author appear in a number of documentary letters among the papyri. This paper discusses seven examples from documentary letters which enable us to build a general picture of how secretarial greetings function within epistolary communication. This general picture highlights several unique features of Tertius’ greeting.

From the New Testament onward, ethical-theological reflection on the “image of God” concept rooted in Genesis 1 has tended to place the image-bearer in the “object” position. In other words, the general question has been something like, “If I believe that you bear the ‘image of God,’ what constraints does that ‘image’ place on me?” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film “The Sixth Day” (dir. Roger Spottiswoode, 2000) inverts this question, placing the image-bearer in the “subject” position to ask, “If I believe that I bear ‘the image of God,’ what authority does that ‘image’ confer on me?” In the tradition of Roncace and Gray (2005; 2007), this presentation offers a model for using an explicit theological debate that occurs within the film to spark ethical-theological reflection outside the film.

Deuteronomy, Covenant Participation, and Dying/Rising with Christ in Paul

The Ethiopic book "Rest of the Words of Baruch" or 4Baruch is considered to be part of the Ethiopic Jeremiah Cycle. This Book was edited by A. Dillmann in 1866, but since then, many older Ethiopic manuscripts have been found that require a new critical edition. The older manuscripts of 4Baruch give also valuable information about the history of its text, and about the history of its canonical status.

The destruction of the Jewish temple and the loss of Jerusalem is an important theme in the Dialogue with Trypho written by Justin soon after the Bar Kochba revolt. First of all, this is interpreted as the outcome of Jewish unbelief and sinful life. In addition, Justin takes the chance to discuss the role of sacrifice in general, which, as Judith Lieu stated, “must have been a searching debate about the possibilities of sacrifice and forgiveness without the Temple” and includes “a Jewish response to the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of sacrifice.” (Image and Reality. The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century, London / New York 1996, p. 122f.) She concludes, that “behind Trypho, too, we hear the echoes of a counter-presentation which makes him more substantial than the ?straw man'”. (p. 124) Contrary to her description runs the estimation of Simon Goldhill, who criticizes Justin for not writing a dialogue at all (The End of Dialogue in Antiquity, Cambridge 2008, 6). He states, with reference to Paula Frediksen, that Trypho is nothing more than “cannon fodder” without any convincing individual Jewish profile. This paper takes a fresh look at this item and tries to answer the question whether the destruction of the temple is just one standard item similarly iterated in Christian anti-Jewish literature or whether there are different kinds of argumentation (cf., e.g., Barnabas, Celsus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Ps-Cyprian). If there are differences, do they depend upon the genre of the text (dialogues / disputations and other genres) or on other features? Are the dialogues taking up several argumentations to a higher degree than e.g. a tractatus or a letter? Is the theme changing in later texts like the Dialogue of Athanasius and Zacchaeus (fourth century) when Christians themselves have constructed a “Christian Jerusalem” and a “Holy Land”? The result will help to evaluate the form or genre of the Jewish-Christian dialogues as well as the content of these dialogues with reference to one central item of debate. This paper is part of my research on dialogues and disputations on which I am preparing an article for the encyclopedia “Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum” (RAC, Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, edited by Fran Dölger Institute, Bonn).

There is a subtle, yet encouraging turning of the tide in the tone of the discourse surrounding contemporary practices of adoption in evangelical circles, seen especially in the mission and vision statements of big evangelical organizations and coalitions who are increasingly concerned with the protection, support, and preservation of vulnerable families, and who increasingly recognize that adoption is, at best, a relative good rather than an absolute good. However, there still is a stubborn insistence in much of evangelical theological discourse on grounding the contemporary practice of adoption in the Pauline adoption texts. This paper will examine the key features of this Pauline narrative found in influential evangelical resources on adoption, and argue that these features undermine and short-circuit the complex, nuanced, and multi-voiced conversation that is necessary for best-practice.

Recent insights into metaphor theory highlight how metaphors matter as metaphors, not just as what they are supposed to mean. Consequently, we need to distinguish between the translation of hebel on the one hand, and its interpretation on the other. In translation, we need to retain the literal, denotative meaning of the word, referring to hot air in the form of mist or steam. Interpretation, by contrast, needs to highlight the most salient aspect of mist and steam, namely that both are visible only for a brief time and then appear to vanish. This suggests two nuances: (a) brevity or ephemerality; (b) the illusion of something appearing more substantial than it is. However, recent metaphor theory also highlights that conventional metaphors, like hebel as mist, can be developed into novel metaphors. I will propose that the word hebel in Ecclesiastes is such a novel metaphor, extending the visual image of mist into a mirage, an optical illusion of the mind. I will support this proposal with four arguments: (1) Mirages are created through “hot air,” precisely the substance which hebel denotes. Thus, the step from seeing hebel as mist to seeing it as a mirage does not constitute an entirely new meaning or denotation. Rather, it is a natural extension by means of the metonymical relation between cause and effect: hot air causes mirages. (2) Biblical Hebrew does not have an alternative word for mirage, although the phenomenon clearly existed. I will show that the only possible alternative, the word “sharab” in Isa 35:7 and 49:10, does not carry this meaning. (3) I will demonstrate that the word hebel denotes mirages elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, for example in Isaiah 30:7; Zech 10:2; Pss 39:6+7; 62:10; 78:33; 94:11; 144:4; Job 7:16; 21:34; 27:12; Prov 13:11; 21:6; 31:30. (4) I will show that understanding hebel as “mirage” throughout Ecclesiastes enhances the rhetorical impact of all its occurrences, consistent with the overall message of the book.

In his most recent study on Paul, E.P. Sanders has noted that at least one problem continues to plague any interpretation of Galatians 4:21–31. That is, there has yet to be a satisfactory explanation for how Paul can connect the figure of Hagar, and likewise her descendants, with two of Judaism’s most sacred spaces: Mount Sinai and Jerusalem. Consequently, echoes of the hermeneutic of supersessionism continue to infect this difficult text. By employing insights from critical spatial theory and social identity, however, this paper will seek to offer an alternative explanation, and thus reading––namely, one that is post-supersessionist––for the relationship Paul intended to convey between the figure of Hagar, Mount Sinai, and Jerusalem in Galatians 4:24–26.

White mainline church leaders, both lay and clergy, sit in a circle at a retreat. They are there to discuss “diversity,” which many interpret as meaning race. The convener begins by listing the many ways diversity is present in congregations: age, sexual orientation, gender, race, worship style, backgrounds, nationality, politics. The convener then asks the participants what they think a preacher should say about diversity? One person speaks up: “They shouldn’t say anything. That’s not what I came for. I came to hear a sermon preached from the Bible, and none of those issues you’ve listed are in the Bible.” Are issues of diversity present in the Bible? Specifically, what does the Bible say about race? This paper looks at the process of preaching on biblical texts about race and racism. Race is not a scientific category, yet it continues to refer to differences in skin color that loosely categorizes groups of people. Critical race scholarship and whiteness studies have analyzed the way race as a concept continues to operate in the United States. In recent years, several homileticians have focused on the subject of race as being important to address from the pulpit. At the same time, some homiletic traditions insist upon “biblical preaching,” which refers to theoretically allowing the text to speak for itself without imposing any outside agenda. This perspective frowns upon sermons that are topic-driven, seeing this kind of preaching as artificially making the text say something it is not actually saying. In one of the most recent books published in homiletics on race, Who Lynched Willie Earle? Preaching to Confront Racism, William Willimon insists that preaching on racism be “biblical,” and that the preacher focus on “theology rather than anthropology.” It is anachronistic to suggest that biblical texts address race. Skin color as a category used to distinguish groups became systematized during the era of colonial expansion and the slave trade, over a millennia after the latest writings in the Bible were penned. If preachers relied only on the text for guidance on what issues to address, then they would never preach about race or racism. And yet to avoid preaching on race when persons who are racialized as not white continue to experience discrimination, is to ignore an ethic of care found through much of the Bible. This paper argues that a particular hermeneutic for selecting scripture texts for preaching is necessary, in which one attends to the biblical text while also conversing with scholarship on anti-racism. This hermeneutic recognizes the complexity of a modern racialized society with persons at varying intersections of privilege and listens for where that reality is mirrored in scripture. Such a hermeneutic also recognizes the personal implications of racial awareness on behalf of whites, an awareness that often elicits shame and guilt. For whites who feel implicated by discussions of race but paralyzed by their emotional reaction, this hermeneutic finds biblical resources that accompany whites on their journey of metanoia.

What strategies for confrontation and resistance existed for people committed to a vision of the peaceable Kingdom of God? How did people of faith and conviction voice and enact opposition against powerful institutions of tyranny and expressions of injustice? This study explores select examples of how rhetorical strategies of resistance, identified in post-colonial theory, contributed to robust counter-narratives in the book of Revelation. Specifically, images of beasts (Rev 13) and exploitative sexual practices (Rev 2; 17–18) will be considered.

Review of "I, You, and the Word 'God': Finding Meaning in the Song of Songs" (Eisenbrauns, 2016)

The question of whether Joseph and Aseneth is “Jewish or Christian?” is one with which almost every scholar who works on this imaginative tale has grappled. A decade ago, John Collins published an article posing this very question in the title (“Joseph and Aseneth: Jewish or Christian?” [JSP, 2005]), which captured and reinforced the terms of the debate. The binary remains operative in recent work on the narrative as well (e.g., Rivka Nir’s Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book [2012]). Yet, such a formulation assumes that “Judaism” and “Christianity” were distinct entities without overlap, when it is now widely acknowledged that that these two categories were not mutually exclusive or easily identifiable in antiquity. In this paper, I contend that the question of whether Joseph and Aseneth is “Jewish or gentile” is more profitable for contextualizing Aseneth’s tale. I offer fresh evidence in favor of situating the narrative’s origins among Jews in Greco-Roman Egypt. I place Joseph and Aseneth alongside other imaginative fictions developed in antiquity, among both Jews and gentile Christians, in order to show that its author was a participant in a Hellenistic Jewish interpretive tradition in Egypt that retold the story of Joseph the patriarch as a way of advocating a particular construal of proper boundaries between Jews and the host-land culture of Egypt. The paper closes with methodological reflection on the relationship between fictional setting and socio-historical context.

Not unlike Hebrew narrative and prophetic discourse, the poetic landscape of the Psalms is characterized by a multiplicity of speaking voices. Already in Ps 2 we hear alongside the psalmist’s own words also those of the nations, of YHWH’s anointed king, and of YHWH himself. Such lyrical polyphony (i.e., shifts between different 1st-person speakers) is created throughout the Psalter by means of speech quotations and dialogical constructions. Building on R. Jacobson’s stimulating study of this aspect of the Psalter (Many are Saying, T&T Clark, 2004), my paper addresses the question of ambiguity in the voicing of the Psalms. The literary phenomenon of voices that defy straightforward speaker identification has been detected elsewhere in Hebrew poetry (especially in Jeremiah) and I intend to demonstrate that it is employed for various rhetorical and theological purposes also in the Psalter. Of particular significance in this regard are sections of discourse which may be assigned either to YHWH or to the psalmist. The purpose of my paper is not to argued for one or the other option, but to probe the function of such ambiguity of voice as a lyrical element in its own right. The paper is structured into two parts: first, I will introduce the research context of voicing and polyphony in the Psalter by highlighting representative passages. As a pivot to the next section, I will make some suggestions for how recent studies of Jeremiah’s lyric poetry provide a hermeneutical lens for polyphony and ambiguity in the Psalter. Second, I will discuss in detail Psalms 45 and 101, both of which present excellent showcases for divine-human speaker ambiguity. I will address the place and function of this ambiguity within the compositional design of these poems and show how it contributes to their structure and message. Reaching beyond the individual compositions, I will also give some indications regarding the significance of this ambiguity in the poems’ canonical context – Ps 45 as part of the Korahite collection of Pss 42-49, and Ps 101 as the sequel to the “YHWH reigns” collection of Pss 93-100.

In recent years, much unease has been expressed in some quarters of papyrological studies (and from scholars in related fields) arising from the discipline’s reliance on paleographical methods for dating manuscripts. This paper seeks to illuminate a factor relevant to the dating of Biblical manuscripts that does not rely on handwriting samples or even the “general appearance” of manuscripts. That factor is the way the text is divided. Building on research presented at the 2014 and 2015 meetings of this Section, this paper will seek to show from a number of specific examples that a general progression appears to be traceable, in both OT and NT manuscripts, from less frequent textual breaks in the earlier papyri to more frequent ones in the fourth- and fifth-century majuscules and beyond; moreover, that a special relationship exists between the “chapter” numbers placed in the margin of Codex Vaticanus and the textual divisions of earlier Biblical manuscripts. While this research (still in its infancy) may hold the most promise for helping to identify the stage of textual development represented by the text of a manuscript, it may also serve as a factor to consider in dating the manuscripts themselves. The paper will end with some reflections on the dating of P. Bod. XIV-XV (P75).

Codex Bezae lacks the Greek text of Acts 10.4–14, but the Latin text survives. Damage to the manuscript has allowed traces of ink from the now-lost Greek text to be transferred onto the Latin page of Acts 10.4–14. They preserve a mirror image of text from the facing page at the time of the damage. Reading the traces of ink from the Greek text is difficult and similar to reading a fragmentary papyrus or palimpsest, but the offset ink can be deciphered with the help of photo-editing software. As a result, the surviving Greek text from Acts 10.4–9 in Codex Bezae is presented here for the first time.

Chinese and Jews: A Chinese Reading of the Eschatological Restoration of Israel

With its aphoristic character and elusive relationship to the immediate discursive context, 2 Cor 3:17b—Paul’s assertion, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”—has generated significant debate over the referential range of the noun elutheria, frequently defined as some configuration of freedom from the law, sin, and death. A few interpreters, noting the motif of veil-removal in vv. 16 and 18, have suggested that the primary form of liberty in view is freedom from occluded perception that Paul claims afflicts both the Jewish people in their reading of Torah (2 Cor 3:15) and those who reject Paul’s embodied gospel (2 Cor 4:3–4). In defense of this minority position, the present essay expounds the thesis that Paul’s assertion in 2 Cor 3:17b reflects his exegesis of Isa 61:1 LXX, in which the prophetic figure identifies his reception of the Spirit of the Lord as the grounds of his mission to proclaim liberation to captives, including those captive to blindness. In support of the preceding proposal, this essay highlights significant lexical and thematic parallels between these texts, particularly their unique use of the phrase pneuma kuriu and mutual portrayal of the Spirit’s liberative activity. Further support for this intertextual relationship derives from the additional resonances of Isa 61 in 2 Cor 3–4, ultimately demonstrating the capacity of this reading to clarify the discursive function of 2 Cor 3:17b in its context. For Paul, the Spirit authorizes the herald’s proclamation of liberty to prisoners of darkness, restoring their sight so that they might view the glory of the Lord with unobstructed gaze (2 Cor 3:18).

It is well-known that the Medinan surahs are marked by an emphasis and proliferation of slogan- and refrain-like formulae that emphasise the name of God and his principal qualities or attributes (usually at the end of the surahs’ sub-sections). Borrowing from the terminology from New Testament studies, I define these utterances as doxological-theophoric formulae, even though verbs of praise are not necessarily used. The nature and functions of these formulae have been studied by scholars such as Neuwirth, Sinai, and Robinson, who have highlighted various stylistic, compositional, intratextual, and theological functions (e.g., parallelism, rhyme, section demarcation, didactic emphasis). Other scholars, like Moubarac, Gimaret, and Byrne, have attended to the theophoric contents of these formulae and have attempted to identify a kind of theology of the name, focusing on the shared etymologies and semantics of the names and attributes. In this paper, a third perspective on these formulae is provided. I argue that the Qur’an pursued a determined and strategically informed dialogue with its Biblical co-texts and companions (i.e., the Jews and the Christians). This hypothesis is furthermore based on the premise that the Medinan phase was characterized by an increased knowledge of and familiarity with late antique Biblical theology, taken in its broadest sense. However, this knowledge and familiarity developed in an atmosphere of increased ambivalence and enmity. Prominent Qur’anic points of dissent included rabbinic ars rhetorica and patristic/Christological debates, both of which were condemned as sectarian, corrupted, polemical, and sophistic teachings by the Qur’an (see e.g., Q3:65-67, 71, 77 on Abraham’s true ?anif-hood over against the claims of his connection with the Tawrat or the Injil, and the allegations of ta?rif). In the emergent Qur’anic milieu we witness an acute awareness that the Jews and the Christians had gone off on a theological tangent (e.g., Crone, Hawting, Wansbrough). Instead of safeguarding a perceived original and simple monotheism, Judaism and Christianity had fallen prey to theological disputation and sophistry (McAuliffe). This was to be perceived as a sign of crisis and aberration. Therefore, in order not to be ?sucked into’ the same kind of vicious theological spiral as the Jews and the Christians, the Medinan revelations were shored up by these slogan- and refrain-like formulae that inculcated an elementary theophoric doxology based on a finite set of divine qualities (omniscience, omnipotence, beneficence, indulgence, uniqueness, perfection, and reliability). Simple doxological formulae provided the Qur’an with an ‘immune system’ against theological sophistry and complication. This strategy paid off in terms of theological crystallization and in terms of religious transmission (cf. the doctrinal mode of religiosity as argued by Harvey Whitehouse). As such, this can be interpreted as the rhetorical-formulaic counterpart to what Joseph Lowry has designated as the legal minimalism of the Qur’an, its strategies of ‘less-is-more’.

The Decalogue was a textual monument. Monument making in the ancient Near East primarily involved the materialization and perpetuation of communication and relationships, so Near Eastern monumentality was closely associated with texts. Because the text was a material object itself, it could in some cases carry this monumentality alone. The latter half of Exodus preserves a cultural memory of monument making. The first half of the book mainly describes YHWH’s battle with Egypt, so an account of monument making would be expected by the ancient audience following his victory. The text then relates the giving of a law code (Ex. 21-23), the erection of steles and an altar (Ex. 24), the building of a temple (Ex. 25-31), and various other descriptions of monuments apparently marking YHWH’s newly established kingship over Israel. Opening these accounts and connecting them to the narratives preceding them is the Decalogue, which acts as the text of a victory stele for YHWH. The Decalogue borrows phraseology, motifs and the rhetorical structure of Northwest Semitic monumental inscriptions. Beyond this it fulfills the primary function of Northwest Semitic monuments by materializing communication between a king and his people and establishing a relationship between them. The Decalogue thus became more than a collection of laws, a treaty, or even the memory of a monument. The text was a monument itself.

How did early Christians leaders persuade wealthy benefactors and benefactresses of the legitimacy of their teachings over against rival teachers? 1 Timothy provides a fascinating case study for considering the politics that surrounded the sensitive negotiation of authority between early Christians leaders and the patrons and hosts of their private home gatherings. Early Christian leaders, like the author of 1 Timothy, writing in the name of Paul, had to walk a tight rope of persuading and sometimes correcting the intellectual and theological aesthetics of their patrons to prefer their own distinguished “intellectual goods” over against rival teachers, whom they rhetorically denigrated as heterodox, demon possessed, and greedy charlatans without excessively offending their wealthy audiences, lest they lose their support. In the case of 1 Timothy, the author has the audacious task of not only persuading patrons and patronesses of supporting his own correct teachings, but to also recuse themselves of the authority to teach and to coordinate teachers—such responsibilities should be left in the hands of those who have proper apostolic credentials. One underappreciated tactic of the author of 1 Timothy’s negotiation of this political minefield, is the author’s representation of those who possess the “inheritance” (1 Tim. 6:20) of what has been handed down from the apostles as holding a monopoly upon what constitutes true “piety” (eusebeia). When we survey the ancient cultural milieu of early Christianity, we can begint o appreciate the cultural capital of this seemingly banal and overlooked term. Claims to piety proliferated within Roman imperial propaganda and monumental inscriptions honoring the status and virtues of wealthy elites. This public self-representation of pietas or eusebeia both reinforced and was undergirded by dominant ideologies about who was particularly fit to rule and wield authority within the political civic sphere. As a representative case study of this civic discourse on piety, I will examine a set of early second-century c.e. inscriptions from Ephesus that promote the piety and generosity of the wealthy benefactor, Gaius Vibius Salutaris. While the author of 1 Timothy might not be sociologically categorized among such elite, this does not preclude the author from participating within this elite discourse on piety nor from re-describing this virtue toward his own social and political ends. I argue that an analysis of this elite discourse on piety within the domain of honorary inscriptions can illuminate our understanding of 1 Timothy’s own rhetorical use of this virtue in the author’s attempt to legitimate his teachings over against rival religious experts as well as to compel benefactors to support his contested notion of an ideal church order.

Before I embark in my argument I want to say categorically that it is not my goal to reduce the sick and disabled people discussed in my paper to literary metaphors. My goal is to examine the social context of their lives through a lens that seeks to expose the oppression imposed upon them by an empowered elite who, not only had little concern for their suffering, but benefited from it. In a world so influenced by Christian history, the idea of the victim now resonates deeply within most cultures. James Alison states that in the trajectory of history, from “a world where nobody understood the viewpoint of the victim;” it is now commonplace to feel that “we would all be right to side with the victim.” As a physician, it is difficult to miss the fact that the Bible is full of sick people. It does not strain credulity to suggest that the evangelists intended to convey more than physical infirmity in the stories about sick persons. As such, I submit that illness functions as a metaphor for exclusion. I examine seven cases of illness in the New Testament against the criteria for medical diagnosis and that established by René Girard for scapegoats. In each, the healing makes a much larger statement than the restoration of good health for the protagonists. I believe that Jesus’ intervention in each case is an act of resistance consistent with Heim’s criteria for the reversal of scapegoating. While ancient literature is replete with the rescues of innocent victims, Jesus’ interventions are unique in that, in each case, these victims have been adjudicated as guilty of transgressing societal or religious norms. Jesus lays bare the hypocrisy of these mechanisms of exclusion. The ramifications of this have been profound in human history.

Papyrus Amherst 63 seems to be the product of a culturally-diverse Aramaic-speaking community in Egypt in perhaps the early Hellenistic period. Its contents, which include multiple religious texts of varying lengths and one long narrative, demonstrate the authors’ perceived connections to Syria-Palestine, to Mesopotamia, and possibly the Zagros region. While many of the gods and goddesses are well-known from Egyptian Aramaic documents from the Persian period, the papyrus expands our knowledge of several deities and reveals new aspects of their cults. This is especially true for the main goddess of the papyrus and arguably its liturgical anchor, Nanay, who, outside of the papyrus, is best known in Aramean religion from the Parthian period. On the papyrus, however, she appears in her ancient Mesopotamian roles as the spouse of Nabu, a love goddess, and a patroness of kings, but also in new guises (e.g., the spouse of Ba?alshamayn, a Dove, a Cow, etc.). This paper explores how P. Amherst 63 fills a gap in our knowledge of Aramean pantheon and cult, especially between the Persian and Parthian periods.

The origin and character of the so-called ‘Western Text’ and its role and place in the textual history of the New Testament has been a challenge and puzzle to historians of the textual tradition of the New Testament for 250 years (ever since Semler, 1767). This presentation will (a) offer an assessment of the new Editio Critica Maior of Acts (the book in which the challenge of the ‘Western Text’ stand out most clearly), and (b) investigate whether the resources utilized in the production of this edition—in particular, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method—provide new evidence and/or perspectives that shed light on the textual history of Acts and its distinctive issues.

The idea that a certain ethnic or social group is historically related to the ancient Israelites is a widespread phenomenon in Africa. In some cases the identification is made from a 'we'-perspective about 'our' group, such as the Lembas in Zimbabwe and South Africa. In other cases it is made from a 'they'-perspective about 'their' group, such as Moritz Merker's claim about the Maasai of East Africa. Merker served as a colonial officer in German East Africa, and his Die Masai: Ethnographische Monographie eines ostafrikanischen Semitenvolkes (1904, 19102) is generally seen as the first ethnographic study of the Maasai, and as such it continues to receive attention. However, the ethnographic focus of the book is framed by a discussion about the past of the Maasai, arguing—with reference to contemporary German Assyriology and Biblical Studies—that they are a Semitic people originating in Arabia and sharing roots with the ancient Israelites. The present paper will discuss Merker's claim from a postcolonial perspective, arguing that its central idea of a non-African background of the Maasai reflects Merker's colonial, interpretive context.

Despite the importance of the Song of Songs in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, relatively little study has been given to visual interpretation of the Song. I apply J. Cherl Exum’s method of visual exegesis to the Song of Songs in The Saint John’s Bible, an illuminated biblical manuscript completed in 2011 through a collaboration between English calligrapher Donald Jackson and the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Through its use of repeated visual motifs across multiple illuminations, The Saint John’s Bible creates a dense, imaginative web of intertextuality within the canon. Its treatment of the Song of Songs connects it most closely with Temple symbolism and with Jesus’s relationship with his disciples. In linking the Song with the Temple, it draws a parallel between the intimacy of God’s presence in the Temple and the intimacy of the lovers in the Song. The Song’s association with Jesus alludes to Jesus’s encounter with Mary Magdalene in John 20, and suggests medieval Western liturgical traditions depicting the female beloved in the Song as the Virgin Mary, crying out for her son at the foot of the cross. This liturgical and christological visual exegesis of the Song guides the reader to construct new possible meanings in the Song, retrieving the medieval tradition of reading the Song through the lens of the divine-human relationship. Further, this Bible’s use of the medieval medium of an illustrated manuscript of the entire Bible enables it to express visual-exegetical possibilities less possible for other forms of biblical art. In creating these possibilities, The Saint John’s Bible aims to inspire the theological-spiritual imaginations of biblical readers today.

The ideological orientation and self-understanding of the reader affect the reading of the text. Certain textual topoi, such as despair, anxiety, depression, or violence, may trigger responses in readers who are well acquainted with matters of mental well-being. Whereas readers of biblical literature are faced with literary expressions of extreme mental and physical anguish, narrative characters with death wishes (i.e. Jonah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Job), characters who commit suicide (Abimelech son of Gideon, Samson, Saul, Saul’s armor-bearer, Ahithphel, Zimri, and Judas), and writers who face life’s challenges (Paul and John), these typically do not affect the interpretive process. However, when teaching adolescents and populations at risk for mental health issues, these literary expressions can lead to closer readings of the text that inform the larger learning community. In this presentation, I will present some sample readings that will demonstrate the value of reading in community. Take aways will include suggestions for meaningful classroom dialogue, ways to affirm the worth of those in the mental health community, and pedagogical approaches to reading texts in new ways that connect with today’s students.

to be supplied

Ippolito Scarsella (1550-1620), commonly known by his contemporaries and friends as Scarsellino, was a Ferrarese artist who produced Post-Trent religious paintings in the Mannerist style. Considered amongst the “Reformers” in late sixteenth-century Italy, his theological iconography anticipates the Baroque style of the next century. Two works by Scarsellino are housed in Boston collections. "The Way to Calvary" resides in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and "Christ and Saint Peter at the Sea of Galilee," the primary focus of this paper, is in the Harvard Art Museums in neighboring Cambridge. Through a comparison with other scenes of walking on water, the form and content of the picture will be discussed using an art historical methodology with a theological bent, attending to the commentaries and doctrinal sources that may have influenced Scarsellino at this time in the history of religious art.

One of the points where linguistics and philology often intertwine is in the explanation of apparent linguistic anomalies in Biblical Hebrew. Because we are dependent on texts that both preserve authentically ancient linguistic realities and include secondary features characteristic of later linguistic and/or interpretive traditions, comprehensiveness demands we judiciously combine cross-linguistic analysis with language- and corpus-specific considerations. The present study, focusing on the alternative perfective past syntagms terem yiqtol and terem qatal, mixes important observations from the realm of general linguistics, especially as regards the Biblical Hebrew verbal system, with key considerations of a more local character centering on, inter alia, text, genre, and discrepancies of apparent diachronic significance in the various manifestations of ancient Hebrew, especially, but not only, cases of probable mismatch between the Tiberian Masoretic written and reading traditions. The investigation examines the extent to which the anomaly under consideration should be deemed a genuine linguistic irregularity born of the inconsistency inherent in human language, as opposed to an accidental by-product of the fusion of diverse linguistic traditions, and seeks to account for that portion of the anomaly that must be considered representative of authentic language usage. It is argued that any sound approach to ancient Hebrew will incorporate a merger of the philological and linguistic disciplines. However, far from representing a revolution in this regard, it is argued that both linguists and philologists routinely blend approaches. It is hoped, especially in the context of joint academic ventures such as the present one, that scholars representing both fields continue to draw on one another’s contributions to the mutual benefit of their respective areas of enquiry and beyond.

This paper will focus on the recently published material of J.B. Lightfoot's interpretation of 1 Peter.

In the 1990s, Barnard College pioneered the “Reacting to the Past” model of engaging in role-playing to understand history. Building on that model, I have developed role-playing games that have had great success in helping students to achieve desired learning outcomes in undergraduate New Testament classes. This paper explores two role-playing games that have fared well in New Testament classrooms and suggests ways in which the development of role-playing activities can benefit New Testament courses. The first part of the paper explores two different role-playing games: “The Canon Game” and “The Jesus Game.” “The Canon Game” is a role-playing game that aims to expose student-players to the content of first and second century literature while immersing them in the world of the third-century church councils in which the process of canonization gradually unfolded. Likewise, “The Jesus Game” is a role-playing game that introduces student-players to the cultural milieu of first-century Jerusalem while asking them to evaluate Jesus’ work from the perspective of an active social, political, or religious group of that time. After describing both of these games more fully, this section of the paper introduces the setting, characters, goals, assignments, and game play of these games. After outlining the details of these two role-playing games, the paper argues that the use of such role-playing games has enormous pedagogical benefits, despite some of the challenges of implementing role-playing activities in the classroom. This will be demonstrated at the conclusion of the presentation with a sample of game materials and a brief test-play as time allows.

The divine speeches in Job 38–41 employ terms related to the tabernacle and its appurtenances in order to depict Earth as a tabernacle and its ecosystems as sacred. This paper contributes to prior ecological readings of Job 38–41 by highlighting the ecological implications of tabernacle terms in these chapters. Over eighty-five percent of the occurrences in the Hebrew Bible of ’eden (“base”), miškan (“tabernacle”), and badîm (“poles”) appear in descriptions of the tabernacle or of the appurtenances of the tabernacle or temple. In the divine speeches, these tabernacle terms depict Earth’s foundations, the onager’s habitat, and Leviathan’s limbs (Job 38:6; 39:6; 41:4 [12]). Furthermore, nine additional terms in Job 38-41 appear in the Torah’s priestly portrayals of the tabernacle and its objects more than in any single book of the Hebrew Bible outside of the Torah. Multiple occurrences of these terms in Job 38–41 describe the sea, hawk, Behemoth, and especially Leviathan. This paper applies the three steps of ecological hermeneutics as described by Norman C. Habel in Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics (SBL, 2008) to a lexical analysis of tabernacle terms in the divine speeches. First, I critique anthropocentric interpretations of these ecocentric speeches with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Then, I analyze how the Joban theophany’s innovative application of tabernacle terms to Earth and its ecosystems reveals God’s identification with Earth and encourages Job and readers to empathize with and revere Earth, including ecosystems and fauna maligned in other biblical texts. Finally, I retrieve the voices of the stars as they celebrate this planetary tabernacle, of the raven’s young as they cry to God, of the horse as it snorts with theophanic splendor, and of the onager, ostrich, horse, and Leviathan as they laugh with scorn at human violence (Job 38:7, 41; 39:7, 18–22; 41:21 [29]). The Joban theophany challenges anthropocentric assumptions of other biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts and traditions by depicting God’s care for and delight in the sea, desert, Leviathan, and animals labeled in Lev 11 as unclean or an abomination. The application of tabernacle terms to Earth, sea, saltings, and fauna in Job 38–41 encourages humankind to treat this planet and its ecosystems with the same reverence that priests expressed toward the Holy of Holies. The divine speeches provide a vital theological foundation for an urgent ecological revolution in how humankind relates to this planetary tabernacle, its holy habitats, and its sacred species.

In Leviticus 18, H uses a variety of negative words (??? ,??? ,??? ,????? ,???) to describe forbidden actions. These words, which convey judgements from shame in the sense of socially marked ostracization to a more general sense of disgust, work together to form a shame typology in the chapter. In this paper, I will employ a cognitive linguistic theory of lexicography to describe each of these near-synonyms. Geeraerts delineates three important aspects of lexical semantic structure: 1) the importance of protoypicality effects for lexical structure; 2) the intractible nature of polysemy; and 3) the structured nature of polysemy. Each of these aspects has a blurring effect on the nuances that mark senses of a lexical item, but when applied to a cluster of near-synonyms, they help elucidate how the language is used. Leviticus 18’s shame pedagogy relies on such a cluster of near-synonyms framed by a theological xenophobia. The application of cognitive linguistics within this framework elucidates the ways in which H uses shame to teach Israel to obey.

Elijah, clothed in a garment of hair, proclaiming God’s judgment on Baal, and meeting God in a whisper on Horeb, is one of the most fruitful figural characters in the scriptural narrative. This paper will seek to illustrate that figural legacy in a particular place of intensity. That is, the figure of Elijah becomes a crucial exemplar and biblical root for the mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans, as they sought to defend their preaching mission and radical poverty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even more, once the figure of Elijah was taken up in this way, his influence begins to spread – he becomes important not just in the defense of the mendicant charism, but as a broader exemplar of the radical discipleship Francis and his followers sought to take up. When the new mendicant way of life came under attack in the mid-thirteenth century, certain elements of Elijah’s narrative were taken up as scriptural defenses against the charge of novelty. Mendicant apologiae readily deployed 1 Kings 17, where Elijah is commanded by God to go and be fed by the widow in Sidon, and 1 Kings 19, where Elijah is fed by an angel of the Lord, as biblical warrants for their wandering begging. Elijah’s rough and simply dress (2 Kings 1.8) also bespoke a kind of Franciscanism avant la lettre. But these several proof-texts were only the beginning of a kind of gradual contemplative exploration of the whole narrative of Elijah the Tishbite as a figural type of rich and varied applications, from preaching to sacramental theology to mystical union. This paper will explore the figure of Elijah as he is taken up in this complex contemplative way among Franciscan exegetes, focusing especially on Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (d. 1274). My exploration will demonstrate the centrality of Elijah to early Franciscan identity, but, more generally, it will provide an exemplary case of “pre-critical” medieval figural exegesis, illustrating the theological fertility of the full narrative scope of a scriptural figure such as Elijah. Beyond evidentiary “proof-texting” or shallow allegorizing, medieval scriptural hermeneutics provides ample contemplative space to allow Elijah, in all his narrative complexity, to take root in thought and practice.

Umberto Eco’s semiotics provide a theoretical bridge from text to lived reality. Using 1 Peter 2:1-3 as a test case, this paper will show, first, that proper attention to the object that prompts the language of nursing expands the signs to include ?p?t???µ? and ???st??. Not only the act of nursing, but the cultural units connected with it, such as Gellus’ Attic Nights 12.1, ground an abductive reading from which the target of the metaphor emerges. Furthermore, Eco’s semiotics heuristically frame the difficulty of determining whether 1 Peter is attempting to confirm or change the identity of its addressees. However, 1 Peter 2:1-3 does contribute to a subtle critique against conformity with the society in which they are embedded.

The present paper seeks to honor Professor Jo Ann Hackett’s work in the book of Judges. In this programmatic study, I sketch out a proposal for the merger of an early Judges compilation (ca. Judg 3–18*) with the emergent Samuel–Kings corpus sometime during the late monarchic period. The nexus of this combinatory effort is concentrated in 1 Sam 7–15, with a sprawling network of editorial interventions stretching as far back as Judg 19. Proto-Judges (which would have ended with the transition to the monarchy in an inchoate version of 1 Sam 8*; 10:17–27*; 12:1–5,[ff.?]) had already circulated in the same Levitical-Priestly circles as the so-called Prophetic Record (spanning much of 1 Sam 9–2 Kgs 9*) and its monarchic-era additions. Building on the work of previous scholars (e.g., Richter, Cross, Halpern and Vanderhooft, and many others), I propose that the two large corpora were brought together by a pre-exilic Deuteronomistic Historian.

In the Fourth Gospel, John does not report Jesus’ casting out demons, which is one of the most prominent aspects of Jesus’ healing ministry in the Synoptic Gospels (e.g. Mark 1:21-28, 32; 3:11-12). And Jesus’ healing ministry is closely related to the physical illnesses, but not to demon-possession (e.g. John 4:46-54; 5:1-9; 6:1-2). But this does not suggest that John has little interest in demon-possession or Jesus’ victory over the demonic powers. The controversy between Jesus and the Judean leaders (John 8:48, 52; cf. also 7:20; 8:44; 10:20-21) seems to parallel the “Beelezul” controversy in the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 3:22-27 pars.; cf. Mark 3:21) both in the language of demon-possession (echein daimonion/echein Beelzebul [ho archon ton daimonion]) and the narrative structure (the controversy about demon-possession being followed by Jesus’ Judean opponents’ accusation of him for his demon-possession). John also highlights that Jesus healed the blind young man by the power of God’s Spirit, but not by the demonic power (John 9:1-3, 31-33; 10:21; cf. Matt 12:22, 28; Luke 3:20). According to John, Jesus not only knew that Satan, the father of lies and ruler of this world, was already working to deceive people (John 8:44; 12:31) and would make Judas of Iscariot, one of his twelve disciples, hand him over to death (John 6:70-71; 13:27), but he also taught his disciples that his death (and his return to the Father) would bring judgment upon Satan (John 12:31; 16:11; cf. John 16:33). And the victory over the demonic powers is a controlling theme even in 1 John (2:13-14; 3:8; 4:4; 5:5, 18-20). In the present paper, I will examine John’s perception of demon-possession and his theological emphasis on the victory over the demonic powers laid out in the Johannine literature and their possible influences in other early Christian writings (e.g. Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenaeus).

Anxiety, depression and suicide among teens (WHO, 2014)? Bible fatigue among young people (Pollefeyt & Bieringer, 2010)? Affective social competence in adolescence (Booker & Dunsmore, 2016)? How do we put these concerns together and respond to them effectively? The 2015 Disney-Pixar film Inside Out provides an avenue for us to find answers to these questions. This film allows the viewers to meet our primary emotions – joy, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness – through the story of young Riley who has been uprooted from her wintery Midwest life to settle in sunny San Francisco. I suggest that this film’s treatment of Riley’s conflicting emotions on how to integrate the newness of everything – the city, their house, and her school – offers a great entry-point for students to name their most basic emotions and explore with them how emotions and feelings play vital roles in one’s life and in one’s faith – and doubts – both on the personal and communal levels. I will discuss this proposal in three stages. First, I will let the film dialogue with Brueggemann’s seasons of life and the scheme of orientation-disorientation-new orientation as a way to understand our being human in the psalms (Brueggemann, 1984, 2014). Second, I will briefly discuss the vital role of lament or disorientation psalms and what we costly lose as a community when we forget and forego these psalms. Finally, I will share how this activity and discussion (for example, Psalm 88) are helpful in detecting despair, anxiety, suicide, depression, anger, trauma, etc. among students and in discovering affective social competences among the youth, especially the students who are most at risks.

This paper posits that a continued critical biblical hermeneutics that incorporates trauma theory and ecological hermeneutics is needed for the evaluation and enrichment of how select passages from Matthew 27 and 28 were recontextualized and used in ministry in the context of post-disaster settings like the aftermath of the 2013 super typhoon Haiyan, known as Yolanda in the Philippines. Since the nation lacks professional psychologists to aid in stress debriefing, this gap is usually fulfilled by volunteers like the religious and lay people from the Roman Catholic church. Focusing on the examples found in the book "Desperately Seeking God's Saving Action: Yolanda Survivors' Hope Beyond Heartbreaking Lamentations" (Gaspar, 2014), this paper analyzes the ways in which the biblical texts he used in the book, particularly Mt 27:45-61 and Mt 28:1-10, were employed two months after the disaster by the missionaries in order to help in the stress-debriefing and to promote coping strategies for the survivors in the island of Leyte. The paper examines the hermeneutical issues in need of critical attention for a better recontextualization of the Bible in a post-disaster setting: (a) the post-traumatic and ecologically devastated setting; (b) indigenous strategies to deal with the spirits and the culture of the people; (c) the various contexts in which the Bible was used (Bible sharing, prayers, and rituals for the restless spirits of the victims); (d) the choice of biblical texts to be employed; (e) the hermeneutical methods used; and (f) the influence of the liturgical context of Lent. At the end, it offers some suggestions on how to enrich the use of the Bible in Gaspar's book which can be employed as a potential resource in post-environmental trauma or stress-debriefing ministry in the future.

Aligning Bible translations with the original text has a venerable and mixed history, popularised by the hand-coding of groups such as Online Bible and CrossWire. Bibles have been successfully tagged in a few languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and German, but each takes about a decade of a scholar's time. Computational methods are hampered by the limitations of Strongs tags (which do not separate Hebrew pronoun and prepositional affixes), the small Hebrew vocabulary (so one word has many meanings), differences in textual sources, and a very high proportion of rare words. The Greek New Testament lacks many of these problems but its smaller size and wider textual variants reduce accurate alignment. Additionally, most translations are not as verbatim as the King James. This project is based on a set of Hebrew and Greek tags which are aligned to academic lexicons (BDB & LSJ) and have separate tags for affixes, with options for major sets of textual variants. Rare words are linked with similar-meaning popular words during alignment. The target language is stemmed by removing repetitive prefixes and endings and then put through the Berkeley aligner with the tags representing the original text. Swahili was chosen for a proof of concept, because each verb can have half a dozen one-syllable prefixes and suffixes surrounding a small root, making this an extreme test for computational analysis. A survey of the results suggested several post-processing methods for increasing the accuracy, and ways to highlight individual words or phrases that required manual checking. The output can also be used to create a lookup dictionary between Greek/Hebrew words and the translation language. The techniques and tools assembled for this project can be used for other languages, though adaptations for specific languages produce better results. Nevertheless, a quick trial with English and Spanish Bibles produced usable results even without tweaking for the characteristics of those languages. The methodology and coding is being released on a public licence as part of the project www.STEPBible.org of Tyndale House, Cambridge.

Early Christian heresiology required its heretical subjects to be thoroughly engaged in various forms of altering the “truth” and its hegemonic expressions circulating between the second and the fourth century CE. Heresiologists such as Irenaeus of Lyon, the anonymous author of “Refutation of all Heresies,” and Epiphanius of Salamis, depicted their opponents as being engaged in the creation of a derivative textual and ritual reality, through corruption of the Christian tradition, falsification of received teachings, modification of biblical texts, and pseudepigraphy. The paper takes into account the above three heresiological corpora, yet it focuses especially on Epiphanius of Cyprus’ fourth-century depiction of the groups of the Nicolaitans and the Gnostikoi (Panarion, ch. 24 and 25). This paper suggests that one of the main epistemological functions of the early Christian heresiological accusation of lying and deception is to describe its opponents as operating within the network of a second-order Platonic world of simulacra and phantasms. It also proposes that heretical deception became a mandatory internal element of ancient Christian heresiological discourses as an efficient Platonic stratagem of denying any degree of ontological substance to the practices, literary productions, and religious beliefs of other, rival early Christian groups.

In novels set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, it is not surprising that the Bible appears as a significant artefact, or that its contents are referred to and quoted. Christianity may not be as dominant a force in these islands as it once was, but its influence remains strong at least for some. In Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy (The Black House (2011), The Lewis Man (2012) and The Chessmen (2013)) many characters demonstrate biblical literacy in their speech and in the way they make sense of events. Gigs’s reading of the Bible each night on the expedition in The Black House, followed on the last night by his Nathan-like words of judgement, gives him the status of prophet to those present. The young boy’s reading of the meal prepared to welcome him home as the feast prepared for the Prodigal Son in The Lewis Man makes his foster-father’s punishment all the more shocking. The narrator of the scene in The Chessmen in which Donald Murray is tried in front of the Church’s Judicial Committee comments on the status of the Bible and the subjective nature of interpretations of its texts. Further evidence from Coffin Road (2016), a novel set in both Lewis and Edinburgh in which the Lewis Trilogy’s detective appears, confirms that interpretation of biblical texts such as the parables is character-specific. This paper will argue that the contrasting ways in which characters react to the Bible offer insight into their self-understanding, while simultaneously undermining the narrative thrust of detective novels towards a definitive interpretation of “events”.

The Indo-Western woman living in urban India aptly captures the dilemma and delirium of a globalized identity. A fusion of Indian and Western cultural elements, the body of the Indo-Western woman is transformed into a culturally hybrid body that almost but not quite belongs to either cultures. At the same time, the willing participation of Indian women in western cultures depicts them as sexually deviant and culturally corrupt and their hybrid bodies threaten to contaminate the traditional but patriarchal view of a nationalized India. Thus, the sexually deviant body of the Indo-Western woman living in urban India is punished as her sexual assault and sexual violence is justified, reasoned, and condoned based on a regressive view of nationalism. Biblical scholars have argued and agreed that the character of Jezebel in the book of Revelation 2:20-25 is not a foreign woman but rather is a hybrid woman. John of Patmos names the Christian prophet in Thyatira Jezebel, signifying her assimilation into the Roman empire. The author of Revelation envisions a new empire of God that is pure and distinct from the earthly imperial powers. The culturally hybrid body of Jezebel participating and colluding with the Roman empire threatens to contaminate his nationalistic vision and therefore must be contained and punished. Thus, one could argue that like the Indo-Western woman whose sexual violence is defended on the basis of a limited vision of nationalism and nation, so also the assault of Jezebel in the book of Revelation is justified and validated on the basis of her cultural hybridity that threatens to dismantle and deconstruct the new empire of God. Although, Jezebel and the Indo-Western woman are different, they are connected in their hybridity. This paper reads the character of Jezebel through the contextual experiences of the Indo-Western women living in urban India. Jezebel and the Indo-Western women as sexually deviant women compromise the vision of the nation through their cultural hybridity. In other words, cultural hybridity is used by patriarchy to justify actions of sexual violence and sexual assault against women’s bodies. Therefore, Jezebel read through the lens of the Indo-Western woman is targeted because she willingly chooses to participate in a culture that is different from her own and becomes not just a seductive body but also a traitorous body that must be punished. By reading the character of Jezebel through the Indo-Western woman’s eyes, I seek to construct a new way of interpreting Revelation 2:20-25 that pushes beyond the identity of Jezebel as a hybrid prophetess and argue that her cultural hybridity threatening to dismantle the vision of empire is first used to sexualize her body and then later justifies her terrorization and silences her voice both in the written text and in the lived Indian context. Hence, in the name of nation Jezebel and the Indo-Western woman are victimized on account of their culturally hybridity.

Over the past several years, we have been exploring the orthographic character of the Ethiopic Old Testament. By modifying and applying computer scripts developed for the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament research project, we have been able to generate an immense amount of data related to Ge’ez orthography. Some of this data we have analyzed and presented in previous years. We have explored topics such as homophone letters, the development of orthography over time, and orthographic differences between Old Testament books. This year, we will focus on finalizing our observations and exploring some previously unanswered questions. Specifically, this paper will focus on three key aspects of the orthographic nature of the Ethiopic Old Testament. First, we will analyze individual words that have changed orthographically over time. Second, we will explore the distinctive characteristics of individual books in order to understand better what makes, as an example, Ruth orthographically different from the Psalms. Our final point will center on a key finding from our previous studies: the major shift in the orthographic development of Ge’ez that happened in the 17th century. In this paper, we will explore possible reasons for this phenomenon.

For more than the last thirty years, scholars have engaged in a vibrant conversation regarding the shape and shaping of the Hebrew Psalter.  In Germany, research has focused mainly on diachronic reconstructions of the shaping of the Psalter (Zenger, Hossfeld, Millard, et al).  In North America, research has focused mainly on synchronic interpretations of the meaning of the final shape of the Psalter as a whole, or on sub-collections within the Psalter (Wilson, deClaissé-Walford, Howard, McCann, Brueggemann, et al).  The present paper offers a summary of the evidence, established mid-range conclusions, and still-open questions, then offers a minimalist proposal regarding the shape of the Psalter—namely, that the Psalter is to be understood as instruction and messianic prophecy.

Prophetic poetic texts can be read as aesthetic artifacts. What indications are there, however, that these poets themselves conceived of their work specifically as art? What, further, does it mean to speak of a biblical Hebrew poem as aesthetic or aestheticized? The ancient Israelite writers left us no treatises on poetics, but this paper seeks to explore traces of Israelite thought on poetic artistic creativity. It explores examples of "foregrounding of figuration," (Robert Alter) particularly in the use of the verb damah (to liken, compare). Jeremiah 6, Ezek 31, and Hos 12 provide examples in which the poets not only create metaphors (or, better, verbal images) but also engage in some level of second-order reflection upon that creative act. In so doing, the poets are self-conscious of their artistic task. Following the work of art historian Zainab Bahrani, this paper suggests that poetic art creates a presence that is not constrained by ideological or mimetic parameters. In the particular examples we discuss, the poets play with the homonymous word (dmh) meaning “to destroy, silence.” In both Jer 6:2 and Hos 12:1, the prophetic poets exploit this duality of creativity and silence, or of beauty and destruction. Each of these prophetic texts depict judgment, yet the images the poets make open spaces of imagistic beauty in the midst of destruction. We will argue that the aesthetic impulse can be found precisely in the spaces where the text escapes and overflows the constraints of prophetic rhetoric.

Metanoia is a topic of great importance in Luke-Acts. The concept of “metanoia” is, however, debated in recent scholarship. Therefore the paper summarizes important contributions in recent research on metanoia in Luke-Acts (e.g. J.-W. Taeger, H. Schönfeld, C. Stenschke, F. Méndez-Moratalla, M. Kim-Rauchholz, J.B. Green) in a first section. In a second section it is shown that narrative representations of metanoia in Luke-Acts help to identify necessary elements of Luke’s concept of metanoia. The call for repentance that occurs particularly in John the Baptist’s proclamation and in the sermons in the book of Acts show how important metanoia is, but it remains unexplained, what metanoia is and which behavior is expected. Therefore the paper considers texts such as Lk 7:36-50 (the pericope of Jesus’s annointment by a female sinner), Lk 15:11-32 (the parable of the “prodigal son”), Lk 18:9-14 (the prayer of a Pharisee and a toll collector in the temple), Lk 19:1-10 (the pericope of Zachaeus), and Lk 23:39-43 (the dialogue of Jesus and one of the crucified malefactors in the passion narrative) in order to identify regularly occurring elements in narrative representations of metanoia in Luke’s Gospel. In a next section, these regularly occurring elements of “metanoia” are compared with individual penitential prayers from the Old Testament and the early Jewish tradition. The paper will analyze penitential prayers from the Old Testament and Early Jewish texts such as Ps 51 (Ps 50 LXX), the Prayer of Manasseh, and Joseph and Aseneth 12-13 in order to gain fresh insights concerning Luke’s concept of metanoia.

Trauma, as sociologists like Jeffrey Alexander define it, is meaning negotiated and created by a community that allows a group to make sense of its suffering. This presentation will argue that, while such a process of narrative construction and meaning-making can benefit societies that have undergone trauma, the effects of these social narratives frustrate individuals’ healing from trauma. Individual trauma results from being overwhelmed by horrific violence and failing to experience or know the trauma; in the study of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, trauma is “unclaimed experience” as Cathy Caruth puts it, something very different than Alexander’s description of trauma as the narrative construction of meaning and thus as a society’s claiming of experience. The presentation will explore why trauma as understood by psychoanalysis and literary criticism — individual trauma as opposed to Alexander’s social trauma — is antithetical to narrative. Because trauma is not stored as normal memories are, traumatic events are not things that victims can make sense of. They do not become part of victims’ autobiographical narratives, their senses of self, and they are not truly known by victims. These traumatic “memories” are things that victims relive in different kinds of literal flashbacks rather than things they remember. Because trauma does not form part of the sense of self, trauma testimonies frequently refer to the victims’ incredulity, their failure of belief that they have undergone the events of which they are speaking or writing. And because trauma is literally relived rather than remembered, the traumatic past repeats over and over in the survivors’ present. So trauma as understood by psychoanalysis and literary criticism is anti-narrative, offering neither understanding nor chronology nor meaning; it is precisely the opposite of the meaning-making narratives that sociologists like Alexander describe. For trauma survivors to integrate trauma into their selves and to heal they need to speak it to an empathetic listener who is willing to believe the accounts that they themselves cannot believe. But while the narratives created by social groups to explain trauma to community members can advance social goods such as group cohesion, this is done at the expense of silencing the non-narrative trauma of individual victims. For the social project of trauma narrative to succeed, it must overwrite and erase the victims’ trauma, claiming their unclaimed experience. The presentation will conclude by acknowledging a point raised in postcolonial studies of trauma: in the colonial and postcolonial contexts, trauma is a facet of everyday life, and the silence to which victims tend might have been more adaptive in the exilic and post-exilic settings in which many biblical writers found themselves. For these writers and their readers, accepting narratives that blamed them for their suffering might have been easier than dealing with the speechless terror of their trauma, but we should not confuse such acceptance with healing. When we use sociological readings of trauma to understand biblical texts, we need to make clear the therapeutic limitations of such readings.

In John 13:23–25 and 21:20 the Beloved Disciple is said to recline “in the lap” and “on the chest” of Jesus, reflecting the typical position of recliners sharing a couch at a symposium. As some interpreters have further suggested, the physical intimacy between the two should be read to be erotic in nature and, in light of research into the history of sexuality, is best understood within the framework of ancient Greek pederasty. What I shall contribute in support of this position is fresh evidence from ancient Greek and Roman visual art. Yet to be noted in this regard is the particular iconographic motif showing “two to a couch”: a man is portrayed embracing either a male youth or woman as the two recline on a couch during a meal. This image is ubiquitous and functions as an important communicative item in sympotic iconographies throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. I shall analyze examples of its appearance in Attic Red-figure vases, wall paintings in Pompeii and Herculaneum, allegorical floor mosaics in Antioch, and in portrayals of the Totenmahl in tomb paintings and on grave steles, altars, urns, and sarcophagi. I shall first interpret these images and the erotic identities they presume and/or promulgate in their own iconographic terms and contexts. This, in turn, will help us to understand the cultural and visual background in which the Johannine text’s literary image of two-to-a-couch was shaped and received. I shall show that interpreting John 13:23–25 and 21:20 in light of the visual record does indeed support the interpretation that in John Jesus and the Beloved Disciple are portrayed as sharing a physically intimate relationship that should be understood within the framework of Greek pederasty. What is more, their erotic embrace in itself is powerfully multivalent, evoking, as it does in the art, (a) luxury, wealth, and prestige, which is subverted in John in favor of a discipleship of service and anticipated suffering; (b) an allegorical application, in which the ideal disciple can be seen to find rest and love in the lap of none other than the Logos become flesh; and (c) death, reflection about death, and the relationship between love, Eros, and Jesus’ death, in what is essentially in the Johannine text a death-meal. I shall argue that the evidence of ancient art helps us to understand that this image of male-male erotic intimacy, so often overlooked, should be seen not only for what it is but also for its evocative and symbolic power in John’s gospel as a whole.

The Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel, known in a single Coptic manuscript (Pierpont Morgan M593) and attributed to the archdeacon Stephen the archdeacon (Acts 6-7), makes repeated exhortations to give charity, promising grand rewards to those who do, and threatening those who do not with grave consequences. This paper will discuss the text’s system of rewards and punishments in connection with its theology of archangels, the Eucharist, and its unique vision of Judgement Day.

In recent Pentateuch study, the so-called "non-Priestly" version of the Scout story (Numbers 13-14*) is being generally dated late as, for instance, Deuteronomistic composition (KD, E. Blum), the Late Yahwist (J. Van Seters), and Hexateuch Redaction (E. Otto, R. Achenbach); yet it is also claimed often that the story still contains a kernel of much earlier traditions. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to prove that even the core part of the non-P story is a later literary invention rather than an earlier tradition, through a detailed redaction-critical analysis of the text and an engagement with archaeological debates on the Persian period. The redaction-critical analysis will reveal that that the non-P version of the Scout narrative (Numbers 13-14) has been formulated gradually through multiple phases of composition and redaction possibly in post-Priestly stages. Especially a close comparison between Numbers 13-14 and the parallel account in Deut 1:19-46 will reveal that the two texts have been gradually formulated through complicated interactions between them. The comparison will also lead to the conclusion that the motifs of dispatching the scouts and their collecting fruits from the Valley of Eshcol are the major literary invention of the non-P text in Numbers 13-14, and this process was later than the earliest layer of the parallel account in Deuteronomy 1. This literary analysis will be interpreted in the milieu of the recent archaeological discussions about the border between Yehud and Edumea as well as the political state of the Hebron area in the Persian period. The discussions will indicate that the significance of the Valley of Eshcol and the Caleb-Hebron connection can be well understood in the Persian period context, especially as a justification of the political situation of the southern border area of Yehud as well as a political claim for Hebron.

In Romans 11:11-14, Paul makes what Käsemann calls an “absurd” claim: “The Gentile mission will make Israel jealous and lead to its conversion” (Käsemann, Romans, 304). Indeed, the question of how exactly Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles and the Gentiles’ subsequent faith in Christ could possibly lead Torah-reliant Jews to jealousy has perplexed scholars. While the majority of scholars believe Paul saw some direct connection between his ministry to the Gentiles and the Jews’ jealousy, few have been able to decipher his logic. This paper argues that Paul does not see the salvation of the Gentiles—in an abstract and general sense—as the reason for the Jews’ jealousy. Rather, it is specifically the Gentiles’ obedience to the Law by faith, the very goal of Paul’s apostleship (1:5; 15:18; 16:26), that is the reason for the Jews’ jealousy. In other words, if “salvation through faith in Christ” is construed as the object of envy, it is difficult to see how Jews would be jealous of Gentiles. On the other hand, if Jews are jealous of the Gentiles for attaining a righteousness that they themselves pursued yet failed to obtain (9:30-31), then the logic becomes clear and fits in with Paul’s purpose in the letter as a whole. This paper argues for this interpretation by first clarifying the purpose of Paul’s ministry, which he hopes to magnify to make Jews jealous (11:13-14). Second, this paper shows how two contemporaries of Paul—Philo and Josephus—provide a helpful comparison in the ways they describe Gentiles’ attraction to Judaism through the Jews’ careful obedience to the Law. Third, this paper shows how the jealousy of the Jews fits into Paul’s broader argument in ch. 9-11 regarding the Jews’ disobedience (11:30) and failure to attain righteousness (9:30) in contrast to the Gentiles’ obedience and attainment of righteousness by faith. Finally, this paper concludes by showing how Paul’s train of thought regarding the goal of his ministry and the Gentiles’ obedience continues through the “ethical” section of ch. 12-14, which is part of his plan to provoke the Jews to jealousy.

Various episodes in book of Nehemiah concern different kinds of tensions and conflicts in the restoration of wall, city and community, in which both distant and near outsiders are involved. Neh 5 intrudes into the narrative of the wall building of Neh 1-4, which is resumed in 6:1. While the construction of the wall might be seen as a building of a symbolic barrier between the community and others, Neh 5 concerns a community that is composite and divide. Some of the people complain about how they are treated by fellow Yehudites in a situation of hunger and imperial taxation, and related issues like mortgage, loans and loss of collateral (5:2-5). Nehemiah accuses Yehudite creditors for their exploitation of fellows (5:6-7). He rebukes them for selling kinsmen as debt-slaves to foreigners, bringing disgrace upon the community from their enemies, the peoples (5:8-9). By his criticism of the way they treat fellows, Nehemiah accuses them for acting like foreigners. He administers an oath to end these practices and seeks legitimation by the priests (5:10-12). Those who do not keep the oath, were shaken out (5:13). The outcry from the people leads to change. Regarding the prevailing conditions, the imperial tax is not opposed: The people pay the tax but oppose the behaviour of their brothers. Also, Nehemiah does not question the payment of taxes, but rebukes the local leaders for exploiting needy families. Moreover, none of those involved appeal to the Torah, but to fear of YHWH, disgrace (5:9), and the obligation as kin (5:7-8). In this episode, the community is restored through a blend of ethnicity, siblinghood and economic issues, in relation to the Achaemenid Empire and surrounding peoples. In scholarship on the book of Nehemiah, definitions of ethnicity and religion are contested, including ideas of a shift from the one to the other within the notions of Jew and Judaism. This paper stresses a dynamic relationship between ethnicity and religion within a broader discourse of identity formations in the book of Nehemiah. Both ethnicity and religion work rhetorically to nurture identity formation. In both instances, we are dealing with classification of groups of people, focusing on similarities, differences and otherness, where material aspects, practice, shared values and memories are put in play. When asking who classifies oneself and the “other”, elements of status, hierarchy and power are activated, but also a sense of equality, cohesion and solidarity. In Ezra-Nehemiah research, a tendency to postulate social groups or communities behind the texts might be due to lack of sensitivity when it comes to the texts’ rhetorical strategy. While the texts give an impression of a group which belongs together, it does not mean that there is a socio-historical (or kinship) group behind. What we are facing in Neh 5, is a controversy at a narrative level, which works as marker in a broader discourse of the formation of “Israel’s self-understanding” in Achaemenid Yehud.

With all due respect to Aristotle, who famously denigrated character as subservient to plot, characters and characterization are essential to all narratives. Readers relate to a story via the characters in it. Interestingly, interpretation of a story can be dependent upon an assessment of the characters in the story. Nowhere is this more clear and problematic than in the book of Samuel. For example, is Saul a tragic hero on the wrong side of history (and God!) or is he a villain who stands in the way of God’s chosen hero? Or, is David a faithful hero following God’s path or a usurping upstart hungry for power at any cost? Decisions on these aspects of characterization are crucial for understanding what the book of Samuel is about. This paper will survey some research about character and characterization in the Hebrew Bible and then make the case that the book of Samuel invites the reader in to wrestle with complex and ambiguous characters as an interpretive crux to the story. In other words, this paper is an apologia for the importance of character study for understanding biblical narrative generally, and the book of Samuel, specifically.

The Bible presents five instances where a general, impersonal law emerges from a particular case adjudicated by Yahweh (Lev 24:10-23; Num 9:6-14; Num 15:32-36; Num 27:1-11; Num 36:1-12). The cases are presented before tribunals presided over by Moses, who transmits them to Yahweh for judgment; this judgment is described as a normative piece of legislation for all future disputes. This adjudicatory procedure is what legal historians refer to as a rescript, a legislative technique best known from Roman law, but with precedent in the ancient Near East. The procedural distinctiveness of the rescript rests on the principle of a sovereign authority as the ultimate and exclusive source of law. Biblical tradition has identified Yahweh as this sovereign legislator, in contrast to other Near Eastern cultures that understand the authority to create new laws as a decidedly royal prerogative. This study analyses these five biblical texts according to the procedure of the rescript, explores the dissonance between Mesopotamian and biblical presentations of law, and attempts to locate vestiges of the legislative authority of Israelite and Judahite kings in biblical tradition.

A recent development in scholarly discourse in the fields of early Judaism and early Christianity is an increased awareness of the influence that the publication of unprovenanced material has on the illicit trade in antiquities. The primary concerns are that publications legitimate artifacts that are potentially looted, forged, or illegally imported, and that such material has the capacity to contaminate the academic corpus of ancient texts. As a consequence, a number of scholarly societies, most recently the Society of Biblical Literature, have enacted policies that reject any initial announcement, presentation, or publication of unprovenanced material in their venues. This article discusses an ethical issue not considered thoroughly under these policies: the ethics of publishing unprovenanced material following the initial publication. Though technically permitted, do subsequent publications help or harm? In order to explore this topic, this article utilizes as a case study the publication of DSS F.Instruction1, an unprovenanced fragment formerly published as part of 4Q416 that was reconsidered in a new edition.

In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, Paul imagines a household of believers and unbelievers living together. In this paper, I would like to use this scenario to think about households in which some members were followers of Christ and some were not, and to map out the ways believers after Paul incorporated their worship in domestic settings. Literary and material evidence indicates that slaves and wives were often involved in carrying out the tasks involved with household worship, even as the head of the household was typically responsible for dictating which gods were worshipped. With this in mind, I will explore the connections between religious practice and social power specifically in domestic spaces and relationships, and argue that domestic cult practices offered possibilities for expressing agency to those with less power. In so doing, I will consider how scholarly discussions of class might contribute to our thinking about this material.  

Previous attempts to understand the destruction of ancient Near Eastern archaeological sites by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have focused on the shock value of the group’s online propaganda or on the group’s reliance on strict interpretations of Wahabist iconoclasm which take a hard line against perceived shirk or idolatry. This paper contends that attempts to understand ISIS’ campaign of destruction have not considered the full range of meaning which the group attaches to the term shirk. Drawing on the published works of a number of jihadist thinkers, this paper argues that ISIS has inherited their thought which condemns the nation-state as a form of shirk which demands loyalty apart from God. The political utilization of the pre-Islamic past by the Ba’thist governments of Iraq and Syria created a strong link between the pre-Islamic past and secular nationalism. The pre-Islamic past became an ideological justification for the existence of the modern states of Iraq and Syria as the regimes presented themselves as recapitulations of past civilizations as they sought to justify taking a special leadership role in the Arab world. In doing so they forged a strong link between the ancient past and modern Syrian and Iraqi national identity, a link which ISIS was determined to break. This paper concludes that ISIS destroys archaeological remains not because of the religious practices of ancient cultures but because of their modern ideological utilization in support of the formation of national identities. ISIS’ antiquities destruction should be understood as a part of the group’s rejection of nationalism. Efforts to counter violent extremism and promote heritage conservation must take into account this challenge to the political order.

This paper reviews the treatment of the Pseudo-Clementine Dispute with Appion (Homilies 4-6) in recent research. It focuses on the question of whether the Dispute formed a part of the Basic Writing and why there is a difference of opinions here. Contributions to determinations of the profile of the author are then surveyed in search of areas of consensus.

The outcome of Sennacherib’s third campaign in 701 B.C.E. as it concerns Hezekiah and Judah has been the subject of much debate. The Judean king not only survived but he retained his position as king, which causes many scholars to question what occurred. Some have labeled the campaign a partial victory or a compromise on Sennacherib’s part, since the outcome departed from his predecessors’ policies or actions against rebellious vassal states. Many have approached this topic from an archaeological standpoint, while others have relied more heavily on textual materials. In order to comprehend Sennacherib’s treatment of the rebellious Judean kingdom, it is necessary to approach his actions from both the archaeological, historical-critical, and textual standpoints. In this paper, I will first assess the political and strategical actions taken by Sennacherib’s predecessors against rebellious vassal states and provinces during their reigns. As the expansionists of the realm, they pioneered and established the policies which Assyria used when dealing with its vassal kingdoms. Sennacherib had them as his exemplars and guides in foreign relations, although he may not have chosen their methods in all instances. A better understanding of Sennacherib in contrast to the kings who preceded him must precede the topic at hand. I will then treat the western campaign of 701 B.C.E. by first explaining the best strategy Sennacherib could and did take militarily before confronting Jerusalem. Next, I will pose what viable options Sennacherib had if he were to succeed in taking Jerusalem by siege and how the cost/benefit equation was not worth the effort. Hezekiah’s punishment in loss of lands, his people in the Shephelah, his military strength, his court, and the indemnity he had to pay were more than sufficient to stabilize the area during succeeding generations of Assyrian monarchs. Although the outcome of Jerusalem and her king posed a problem for the author of the Assyrian royal inscriptions and the traditional and ideological objectives which they required, Sennacherib solved this by means of his success in the conquest of Babylon and his use of the Lachish reliefs. The problem that obfuscates this issue at hand is that many assume that Judah was like any other province in its worth or prominence and that Sennacherib was like his predecessors, which he was not. These various approaches to this topic will indicate that he was a brilliant and successful strategist, albeit a nontraditional Assyrian monarch in contrast to his predecessors.

In the wake of the full publication of the Aramaic texts from Qumran in 2001 and 2009, a number of scholars have taken initial steps toward situating them within the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls library as a whole. Studies by Dimant, Tigchelaar, García Martínez, and Machiela in particular have begun to consider the question of whether, and to what extent, the Aramaic Scrolls might be considered as a cohesive unit within the Qumran library on the basis of some of their shared linguistic, thematic, and generic features. These scholars have also started to consider the relation of the Aramaic Scrolls to the Hebrew texts from Qumran, in particular, the sectarian compositions. One of the ways that scholars such as García Martínez and Machiela have understood the relationship between these two corpora within the Qumran library relates to their shared apocalyptic outlook. For while the Aramaic Scrolls are almost never quoted by the sectarian compositions, the Aramaic texts seem to have played a fundamental role in shaping the apocalyptic worldview of the ya?ad, especially the sect’s “belief in the secret revelation of divine knowledge and mysteries to select, righteous humans” (Machiela 2015, 255). Taking these observations as a starting point, this paper will explore the theme of divine wisdom in the Aramaic Scrolls and the 1QHa Hodayot manuscript. Both of these collections exhibit a strong interest in divine wisdom, namely, its revelation to righteous/elect individuals and its subsequent transmission to worthy recipients. The majority of this paper, then, represents a close reading of both of these collections, paying special attention to the role of divine wisdom in each one. After a discussion of each collection in turn, I attempt to synthesize the data in order to make a few concluding observations about the similarities and differences between these two collections, and make a few suggestions about how we might understand the implications of such similarities and differences. For one, the authors of the Aramaic Scrolls are more clear about the means by which they understood the process of revelation to have occurred. The Aramaic Scrolls detail a revelatory process whereby righteous/elect individuals have divine wisdom imparted to them by angelic mediators and heavenly tablets, which occurs in the context of a dream-vision. The Hodayot, on the other hand, use more direct language to conceptualize the revelatory process. However, the Hodayot are vaguer than the Aramaic Scrolls on the question of how God reveals information. It is my contention that a close reading of the Hodayot can help demonstrate that authors of the Hodayot understood the process of revelation to have occurred in and through the act of the inspired interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, although the Aramaic Scrolls and the Hodayot share a similar interest in the concept of the revelation, these collections differ on how they envision the precise mode by which such revelation occurs. This observation has significant implications for how we should ultimately understand the relationship between the Aramaic Scrolls and the Hodayot.

Several Diatessaronic readings refer to the law in terms that differ from the received text – usually terms that appear to be more primitive. The phenomenon has been attributed to Tatian's use of now lost manuscripts of the Gospels, the received Gospel text being held to reflect later Christian corrections. Renewed inspection of the evidence suggests instead that some of the references to the law contained in the Diatessaron may go back to Tatian's use of a "fifth source" not identical with any of the Gospels that became canonical.

An especially interesting aspect of the textual criticism of the Ethiopic Old Testament tradition is its known relationship to a Greek Vorlage, and to the possible influence of other versions as well. Such relationships are typically analyzed in critical editions. In the case of Ethiopic Old Testament manuscripts, this has been done with varying degrees of completeness, precision and rigor. The methods and processes of The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project can produce a report that identifies with precision the relationships of Ethiopic manuscripts to Hebrew and Greek texts. The report provides detailed lists of shared readings with which to characterize those relationships. Such analysis helps to clarify the external relationships of the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament. The starting point for this study begins with the transcription and formatting of at least 30 manuscripts of a full or partial book of the Ethiopic Old Testament. The texts have been manually formatted to arrange into columns the words of each manuscript that should be compared against words in the other manuscripts. Such formatting allows the computer scripts to automate the analysis of these manuscripts by, for example, calculating a percentage sameness of each manuscript against each other manuscript. For this study, the Hebrew Masoretic Text was added to the document, as were a few Greek Septuagint manuscripts. We are also exploring collaborations with other scholars to add the Syriac Peshitta and an Arabic text to the pilot project. For previous studies that included only Ethiopic manuscripts, we used a single criterion for whether words from various manuscripts go into the same column: whether the words have the same Ge’ez root. For this study, the criterion was adjusted to arrange into the same column those words that have text-critical significance for comparing Ethiopic manuscripts to Hebrew and Greek texts. The computer scripts that I developed calculated a percentage sameness grid, whose data were then fed into the R Statistical Package to generate a dendrogram. From that we identified clusters of manuscripts showing the relationships of the Ethiopic manuscripts to their Hebrew and Greek counterparts. Additional scripts identify the best representative manuscripts for each cluster, and describe precisely the distinctive readings that characterize each cluster. Finally, additional scripts analyze the relationships of manuscripts that are only loosely affiliated with clusters. Since our sample of 30+ Ethiopic manuscripts provides such a rich data set for the inner Ethiopic variations in the tradition, the results of this study provide significant insights into the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament in relation to other external texts. Our assumption is that such influences could have happened not only at the origin of the tradition, but at various points along the way. The presentation will end with a brief discussion on future directions for my research, including the possibility, mentioned above, for the inclusion of Arabic, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian texts.

Information Literacy (IL) is required by most regional and national accrediting agencies, i.e. WSCUC, TRACS, and ABHE. Information Literacy must be demonstrated throughout all degree programs and is supposed to be demonstrated in many individual courses. The demonstration of IL is done by stating IL Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) and creating assignments that account for those outcomes. This session is about several IL SLOs and practical assignments that assess IL within Biblical and Religious studies, all while fulfilling some of the institution’s IL requirements for accreditation. The idea of “practical” information literacy comes from the need to fulfill IL requirements while at the same time staying true to the intent of the course description. The intention of this session then is to provide those in attendance with: IL SLOs, instructions, and rubrics for grading those assignments. A website is being created that hosts all that information. The IL SLOs are written in multiple forms. Each form is tied to one of the more common IL definitions and list of standards: AAC&U’s VALUE Rubrics, ACRL’s IL Standards, and ACRL’s Frames. The instructions are written in multiple forms, to match the IL standards listed above. Each instruction is not an entire self-contained assignment, but an add-on to assignment already in the course. The goal is to create IL assignments that are embedded in existing assignments AND make them so that they will not add much time to the grading of said assignments. Generic rubrics have been constructed so that they assess the IL component of an assignment. Typically the rubric covers quantity (of parts), quality, and completion. These rubrics can then be modified and added to the instructor’s rubric for the complete assignment.

In his monograph Evil Incarnate, David Frankfurter points out that demonologies function not only as organization mechanisms consolidating various malign spirits within a single coherent and systematic structure, but also as effective means for ritual experts to assert control and legitimization within the local social landscapes they inhabit. Through the construction of demonologies, ritual specialists equip themselves to discursively dictate who these spirits are, where they come from, and the sorts of activities they engage in as well as prescribe sorts the rituals necessary to regulate or subdue them. Surprisingly, very few studies have yet attempted to approach in detail any of the apotropaic and exorcistic texts at Qumran with this sort of theoretical and methodological focus. This paper will analyze the demonology of one particular manuscript—the Apocryphal Psalms Scroll from Cave 11—with the goal of better grasping both its understanding of demonic beings and its function as a ritual text. As scholars have amply noted, several elements of 11QapocrPs show the influence of Enochic traditions and their account of the origin of the evil spirits. Working off these previous studies, this paper will propose that 11QapocrPs uses components of the Enochic Watchers myth as a sort of organization principle guiding its comprehensive categorization of the demonic. In this manner, 11QapocrPs constructs a basic demonic hierarchy, progressing from the origin of all evil spirits to a particular demonic adversary. After laying out how 11QapocrPs creates its spiritual taxonomy, this study will address how the apotropaic ritual found in columns 5 and 6 relies upon the demonological structure preceding them as a form of discursive authority providing the ritual expert the necessary means of thwarting the demonic foe.

Over the last fifteen years more than 70 new Dead Sea Scrolls fragments have surfaced on the antiquities marked. These are commonly referred to as post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments. A growing number of scholars regard a substantial part of them as forgeries. In this paper, I will present and discuss what seems to be yet another DSS forgery - from the 20th Century. This manuscript has been known since the late nineties, and it is accepted as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls dataset – despite the fact that it is unprovenanced, has a made-up list of previous owners, and contains several suspicious physical features.

On the occasion of the 500th anniverary of the Reformation, this paper will discuss Martin Luther's shifting attitudes towards Queen Esther and the book named after her. It will demonstrate that this shift stemmed from Luther's theological presuppositions towards Judaism, and his changing approaches to the Jewish people. It will also note the great influence of Luther's views of Esther, Jews and Judaism on modern biblical scholarship.

Appropriating Michel Foucault’s notion of observation as a disciplinary power in the context of Korean Confucianism, I reinterpret the story of the capable wife in Proverbs 31:10-31. This text has been read as a way to exhort women to be faithful in front of YHWH by making significant contributions to their husbands and households. Women under culturally oppressive societies, such as traditional Confucian society, may read the text as requiring them to be submissive and obedient to men: to their fathers, husbands, and sons. Regardless of efforts by feminist critiques that read this text as advocating women’s agency, cultural influence may bring oppressive consequences for women. I will first show that the capable wife is seen by multiple observers and this regulates her daily activities, which benefit the husband and household. The wife’s contribution is regarded as praiseworthy by YHWH; thus this text produces disciplinary power over women by constructing discourses which maintain and reinforce male power. Then I will read the text in light of Korean Confucianism, which defines women as household managers and supporters of their husbands. Revealing strategies to maintain power over women, we see the oppression of women’s autonomous agency and self-realization in the public sphere.

The second column of Origen's Hexapla (Secunda) is a Greek transcription of Biblical Hebrew originally composed no later than the 3rd century CE. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, all that was extant from the Secunda were quotations and references in the church fathers (e.g., Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Eusebius, etc.) and notes in LXX manuscripts. At the end of the nineteenth century a palimpsest was discovered in the Ambrosiana library which contained portions of eleven Psalms of Origen's Secunda (Ambrosiana O 39 Sup.). The discovery prompted a number of studies on the phonology of the Hebrew tradition reflected in the transcriptions and has been an integral part of historical Hebrew linguistics ever since. The Ambrosiana palimpsest contains approximately 1000 words and the quotations in the church fathers and other sources contain over 200 words. Although earlier scholars made use of both the Ambrosiana manuscript and the quotations in the church fathers, later scholars have tended to limit themselves to the material from the more reliable Ambrosiana palimpsest. A desideratum in Secunda studies is a careful analysis of the manuscript traditions behind the various quotations of the second column outside of the Ambrosiana manuscript. In this paper I will summarize the various sources for quotations of the second column, assess the degree of variation in their respective histories of transmission, compare the linguistic elements of the Secunda attestations in the various sources to that of the Ambrosiana palimpsest, and finally offer conclusions regarding the degree to which these sources may be regarded as reliable attestations of the second column and thus relevant for historical Hebrew phonology.

Neo-Babylonian and Persian Period texts found in the Bible describe various ad hoc and emergency instances of economic relief through the practice of economic “release” (derôr; e.g., Jer 34). These practices share affinity with various Mesopotamian practices (andurarum and mišarum). In contrast, Leviticus 25 details extensive legislation regarding the regularized practice of economic relief of the sabbatical and jubilee years. The Levitical legislation even accords the Pentecodal practice the distinctive term yôbel. In this paper, I argue that, the Levitical legislation constructed the regularized practice of derôr in the yôbel in utopian terms. Whereas earlier scholarship has often described Leviticus 25 as utopian, this description has largely been an uncritical use of the term to question the feasibility of the jubilee legislation. In contrast, I employ the term as a critical tool to better appreciate the shape and character of the practices described in Leviticus 25. Building on the work of Darko Suvin and Lyman Tower Sargent, I argue in this paper that the writer of Leviticus 25 constructed a “Eutopia” or “positive utopia.” Sargent defines a “Eutopia” as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably better than the society in which that reader lived” (“The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” 9). While this approach to the legislation of Leviticus 25 may not help clarify the social context in which this legislation developed, it can help sharpen our understanding of the utopian ideal of the jubilee.

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This paper, located methodologically in the fields of Religious Studies and Anthropology, will investigate discourses on the destruction of cultural heritage in a major part of the North American population, namely, modern Evangelicalism. On the one hand, American evangelicals (hereafter just “evangelicals”)—along with the rest of the world—rightly lament and condemn the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq. On the other hand, analogous acts of destruction in the Christian Bible—here I will focus specifically on those acts said to have been performed by King Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23:28 and 2 Chronicles 34-35—are lauded in evangelical scholarly commentaries. Within the field of linguistic anthropology, many studies have shown that discourses not only reflect the structure and ideology of a given society but also reinscribe that structure and ideology. Building on and hoping to further contribute to such work, this paper will show that said evangelical discourses reveal a form of religious extremism latent in North America that is continually reinscribed through evangelical biblical commentaries. I will also show how the presence of that extremism manifests itself, when convenient for evangelicals, in ways that are against the code of cultural preservation. Specifically, evangelicals (or at least some evangelicals) approve of the destruction of the cultural heritage of others—and perhaps are willing to participate in the illicit trade market—if it results in the discovery of early artifacts relevant for Christianity.

This paper elucidates how the Jewish writers in the Greco-Roman period, especially the author of 4 Maccabees and Josephus, exploited the image of the Jews as philosophers. This image was not originally created by the Jews themselves, but by the Greek ethnographers in the Hellenistic period, such as Theophrastus (De pietate, apud Porphyry, De abstinentia 2.26), Clearchus of Soli (De somno, apud Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.176-83), and Megasthenes (Indica, apud Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 1.15.72.5). These three writers are not familiar with the reality of the Jews; on the contrary, they have no intention to deliver the correct information about the Jews from the beginning, because they share the then-tendency of idealization of the eastern world, which was typical in Greek ethnography and historiography at that time. On that basis, the Greek writers regard the Jews not as an independent ethnic group, but as a priest group in Syria, comparing them with the gymnosophists in India and Magi in Persia, both of whom are identified with philosophers according to the Greek perspective. Moreover, these writers connect the Jewish aniconism to the Greek philosophical understanding of divinity. The Jews, on the other hand, inherit this image of the Jews as philosophers from the Greeks and deliberately convert it into their self-image. Jewish usage of the image can be found in some works of Judeo-Hellenistic literature, such as the Letter of Aristeas (31), the works of Philo of Alexandria (Prob. 88), the Book of 4 Maccabees (7:7), and the works of Josephus. These Jewish writers dare to exploit the Greek standards to demonstrate the superiority of the Jews. Among them, Josephus is extremely important, because, first, he clarifies the fact that the image derived from Greek literature, by citing Clearchus of Soli’s De Somno, in which Aristotle indicated the Jews were descendants of philosophers (Contra Apionem 1.175-182). Second, while knowing the image, Josephus does not slavishly follow the tradition of his predecessors, but rather abstractly develops it into a more conceptual image of Judaism as a philosophy. For example, Josephus explains about the sects among the Jews, such as the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Essenes, and the so-called “Fourth Philosophy,” by using the terms related to philosophy. Clearly influenced by Josephus, Eusebius of Caesarea also uses the traditional image of the Jews as philosophers (Praeparatio Evangelica 8.11), whereas Tatian modifies the image of Judaism as a philosophy, applying it to Christianity (Oratio ad Graecos 31.1).

This paper will outline some initial explorations of the new research that I am conducting on positioning theory, purity, and gendered performance. This paper will be methodologically underpinned by positioning theory, which cognitively generates findings through stories and storylines. The War Texts form an intriguing body of ancient texts, since outside of the Dead Sea Scrolls there are no known literary parallels or equivalents in Second Temple literature. This highlights their importance and the unique nature of the sectarian material. To date, much has been written about the formation of the War Texts from an exegetical perspective, but this has mainly focussed on our understanding of the genre and placement of this material in the wider Second Temple period. Consequently, the socio-historical placement and influence of these texts has been neglected. Using the War Texts as a frame, this paper will thus perform an exploratory socio-literary analysis with positioning theory as a model, to reveal the positions of non-priestly men to their communities.

This paper asserts that scholars have tended to overlook several ways in which the references to mortuary practices throughout Matthew are distinctive from other gospels. I suggest that this is because social aspects of the gospel have been analyzed under the rubrics of status and empire rather than class. By drawing on recent scholarship in religious studies and the social sciences that redefines class as a “socially habituated subjectivity” regarding one’s economic position rather than a static economic structure, I advocate the use of class in the study of the gospels. Focusing on Matthew’s language of burial in three literary units (the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, the attack against the Scribes and Pharisees, and the burial of Jesus) in comparison with the other gospels, I demonstrate that Matthew articulates class differences through his descriptions of mortuary practices and uses these for both polemical and apologetic purposes. Furthermore, I show that archaeological evidence of mortuary practices in provincial Syria (the provenance of Matthew’s gospel) illuminates the social dynamics that informed Matthew’s dispositions about burials. Critically analyzing the gospel in light of such material evidence proves useful for determining some of the ways that the Matthean author and community responded to and participated in cultural and socioeconomic changes induced by recent and ongoing geopolitical shifts in the Roman East.

Competitive Reading Cultures in Early Christianity

While genocide scholars (i.e. Jones, Kiernan, Levene, Strauss) have done an admirable job in explaining the structural features common to modern genocides, they have been less interested in identifying such structural features in antiquity. This paper, which is part of a larger project on genocide and the Bible, seeks to fill this scholarly void by analyzing one specific example of ancient genocidal violence-the Roman slaughter in response to the Judean revolt. The question is why Rome resorted to genocidal violence in this instance when other revolts produced a more restrained Roman response. I have argued elsewhere that the sustained length of the war was perceived as a challenge to Roman honor and Roman values. In this paper I wish to narrow the focus to siege warfare as it was both carried out and as it was perceived. With the help of classical scholarship (i.e. Levithan), I will locate Roman views of siege warfare as framed by Roman theories of virtue. I will argue that the occupying Romans perceived siege warfare as a challenge to Roman authority but also as especially feminine and cowardly. The virtuous faced the Roman army on the field of battle while the dishonorable or the feminine hid behind walls. By such unvirtuous action, the Judean rebels removed themselves from the loosely defined realm of legal warfare and are deserving of exterminatory violence, mass destruction and mass enslavement. I wish to focus on three sets of interrelated topics as refracted though the text of Josephus’s Jewish War. I will make three interrelated claims: (i) The Roman view of siege warfare helps explain the unusually high level of exterminatory violence unleashed against Jerusalem, something which is confirmed in the account of Josephus (see especially Jewish War VI, 350ff). (ii) The narrated behavior during the siege seeks to reaffirm Roman hierarchies of Roman/barbarian and masculine/feminine, emphasizing Roman courage, planning, discipline and order. (iii) The narrative structures the characterization of the rebel leaders so as to answer the implied Roman critique that the rebels were cowardly for fighting from behind the safety of walls. For Josephus, the rebel leaders may be bloodthirsty, tyrannical and foolish, but they are also emphatically courageous. They have many flaws, which Josephus narrates in loving detail (i.e. II 442-3. II, 652), but cowardice was not among them.

In Dr. King’s famous 1957 article, “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” he articulates a rationale for the centrality of nonviolence to address “the crisis in race relations [that] dominates the arena of American life.” During his advocacy for nonviolent resistance, King asserts that this form of resistance is deeply rooted in elements of the Christian faith. Although Dr. King limits his biblical analysis to the Greek New Testament, several passages of the Hebrew Bible are viable test cases to investigate how nonviolent resistance and divine intervention relate to each other in an oppressed group’s struggle for equality, justice, and dignity. A purpose of this paper is to explore how Dr. King’s framework for nonviolent resistance is operative within the book of Daniel and illumines from a different angle the coherence and purpose of this biblical book. In this paper, I seek to investigate how Dr. King’s description of nonviolent resistance and its impact upon African-American identity in “Nonviolence and Racial Justice” may illumine aspects of the book of Daniel, especially the “trial” narratives in Daniel 1, 3, and 6. Specifically, this paper seeks to examine how Dr. King’s assertion that adherents to methods of nonviolence must believe that “the universe is on the side of justice” may be operative within the book of Daniel in at least two ways. First, during the trial narratives in Daniel, divine agents appear consistently to aid these young men in their non-violent opposition to purported Babylonian hegemony. Similar to Dr. King’s thesis, the trial narratives in Daniel demonstrate that this manner of resistance positively affects both the oppressed and the oppressor. Second, King’s proposal regarding the participation of God in fights for justice illumines a possible thematic connection that links the narrative tales in the book of Daniel (Daniel 1-6) to the apocalyptic visions that conclude the biblical text (Daniel 7-12). Finally, by using Dr. King’s article as a framework for reading the book of Daniel, I hope to suggest ways in which the portrait of Jewish identity advocated in Daniel is consistent with Dr. King’s vision of African-American identity.

The post-Enlightenment hermeneutical turn is epitomized by the early History of Religions School, which elaborated the new attention to the human role in both the authorship and interpretation of biblical texts by its emphasis on historical, comparative, and evolutionary approaches. Early attempts to apply these hermeneutical approaches in ways that might have benefited from comparisons between African religions and biblical texts were often suspiciously complementary to colonialism and imperialism. However, fresh vistas for a more positive perspective have emerged from the dramatic surge in paleoanthropological research over the last two decades. This not only has confirmed the "out-of-Africa" model of human origins, but also places perspectives oriented from points within Africa in privileged positions in discussions of the origins of religion. Challenges this poses to models derived from the biblical creation stories are well known. This paper explores the implications of paleoanthropology for other biblical paradigms. These include: (1) a hermeneutical framework in "deep time" that marginalizes the interpretive hubris of the anthropocentric view of the cosmos found in theological traditions derived from the Bible; (2) the grounding of biblical morality in evolutionary tendencies that do not even require human cognitive capacities; (3) the dynamic relationship between Early and Middle Stone Age technologies and cognitive evolution, which reframes our understanding of "canon" and "sacred text"; (4) the undermining of nationalist, patriarchal, and exceptionalist claims of the biblical prophets by the much older paleoanthropology of religious experience in Africa; (5) the relativization of biblical migration models ("Exodus," "Conquest," and "Diaspora") by the more demonstrable success of African genetic groups that emigrated from Africa and colonized the rest of the planet; and (6) the liberating implications of an evolutionary eschatology unbound by teleogical determinism, which contrasts sharply with Jewish, Christian, and Islamic apocalypticism. The paper concludes with a rationale for giving such insights from paleoanthropology more attention in the development of an African hermeneutic. First, the demands of honesty and other moral imperatives require that human evolution be taken more seriously. Second, if shared commitments to confrontation with history provide a common ground for dialogue across cultures and religions, this is all the more so in grappling with the paleohistorical evidence of a shared African heritage. Third, despite the challenges that paleoanthropology poses to traditions constructed from the biblical text, hermeneutic models are already available in these traditions that accommodate such challenges. Fourth, the subversion of the ethnocentric narratives of biblical texts by the narrative of African paleoanthropology does not undermine the utility of biblical language and imagery as a channel for communication, including subversive communication. Finally, paleoanthropology suggests that Africa offers a unique potential for a more empirically grounded hermeneutic not just for biblical texts, but for the study of religion more generally.

Modern theorists of globalization have explored how the experience of living under globalized capitalism has produced particular destabilizations of the human subject (e.g., Hardt and Negri, Empire). Globalization causes people’s spatial experience of the world to simultaneously expand and contract, while time both speeds up and slows down. The anxieties associated with the global flows of capital and labor are thus as much related to economics as they are to this uncertainty regarding the human being’s place in a changing world. The international popularity of zombies, those endless consumers who threaten to destroy human nature and society, illustrate this well as Sarah Juliet Lauro has shown (“A Zombie Manifesto”). Scholars of antiquity have recently found models of Globalization helpful for redescribing the geospatial dynamics of the Roman Empire, and its complex interactions of local and “global” cultures (e.g., Richard Hingley, Jörg Rüpke, etc.). Rome’s globalizing presence in the ancient Mediterranean was both rhetoric and reality for its denizens in at times disorienting ways. In this paper, I argue that the pericope where Jesus says to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” helps illustrate the complex experiences of Rome’s globalizing presence in the early centuries CE. In the Synoptic Gospels, when Jesus makes this statement, it is in reference to a Roman denarius bearing the Emperor’s image (Mk 12:14-17, Mt 22:17-21, Lk 20:22-25). As globalization like Peter Sloterdijk argues (“Geometry in the Colossal”), the broad circulation of a coin such this one across space and time operates on the grounds of globalization. After all, images of the Roman Emperors holding a globe in their hand or placing their foot upon a globe were often stamped upon these very coins. Scholars have frequently read this story in the Synoptic Gospels as a kind of litmus test for pro vs. anti-Empire stances by Jesus or the authors. However, read in concert with the next passage, this story instead illustrates the fundamental ways that experiences of Rome’s globalizing presence shaped human existence in the ancient Mediterranean. Immediately after Jesus utters his pithy comment about the Roman denarius, he debates the Sadducees on the nature of resurrection. Jesus asserts that after dying, resurrected humans become “like angels in heaven” (Mk 12:25, Mt 22:30, Lk 20:36). This, after telling those around him what to do a coin stamped with the image of an Emperor who will travel to the heavens to be among the gods after his own death. Rome’s empire created a kind of globalized ancient Mediterranean, simultaneously pressing together a diversity of peoples and allowing their movement. All of this occurs under the reign of a man who will join the gods in the heavens and has his image circulating the globe on currency, thus colonizing the heavens and the earth. This globalizing logic likewise constitutes Jesus’ teachings on resurrection, where humans achieve new spatial heights through death. These stories from the Synoptic Gospels thus help illustrate the complex and diffused biopolitics of the Roman Empire’s globalized ordering of the Mediterranean world.

More than half a century ago Barthalemy claimed: „Origène était un érudit d'une honnête scrupuleuse, animé d'un profond sens de la tradition.” (D. Barthélemy, “Origene et le texte de l' Ancien Testament”, Etudes d'histoire du texte de 1'Ancien Testament (OBO 21; Freibourg/Göttingen: Universitätsverlag/ Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978) p. 203) What does Origen’s "sense of tradition" mean? Origen is presentative and successor of the Alexandrian grammar school. This is shown in various details of his life and work: in creating a working infrastructure (i.e. founding a library in Caesarea, creating a team of assistants and supporters), in collecting the working material (manuscripts), in preparing excerpts from different texts and in the mode of commenting them, as well as in the terminology used in his works. Aalexandrian roots are manifested in his approach to the textual criticism: in his conservatism as a text-critic based on the old principle µ?te p??s?e??a? µ?t' ?fe?e?? (“do not add or remove anything”) as well as in uncategorical judgement in the evaluation of variants (See esp. Bernhard Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe (2 vols) (Basel: Reinhardt, 1987)). In addition to this in case of Origen the “sense of tradition” means to consider the Septuagint as an inspired text and to believe a divine aiconomy is one of the causes of changing the text as well. Despite all abovementioned, when practical aspects of his work are discussed and his "recension" is described as an approximated text towards the Hebrew through the texts of the three his "sense of tradition" and his theoretical views declared in the commentaries on the scripture are absolutely ignored.. In the paper I will try to discuss his project in the light of “sense of tradition” considering the context to which he belonged and the ideas declared by himself. I think this is an only correct way to evaluate Hexapla adequately as an innovative akdosis based on the traditions of Alexandrian Grammar (Philological) School and completed according to the new realities and objectives in Caesarea.

The well-known similarities between Pliny’s letters to Sabinianus and Paul’s letter to Philemon provide a marvelous opportunity to discuss social status in the classroom. At my institution, students tend to be somewhat uncomfortable with those similarities and argue that Paul is not nearly as concerned with social status as Pliny and is simply viewing himself, along with Philemon and Onesimus, as equal “in Christ.” To move students out of this comfortable-but-untenable position, I first invite students to name the various mechanisms of social status at the school (degree program, financial situation, gender, ethnicity, relational network, etc.)—that conversation is proof that “equality in Christ,” whatever they think that means, has hardly won the day. Then, returning to Pliny and Paul, we highlight all of the words carrying status connotations in each letter. Numbers don’t lie: Paul is far more prone to using status language than Pliny. I then ask them to rank the three individuals in each narrative. The first is easy: Pliny first, Sabinianus second, the freedman last. The second is impossible: each character is superior to the others at one point in the letter, of equal rank to them at another, and inferior to them at yet another. Most students eventually come to the point of resigned confusion about what exactly Paul thought about social status within the church, but eventually someone will suggest that such confusion was precisely Paul’s point—that his goal was to deconstruct the unstated assumption that social hierarchy works in the church more or less like it does everywhere else. We are confused, in other words, because we have unknowingly bought into a system much like the one Paul was attempting to undermine. The first rule of social hierarchy for Paul, in other words, was that none of the old rules apply. And having created dissatisfaction with the status quo, Paul is able to call Philemon to decisive action against that status quo and to spark a conversation about what new rules may apply if the old ones need to be rejected.

How can students of ancient languages achieve fluency so that they can read simple, unfamiliar texts with comprehension, yet without the assistance of tools, in the same way that someone at an intermediate level in a modern language can read, say, the daily newspaper? This presentation explores how interactive fiction in the classroom, using the target ancient language for communication, is not only a more enjoyable and memorable experience but also better facilitates students’ internalization of the core of the language than traditional methods, which are based typically on rote memorization. Such interactive role-play in the context of teacher-led story telling brings the students inside the text at hand, enabling greater understanding of it. The questioning technique used by the teacher – involving varied comprehension questions for both actors and audience – continually reinforces and builds upon what is known. In addition, the interactive fiction, honed through the teacher’s comprehension questions, develops students’ ability to independently explore previously unseen ancient texts. They acquire a sensitive ability to draw on what is known in order to comprehend new, unexpected information and also evaluate its relative significance in context. The presentation focuses on TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), Blaine Ray’s widely used method for modern language instruction using teacher-led interactive oral stories and readings. The presentation will argue that TPRS can be used profitably by ancient language instructors as well. The majority of the presentation is a demonstration of the approach in Hellenistic Greek. A more limited hands-on participation from the audience is also elicited.

In recent decades scholars have devoted ample attention to the biblical authors’ interpretation of earlier scriptural texts. My primary purpose is to demonstrate the spectrum in which Daniel 3 employs Genesis 10-11 to make its own theological points. To make my case, I will investigate the literary allusion that I define together with the Israeli critic Ziva Ben-Porat as “a literary device for the simultaneous activation of two texts” (“The Poetics of Literary Allusion,” PTL 1 [1976]: 107). My argument will have three sections: (1) The main sign—“nations,” “peoples,” and “languages”—works in many junctions between the alluding text of Daniel 3 (vv. 4, 7, 29, 31) and its two evoked texts in Genesis 10 (vv. 5, 20, 31, 32) and 11 (vv. 6, 7, 9). Daniel 3 adopts as its backdrop the event that the descendants of Noah’s three sons spread over all the earth according to their nations, peoples, and languages after the Flood (Gen 10). In Gen 11:1-9, postdiluvian humankind’s scattered settlement results from its rebellious enterprise of a gigantic construction in Babel and God’s judgmental reaction to it. Daniel 3 alludes strategically to the Genesis Babel: the primal empire of humankind and its imperial project of construction. (2) The points of connection between the supplemental signs are more conceptual than linguistic. A fine example is found in a link between the Daniel expression “the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar erected” (Dan 3:2, 3, 5, 7) and the Genesis expression “the tower that humankind had built” (Gen 11:5). Nimrod the founder of Babel is credited with a series of “great” cities (Gen 10:12). Likewise, the physical dimensions of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, specified as ninety feet by nine feet, create an impression that it is disproportionately heavy at the top so as to be in danger of toppling (Dan 3:1). The hyperbolically accentuated height of the tower is transformed to the grotesquely unbalanced dimensions of the statue. In terms of the social function, the statue is a replica of the tower. They function as a social enterprise, in which all the members of Babel intend to stay in perfect unison. However, while the tower-project is purely political, the statue-worship combines politics and cult. In Genesis primeval humankind longs to stay in unison through its collaborative project to build the tower. In Daniel humankind still pursues collective unison, but what brings humankind together is the cult that undergirds the dictatorial authority of its leader. (3) Finally, I will proceed to discuss maximum activation of the allusions that interact between the larger contexts. The exiled Jews in the Babylonian empire saw clearly the pain and brutality of the world to which they were deported. Thus Daniel 3 exposes Israel’s social and religious conflict with the ancient imperialism. The sinister images of human imperialism that Daniel 3 paints revolve largely around the clash between King Nebuchadnezzar and the God of three pious Jews, highlighting the divine sovereignty that characterizes Daniel 3 as a theological critique of imperialism built on the human depravity.

"It a text can be said to change according to the way it is read, then probably no biblical book has undergone a greater transformation in this century than has the Psalter." -Ellen F. Davis- Among books of the Bible, special attention has been given to the repeatability of the Psalter by its reading communities. Reading communities of faith have individually or communally recited certain parts of the Psalter as their liturgical scripts. To comprehend the Psalter’s uses and influences, reception history attempts to map the consequentiality of the Psalter throughout history. The reception history of this liturgical poetry is particularly marked by its frequent employment in the musical domain. Composers have employed its musical qualities in the classic and hymns. Psalm 22 is no exception to this special attention. In this regard, this essay explores the reception history of Ps 22 with a particular focus on Felix Mendelssohn’s musical (re)interpretation of Ps 22. As Joel LeMon eloquently articulates, a discussion of one composer’s musical exegesis is “an exercise in reception history.” LeMon further articulates, however, that an essential objective of this scholarly activity attempts to describe the Psalter’s repeatability for “faithful communities today,” as it resonated with its intended audience. By identifying the enduring potential engagement between the ordinary individual and Ps 22, this study will also demonstrate how Mendelssohn’s setting of Ps 22 enhances individual participants of faithful communities today to resonate with the text. Mendelssohn’s Op. 78. No. 3 (Ps 22) functions as the musical expression of the poet’s fearful yet gratitude soul before God. And the genuine transition is made through his absolute dependence on God, where the poet’s absolute trust and hope reside. By sampling a theological oscillation between the lament (on his tragic situation) and praise (on God’s intervention and the sovereign rule) in Ps 22, Mendelssohn musically dramatizes the poet’s hymnic confession toward God. By distilling “the possibility, efficacy and necessity of giving praise to God in extremis” from Ps 22, Mendelssohn transforms the voice of the poet into that of singer and listening community today.

The topos of blindness plays a crucial literary and theological role in the Book of Acts. While this topos was widely used in the early Christian texts including St. Paul’s letters, Luke’s use is interesting in that he applies blindness to describe Paul’s so-called “conversion/call” experience in Acts (9:1-31, 22:6-21). This is an element that we do not find in Paul’s own comments about his revelatory experiences (Gal 1:11-24; 1 Cor 15:1-11). In the previous scholarship, this Lukan use of blindness was often understood within the Hebrew literary tradition of prophetic calling or divine punishment. Often received less attention in these analyses, however, is the Hellenistic philosophical tradition which used blindness as a powerful metaphor depicting a person’s radical transformation upon his/her acceptance of a particular truth-claim. In fact, Luke’s use of other philosophical motifs in depicting Paul’s experience, such as the teaching figure, sudden revelation of truth, and emphasis on the radicality of the change, makes it possible to understand Paul’s blindness as a Lukan literary device within this realm of philosophical topoi. In this paper, by placing Luke’s use of blindness in the Hellenistic philosophical discourses of personal transformation, and also the Jewish philosophical texts that participated in these discourses, I argue that Luke depicts Paul as going through a radical transformation, i.e. “conversion” from the religion/philosophy of “Judaism” to “Christianity.” In this Lukan description, moreover, Paul’s body becomes the locus where the radical transformation occurs and should occur when joining the church community. This Jewish body experiences the same transition from “darkness to light” as other gentile bodies of the community experience (Acts 26:12-17). It seems that Luke, by skillfully using the topos of blindness both for Paul and the gentiles, is creating the common notion of “conversion” for all members of the community. Paul, by becoming blind and then recovering his sight upon divine revelation, functions as the embodiment and the prominent example of “conversion” to Christianity in the Book of Acts.

Responses to polar questions in Biblical Hebrew commonly utilize a negative particle for the negative answer and the first word of the question for the affirmative answer. The explanations of traditional grammars using the concept “emphasis” are not satisfactory, since the one-word as an answer does not denote the emphatic or most important element of the question. Greenstein’s generative approach that accounts for the one-word as the result of the deletion of the rest of the sentence does not do justice to the intentions of the respondent. Besides the one-word answer, the respondent has other options when responding to a polar question, such as repeating more than one word of the question (sometimes repeating the whole question almost verbatim), adding additional elements to the repetition of one or more words, presenting new elements without the repetition, or even ignoring the question by not saying a word. This paper looks into these various types of responses to polar questions in their narrative context. The one-word answer often signifies a range of nuances such as finality, resoluteness, or authority as well as impatience, while the answer that repeats more than one word of the question expresses conformity, encouragement, or subservience. Moreover, the answer that contains new elements not found in the question signals the respondent’s non-conformity and initiative by giving out unsolicited information or instructions to the questioner. In order to understand the functions of various responding strategies to polar questions, we examine how the characters in the biblical narrative answer the question “hashalom.” The simple question is met by various types of responses depending on its narrative context. Each type reflects the respondent’s attitude toward the question, questioner, or the situation of the interaction. The primary function of responses to polar questions is offering the polarity value of the statement incorporated in the question. However, the respondent has the liberty to choose from different types of available responses. A particular choice offers the reader an insight into the attitude of the respondent portrayed by the narrator.

At least a generation after the death of Paul, the anonymous author of the Pastoral epistles indelibly altered the conception of women, children, and families in the New Testament Pauline canon. Whereas the undisputed epistles are ambivalent about the value of marriage and procreation, the author of 1 Timothy sought to limit the public role and status that some women had apparently attained in early Pauline communities, insisting that no woman should “teach or hold authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12; NRSV). The same author infamously tied a woman’s hope for salvation to her “natural” purpose: bearing and raising children (1 Tim. 2:15). In addition to presenting a conception of women and families that is very much at odds with Paul’s stances in the genuine corpus, the Pastoral epistles—and especially 1 Timothy—are notable for the fact that they rely on ideas of what is “natural” rather than (or in tandem with) relevant theological arguments. Indeed, when one encounters the phrase “traditional family values” in a contemporary Christian setting, the values in question almost certainly derive from the disputed Pauline corpus—i.e., the Pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Tim. and Titus) and/or the deutero-Pauline epistles (Col., Eph, and 2 Thess.). With these issues in mind, this paper will undertake two closely related goals: 1) to demonstrate that the phrase “traditional family values” refers to a loosely defined set of beliefs that entered the Christian idiom through the Pastoral epistles, which mapped the submission language of the Haustafel tradition onto Paul’s creation anthropology, and 2) to address how echoes of these beliefs continue to shape “traditional family values” and, especially, ideals of “Christian femininity” in contemporary America—both within and outside of religious communities.

The Syriac Electronic Data Research Archive (SEDRA) is a linguistic and literary database of the Syriac language and literature. Its acronym derives from the Syriac word ???? sedra, whose meanings include 'array', 'series' as well as 'order' and 'rank', all of which are terms that are associated with database theory. The new version of SEDRA (version IV) has new features and content. These features allow lexicographers to add new lexical entries and to mark lexical entries from existing databases. In addition, through Linked Data methodologies, SEDRA now connects to third-party lexical resources. The talk will walk through the new features which have been added during the last two years.

Although the concept of whiteness has its roots in biological notions of “race" that have been definitively disproven, it nonetheless represents a sociological reality created through the hegemony of people of European descent in western cultures. As such, “whiteness” can be an accurate descriptor of systems of privilege and standards of activity in the academy and other social institutions. Theological Interpretation of Scripture can be seen as an expression of whiteness, and white hegemony more specifically, as it works within and for the reification of long-established systems of power, and as it sometimes conducted under the guise of objectivity or historical-critical accuracy. Recent arguments for divine Christology in early Christian texts will serve as a test case to the thesis that theological interpretation is an expression of white hegemony in the biblical studies academy: demonstrating white privilege in its methodologies and maintaining white hegemony through the rhetorical effects and sociological ramifications of its conclusions.

The lecture will deal with some aspects, both of redaction and content, of CD IV-V, more specifically with the anthropoligy and soteriology reflected in these pages, and their bearing on a Gospel pericope.

Over eighty years ago, the famed biblical Hebrew scholar H. L. Ginsberg noted that Ps. 29 was originally a Canaanite “hymn” that celebrated Ba‘l’s victory over his adversaries. In order to adapt the prayer, the ancient editor, principally but not exclusively, substituted YHWH for Ba‘l. Aside from a few disruptions in the meter, the original text remained intact. F.M. Cross dated the adjustment to the tenth century BCE and insightfully clarified one way a polytheistic prayer infiltrated the monotheistic Psalter of the Hebrew Bible. Both of these noted giants in the field of Israelite religion were the product of their time when the primary motivation of scholarly inquiry was the defense of monotheism against polytheism. Even though this incentive is less a factor today, the polytheistic environment in which the Hebrew and Greek Bible developed continues to challenge scholars. Perhaps, nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the field of biblical prayer. Unlike monotheism, polytheism allowed everyone to discover and develop a close relationship with any one of a number of deities. Thus polytheism promoted the sense of mutual choice between a deity and worshiper. Since, both parties were, to a degree, reciprocally invested in each other, a worshiper could rely on the maintenance of personal welfare through lively prayers that vigorously called upon the deity for divine interventions. Biblical monotheism inherited this deeply expressive repertoire of prayers from polytheism together with the general, cultural sensibilities that gave rise to them. This presentation will explore how the divine-human relationship of polytheism informed the prayers and prayer life Semitic monotheistic worshipers. Although many biblical prayers exhibit a detectible tension in the shift from polytheism to monotheism, it is this same tension that provides us with a spectrum of prayers that gives voice to the entire range of human emotions and needs.

This paper considers the possibility that the key to unlocking the purpose of the Letter of Aristeas may be discovered by exploring the nexus between the pseudepigraphic nature of the work on the one hand and the identity transformations displayed by the characters in the work—especially the philosopher-translators—on the other. The starting points of this paper are these: (1) Scholars continue to wonder whether the legend of the Septuagint constitutes the true purpose of the Letter of Aristeas. (2) The pseudepigraphic nature of the work should give us pause: if we do not trust the narrator’s identity-claim, why should we trust his purpose-claim? (3) The extended philosophical symposium—which constitutes more than one third of the entire work—cannot be a mere digression, but must serve to support at least one central purpose of the work. Working from these starting points, this paper will argue that a central purpose of the book can be revealed by comparing and contrasting the stances toward to Hellenism, Judaism, and the Law displayed by Eleazar the High Priest in Jerusalem on the one hand and the 72 unnamed philosopher-translators in Alexandria on the other. In our author’s dream-world, Greeks visiting the temple in Jerusalem would be so impressed as to remain unoffended by what could otherwise be insulting critiques of Hellenistic mores (including idolatry, polytheism and royal incest). Yet our author’s hopes for the diaspora are more modest: throughout the week-long symposium, the philosopher-translators stay focused on shared, plausibly universal values. Flattery is of the upmost, and any critique is more thickly veiled. They maintain their Jewish identity, but they do so in fine Greek, balancing respect for earthly powers with reverence for God. Yet despite all these contrasts, these characters are not fundamentally different: the philosopher-translators, after all, have been dispatched by the priestly Eleazar from Judea, selected for their expertise in the Law. Back in Jerusalem, they might have been expected to behave more like Eleazar the High Priest. Readers who pay careful attention to Eleazar’s symbolic discourse on the Law while largely dismissing the content of the philosophers’ pithy witticisms are missing a key point. The author of Aristeas—himself a Jew parading rather successfully as a Greek—has used the legend of the Septuagint as a vehicle for modeling what he considers ideal Jewish behavior in the Hellenistic word. For the author of Aristeas, knowing how much to conceal or reveal, when and where, is a fundamental skill, the secret to success for Jews in the Hellenistic diaspora especially (despite the criticism of actors offered in Aristeas 219). This is the discipline put on display by the philosopher-translators at the symposium. Ironically, the Jewish author of Aristeas, who was mistaken for a Greek for many centuries, mastered these skills himself more than he likely ever imagined.

In this paper we will present new data from our excavations at Megiddo, which shed light on the history of cult activity at the site in the Iron Age in particular, and on cult in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in general. The Megiddo data point to two major transformations. The first took place at the end of the late Iron Age I, in the tenth century, with the destruction of the central temple of the second millennium B.C.E. city. The second occurred in the beginning of the late Iron Age IIA, in the early ninth century B.C.E., with a shift from a long-term tradition of buildings fully devoted to cult (temples) to cult practiced in restricted areas within prominent administrative buildings in the city.

As the paradigmatic display of God’s power and special relationship with Israel, the idea of the Exodus from Egypt figures prominently in psalms and liturgies of the Second Temple Period. The paper will follow the line of interpretation in biblical texts (Exod 15; Ps 78; 105; 106; 114, 135, 136; Isa 63–64; Neh 9) and some non-biblical materials (Sir 36:6–7; 39:17; Bar 1–3; Words of the Luminaries). It will be demonstrated that the process of productive interpretation shaped the idea of the Exodus as a founding myth of biblical Judaism that could be appropriated in the spiritualised act of praying.

The Kingship and Priesthood of Melchizedek, David, and the Messiah in Psalm 110

The notion of transaction costs and their minimizing (Williamson 1981) has been mobilized in New Institutional Economics, or NIE (North 1991 and others), and occasionally invoked for understanding the social and economic dynamics of ancient associations (Monson 2006 and others). The hypothesis that the growth of guilds in antiquity is to be explained on the basis of NIE has, however, come in for some criticism (Verboven 2015; Ogilvie 2004). This paper will consider the extent to which NIE offers a helpful framework for thinking about ancient occupational guilds and cultic associations.

Scholars have long sought an explanation of David’s census and its disastrous results by appeal to censuses recorded at Mari, concerning the reigns of both the kings Yasmah-Addu and Zimri-Lim. The reports of these censuses feature a resistance or anticipated resistance by at least some aspect of the population to be counted. Proposals for why this should be case usually suggest that the census taker either neglected some obscure religious rite or sought to impose an unbearable oath of fealty on the subject population. In this study, we explain how the specific contexts of these censuses and their anticipated and realized negative consequences can be explained by reference to the segmentary lineage model of mobile pastoral society. The segmentary lineage model grew out of twentieth-century ethnographic accounts of mobile pastoral populations. Epistemological shortcomings that were unresolved in anthropology before a significant shift in the focus of the field in the 1970s and 1980s ultimately led to the offhand rejection of this model. It is this opinion that is most frequently reflected in contemporary biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholarship, despite ongoing ethnographic engagement with southwest and central Asian societies and the continued evolution of the segmentary lineage model. Specifically, the principle of self-help and the opposition of lineage groups described by the model provide an inherent explanation as to why such societies would be particularly offended by a census. A critical adaptation of this model and the parsimonious nature by which it can explain the reaction of disparate populations to royal censuses in Iron Age Israel and Middle Bronze Age Mari suggests its relevance in further biblical and ancient Near Eastern research. Furthermore, it implies certain specific features shared by these societies, most notably that they were mobile, pastoral, and largely politically and economically independent of sedentary structures of power and production. These results have certain specific, and broadly relevant, implications for our understanding of both of these periods and places and underline the inherent, shared cultural oikos of the ancient Levant and inland Syria.

Biblical stress on God’s ownership of the land in Leviticus 25 is grounded in a long tradition, documented for both Egypt and Mesopotamia over a long period of time, of royal or divine (priestly) control over the disposition and assignment of land rights. A ruler could assign tracts of land to support a particular temple (as in the “Tradition of Seven Lean Years” in Egypt), or could assign it as a reward for faithful military service. Royal land grants are also documented for the Hittite Middle Kingdom period, and referenced in the Hittite Laws (e.g. #47a and following). It is in this general cultural context that Lev 25:23 makes its claim that “The land belongs to me [YHWH], and you are but tenants…” This Priestly text asserts divine right to distribute land and assign its use. This concept of divine ownership dictates that ownership of land is never transferred, but only its use. Further, it should be noted that land cannot realistically be “returned” automatically by divine decree in the Jubilee. Some representative of the family clan must present himself publicly to the current land holder with proof of his “right of redemption” for a given tract of land, and perform some sort of transaction to obtain a deed as seen in Jer 32:6-16 and Ruth 4. The expected process by which this happened was redemption, with the redemption price being reduced as the Jubilee approached (specified explicitly in Lev 25:14-17). The redemption transaction would have been necessary even in the Jubilee in order to obtain the deed. In the case of persons enslaved for debt, they could go out free (without payment) by having their debt contracts annulled or cancelled (literally smashed in the case of cuneiform tablets). This would have been necessary in conjunction with the Jubilee as prescribed in Lev 25 whenever a Jubilee year happened to intervene within a normal 6-year debt-service contract, since release of the land without the person being free to work it would be pointless, whereas the likelihood of a person maintaining their freedom for very long is pretty small once they have defaulted on a loan and thus lost the use of their land used as collateral. Together, these two provisions for release of collateral effectively also cancel any outstanding debt obligations, with the effect of allowing an impoverished family to start over with a clean slate once in a generation. The economic practicality of such provisions rests entirely on the redemption formuli given in Lev 25:14-17 for land and 25:50-52 for debt slaves, by which it is clear that the creditor does not take a financial hit with this release since the approach of the debt release is taken into account already in the terms of any loan, and in the value assigned to any potential collateral. The result is that credit inevitably dries up progressively with the approach of a Jubilee year (as predicted in Deut 15:9), requiring the generosity of brothers.

The extensive excavations at Ramat Ra?el first by Aharoni and most recently by Lipschits, Gadot, et al. must count as among the most important for understanding Judean history. The discovery of a long-enduring monumental complex just outside Jerusalem and the analysis of the Yehud stamp impressions, are transforming our understanding of the administration, economy, and politics of the region. Given the pivotal location of Ramat Ra?el, it may be surprising that the site is mentioned only once in Ezra-Nehemiah. My paper explores the disjunction between the prominence of this site over central centuries and the lack of attention given to it in Ezra-Nehemiah (and 1 Esdras). Why the virtual silence? Why are the role and function of Ramat Ra?el not addressed? How is Ramat Ra?el important for gaining a better sense of the particular nature of Ezra-Nehemiah – its origins, interests, genre, and limitations? The questions are necessarily speculative, but worth asking.

Intended for proclamation as well as study and contemplation, the practical use of the Gospels in late antique liturgies had an important impact on their transmission, reception, and interpretation. This is particularly true of the Gospel of John, which was selected in Constantinople for continuous reading throughout the fifty-day period from Easter to Pentecost. Para-textual apparatuses like sense lines, section divisions, and chapter lists provide early evidence both of these recurring reading practices and of the interpretive priorities of ancient Christian readers, as mutually reinforcing processes of meaning production and scripturalization were literally written into Gospel texts. By focusing on one particularly beloved story, the pericope of the man born blind, and outlining the placement of this passage in the kephalaia (chapter divisions with accompanying titles), the emerging Constantinopolitan liturgy, and late antique homilies, this paper calls attention to the use of John as a liturgical object designed to teach audiences to see as well as to hear what was regarded as the healing message of Jesus Christ.

This paper presents an alternative understanding of early Philistia, opting for a distinction between the historical Philistines and the archaeology of southwestern Canaan during the Iron I. It suggests that the Philistines were warrior bands, like other bands of the late second millennium BCE, and accentuates the absence of information about their deeds following the battles against Ramesses III or the circumstances that led some of them to gain power in southwestern Canaan. It consequently puts forward that the transformations observed in the archaeological record are to be understood considering the collapse of the Egyptian-oriented network and the consequent regionalization and societal reorientations that led to the emergence of new society with new centers of power and new focal points of interaction.

Growing up, there was always Ladies’ Home Journal available in our bathroom. I remember reading a monthly column, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Betrayal, the interference of in-laws and ex-spouses, lost jobs, and bedroom problems forced couples to consult an expert over whether their marriage was yet salvageable, and, if so, how. This same m.o. is presently found on television shows ranging from Dr. Phil to Divorce Court. Utilizing a similar method in the classroom for teaching biblical texts that trigger visceral student responses can be incredibly useful. The ground rules very somewhat, of course, depending on whether the setting is secular or confessional (yet, even there, one keeps in mind Luther’s views on the book of James). This pedagogy introduces basic principles of mediation, beginning with identifying stakeholders and understanding the distinction between positions (stated demands) and values (what motivates the persons staking their positions). The classroom work focuses on unearthing the operative values at work among the actors within the text and, as well, the purveyors of the text itself. One example: “Can This Congregation Be Saved?” Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple, are struck dead for contributing only a portion of the proceeds from a land sale to the Disciples’ Discretionary Fund. Their death, in which chief disciple Peter has indicted Satan as co-conspirator and the Holy Spirit as the Victim, has led to widespread fear gripping the whole congregation. Merely calling the couple out for public shaming was apparently not an adequate remedy, and though the couple’s marriage could be saved, their lives could not. The class here is asked to participate in determining whether this congregation can be saved, and key to this is a discussion on the proportionality of punishment. Some students are asked to represent Peter, identifying what was at stake in the Apostles’ communistic plans for sustaining their early Christian communities and what values motivated Peter to show less compassion to this couple than Jesus showed to Peter himself. Other students would represent the congregants and what it means to replace a sense of sharing freely with a fear of being slain. After opening statements and a round of the Professor-cum-Mediator’s questions, the remaining students then query either group in seeking to determine if any shared values exist and if that congregational relationship can be salvaged, and, if so, on what mediated terms. The creativity of students in this approach is consistently astounding, and when the discussion moves to the sociological, theological, and financial values animating the stakeholders, then students rapidly begin bringing in their own experiences and insights, while experiencing the safety and respect to react, even strongly and viscerally—opening themselves to growth rather than shutting themselves down from frustration or worse. In our own Session, we will take on Ezra’s campaign to “Make Israel Great Again” through means of mass deportation, sundering families, restoring pure bloodlines, and centrally controlling wealth. Roles will be assigned (participation voluntary)!

The Papian fragment cited in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History 3.39.4 has caused major interpretative difficulties. Were Papias's "elders" a special class of ecclesiastical presbyters who ranked beneath and were appointed by the apostles? Or did the "elders" stand in an appositional relationship to the "disciples of the Lord," meaning that Papias was simply restating his goal to ascertain the elder’s (i.e. disciple’s) words or what they had said? The second question is whether the same John was mentioned twice, the first time as part of the seven disciples who had passed away and the second time as one of the two remaining disciples who were still alive in Papias’s time, or whether the disciple John and the elder John were two separate individuals. However one resolves these translation issues, this paper will explore the Patristic reception of Papias's mysterious informant on the evangelists Mark and Matthew (H.E. 3.39.15-16). Although A. C. Perumalil (1980) and Richard Bauckham (2006, 2007) have argued via different routes that Irenaeus maintained the distinction between the apostle John and the elder John, Lorne Zelyck (2016) has reiterated that Irenaeus probably assumed that the apostle John inaugurated a line of apostolic succession in Asia Minor through the bishops Papias and Polycarp (A.H. 3.3.4; 5.33.4) and legitimated the fourth canonical Gospel by recourse to its apostolic origins (3.1.1). I would add that there is also no additional information to be gleaned about the "elder John" from Polycrates of Ephesus (Eusebius, H.E. 3.31.3; 5.24.2) or from the Muratorian Canon. Finally, Eusebius and Jerome may not have manufactured the second John since they had access to Papias’s five-volume treatise, but their biases are displayed when they assigned the book of Revelation or the Johannine epistles to this anonymous elder in order to downgrade their authoritative status (H.E. 3.39.2, 5-7; cf. 3.25.2, 4; 3.28.2-5; 3.39.13-15; 7.25.1-27; Jerome, De vir. il. 13). Thus, ideological agendas were at work in the translation of Papias's sloppy phraseology.

African Theological Perspectives on Eschatology

In Ezekiel’s scholarship it is widely accepted that Ezekiel’s approach toward Jehoiachin was positive and that Ezekiel predicted his future restoration to the throne. The first part of this presentation will try to challenge this convention. A new analysis of the prophecy about the cedar, the vine and the two eagles (Ezek 17) will demonstrate that it does not predict a bright future to the exiled king. Jehoiachin is depicted as a cedar that was totally uprooted, both treetop and roots, and was thrown in a ’city of merchants’ not in order to be replanted and protected but rather in order to be dried and ready for trade. Even in the future, a new sprig will be restored, but Jehoiachin, the original cedar, will remain in exile. Furthermore, an analysis of the prophecy about the lioness and her cubs (Ezek 19) will demonstrate that the second cub resembled Jehoiachin. Ezekiel depicted him as blood shedder harming his own people and predicted that his voice will not be heard again on the mountains of Israel. These findings tally with the prophecy to the shepherds (Ezek 34) in which Ezekiel evaluate all Israel’s past leaders, including Jehoiachin, negatively. Ezekiel considered them responsible for the destruction and exile and predicted their dismissal from their position, never to lead Israel again. The second part of the presentation will deal with the question why was Ezekiel’s attitude toward Jehoiachin so negative? Jehoiachin had many features that could have caused Ezekiel to evaluate him positively: He ruled for only three months and could not have manage to sin considerably, his surrender to the Babylonians was a result of his father’s rebellion, and eventually, he was exiled just like Ezekiel and his audience, and one could have expected that Ezekiel would reveal some degree of sympathy with the king who shared with him a similar fate. As a response it will be offered that Ezekiel's exile theology and place of dwelling had a crucial role in shaping his perspectives. Ezekiel considered the exile as an atoning event, but only in regard to those who suffered its hardships, therefore also enabling their restoration. Contrary to the Judean exiles that suffered those hardships and were settled as land tenants in small communities in the southern Babylonian periphery, Jehoiachin was held in the palace at the city of Babylon. In this case, Geography defined who might be considered as exile. Ezekiel maintained that just like others that were not exiled and therefore did not achieve atonement (such as those who remained in the land), Jehoiachin as well will not be part of Israel’s future restoration.

tba

Few things seem to stimulate the creative impulses of Hebrew Bible text-critics as much as difficult readings, or cruces interpretum. In their endeavour to elucidate or eliminate problematic passages, text-critics generally put forward philological and grammatical solutions, or they resort to emendations (often of the conjectural kind). In the case of difficult readings in the Hebrew versions of the book of Lamentations, the solutions and emendations proposed by text-critics are, at times, quite ingenious, but they seldom find widespread support from other scholars. The phrase kammawet, “like death”, in the MT version of v. 20 is a good example of a difficult reading in Lamentations 1 that has elicited many creative interpretations from text-critics and, yet, remains “unsolved”. In his important Anchor Bible commentary on Lamentations, Delbert Hillers suggests an emendation of the reading in the MT that not only draws on parallels in other Hebrew Bible writings, but also refers to a passage from the Sumerian city-lament, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur. Hillers’s proposed emendation treats the Hebrew text of Lamentations 1 as a medium of meaningful communication and connects its intelligibility to themes that are also found in other literature from its larger cultural environment. Although this paper does not accept Hillers’s emendation of MT Lam 1:20, it takes his treatment of the text of Lamentations 1 as a cultural artefact and a medium in a rhetorical act as its point of departure in exploring the communicative potential of the phrase kammawet. For the text-critic who endeavours to make sense of difficult readings in the textual representatives of Hebrew Bible writings, such an exploration entails two interpretative tasks: Firstly, text-critics should investigate whether concepts, images, scenes or motifs that might potentially have been part of the writings’ encyclopaedic intellectual heritage can help to make sense of a difficult reading. Secondly, text-critics should determine how a comparison with other ancient Near Eastern cultural artefacts that use similar concepts, images, scenes or motifs brings the specific contribution of the difficult reading to the content of its passage into relief. The paper tackles these two tasks in an attempt to elucidate the reading kammawet in MT Lam 1:20 by drawing on depictions of personified Death in ancient Near Eastern texts. It subsequently compares MT Lam 1:20 to a similar passage in The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur to establish what the suggested understanding of kammawet contributes to the theme of the inescapability of death that is found in both the Hebrew and Sumerian laments. The paper concludes that the reading in the MT makes good sense and, therefore, that there is no need to emend it or do away with its comparison to Death. It illustrates that grammar, comparative philology and conjectural emendation are not the only avenues along which to make sense of difficult readings in the Hebrew Bible writings. Text-critics can also make use of information from the writings’ broader cultural environment for this purpose.

By the fourth century CE, patristic authors repeatedly associate the Adam (i.e., primordial human) of Genesis 1–3 with wisdom. In this paper I argue that Chrysostom, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria provide evidence of a wide-spread exegetical tradition in which Adam, or the primordial human being, was divinely endowed with wisdom/knowledge. While they all draw universal implications from their understanding of Adam’s wisdom, the specific contours of the motif’s deployment may vary. Chrysostom deploys the motif to criticize the irrational nature of pagan worship. For Augustine, the motif serves an allegory of the human soul falling into pride. Cyril employs the Adam’s wisdom motif to highlight pagan degeneration into polytheism.

In November 2016, the research team of Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), in collaboration with the Münster Institute for New Testament textual research, made available a database of more than 6000 conjectures on the Greek New Testament (see http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/nt-conjectures). This contribution shows how the database can be used as a research tool for both textual criticism and exegesis, as well as for historical study of New Testament and classical scholars.

Cyrus, the creation, monotheism, universalism and dualism – these are the topics on the agenda when it comes to the question of Persian influences in the book of Isaiah. This question is aimed primarily at what is known as Second Isaiah in Isa 40-66, and it addresses three aspects: First, it enquires about general religio-historical analogies; secondly, it examines the relationship between distinct – Late Babylonian and Persian – sources or historical constellations and texts in Second Isaiah; thirdly, it aims to identify and date the postulated anonymous prophet. The religio-historical comparison is quite often in dispute with, or rather against hypotheses that envisage a gradual literary growth of Isaiah 40–66. In this paper I am going to address the late Babylonian and Persian influences in Second Isaiah and, using selected examples, consider what they contribute to the dating and literary unity of the texts.

There exists in the history of Qumran scholarship a long tradition of liturgical or ritual readings of the War Scroll. While this work is undoubtedly future oriented, it contains numerous passages that share forms and concerns with non-apocalyptic Qumran ritual texts. But should this be limited only to performative utterance, or do we also find descriptions of material practices that would be considered ritually efficacious or even potential prayer forms? I will argue that the rules of the trumpets and banners in 1QM III–IV describe the production of apotropaic devices that are made to solicit divine protection within the conflicts described in the text. Trumpets were most often associated with cultic procession, even within martial traditions. Banners are less attested in early Jewish sources, and Roman standard-bearing practices likely influenced this tradition. In both cases—as well as in that of the prince’s shield (1QM V 1–2)—a standardized set of inscriptions are prescribed, all of which are congruent with both the communal identity construction and unique apotropaic prayer practices found in sectarian texts. Given this congruence, we must question if such inscriptions may be defined as a type of prayer, just as we must with amulets and tefillin. As with all boundary-marking rites, these inscriptions and their attendant practices bear the dual roles of affirming the movement’s identity and figural universe, and creating bound space which is resistant to the encroachment of evil spirits and other outsiders. As with all other apocalyptically-oriented rituals (e.g., sectarian participation in angelic or heavenly liturgies), we must at least entertain some possibility that the practices had both present and future performative contexts for the communities that produced these texts. Such designation will also help to clarify further the means and methods of Qumran apotropaic prayer, in both 1QM and other, more traditional rites of affliction.

The New Testament contains various texts in which the speaking of more than one language and the need for translations and interpretations occur. First and foremost among those are instances, particularly found in the Gospels and Acts, where mostly Aramaic words or phrases are translated into Greek (e.g. Mark 15:34 or John 1:41). Of a different nature is the narrative about Paul in Acts 21:37–22:3 who is portrayed as a person both versatile in Greek and Hebrew and knows when best to make use of which language. Of yet another kind is the need for translation mentioned by Paul himself, when it comes to speaking in tongues and understanding such speech (e.g. 1Cor 12 and 14). Likewise contemporary documentary evidence offers a variety of texts which either are bilingual in nature or give hint to being a translation. Furthermore, there are mostly legal texts in which the need or presence of a translator is mentioned. By taking a look into comparable situations from ancient everyday life as preserved in documentary evidence and the New Testament and by discussing similarities and differences this paper aims at analysing the social situations in which translations and the presence of an interpreter became necessary in New Testament times.

This essay examines Paul’s puzzling “thankless thanks” in Philippians 4 in relation to several aspects of the larger epistle that have significance for the social identities of Paul’s Philippian audience and for later readers of the text. The main line of argumentation is that Paul re-contextualizes his economic exchange with the Philippians within an economy of gift that is intelligible (and possible) only because of the transformed social identity of the community. This identity emerges from the community’s shared participation in the life of God through union with Christ. Within this economy of gift, economic exchange is a doxological act whose meaning and practice is informed by the fact that God is both the receiver and the giver of every gift. The claim will be explored relative to its social identity ramifications and to its ramifications for the relationship between social identity and resource exchange. This theocentric reading of economic exchange in Philippi opens the door to a further claim that comes into view when one reads Philippians 4 against the background of the great Christ-“hymn” in Philippians 2. Paul’s insistence that Christian economic exchange is a theocentric doxological act that takes place “in Christ” is given a powerful ontological foundation in the relationship of gift-giving that exists between Jesus and the Father. The economic exchange in Philippians 4 is a profound actualization of a social identity whose liturgical practice of economic exchange is a mode of participation in the economy of gift that exists between the Father and Jesus. It is toward this pattern of shared life, and hence to this expression of social identity, that Paul urges his hearers.

Surat Yusuf is particularly rich in exegetical motifs paralleled in rabbinic midrash (biblical interpretation). A few examples may suggest some more general conclusions about the oral transmission of such motifs in ancient times.

This paper examines the diversity in Paul’s reception of the original literary context of quotations from the Pentateuch, particularly concentrating on the question, to what extent Paul invites metaleptical readings. The concept of metalepsis was introduced into biblical studies by Richard B. Hays: “Metalepsis is a literary technique of citing or echoing a small bit of a precursor text in such a way that the reader can grasp the significance of the echo only by recalling or recovering the original context from which the fragmentary echo came, and then reading the two texts in dialogical juxtaposition.” (Hays 2016, 11; cf. 1989, 20) When applied to direct quotations (rather than allusions or echoes), metaleptical readings tend to assume that the original context echoes through the quoted words. Recently, however, several scholars have inquired after the limits of valid metalepsis. Are there boundaries for justifiable metaleptical readings? This paper examines the question from the perspective of Paul’s argumentation. When would a metaleptical reading be disadvantageous for the flow of Paul’s thought? The paper analyzes quotations that represent various ways of Paul receiving the original literary context. They form a spectrum: its one end encompasses quotations where metalepsis may be integral to Paul’s argument, the other end quotations where a metaleptical reading would risk leading the readers seriously astray and hinder them from grasping Paul’s point. In the cases closer to the latter end of the spectrum, special attention will be drawn to the small interpretive hints that Paul gives his audience to guide their interpretation. All examples derive from direct quotations from the Pentateuch in the letter to the Romans. By covering the diversity of cases, including those ones in which Paul does not appear to invite metaleptic readings, the paper aims at giving a more nuanced picture of Paul’s use of quotations in his argumentation. Furthermore, it participates in the discussion concerning the function of metalepsis in New Testament writings.

Understanding the lexeme hebel in Ecclesiastes has proved difficult for exegetes. Various glosses have been proposed for the noun, including “transitory,” “futile,” “vanity,” “absurd,” and “meaningless.” However, consensus concerning its meaning is yet to be reached. The present paper seeks to approach the problem by adopting Fillmore’s framework of scenic lexemes. The idea of scenic lexemes is a part of Fillmore’s theory of frame semantics: Fillmore observes that to understand some lexemes, it is also necessary to understand its associated scenes. This observation may be applied to the scenes concerning hebel: I show that it is possible to capture significant commonalities among the usages of hebel by shifting the focus of analysis from the word to the scenes in which hebel participates to create meaning. The cognitive linguistic methodology to achieve this aim is simple: Commonalities among the scenes must be abstracted, and then schematized into a representation that defines hebel. A second important aspect of the present paper is its utilization of ethnolinguistic approaches in combination with frame semantics. The fact that some foreign emotions and sensibilities cannot easily be grasped by English-oriented onlookers has long been recognized by anthropologists studying contemporary non-industrial cultures. An important milestone in these studies has been the recognition that emotions and sensibilities are not bio-physical universals, but rather, primarily cultural: Each culture has words for emotions and sensibilities that are not translatable into other languages. To define these lexemes, descriptions of the moral point of view, social goals, and sequences of events within scenes are required. Although the observation that hebel is untranslatable is not new, this paper seeks to go beyond a simple observation of the difficulty of translating hebel, by proposing a way to define hebel without being imprisoned by English sensibilities. Words like “absurd” and “vanity” are to be avoided in defining the scene, since the scenes that “absurd” and “vanity” evoke are English-particular scenes. Rather, simple and more universal words like “see,” “want,” and “think” are to be used in describing the scenes of hebel. In the present paper, I apply the theory to define some components of the hebel scene, in order to show how the methodology may be applied. I show that hebel consists of a scene with at least three components that may be schematized as follows: “I wanted… after this I saw… now I think…” The schematization of the scene is still skeletal at this point, but for the purposes of this paper, I place greater emphasis on establishing a methodology for defining scenic lexemes in ancient literature. The paper contributes to ongoing applications of cognitive linguistic to Biblical studies by extending the use of Fillmore’s frame semantics to scenic lexemes in Biblical literature, and the paper also makes a small contribution to scholarship on hebel in Ecclesiastes by positing a new way to approach the problem.

This paper examines the unexpressed yet operative political values built into liberal historicism that affected portraits of early Judaism in 19th-century Prussia. As classical antiquity became part and parcel of the political and cultural institutions that formed over the century, liberalism and historicism walked hand-in-hand. Not only did classical forms of Bildung take hold beneath the Prussian establishment, but historians themselves also served in government (e.g. Heinrich von Treitschke and Theodor Mommsen). Through school reforms and institutional support, this scholarship quickly specialized, professionalized, and dominated the fields of history, classics, and theology (esp. biblical studies) across Europe and North America. This mode of historiography, which came to define “scientificness” across the human sciences until the fin de siècle, centered on empiricism, focused on data collection, and opposed comparative ventures, which helped naturalize theoretical commitments into the venture of accessing the past. Since liberal historians, theologians, and classicists wielded much power in the hierarchical and highly-centralized government institutions of culture and education, they successfully established themselves and those of similar mind. The portrait of the past they and their intellectual allies composed preserved a transformed tradition of Christian humanism and cultural Protestantism while celebrating the values of national and political autonomy, freedom of conscience, and individual liberty. This essay applies discursive approaches to scrutinize knowledge production in the portraits of ancient Judaism by Leopold von Ranke, Johann Gustav Droysen, Mommsen, and Eduard Meyer. All these scholars were massively influential, not least on reconstructions of religion in antiquity: Julius Wellhausen himself, for example, relied heavily on Mommsen’s history of the ancient world and famously debated Meyer on the subject of ancient Judaism. By deploying linguistic analysis of evaluative terms, implied narratives, and lexicon for religious groups, the paper excavates operative categories and partisan historiographic practices. The analytical blade therefore cuts in two directions, towards the fundamental values built into liberal historicism and the actual portrayal of Judaism. Early Jewish polity provides leverage on these values because it did not conform to them: it was a national group that never maintained a sustained political autonomy. Hellenistic influence on Jewish thought and culture featured prominently in these portrayals, revealing the premium the enterprise of historicism placed on national-political autonomy. While the presumed autonomy of Greek civilization permitted historians to assume any elements borrowed from foreign peoples underwent a transformation to become thoroughly Greek, for instance, the Jews of antiquity were depicted as a mixed or syncretistic people, blending the Hellenistic with the Semitic. According to such values, the perceived fusion of cultural elements revealed a relatively weak national identity. Furthermore, the transition from Hebrew to Aramaic as the Jewish language was one factor into this depiction too. In consequence, the paper seeks to demonstrate how specifically Prussian political values affected the portrait and ultimate judgment of ancient Judaism – values perhaps still underpinning reconstructions of Judaism today.

It has been argued that Ben Sira, as a Hellenistic wisdom text, is an important document that combines Israelite wisdom tradition with Torah including Deuteronomistic languages, so that wisdom in Ben Sira is recognised as Torah (15:1; 24:23). Scholars until now have proposed diverse ways of understanding such a close relation between Wisdom and Torah. Some think that Ben Sira is “sapientializing” Torah or Deuteronomi(sti)c heritage, others still maintain that Ben Sira is “torahizing” wisdom tradition. Otherwise, both literary profiles are not subjugated to each other, but are correlated as retaining independent identities (e.g., Goering). A closer look at these scholarly claims indicates that Ben Sira does not equate the concept of wisdom with Torah, but it uses no more than the widespread Jewish laws that are integrated with instruction or advice literature just as indicated in Proverbs 1-9. In Ben Sira, wisdom is the consequence of Torah (1:26; 15:1-8; 24:23-26) and Torah is the consequence of pursuing all wisdom (19:20) and wisdom is a product of internalizing and working with Torah and instructions (1:26; 6:37; 15:1; 24:23-7). In this paper, I examine scholarly arguments which make assumptions about the confluence of Wisdom and Torah in Ben Sira, and I put forward the claim that Ben Sira has little influence of the canonical form of Torah and that the context of Ben Sira, though there are similar expressions with Pentateuch, is quite different from what Torah says.

The disconnect between the depiction of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–11 and the more “enlightened” wisdom attributed to him in Proverbs has long been a source of scholarly discomfort. In 1801, for example, Georg Laurenz Bauer wrote, “It is undeniable that the historical books follow more the general principles of popular religion than the concepts that wiser and more talented Israelites acquired through reflection and scholarly education.” More recently, even the canonical critic Brevard Childs (1979) was unwilling to acknowledge that the Solomonic superscription of Proverbs connected the book with anything more than the “sapiential material” in Kings, lest “the uniqueness of the sapiential witness” be merged with “more dominant biblical themes.” Therefore, though many, like R. B. Y. Scott (1960), may recognize that there are several types of wisdom in the Solomonic account, including political, legal, and even cultic acumen, most follow his conclusion that only Solomon’s superior knowledge and intellect (1 Kgs 5:9-14 [ET 4:29-34]; 10:1-10, 13, 23-24) connect the king to the Wisdom Literature. Instead of projecting this modern definition of Wisdom Literature back onto the description of Solomon in Kings, in this paper I will follow that text’s presentation of Israelite wisdom. If mention of the word “wisdom” (hokmah and its derivatives), which appears 21 times, or interest in the topic are the main criteria for the category, then this text should be chief among the Wisdom texts. Rather than its widely debated historical value, I will explore its commonly overlooked hermeneutical significance of the text’s depiction of Solomon. The material in 1 Kings 1–11 may be late and legendary, as James Crenshaw (2010) argues, but, as he still acknowledges, the Solomonic connection must tell us something about how wisdom was understood. I will argue the account of Solomon and his reign provides a personified, narrative definition of the term’s semantic range (complete with antonyms: 1 Kings 11:1-8). Therefore, as the superscription of Proverbs invites the book to be read according to the wisdom attributed to Solomon in 1 Kings, so the variegated presentation of wisdom in that account draws other texts across the canon into the interpretation of Proverbs. The Solomonic attribution does not cordon Proverbs off from the rest of the canon, but invites the book into the complex intertextual network represented in the description of the wise king in 1 Kings, one in which politics and prophecy, intellect and piety, the secular and the sacred intersect. As scholars have noted these features in Proverbs, reading the book in a series of intertextual groupings, they have reflected the variegated nature of Proverbs and the wisdom it describes. The compilers of 1 Kings 1–11 were a step ahead of them.

Abraham ibn Ezra, a medieval Spanish Jewish polymath and peripatetic transplant to Latin Europe, is conventionally associated with peshat exegesis, a method of linguistic-contextual biblical hermeneutics regnant in medieval Jewish commentaries. However, a careful examination of ibn Ezra’s programmatic introductions as well as his commentaries themselves demonstrate that he pursues esoteric interpretations, or sod, as a significant component of his works, distinct from what he terms peshat. My paper will move beyond the binary of exotericism and esotericism to account for both ibn Ezra’s militant pursuit of peshat and his esoteric comments, which comprehend mystical, philosophical, and scientific ideas. It will draw upon a more dialectical understanding of esotericism—as put forward by Elliot Wolfson—to explain ibn Ezra’s textual hermeneutic as well as his theory of ritual. My paper aims to show how ibn Ezra’s textual hermeneutics are the means to unlocking a collection of interrelated concepts in his thought. Ibn Ezra employs both peshat and sod in his interpretation of the biblical text and in his project—part of a broader enterprise in medieval Jewish thought—of rationalizing the commandments. In this context, sod for ibn Ezra constitutes the reasons for those commandments that defy or simply do not accord with reason. Ibn Ezra’s esoteric exegesis is partially aimed at dealing polemical blows to Christian modes of exegesis and religious practice. For ibn Ezra, the Christian rejection of the commandments is fundamentally linked to the Christian excess in reading biblical texts esoterically and allegorically. Additionally, his hermeneutic is motivated by a nuanced conception of human reason and its role in biblical interpretation. My paper will show how the dialectic Wolfson describes for esotericism works to illumine the relationship between peshat and sod in ibn Ezra’s conception of the commandments. Circumcision represents the paradigmatic commandment that possesses both peshat and sod. Ibn Ezra seizes on a verse from Deuteronomy mandating “circumcise the foreskin of your heart” as a methodological exercise in exploring the nature and scope of figurative and esoteric interpretation. In the introductions to his commentary he directly links corporeal circumcision to peshat and figurative, spiritual circumcision to sod. My paper will seek to demonstrate that ibn Ezra does not narrowly view “circumcision of the heart” as a figure of speech; rather, this verse and its exegesis prove the existence of a non-literal and esoteric interpretive layer. Further, my paper will address the relationship between figurative language and esotericism that emerges from ibn Ezra’s use of spiritual circumcision. In the case of circumcision, the biblical text uniquely furnishes both the peshat in the form of literal circumcision as well as the sod in the form of figurative circumcision, or the reason underlying the corporeal rite. Circumcision functions in this capacity for ibn Ezra partially because of its salience in the Christian rejection of ritual, which consequently furthers ibn Ezra’s polemical objectives. Moreover, the rabbinic and mystical tradition that associates circumcision with revelation may serve as a source for ibn Ezra.

Cultural memory theory as an interdisciplinary field of research is concerned with the usability of the past for the formation of identity in the present. Theorists argue that cultural memories are only re-appropriated and re-cast as they are found to be useful for contemporary communities facing new and complex circumstances. One medium through which a community’s memories may be reclaimed and reused is literature and, specifically, through the text forming work of intertextuality. By means of intertextuality, literary compositions become sites of memory with the power to form communal identity. The final hymn of the book of Habakkuk, a frequent topic of scholarly debate, demonstrates strong intertextual ties to ancient Near Eastern mythological portraits of nation deities and, as a result, portrays Yahweh as both victor over cosmological forces and national powers. In its present context, the hymn functions as a response to prophetic complaint and individual lament concerning the Judahites’ ongoing experience of injustice and suffering under the oppressive force of the Babylonians. In this new context, the ancient mythological memory of Yahweh as divine warrior and conqueror of chaos is re-appropriated as an affirmation of faith memorialized through literary composition and ritual recitation. Indeed, Habakkuk’s final hymn, understood as an archaic poetic composition intertextually tied to ancient Near Eastern mythological texts, may be understood as the re-appropriation of an ancient cultural memory concerning the character of Yahweh that functions to sustain and unify the community in light of present trauma and political turmoil. Such an assessment of Habakkuk’s final hymn, then, sheds new light on a classic form critical concern. That is, when the lens of cultural memory studies is turned on the final hymn of Habakkuk, new insight emerges regarding the Sitz im Leben of the prophetic work.

The study of the Bible and its reception generally operates with the assumption that biblical interpretation consists of the attempt to solve from a variety of different perspectives problems that are inherent in the biblical text itself. Scholars who aspire to account for the meaning of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context are frequently divided in aim and method from, and produce quite different results than, those who concern themselves with the meaning of the Bible as rendered by later Jewish and Christian religious formations. Nevertheless, both groups proceed with the assumption that what they present are simply alternative solutions to a common set of problems. In fact, the very identification of a text as a problem, as a site that requires interpretation, already presupposes a variety of shared perspectives that may be more the product of certain reading strategies that have developed over the course of Western history than a contradiction, ambiguity, or gap inherent in the text itself. What is needed within biblical studies is a shift whereby we begin to consider not only interpretive problems themselves but also account for the history behind those assumptions that go into the identification of a given textual site as problematic. The present paper, “How to Construct an Interpretive Site: ‘Jewish Seed’ (Est 6:13) and the Book of Esther,” takes a famous “interpretive crux”—Mordecai’s refusal to kneel before Haman in the book of Esther (3:1-6)—and considers what goes into defining this site as inherently ambiguous and thus requiring “interpretation.” The suggestion is made, on the basis of a contextual reading of this passage within the book of Esther and against the backdrop of other historical romances, as well as notions of Jewish ethnicity in the Hellenistic period, that the meaning of the passage need not be seen as inherently unclear and requiring interpretation. Instead, aspects of the passage proved to be unseemly to the changing cultural sensibilities of later readers, leading them to identify the site as problematic. After considering how this process plays itself out in one of the Septuagintal additions to Esther, rabbinic literature and other ancient sources, I show how this identification of the passage as an interpretive crux continues to inform modern biblical scholarship.

Several passages in the Bible are mined for their ecological contributions in terms of eschatology. For example, Romans 8:18-27; Colossians 1:15-17; and Revelation 21-22 in the New Testament, and Isaiah 65:17-25 in the Old Testament are frequently cited as endorsing a hopeful future for Earth in God's redemptive program. the picture of Earth's future, however, is not unequivocal. Passages such as 2 Peter 3:10 and Psalm 102:25-27 seem to speak of Earth as facing destruction or removal at the end of the age. The exercise of cherry-picking passages to support one view or the other seems to lead to an impasse. One way past this impasse may be to look at the beginning of the Bible, the opening chapters of Genesis (1 and 2). These chapters are often viewed as establishing the proper context for understanding God's acts of creation. Creation is good, and so it must always be viewed from this perspective. However, the intrusion of ch. 3 is often seen as radically altering this assessment, leading to views that see creation in the present as not a proper object of concern. Creation may or may not have a hopeful future; it is at the very least no longer currently good. This paper will take a different view of Genesis 1-2. Drawing on its likely redactional context of the Babylonian Captivity, the picture drawn here is not simply a competing ideology against Babylonian creation myths. Rather, for a people in exile, the images crafted here provide not just a retrospective cosmogony, but also a vision of Earth's future, a future toward which those currently in exile not only anticipate, but also inaugurate as they experience their own liberation from exile in the present. And as the final two chapters of the Christian Bible, Revelation 21-22, show, the future of Earth far surpasses the imagery depicted in Genesis 1-2, and function as a vision that motivates concern for Earth in the present.

At their origins, rabbinic circles in Palestine and cenobitic monasteries in Egypt sought to create ideal communities focused on highly regulated engagement with scripture and with material objects. The earliest literature produced by the tannaim of Palestine and by the Pachomian monks was legislative in genre (the Mishnah and the Pachomian Rules), suggesting that early rabbis and monks saw regulations and restrictions as central to their visions of utopia. In this paper, I build upon the work of rabbinics scholar Mira Balberg, who has argued that a goal of the mishnaic subject, in interpreting scripture and developing halakhah, was “attention for attention’s sake” similar to that practiced by Stoic philosophers. I argue, first, that there were some striking similarities between early rabbinic and early monastic utopian myths, in that the quest for attention (to scripture and God, to the physical world, and to oneself) was at the heart of each group’s vision of an ideal community. By juxtaposing early rabbinic and monastic legislative texts on the subject of agricultural work (tractate Peah of the Mishnah and excerpts from the Pachomian Precepts), I compare and contrast how each group used rules, regulations and restrictions to create a vision of a utopian lifestyle. I show that the quest for attention to scripture and to objects allowed rabbis and monks to transform the banality of everyday agricultural work into an intensely mindful, communal and meaningful endeavor. Creating persuasive accounts of why the quest for attention was crucial to the good life also allowed the earliest rabbis and cenobitic monks to consolidate power and prestige by attracting members, thereby expanding their respective movements greatly over the course of the following centuries.

The Book of Ben Sira is one of few early extra-biblical texts of which large passages are extant in Hebrew. Its biblical quotations and allusions provide therefore early insides into the textual histories of biblical books. In a previous textcritical study of Ben Sira’s Jeremiah quotations and allusions, I have argued that Ben Sira systematically and consciously employed the proto-Masoretic text of Jeremiah (“The Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Ben Sira,” in Making the Biblical Text: Textual Studies in the Hebrew and the Greek Bible [ed. I. Himbaza; OBO 273; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015],118-61). In this presentation, I want to compare my work on Jeremiah in the Hebrew text of Ben Sira with Ben Sira’s use of 1-2 Samuel as another text of which different textual versions are preserved.

Based on the palynological evidence, a dual movement of plants within the Persian Empire, will be presented. Within a new pollen diagram from Lake Parishan in southwest Iran, which covers the time period of ca. 2000 BCE–500 CE, a short duration peak of olive (Olea) pollen was documented, starting at ca. 500 BCE and lasting throughout the Achaemenid and Seleucid times. This peak points to significant olive cultivation within the region located close to the capital area of the Achaemenid empire, especially since Olea is not native to this region. At the same time that the peak in olive pollen was recorded, a significant amount of pine (Pinus) pollen was documented in the Lake Parishan palynological diagram. The occurrence of pine pollen is also suggestive of the planting of pine (Pinus) in the southern Zagros, given the total absence of the genus in the flora of Iran. Based on the pollen evidence of the presence of both olive and pine during the Achaemenid and Seleucid times, it can be hypothesized that the Persians encountered these trees especially after their conquests in the Eastern Mediterranean and then introduced them into their homeland. At the same time, on the other side of the Persian empire, palynological evidence points to tree importation from the other direction: from Persia into the Levant. Several years ago I identified pollen grains of citron (Citrus medica) in a royal Persian garden in Ramat Rahel near Jerusalem, dated to the 5th-4th century BCE, when the region was under the hegemony of the Persian Empire. The study showed that citron seems to have made its way to Ramat Rahel from the artificial Achamenid royal palatial gardens. While the east-west migration of citron was as an elite product destined for luxurious gardens (first in Ramat Rahel Royal Persian garden and later in Roman gardens owned by the affluent), olive west-east migration was most probably as a cash crop.

The Book of Enoch is part of the Ethiopic Bible but has otherwise been rejected by other Jewish and Christian communities. Several reasons can be suggested for the rejection of this book, including a possible competition between Moses and Enoch—with the Book of Enoch being an alternative Torah. This paper explores the reception of the Mosaic Torah in the Book of Enoch and its implications for the relationship between these two corpuses.

The pregnant female body in childbirth metaphors is a body where God creates (Ps 139:13-16) and where Job wants to retreat (Job 3:1-10). Zion cries out like her (Jer 4:31) and YHWH breathes like her (Isa 42:14). She is described in detail: her hands (Jer 4:31); her face (Isa 13:7-8), her breath (Jer 4:31; Isa 42:14), and her voice (Isa 26:17; Jer 22:23). Thus far, interpretations of childbirth metaphors have not considered how the pregnant body affects meaning formation. Rather, the pregnant body is fit into the context of the text. For example, in Isa 13:7-8, the community is going to be annihilated. The people cry out like a woman in labor. Interpretations most often identify the pregnant body in this text as a metaphor for crisis or distress. However, the text still depicts a crisis whether the pregnant body is present or not; therefore, the addition of the pregnant body has not contributed to meaning formation. Rather than ask how the text informs the pregnant body, we must to ask how the pregnant female body informs the text. A structured theory, used systematically, holds an interpreter accountable for treating all texts consistently. This is not to say that a structured theory leads to one interpretation, but rather, it should open a multiplicity of interpretations. It must be a theoretical approach that facilitates the integration of the individual pregnant female body alongside and in conjunction with the global pregnant female body. In addition, the physicality of the pregnant female body must be highlighted and integrated with a conceptual understanding of the body. Most importantly, this theory must provide a model in which feminist theory is not a separate entity, but is organically part of the interpretive process. Benjamin Harshav’s theory of Integrational Semantics and “Three-Dimensional Model of Meaning Formation” enables me to place the pregnant female body at the center of an interpretation. The crux of Harshav’s theory is that the process of meaning formation does not occur in semantic units (i.e., words, phrases, or sentences), but is the process of “integrating discontinuous semantic materials located in a given text as well as outside of it” (Harshav 76). The semantic materials of childbirth include the emotional and physical representations the pregnant female body in the text, as well as, an understanding of this body outside of the text. To test my hypothesis, I use Harshav’s Three-Dimensional Model to discuss meaning formation in Psalm 139. Rather than work my way through the text; i.e., from verse to verse in a linear format, I discuss how the discontinuous semantic materials form relationships that are continually unfolding and overlapping. If the pregnant female body is the center of an interpretation, rather than being looked at and placed into context, she is embodied across the text where meaning formation originates in an understanding of her body.

Morna Hooker’s influential argument that the phrase pistis Christou in the Pauline epistles is a “concentric” expression that denotes both the faith of Christ and the faith of believers hints at the close link between the pistis relationship and Paul’s participationist soteriology. This paper goes a step further and argues that Paul’s understanding of union with Christ requires the risen and exalted Jesus, not simply Jesus’ faithful obedience in suffering and death upon the cross. Although the paper is informed by instances of the “in Christ” motif from throughout the Pauline corpus (these instances are addressed exhaustively in my forthcoming monograph on the faithfulness of the risen Christ, co-authored with David J. Downs), the paper focuses on two passages in which participation seems to be linked explicitly with the crucified Jesus: 2 Cor 4:11–14 (v. 11: “we are always being given up to death”) and Gal 2:19–20 (v. 19: “I have been crucified with Christ”). In 2 Cor 4:13, Christ’s declaration in the words of the Psalmist (“I was faithful, therefore I spoke”) likely refers to Christ’s faithful obedience to God unto death and his cry for deliverance upon the cross. However, as Matthew Bates has argued in his examination of Paul’s prosopological exegesis, Paul envisions here “the enthroned Christ…talking about events that now lie in Christ’s own past—suffering, death, Hades, a decisive posture of trust, and deliverance unto life” (Hermeneutics, 316; see also Douglas Campbell on the participatory dynamic of belief in “2 Corinthians 4:13,” 349–53). This sharing in the resurrection of Jesus is why Paul is willing to undergo suffering in the present (4:7–14) and why he urges the Corinthians to live in ways that are consistent with their participation in Christ (2 Cor 13:5; cf. 1 Cor 16:13). Likewise, in Gal 2:19–20 where Paul speaks of co-crucifixion with Christ, Paul “lives for God” (2:19) not simply through his identification with Christ’s crucifixion, but by “the [continuing] faithfulness of the Son of God” (2:20). Richard Hays’ assertion that “for Paul, pistis Christou refers to Jesus’ obedience to death on the cross [and] is the only meaning supported by Paul’s usage” (Faith of Jesus Christ, 297) rightly focuses on the story of Jesus’s faithfulness in Gal 3:1–4:11, but ignores the key role of the risen Christ in incorporating believers “in Christ Jesus…through faith” (3:26; cf. 3:11–12, 21–22, 27–28). Renewed attention to the role of the risen Christ lends strong support to Teresa Morgan’s recent claim about Gal 2:16–17: “‘in Christ’ and ‘through the pistis of Christ’ are very closely related, if not identical, in meaning” (Roman Faith, 304).

As Lamentations begins, a female personification of Jerusalem, Woman Zion, emerges as a prominent figure. Woman Zion’s character comes under debate as the poetry of Lamentations explores whether she is the pitiable victim of warfare or the villainess whose infidelity is blame for Jerusalem’s destruction. Multiple speakers with varying degrees of sympathy and antipathy towards Woman Zion question her relationship to the carnage. An examination of these multiple voices reveals that her indictment is not as harsh or certain as a univocal reading of the book would suggest. Previous scholarship has already presented Lamentations as a polyphonic work using the theoretical framework of Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin argues that the discordant nature of speakers’ voices is integral to the process of meaning-making in a literary work. Accordingly, Bakhtinian feminist scholarship of Lamentations 1 has highlighted how the dialogue between the narrator of the book and Woman Zion lends legitimacy to Woman Zion’s protest against her treatment at the hands of YHWH. Furthermore, feminist scholars (especially Carleen Mandolfo) have argued that Woman Zion’s protest in Lamentations challenges the voiceless state of female personifications of cities across the prophetic tradition (e.g. in Hosea’s marriage metaphor). This line of research has also identified a narrator’s voice that is somewhat sympathetic to Woman Zion’s suffering, yet that also blames her for the assault she experiences. While building on previous feminist scholarship emphasizing Lamentations’ polyphonic nature, this paper will argue that there are more speakers in the book than previously acknowledged. Lam. 1:7-9 introduces and records the voices of Woman Zion’s enemies rather than that of the narrator. Lam. 1:7 introduces enemies who maliciously eye Woman Zion and then mock her downfall. Verses 8 and 9 include the content of the enemies’ mockery, reflecting a harsher attitude towards Woman Zion than the narrator evinces. From the enemies’ perspective, Woman Zion is not only at fault for her distress, but her pain is also to be celebrated. These verses depict her suffering as a sexual assault that the enemies execute and voyeuristically describe with glee. Understanding the accusations against Woman Zion in verses 8 and 9 as expressed by Woman Zion’s rapists has major consequences for feminist interpretation of Lamentations. If the cruelty of verses 8 and 9 reflects the perspective of Woman Zion’s enemies, then these words do not necessarily represent an authoritative attitude which Lamentations as a whole holds towards Woman Zion. The enemies are not figures to be emulated, but rather, foes whose denigration of Woman Zion should be questioned.

In Galatians as well as in several of his other letters, Paul engaged in conflict management in absentu. The Galatian conflict was in many ways a reprise of the conflict addressed by the Apostolic Council. The problem was twofold. It regarded both admission to the Christ movement (circumcision or not) and the unity of the movement (table fellowship between jewish and gentile Christ-believers or not). Three conflict management models seems to have competed for hegemony: an assimilationist approach arguing for both circumcision of Gentile Christ-believers and subsequent table fellowship (the so-called Judaizers; Gal 2,1-5), a segregationist approach neither requiring circumcision of Gentile Christ-believers nor wanting table fellowship with them (James and possibly the Apostolic Council; Gal 2,9), and finally the and Paul’s own Antiochean integrationalist approach, not requiring circumcision of Gentile Christ-believers but insisting on table fellowship (Gal 2,11-14). The present paper discusses (in light of recent work by John S. Kloppenborg and others) the social impact of these three competing models or approaches by comparing them to conflict management practices in ethnically and socially diverse Greco-Roman voluntary associations.

Recent research on the psychology of death and the psychology of reading pave the way for new explorations of the ways in which the Hebrew Bible presents readers with the hard facts of human mortality. This paper focuses on Qoheleth and Kings, two books which may increase mortality salience for readers. Do Qoheleth’s statements on mortality indicate that he is “frightened of” or “obsessed with” death, as has been asserted? Do his words show that the “anxiety-buffering” mechanisms of the author’s society have failed him, as one scholar suggests? In terms of the psychology of pessimism, is Qoheleth being pessimistic or realistic about death? And if Qoheleth is an exception to the rule that the Hebrew Bible accepts mortality, as is often claimed, why did Freud find it remarkably odd that the Jewish Scriptures omit the possibility of a continuation of existence after death? I then ask whether psychology can help to explain why so many stories about human vulnerability, illness, and death are concentrated in the Elijah and Elisha narratives, including reports of mass murder, resuscitation of the dead and escape from death by ascension. Reports of reviving the dead have been said to recall childhood hopes that death is not irreversible. Such accounts often leave readers with a feeling of astonishment or uncanniness. If this is not how most readers of Kings react to these stories, does this imply that they take for granted that the dead bones of a wonder-worker can wield the power to revive a corpse? Are we being invited to view Elisha as an exalted “saint,” so that we can enjoy a kind of vicarious immortality by identifying with this seemingly invulnerable hero? The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on the psychology of reading about death in the Hebrew Bible.

When we use the term “diaspora” in the reading to the book of Esther, we usually look at the community of Israel, which are already displaced in a foreign land. Between the two queens mentioned in the book, we focus on queen Esther, who lives in a foreign land to save her own people, rather than on queen Vashti. Using the diasporic theory of Justo González and Ruth Behar, I will argue that queen Vashti is exiled in her own country. The character of queen Vashti will represent the community of internally displaced people in their homeland, while queen Ester constitutes the diasporic community living in the foreign land. González does not use the term “diaspora”; he uses the term “exile.” He said, “Exile is a dislocation of the center, with all the ambiguities and ambivalence of such dislocation.” Along with González, Behar defines the term “exile,” but she compares it with the term “diaspora” used broadly. Behar’s definition of diaspora is able to apply into people living in either their own countries or foreign countries. They are possibly immigrants, or exiles, or both. In fact, people inside their own countries are also considered to be “the so-called exiles themselves.” James Clifford defines "diaspora" that, “they are caught up with and defined against 1) the norms of nation-states and 2) indigenous, and especially autochthonous, claims by ‘tribal’ peoples.” Clifford draws a clear distinction between diasporic community and immigrant community. While immigrants try to assimilate themselves into the host country, diasporic community resists assimilation. The reasons for difficulties in assimilation are 1) their attachment to the home land (or) relocation without their own desire, and 2) their experience in discrimination and expulsion. Clifford’s definition of the term “diaspora” focuses on how the foreign land has treated the dispersed community. While González’s and Behar’s theory is applied to my interpretation of Est 1:10-22, Clifford’s theory of diaspora can be applied in the reading of Est 8:3-17. Queen Vashti is deposed from her position and exiled from the royal palace. She is touched by diaspora in her own country, representing the community of internally displaced people in their homeland. Since the book seems to lack any direct knowledge of the situation in Judah and its cultic institutions, queen Esther is likely not the first generation living in the foreign land. She is identified with the diasporic community in Susa under the Persian Empire, and exemplifies the current diasporic community in foreign countries. Thus, Vashti and Esther represent the community of internally displaced people/diasporas inside and outside of their home country. By reading the Book of Esther in conversation with contemporary theories of diaspora, we are able better to understand the characters of queen Vashti and Esther: one internally displaced, and the other a member of a diasporic community.

I would argue that all Koran translations are a mixture of imitation and creativity. The translation process is at once imitative, dependent on prior choices made by others, and independent, requiring a decision by the individual—whether artist or scholar, believer or unbeliever—on the preferred meaning for her or his rendition of each verse. Nowhere does the complex intertwining of past choices with present options in Koran translation become more defiantly difficult than in consideration of Q 33:35. In the aftermath of detailed revelations about appropriate behavior for the Prophet’s wives (v. 28-34), Surat al-Ahzab opens up a general register, listing desirable traits for all believers (v. 35), before returning to rules of deportment for the Prophet with his wives (v.50-52) , for believers with his wives (v.53), and then for his wives in public (v. 59). The crucial decisions for translating Q 33:35 are two-fold: 1) how to render muslimun and muslimat in English, and 2) how to list the other nine commendable groups/activities/practices linked to muslimun and muslimat? While both choices reflect a genealogy of preference among translators going back to Muhammad Ali and Abdullah Yusuf Ali, only two major translators – Muhammad Asad and Tarif Khalidi – announce reasons for their choices on either of these decisions. Asad argues on the issue of islam and muslim that “when his (Muhammad’s) contemporaries heard the words islam and muslim, they understood them as denoting man’s self-surrender to God’ and ‘one who surrenders himself to God’, without limiting these terms to any specific community or denomination.” Khalidi, for his part, observes that “since the ‘register’ of the Qur’an constantly shifts”, the translated text “had to look different, a horizontal prose format contrasting with a vertical ‘poetic’ fashion.” (the italics is his) The choices that Asad makes are epistemic, those of Khalidi aesthetic, yet both reflect strategies that are crucial for all translators, albeit too often unannounced or ignored in their published renditions of the Koran in English. While this issue occupies me at length in my book, The Koran in English – A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2017), I will explore its importance in this presentation with attention to the choices made, and the results produced, in seeking to forge the best equivalent in English for those extolled in Q 33:35, those ten favored parties – men and women - “for whom God has prepared forgiveness and a great reward.”

This paper will seek to probe sensory dimensions of embodiment in relation to the presentation of demon-possessed female characters within Luke-Acts. For example, recent work on sound, embodiment and the female voice has contended that voice is not just codified by semantic content, but also its sonorous, non-verbal, embodied features. Attesting to this, classicists and ancient historians have similarly noted how the ancient discipline of physiognomy determined whether people would be judged sane or insane, male or female, honest, marriageable, moribund etc. on account of the embodied sounds they made.

First Nations Biblical Reflections on Eschatology

The account in Neh. 5:1 - 13 is commonly known as a “socioeconomic reform” by modern commentators. Classical economic and sociological theorists recognize that diffuse and decentralized institutions in a society provide a profitable environment particularly for economic actors who pursue self-interest single-mindedly. The marketplace is an unrelentingly rational ground, disconnected from a moral conscience or restraint, and communal ethics does not always play an influential role in the changes that a political economy undergoes. Though ethical and legal injunctions pertaining to debt did exist in the cultures and traditions of Persian-era Yehud, the rationality of the market economy driven by profit-maximizing behaviors trumped the code of kinship and shared humanity. This paper seeks to clarify the principles and accomplishments of Nehemiah’s reform through a political economic lens provided by Douglass C. North’s theory of economic growth and institutions and Friedrich Hayek’s theory on the role of knowledge in economic cooperation. Institutions play a key role in minimizing uncertainty in human social interaction. This is particularly the case when institutions reduce uncertainty in economic transactions, whether the mechanisms by which they do so are informal (norms of behavior, societal codes of conduct) or formal (laws, rules). Both forms require enforcement, a responsibility typically held by the state. Secure property rights ensure economic efficiency and political stability in society. Economic efficiency, in turn, secures political efficiency. Despite this self-reinforcing relationship, history demonstrates that institutions do not always serve to maximize efficiency, and that over time institutional design can promote the bargaining power of certain social groups. Neh. 5 details a situation where not only formal institutional and legal safeguards, but also an ethos of neighborliness and the principle of moral obligation, are absent. In this environment, the elite enjoyed enhanced bargaining power, and, eventually, expanded economic freedom and prosperity. This paper analyzes the interdependence of informal economic, social, and political institutions in a subaltern society without a clearly identifiable central power or its attendant political and economic institutions. It draws on North’s and Hayek’s insights on the role of institutions in order to examine how norms and networks of common mores are correlated with strong property rights, law enforcement, and efficient bureaucracy, resulting in better economic performance over time.

The key phrase “In those days when there was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes” offers a framework for interpreting the double epilogues of the Book of Judges (Jdg. 17-18 and 19-21). Both epilogues tell us stories of a Levite or a Levite priest committing horrendous crimes and bringing big disasters to everyone. In a period without monarchy, these two rebellious and cruel Levites were not suitable leaders for Israel. The narrative uses the pre-monarchical stories to inspire its post-exilic readers to explore suitable forms of leadership at a time when an Israelite monarchy is unavailable or impossible. This paper shifts scholarly focus from monarchy or feminist interpretation to the political competition in priesthood leadership. It elaborates that the ideology of the double epilogues of Judges favors the Aaronide and Zadokite priesthood and contradicts the ideology of Deuteronomy, which promotes the Mushite leadership and acknowledges the Levitical priesthood. The first epilogue of Judges obviously expresses a denigration of the Mushite and Levitical priesthood. Similarly, the Zadokite version of Ezekiel (Ezek. 40-48) endorses the Zadokite priesthood and reduces the Levites to temple-ministrants and the Priestly Code of Torah promotes the Aaronide priesthood. This essay argues for a pro-Zadokite and pro-Aaronide voice hidden in the double epilogues of Judges echoing the Zadokite version of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code. The double epilogues construct a propaganda implying that only the Zadokites can lead the Israelites to enter the peace in the post-exilic era.

This paper examines the reception of the NT epistle of James in the works of Origen, particularly on the topic of justification by faith and works. Origen treats James as authoritative scripture—referring to the texts by name, or as the writings of the apostle James or the brother of the Lord. He uses the texts in the same manner as the other scriptural epistles and the gospels, harmonizing the texts with one another. Within this harmonizing hermeneutic, Origen, as a matter of course, harmonizes what Paul says with what James says on the matter of justification. Statements from James are added to statements about justification by faith alone, and this nuances the understanding of faith in Origen’s writings. Using relevant passages from James as keys to these statements, belief is only belief if it is adopted into one’s life, faith is only faith if it goes beyond a mere profession into being ‘faith according to knowledge,’ which is faith that includes disposition and works. In general, Origen appears to consider correct faith to include works and correct works to include correct faith, and they are inseparable. This paper treats passages that refer to James directly in addition to some passages where Origen deals with passages that refer to ‘faith alone’. This paper offers an alternative reading that reflects the tradition prior to Luther. It offers a perspective that does not binarize faith and works, that is arguably more in keeping with numerous passages in the letter of James, which exhibit faith and knowing as inseparable from works.

Earlier scholarship usually saw a sharp dichotomy between anonymous works by a collective authorship of editors or compilers (the Talmudic mainstream and most Midrashim) and medieval treatises written by individual authors (like Sa’adya and several Geonim, Maimonides, Nachmanides etc.). However, these clear-cut distinctions concealed in many cases subtle developments of new forms of narration and new types of authorship in post-Talmudic texts, usually called ‘late Midrash’. My paper will discuss some shifts and transformations of the presentation and deployment of an author-character and its authority within three different late midrashic traditions. Primarily, I will focus on Seder Eliyahu Zuta (SEZ), as well as its fellow-text called Seder Eliyahu Rabba (SER). These fascinating works (ca. 9th-10th ct.) are of a unique, though hybrid, character between a moral guidebook for righteous conduct and learned exposition (i.e. Midrash). The texts feature an exceptional figure of a first-person narrator in many passages that build the backbone of its complex discourse. While this author-persona seems at times to be an anonymous storyteller or preacher character, the text also spins many subtle links to the Biblical prophet Elijah himself. Another, nearly contemporary tradition of Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (ca. 8th ct.) exhibits similar authorial features. The connection to R. Eliezer is elaborated upon not only in the title but also throughout the work and especially in the introductory chapters that construct an “intellectual biography” of its purported author. A third work, the so-called Alphabeta de-Ben Sira (10th/ 11th ct) introduces the whizz kid Ben Sira who grows from a witty but impudent toddler into a counselor at King Nebuchadnezzar’s court who is well-versed in all kinds of Jewish and foreign traditions. The narration follows Ben Sira’s coming of wisdom, which entails many critical side blows against some rabbinic traditions and other contemporary developments. The paper will demonstrate the skillfulness with which those traditions employ their new ‘authors’ within different genres and micro-forms using exegetical and hermeneutical strategies which make the texts function for different audiences. Finally, a comparative perspective may shed some light on similar developments in the surrounding (Syriac-Christian, Muslim, Persian) cultures of the Geonic period that might have induced new concepts of authorship and narration in Jewish texts.

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine project (IIP) aims to build an on line database of the inscriptions found in Israel/Palestine that date roughly between the VI century BCE and the VII century CE. There are about 15,000 of these inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, by Jews, Christians, Greeks, and Romans. They range from imperial declarations on monumental architecture to notices of donations in synagogues to humble names scratched on ossuaries, and include everything in between, providing a fascinating window into the ancient world. These inscriptions are an invaluable resource for historical investigation, because they provide information that cannot be gleaned from the literary sources: yet, despite their importance, they have been mainly published individually or in small corpora, in different languages, and frequently in obscure journals. The first goal of the project is, therefore, to provide an exhaustive collection that can be used by a variety of disciplines and scholars. We also aim to create an easily accessible platform which allows for extensive textual analysis; to integrate the inscriptions with other contextual information, such as images and geographical data, and to link the corpus to other on line resources (e.g. Pelagios, Trismegistos, Pleiades, PeriodO). In this respect, working with Pleiades was mutually beneficial, since we linked our material to the Gazetteer, but also contributed a fair amount of new places to it. Ideally, geographical information could be also analyzed through GIS to study a large variety of topics, from the diachronic distribution of the inscriptions, to the evolving relationship between languages and religions, to name just a few. We recently began thinking about a more extensive linking that involves also the inscriptions’ lexical component: we are considering, in particular, the application of NLP and of topic modelling. This would allow us to connect our database to onomastica or dictionaries (e.g. Ma’agarim); to find ways to deal with misspelled/misused words, and possibly to propose reconstructions alternative to the editors’ ones; to identify recurring formulas within a specific genre of inscriptions and to link quotations back to their sources.

In Ridley Scott’s Exodus movie, God’s voice is represented by an 11-year old boy, which raised the shackles of many traditionalists. How to represent the voice of God in musical works, when God is included as a character, has always been a major issue for composers. Many composers have felt that no human voice is adequate to portray a divine being. In 16 Moses oratorios and operas I have analyzed, the character assigned the greatest variety of vocal casting is God. In nineteenth-century oratorios, God’s voice is never male, but usually assumed by a chorus. In two nineteenth-century operas I analyzed, God is sung by a male voice. In general, God can be sung by a full chorus, male or female chorus, or small ensemble. In one case, God is represented by only the orchestra, with no human voice. God is often represented by the soprano voice of an Angel of God, not an uncommon choice in oratorio tradition. It allows God’s words to be heard without assigning any specific human voice to God. The lowest male voice is bass, and is typically very resonant and sonorous. The tenor is the highest and generally considered the most thrilling male voice. A bass God projects the right note of solemnity, while the tenor voice can project both a heroic and lyrical sound effectively but is hardly ever used to portray God. The soprano voice traditionally represents purity, and thus is a safe choice to sing God’s part. Musical excerpts will be played.

Whether the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity took place in the first two centuries or in the fourth, or as a longer process, most scholars are comfortable relegating that particular identity struggle to late antiquity. Yet the existence of Messianic Jews and Messianic Jewish communities in the modern world suggests that our categories “Jew” and “Christian” continue to be unstable categories, particularly in the State of Israel. In this paper I suggest that an examination of language used today to include or exclude Messianic Jews in relation to the larger Jewish community may offer useful tools to consider ancient categories of “Jew,” “Christian,” and “Jewish Christian.” Rabbis representing different Jewish denominations and Israeli politicians agree on very little, but they seem to all agree that “Messianic Jews” are not Jews due to expressions of faith in Jesus (Yeshua) as Christ (Messiah). Despite this certainty, in the State of Israel thousands of Messianics are, for all practical purposes, living as Jews: working, paying taxes, serving in the army, and generally living ordinary Jewish Israeli lives. In the State of Israel, where Jewish identity brings with it religious, ethnic, national, and political rights, Jewish identity cannot be (and is not) solely based on halakhic considerations. Many Messianic Jews claim that acceptance of faith in Jesus (most would say “Yeshua”) makes them fulfilled Jews, not Christians. Most do not identify with Christian denominations. Instead, they see themselves as Jewish disciples of a Jewish Jesus, like the earliest Apostles. That Jesus came to be venerated mostly by a non-Jewish Church, that the Church was intensely anti-Jewish, and that Rabbinic Judaism rejected the messianism and divinity of Jesus are all seen by Messianic Jews as deviations in God’s plan. For Messianic believers, faith that the messiah did arrive in the body of Jesus, that he brought a message of salvation for the world, and that he will return to a perfected world comes right out of Scripture. Jews, as God’s chosen people, are expected to be at the forefront of this faith, and there is no need to reject one’s Jewish identity in order to be a part of this movement. Examination of identity claims of non-Messianic and Messianic Jews reveals a blurring of aspects of Jewish and Christian faith and history deemed inconvenient on both sides. What does it mean to reject a binary distinction between “Jew” and “Christian”? How have Jews considered messianism and incarnation part of Jewish faith throughout the ages? What do Messianic Jews mean by the concept of “fulfillment” and how does that affect their views and theologies about non-messianic Jews? In this paper I employ Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, queer theory as well as theological and historical reasoning to show what is at stake for those making identity claims.

In addition to features such as parallelism and terseness of expression, the Hebrew Bible’s poetry is distinguished from its prose by its abundant use of figures of speech. Not surprisingly, and perhaps not without reason, the figure that has received the lion’s share of scholarly attention has been metaphor. Less often considered, at least until quite recently, has been the associated figure of metonymy, the use of one expression for another to which it is related. This deficiency is all the more regrettable given the considerable use to which the Bible’s poetic (and even prose) texts put this device. In this study, I seek to expand upon recent contributions in this area by focusing on a particular category of metonymic language: metonymies of the body. Eyes, ears, lips, tongues, mouths, hearts, throats, kidneys, and a host of related images besides are all used metonymically in poetic texts. A clearer understanding of these figures, as well as the many larger expressions in which they are found (“lift the hands,” “bow the knee,” “lick the dust,” etc.), serves to heighten the emotional potency of biblical poetry while at the same time shedding light on the expressive physicality with which these figures are associated.

At first glance, Isa 57:15–21 is an incongruent passage. In vv. 15–19, YHWH is presented as a compassionate and merciful God. He has seen the evil ways of the Israelites, and he has struck them, and hidden his face and been angry (v. 17). Now he decides to heal and lead them, and šlm (piel) ni?umîm to them all (v. 18). Thus, divine benevolence is shown to the evil-doing Israelites and should be understood as boundless. In vv. 20–21, however, God immediately condemns the wicked to eternal depravity of šalôm. How to explain this incongruity? The paper proposes that the answer lies in the phrase šlm (piel) ni?umîm. Most commentators understand this phrase as “to repay/restore/fill (with) comfort.” Yet this unquestioned, scholarly consensus is not without problems. For instance, how can comfort be repaid/restored/filled? Can comfort serve as a restitution for damage done? Has comfort once existed so that it can be restored? Can it be conceptualized as a physical object to be filled? The paper attempts to solve the incongruity. The contexts of the noun ni?umîm in Hos 11:8; Zech 1:13, and of the verb n?m (piel) in Is 40–66 must be taken into account for the interpretation of šlm (piel) ni?umîm. The study results in two conclusions. First, ni?umîm does not mean “comfort” (i.e. consolation) but has rather the sense of “equilibrium,” referring to one’s psychological serenity. Second, the verb šlm (piel) does not denote the action of “to restore” and “to fill.” It refers to two semantic frames: “to fulfil an obligation” and “to retribute”. Both can be held together under the notion: “to balance (an account).” So I propose that the phrase šlm (piel) ni?umîm means “to balance [with] serenity.” The idea of “equilibrium” solves the incongruity of the text between vv. 14–19 and vv. 20–21. In addition, the paper demonstrates that the long held, unquestioned meaning of šlm (piel) as “to repay” should be reconsidered.

Two ethnic Samburus, one female and one male (not a couple) are among the church leaders who have led the process of decolonization/enculturation of the Quaker Samburu mission as it has moved from initial mission leadership by members of another Kenyan tribal culture to Samburu leadership. Perhaps counterintuitively, the two have a concern to reduce the incidence of the traditional Samburu practice of female circumcision (clitorectomy), within a broader effort to improve gynecologic and obstetric health and general well-being among Samburu women (Cf. Sustainable Development Goals 3, Maternal Health targets). The paper recounts in what ways beliefs, practices, and community of Quakerism are resources in their effort.

Late Byzantine church fresco painting offers a helpful site of interaction between iconographic expression, scriptural exegesis, and ritual practice in the Christian monastic tradition. This paper considers the typological and spatial structuring of the Late Byzantine Old Testament narthex program of the Church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid, Macedonia within the context of the whole church complex. It reassesses the value of univocal and unidirectional analyses of iconographic spatial structuring in monastic church settings by examining the flexible and dynamic nature of typological meaning as well as the mirrored inward and outward movement of monastics in daily life. I argue that while current scholarship has helpfully articulated the Marian typology at work in the narthex program, the multivalent program also invokes imagery associated with funerary liturgy and theological themes of eschatological judgment. In this, I demonstrate the program’s important continuity with early Christian exegesis and liturgy. The paper also draws a comparison with the Old Testament elements of the iconographic program of the Parecclesion funerary chapel of the Kariye Djami in Constantinople. In doing so, I argue that the Old Testament program in the Peribleptos narthex not only prepares the monastics to live a holy life through their movement into the church (as argued by Rossitza Schroeder) but also prepares those worshiping for death and judgment in their exit from the sacred space of the church and their return to quotidian life.

Important work has been done on the biblical anthropology of dress, the assumed gender-specific dress codes, as well as the narrative and symbolic functions of clothes in biblical literature (cf. Batten, 2010; Bender, 2008; Cras, 2011; Fox, 2009; Staubli, 2012, Upson-Saia and Daniel-Hughes, 2014). However, no scholarship has examined the ways in which dress signals gender violence in the Hebrew Bible. In this paper, I take the physical abuse of the female lover in Song of Songs 5:7 as a case-study to demonstrate that clothing and adornment, even when “poeticized”, work as powerful signifiers, enforcing gender norms. In Song 5:7, the woman ventures outside of her house to look for her beloved who was just at her door (5:2-6). She meets the watchmen circling the city for the second time in the poem (cf. Song 3:3-4). However, this time, the city guards physically abuse her and take away her “wrap” or “veil” (redîd). It is common in the scholarship on the Song to trivialize the violence of this episode by ascribing a dreamlike quality to the female lover’s excursions in the city. In line with the works of Black (2001) and Meredith (2013), I depart from this trend in order to reassess the hidden oppressive side of beautification revealed through the embodied practice of un/dressing. I propose to investigate the “textualised” materiality of the crumpled fabric, imagined in the hand of a watchman, or thrown on the ground, revealing the woman’s undergarment or nudity. I contend that gender norms are violently enforced on the Shulammite’s body through her stripping by the city guards, what Exum refers to as a “contemptuous act of exposure” (2004, p. 197). The celebration of beauty and mutuality, for which the Song of Songs is famous, turns into a violent assault on both the fabric and skin of the female lover. Through this episode, the very idea of beauty as an island of female pleasure and empowerment is shattered. In order to demonstrate the latent presence of gender-oriented aggression and pain under the surface of the Song, I will first contrast the two encounters of the woman with the watchmen at night in Song 3:1-4 and 5:2-8. I will focus especially on how the aggressive performance of authority in Song 5:7 follows the use of the “silent treatment” by the guards in chapter 3. Second, I will investigate the sartorial imagery and the allusion to nudity in Song 5:3, 7. I argue that the removal of the tunic (kuttonet), while signalling elements of the female lover’s agency and desire, brings her sexual vulnerability to our attention, like the stripping of the veil. Finally, I will situate the “shawl” of the Shulammite in relation to other “veils” mentioned specifically in the Song of Songs (4:1, 3; 6:7) and more generally in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 24:65; 38:15; Isa 3:23). These textile objects, far from only mediating beauty, disseminate gender power relations and inscribe (sexual) corporeal vulnerability in their wearers.

The book of Job asks of its reader to delve deeply into a torrent of words. Those words, uttered by God and the adversary, Job’s wife, his friends and Job himself, examine the most important of questions to a believer. How can we understand God’s motives in allowing the adversary to inflict Job ‘for no good reason?’ The consequences of God’s wager with the adversary, embodied in Job’s physical suffering, are explored in poetic language that moves from despair to rage, and describes great suffering and Job’s ultimately perplexed acquiescence. The poetry is dense, and at times obscure. As in all great poetry, the biblical text creates palpable word pictures that include Job’s stoic and defiant stances against God and his companions as well as magnificent imagery of the heavens and the far corners of the earth and its wild beasts. Throughout the ages, those word pictures invite depictions of the book in paintings, illustrations and most recently, film. In 2009 the Coen Brothers make a film, “A Serious Man”, in which a professor of physics, Larry Gopnik, a modern day Job, asks a recurring question- - what is going on - - that echoes the ferocious debates of Job and his friends. This paper will examine the extent to which the Coen brothers’ movie illuminates key themes and characters in the biblical book of Job, at the same time as it misleads the viewer through caricature, stereotype and irony. I examine several topics that the film depicts, including Job’s characterization as a physics professor and his interactions with his ‘friends,’ depicted in the movie as three increasingly unhelpful unhelpful rabbis. Gopnik’s conversations with the rabbis provide the filmmakers the opportunity to gleefully skewer a Midwest Jewish community of their childhood. I will also consider how the film intimates, and then chooses to address, the problem of God’s absence, especially since the character of God is essential to Job! As a backdrop to the film’s illustration of the biblical story, I briefly analyze a few illustrations from a series on Job by the poet and engraver William Blake. Blake’s masterful illustrations, steeped both in Christian readings of Job and a more traditional world view, throw into sharp relief the Jewishly- informed and very contemporary preoccupations of the Coen brothers. For instance, Blake illustrates God’s face as a mirror image of that of Job while the Coen Brothers leave God out of it until their last shot of a whirlwind rapidly approaching from a distance. Instead, they fill the screen with symbolic figures such as Gopnik’s mathematical formulas, his brother’s mysterious charts of the cosmos, and most strikingly, the Hebrew letters that swim across his son’s eyes. None of these symbols are easily deciphered by the film’s characters nor by us, leaving us in a state of doubt that echoes Job’s perplexity at the conclusion of the biblical story.

This paper follows up on the conclusions that I presented in my paper on Levites in the book of Chronicles at the 2015 meeting in Atlanta. In this paper, I wish to examine the Chronicler’s inclusion of Levites in the “reforms” of Jehoshaphat, Joash, Hezekiah and Josiah. In all of these, the version presented in Kings does not include any active role for the Levites, while the Chronicler inserts Levites in many different junctures. However, the way in which the Levites are presented within Chronicles differs from king to king, with their role in the story of Jehoshaphat being basically one of teaching, in the story of Joash they are administrators, while in those of Hezekiah and of Josiah they take on an actual cultic role, in addition to their other roles. We will examine the significance of these roles in the Chronicler’s view of the pre-exilic Israelite priesthood, as compared to the Levites’ apparent non-role in the Temple and cult of the Chronicler’s own post-exilic reality.

Reading the two Tabithas, first-century disciple of Acts 9 and the twentieth century witch of ABC, in light of each other yields insights into ethnicity and religious identity, self and other, gender constructions, and reader reception. The point of this exercise is not (merely) to be clever, but to show how cultural criticism allows insight into ancient texts and opens new possibilities of interpretation.

This paper shows how Words of the Luminaries (4Q504 and 4Q506 = Words), like Jubilees 1, relies on Leviticus 26 to present a model of history as a teleological process which will, after the course of many generations, culminate in the progressive refinement of human (or at least, Israelite) nature—specifically in terms of humans’ natural ability to be obedient and observe the law. Words presents a weeklong liturgical—and perhaps experiential—counterpart to Jubilees’ presentation of history. The present paper demonstrates that the requests for moral-spiritual purification advanced at the beginning of the week are pronounced fulfilled from the standpoint of the Friday prayer, which places greater emphasis on human beings’ own participation in the process of perfection-through-chastisement. In this sense, the liturgical progression directly mirrors the linear progression of history recounted in the successive weekday prayers: 1) Creation (recounted on Sunday), 4) the covenant and revelation at Sinai (the meridian, i.e., midpoint and zenith, of historical time, recounted on Wednesday), 5) the chastisements for disobedience (Thursday, start of Friday), which lead into 6) transformational repentance (the telos or end of history, which the congregation claims to have reached at the end of the Friday prayer). Like Jubilees, the Sunday prayer subordinates the creation of Adam into a larger divine action pointing to the adoption of Israel. The Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday prayers position Sinai as the liturgy’s focal point—much as Moses at Sinai forms the central narrative conceit of Jubilees. The pre-Sinaitic history (days 1-3) highlights the base shortcomings of human nature and points forward to the inauguration of the covenant at Sinai (at the meridian of both long-term historical and weeklong liturgical time) as the solution to this problem. Yet, also as in Jubilees, this Sinai solution at the center of the story takes many generations to reach fruition. Entering the Sinai covenant renders the Israelites suddenly liable for punishment per the terms of covenant chastisement (as recounted on days 5 and 6). At Sinai, God adopts Israel through the covenant and then “like a father” proceeds to “raise up” the nation from moral-spiritual childhood, by means of his “chastisement,” until they are led to “humble” themselves and repent. Through this adoption metaphor, Words interprets divine chastisement as a sign of Israel’s firstborn status, using the root ??? to define all the tragedies of post-Sinaitic history in terms of the teleological process of purposeful, paternal punishment it reads out from Leviticus 26, and to which it subordinates the immediate, tit-for-tat curses of Deuteronomy 28. The final lines of the Friday prayer implicitly analogize the transition from the workweek to the Sabbath with the present turning moment at the end of historical time, which had been propelled by the dialectic of sin provoking punishment. The Sabbath hodot—a different kind of liturgical text that, unlike the six weekday prayers, includes no petitions—represent the era of covenant harmony and exaltation to full human potential.

This paper will examine the iconic, textual, and ritual dimensions of Ark traditions in the Hebrew Bible. It will identify the Ark as a conquest and covenant memorial, ritually embedded in Yahwistic cult and in biblical narrative. The paper will consist of two parts. First, it will discuss how biblical authors represent the Ark as an icon that was deployed in ritualized social frameworks of warfare and temple cult, comparable to Mesopotamian and Levantine divine images and monumental inscriptions that were manipulated in ritual settings as interactive agents of imperial power and royal ideologies. Second, it will discuss how biblical authors and editors deploy Ark traditions in ritualized narrative frameworks, in which conquest and covenant traditions embodied by the Ark are transmitted as sacred text. Part one describes a text embedded in an icon (legislative tablets deposited in the Ark); part two describes an icon embedded in a text (Ark traditions woven into biblical narrative); both reveal how the Ark mirrors Scripture, in content and in form, to perpetuate covenant renewal cycles through eras of loss and defeat. The paper therefore argues for the Ark’s role as a text-artifact and public memorial that ritually transmits past achievements and legislation to future generations, as did ancient West Asian monumental inscriptions and as does the Hebrew Bible itself.

The theriomorphic representation of the divine is a surprising and underappreciated feature of Biblical literature. Animals with anthropomorphic traits (including human speech and religious devotion) also appear in a range of Jewish and Christian sources. This paper takes a fresh look at the role of animals in storytelling and apocalyptic texts from the perspective of maturationally natural human ontology. Since early in the field of CSR, minimal counterintuiveness (MCI theory) has been central because it is a major mechanism by which religions propagate. In the first part of the paper, we focus on intuitions about what it means to be a person, and thus by extension, a non-human person. First, we analyze three alternatives for the conceptualization of non-human persons. Second, we turn to the epidemiological context of non-human persons and ask about the role of subjective experience. Third, we argue that the heretofore used category ANIMAL in CSR has not been applied accurately because it exhibits a false binary (human/animal) absent most of human history. In the second part of the paper, we present an ethnographic case study involving communicating with animals and plants in the Amazonian shamanic tradition. We thus suggest a revision of MCI theory in two respects: (1) innate human ontology includes intuitions about dealing with non-human entities; (2) subjective religious experiences have contributed to the formation of god-concepts. In the final part of the paper, we turn to examples from Jewish and Christian literature, including speaking animals in Numbers 22 and the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, as well as theriomorphic representations of the divine in Ezekiel 1, Revelation 5, and the Acts of Philip 3.