One of the main motivations to use the bible in Norwegian kindergardens with a christian foundation, is its ’christian values.’ There is a general understanding that the bible’s inherent values are christian, and ideal for a child’s life. Thus, children need to get to know the bible. But what bible is presented for the children? Yvonne Sherwood’s term ’liberal bible,’ the idea that the bible and modern society is on the same page, corresponds well with the understanding of the bible in kindergardens with a christian foundation. In a survey on the use of the Bible (fall 2018), educators in kindergardens were asked why and how the bible was part of their pedagogical program. The lists of biblical stories that were used, show two main guideline-principals: 1) pedagogical concerns and 2) the concern for the bible. The pedagogical concerns correspond with the guidelines for kindergardens set by Norwegian authorities: First, the pedagogical concern to meet the child, plays part in the selection of stories. Thus a large amount of the stories include animals. Moreover, the kindergardens are expected to reflect Norwegian traditional holidays, which generally means to include the biblical stories related to christmas, easter, and pentecost. The other prinicipal, which is also the overarching concern, is grounded in an understanding of the bible itself: that the bible is a subject that authorizes good values. The lists of stories however, are heavily influenced by the selections found in children’s bibles: there are lots of male heroes. The lack of female characters is not necessarily an expression of contempt of women, but a loyalty towards bible as culture values and remembers it. A significant question to be asked is this: what does our cultural bible say about ”our” christian values?

It has long been recognised that a number of Ethiopic literary traditions, hagiographies and magical texts bear marks of the influence of the early Jewish literature of 1 Enoch and Jubilees. The significance of these works in Ethiopia has largely been focussed on the ecclesiastical context of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church or its theological discussions and biblical interpretation that employ language and imagery from 1 Enoch and Jubilees primarily for Christological formulations. However, to what extent such texts inform the lived religiosity of Orthodox Ethiopians or shape the deeper normative notions and images that underlie people’s world-views has been entirely absent. Adequate attention has also not been devoted to investigating if and how 1 Enoch and its prototypical early Jewish apocalypticism has informed Ethiopian oral tradition or Ge’ez oral poetry. This is particularly true in terms of the relationship between the apocalyptic outlook in Jewish texts in the Ethiopic canon and apocalyptic elements in the way Ethiopian Orthodox imagine their social existence. To address this scholarly lacuna, I will employ the notion of social imaginary as defined by Charles Taylor to present my preliminary observations regarding the relevance of the Enochic apocalyptic outlook in shaping an Ethiopian imagination that has constructed a symbolic world to make sense of a social existence marked by suffering and evil. Towards this end, I will analyse the content and social function of apocalyptic discourse in published and unpublished Ge’ez oral poetry/Qene whose symbolic world engages the issue of social injustice and persecution in comparison to apocalyptic thought in selected 1 Enoch traditions. In exploring the symbolic world of the apocalyptic imaginaries evident in these Qene in comparison to 1 Enoch’s apocalyptic imagination, I hope to explore the possibility of identifying early Jewish apocalyptic thought as the ideal relative to which Ge’ez oral poetry codify and comment on the state of the world. Going forth, this study hopes to incorporate a larger corpus of Ge’ez, Tigrigna and Amharic oral poetry, proverbs, and adages to explore to what extent the paradigm of Enochic apocalyptic tradition and its notion of mediated revelation about time and wisdom can be thought to provide the foundation on which the social imaginary on evil, social injustice and persecution is constructed by Orthodox speakers of Ge’ez and related languages.

This paper will analyze the city of Rome through the lens of borderlands theory, a body of scholarship concerned with topics such as the nature of boundaries and their practical and symbolic functions; the relationship between physical barriers and ethnic, economic, religious, or other social differences; the permeability of borders and how this shapes discourses about migration and its effects; and the complex and situational nature of individual and group identities in borderland regions. While much scholarship on ancient and modern borderlands has historically been focused on “peripheral” areas at the limits of empires or between nation states (the Roman Empire’s Rhine/Danube frontier, the United States’ border with Mexico), this paper will argue that immigration also transforms great cities into borderland spaces, using imperial Rome as a case study. At its height in the first centuries of the Common Era, Rome’s large population was comprised largely of migrants or their descendants. The capital was a place with many internal boundaries, from the physical (hills and valleys, walls and gates, the line of the Tiber dividing Trastevere and the Vatican from the rest of the city) to the administrative (14 regions and 265 neighborhoods from the time of Augustus forward). At the same time, Rome was a place where boundary-crossing was a constant backdrop to everyday life. As Romans worked, worshipped, attended the games, took baths, and got into trouble, they continuously navigated the city’s porous internal borders. While doing so, they also moved between different social worlds. Natives encountered newcomers, Latins encountered Greeks, and (as the history of Christianity tells us) rich encountered poor. In short, boundary-crossing in the imperial city was both a spatial and a social process, as it is in all borderland regions. Understanding community formation in the urban borderland requires close attention to this fact.

Ben Sira’s engagement with theodicy questions has perplexed commentators for centuries. This instruction defends the transcendent majesty of the Deity, while at the same time seeking to inoculate God from any responsibility for human sin. Borrowing heavily from Genesis, Deuteronomy, and other antecedent texts, the author utilizes the “Do not say” formula characteristic of Egyptian instructions to answer his interlocutors and arrive at some measure of consistency. This paper will explore the ambiguous presentation in Sir 15:11-20, especially when considered alongside such passages as 33:14-15, where God makes everything in pairs, and 39:12-35, a hymn of praise. Ben Sira’s affirmation of a good and bad “inclination” or “temperament” (yetser) foreshadows what will appear more fully in the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus and rabbinic texts. The argument here is that the author’s efforts are more didactic than doctrinal, as he seeks to merge Torah-piety with sapiential discourse and maintain his traditional understanding against those with apocalyptic ideas and/or skepticism about longstanding retributive models. Stoic influence is apparent in some of Ben Sira’s presentation, but the baseline goal is to defend the righteousness of God, at times absolving the Deity from sin and at other points speaking of duality in creation. In all of these efforts, Ben Sira is offering an apologetic, meandering response to the origin of evil. His presumed opponents represent a broader discourse on these existential questions in late Second Temple Judea than had occurred in earlier periods.

In this paper we explore the discussion of allusion in Graeco-Roman literary scholarship, seeking to understand how ancient authors alluded to multiple texts/ideas within a passage. We are interested in discerning reading and composition strategies, especially how they might have been taught as well as the interpretive process undertaken by the author.

The Jewish practice of binding tefillin (generally translated as: “phylacteries”) to the arm and the head is an ancient one. While a small number of enigmatic references to the practice occur already in late Second Temple period literature, the first significant details relating to the ritual of tefillin are found only in early rabbinic literature. The ritual remains an important component of Jewish religious praxis until today. The discovery of ancient tefillin remains together with the Dead Sea scrolls in the middle of the 20th century provided the first opportunity to investigate evidence predating the rabbis for the origins and early development of tefillin practice. Unfortunately, however, this vital corpus of tefillin finds never merited comprehensive scientific analysis and publication. Many of the finds remain unpublished, including numerous tefillin slips which have never been unfolded and deciphered. Official publications of the tefillin texts which have been opened and deciphered rely on old readings of the minuscule texts carried out before the introduction of high-resolution multispectral imaging. The paleographic character of the scripts found on most of the published tefillin slips has never been studied comprehensively, and as a result the chronology of the finds remains uncertain. And finally, no full scientific report has ever been published on the vast majority of the tefillin casings. The corpus of Judean Desert tefillin is a treasure-trove of vital information on the origins and early development of halakhah which remains largely untapped. The present paper describes a new work-in-progress: the first comprehensive scientific analysis and publication of all of the ancient tefillin remains found in the Judean Desert. The project makes use of state-of-the-art technologies to analyze both the inscribed tefillin slips as well as the casings made to house them and the straps meant to attach these to the body of the tefillin practitioner. The overall objective of this project is to provide a better understanding of the specific details of tefillin ritual during the Late Second Temple and Interwar periods as an important example of how early halakhah in general was observed and developed over time and across ancient Jewish society. The five specific objectives are: 1. to obtain new texts from undeciphered and still-unpublished tefillin slips; 2. to ascertain new readings of previously-published tefillin slips using new imaging technologies; 3. to discern the dating of all tefillin manuscripts through paleographic analysis; 4. to characterize the questionable tefillin slips; 5. to characterize the tefillin casings and straps in terms of morphology, animal origin of the leathers, and manufacturing processes (tanning, dying, forming and stitching). The significance of the current research project reaches far beyond the limited question of early tefillin practice alone in that it promises to serve as an important test-case for the development of early systems of Jewish ritual law in general.

Leviticus 4:1–35 contains a series of laws governing the חטאת sacrifice; the “purification” or “sin” offering. Unlike the voluntary gift offerings of Lev 1-3 which are tokens of reverence and gratitude to God, the sacrifices in 4:1–35 serve an expiatory function. Their purpose is to secure atonement and forgiveness from God for specific violations or sins. That is, the efficacy of these sacrifices apply exclusively to inadvertent or unintentional offenses on the part of a specified group of individuals. This means that these offerings are not applicable to certain sins – precisely, defiant or “highhanded” sins, for which forgiveness by חטאת is not possible, a situation one finds in Numbers 15. Num 15:22–31 contains a similar tradition which, like Lev 4, seems to be dealing with the same issue, namely; unintentional or inadvertent sins, for which expiatory sacrifice is required by way of חטאת. However, a closer look at Numbers reveals that the two sets of laws are not altogether identical. While the relevant passage in Num 15 restates the sacrifices required for inadvertent violations just like Lev 4, the sacrifices in the two sections differ in a number of significant ways as we shall see below. Moreover, Num 15:30–31 makes it clear that there are sins beyond sacrificial atonement. These differences in legal prescriptions have been the subject of vigorous scholarly debates from late antiquity to the present. Many solutions have been proposed in view of a possible resolution of the apparent discrepancies between the two texts. In view of the ongoing discussion, the aim of this paper is to reconsider the relationship (if any) between the two חטאת sacrifices in Lev 4 and Num 15:22–31. In order to achieve this, we shall begin our discussion by a brief examination of the term חטאת, with regard to its etymology and meaning. The next is a review of the two kinds of חטאת sacrifices in the P source of Leviticus 4. In considering the treatment of חטאת in Num 15:22–31, we shall investigate the possibility of an internal cohesion of the various laws in the passage. This would be followed by a critical comparison of Lev 4 and Num 15:22–31 in order to address the question of whether we have two different laws or a later abbreviation of an earlier one.

Michael D. Swartz’s articles over the years have invited students and scholars alike to the study of late antique and medieval Jews through his analysis of magical-ritual sources of the Genizah, the liturgical poetry of the synagogue (piyyutim), and the mystical prayer of Hekhalot literature. In this presentation I review one of Swartz’s most intriguing and provocative contributions to the field: his endeavor to locate the authors of mystical and magical texts not in the periphery of Jewish society but at its heart, in the synagogue, even in leadership positions. Swartz argues for the fundamental coherency of ritual texts, the comprehensibility of piyyut, and the agency that prayer provided to ancient Jews, whether they were mystics or synagogue attendees. Swartz’s contributions have paved the way for my own research questions on ritual, liturgical, and mystical texts and the people who composed them. Building on his research, I examine how Jews sought healing in late antique Jewish society, turning to other mediators around them, both human and angelic, within and outside familiar institutional settings. Thinking about Jewish mediation in antiquity leads me to a larger rumination on the role of relationship networks among Jews in antiquity, including those among Jewish synagogue functionaries, ritual practitioners, rabbis, and mystics, but also with actors in the invisible realm, namely the angels. I close by reflecting on Robert Orsi’s critique of the category of religion and exploring how Judaism may be studied as a relational religion, far more focused on relationship with invisible networks than has been previously acknowledged.

In 18th century British culture, the sublime was almost always weighted with theological significance. From Addison to Burke, we are in the region of sublimity when our imaginations engage vastness and extreme power, the irresistibly fearful and threatening, the grand, imposing, vertiginous, and appalling. For those who expounded and applauded the sublime in nature and art, sublimity was not merely a feature encountered in plunging ravines, starlit nights, or poetry that tried to dizzy the reader with nature's scary exuberance. Most vitally, our experience of the sublime revealed human destiny as made in God's image with a capacity of mind and imagination apt for the apprehension of deity. Sublimity was the measure of humanity, indeed, in Edmund Burke's account, it was distinctively the measure of man, having a decidedly gendered preference, as discovered by the swooning ladies in a Gothic novel. As a measure of humanity and humanity’s moral and religious vocation, the sublime also provided a determining characterisation of divinity. God, Adam Smith insisted, is “of all the objects of human contemplation by far the most sublime.” If our capacity for sublime response and its attendant emotions engages the highest and best in human religious and cultural aspirations, and is the responsive chord for the mystery of God, then what of the Bible, the authoritative vehicle of divine speech? A due recognition of the sublimity of Scripture was not less important given the parallel insistence that the sublime mode in literary was the acme of art. The Bible could hardly lack the uplift that qualifies the highest in human literature. Configuring Scripture by way of sublime enthusiasm, however, involved some profound reordering of the theological shape of the Biblical canon, away, for instance, from the New Testament toward the Old and, within the latter, away from the prophetic orientation toward Jesus toward celebrations of divine power in creation and judgement. In the context of the New Testament itself, feeling for the sublime as the measure of God and humanity privileged the language of apocalyptic, just as it obscured the Pauline paradoxes around power. Outside the apocalyptic language of the Gospels, Jesus was a somewhat awkward theological feature, refusing the sublime assistance of angelic battalions and teaching with a decided lack of sublime oomph. This occasioned some awkward, not to say, dodgy, Christological manoeuvres in order to retain both a sublime reading and Christian orthodoxy. None of this is without some long-term theological and cultural significance since enthusiasm for the sublime involved a recasting of notions of power within the cultural imagination, one developed further in the 19th and 20th centuries, even when literary and philosophical interest in the sublime declined.

The Christian interpretive tradition has long recognized the tension between James' position in 2:14–26 (e.g., 2:24: “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone”) and Pauline views (esp. Rom 3:21–31; 4:1–12; Gal 2:15–21; Gal 3:1–6; Eph 2:8–9) (e.g., Rom 3:28: “a person is justified by faith apart from the works prescribed by the law”) on the relationship between faith, “works,” and justification. This paper surveys the variety of ways in which this tension between James and Paul was addressed in the ancient Greek and Latin commentary on James traditions. I trace the Greek tradition as witnessed primarily in the Catena to James attributed to Andreas (late 7th c.) and the full commentaries attributed to Oecumenius (10th c.) and Theophylact (early 12th c.); the Latin tradition as witnessed primarily in the various writings of Augustine and Bede’s Commentary on James (early 8th c.). The central aim throughout both traditions is to show that the apparently contradictory views of James and Paul can be reconciled. They seek to demonstrate the harmony between James and Paul in a variety of ways: 1. James and Paul address different audiences, and thus emphasize different aspects of faith and actions 2. James writes to correct a mistaken interpretation of Paul 3. James and Paul define “works” differently: James refers to ethical action, or to a striving for holiness after baptism; Paul to the commandments of the Mosaic law 4. James and Paul define “faith” differently: James refers to simple assent to God’s existence; Paul to an intentional, firm consent 5. Paul refers to a faith held at baptism, James to the faith that a mature Christian should have 6. Both share the same understanding of true faith: Paul’s conception of “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) is the same as James’ formulation of faith “brought to completion by the works” (Jas 2:22). This survey of the ancient Greek and Latin interpretive readings of James and Paul reveals not a forced harmonization of contradictory views based on a preconceived notion of the harmony of Scripture, but rather a careful exegesis of individual texts, with close attention paid to each author’s historical setting, his rhetorical purposes, and the precise, contextual meaning of his key terms.

Stone has often been used as a metaphor for a lack of understanding or diminished senses. Dense. Dumb as a rock. Stone deaf. We find this in common cultural references, but also in the Bible. There, people are often considered to have a lack of understanding or of not hearing, even though they are not deaf. As it often does, however, the Bible speaks with more than one voice. We find a compelling passage in the book of Joshua (24:25-27), where after reading out the law, the leader of the Israelites sets up a stone which has “has heard all the words of the Lord...” Because it has heard both the law and the vocal reply of the people, the stone can act as a testifying witness. Here we find not a metaphorical comparison of humans to a stone, but the personification of a stone which can hear. Many of David Hammons’ sculptures are roughly head-shaped stones, topped with hair taken from the floor of African American barbershops. These works are a statement on African American identity, with the rock as a silent and lifeless pedestal for what is culturally assumed to be the primary distinguishing characteristic of the black body. However, these rock heads are not only statements on African American identity; as heads without ears, they are also representations of unhearing individuals. We suggest that insights from the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community (D/HoH) can help us better reflect on both Hammons’ work and on the scriptural metaphors involving deafness. Doing so can open up a discussion on ableism in communities that are deeply informed by religious texts that metaphorically utilize deafness for a lack of understanding. Just as Hammons’ sculpture focuses hearing viewers’ attention to the hair, those in the D/HoH community must daily interact with others who are generally unable to recognize their difference (“Funny, you don’t look/sound deaf.”). By reflecting on the ability of the D/HoH community to hear without access to audible sounds, we hope to find biblical and artistic means to subvert the harmful and exclusionary tradition of the metaphorical equivalence of deafness with a lack of comprehension.

This paper examines the impact of the popular children’s songs about Jesus’ love for children, artwork depicting Jesus’ blessing of children, and infant baptism and dedication liturgies centered around this same theme on the reception of the synoptic accounts of Jesus’ encounter with children in Matt. 19:13-15; Mark 10:13-16; and Lk. 18:15-17. Such popular uses of this biblical account capitalize upon this gospel encounter as an opportunity to market Jesus to children as a gentle and welcoming teacher. Images of the compassionate Savior with arms outstretched toward a handful of smiling children hang in many Sunday School classrooms, mirroring children’s bibles with similar images across the ages, while baptismal fonts are engraved with the words of Jesus that the gospel texts recount. This paper seeks to provide a survey of the history of the use of the synoptic accounts of Jesus welcoming the little children in children’s literature and accompanying practice and to interrogate its influence on preconceived images of Jesus brought to the study not only this text, but also the broader gospel corpus, in contrast to A. James Murphy’s more cautionary picture of the Jesus Movement’s early interactions with children.

Despite its importance for understanding the textual history, reception, and transmission of the book of Revelation, the Andrew of Caesarea commentary has received little critical attention until very recently. In addition to passing comments on Andrew's interpretation of particular texts scattered in a number of works, two major approaches on the Andrew tradition have emerged. Eugenia Constantinou has used the commentary tradition to reconstruct the "historical Andrew" and his method of composition, focusing on Andrew as an ideal ecclesiarch in the Greek Orthodox tradition. And, in a number of studies, Juan Hernández has engaged the Andrew commentary's importance for understanding Revelation's textual history and the context of modern textual scholarship. But no sustained studies have been made of the manuscripts of the Andrew commentary since Josef Schmid in the 1950s. This paper begins to explore the broader "Andrew tradition" by examining the many paratextual and design features that comprise the Greek manuscripts. The paratext of the Andrew tradition impinge on the shape of nearly half of all of Revelation's Greek manuscripts, even those that do not preserve any traces of the commentary.

The veqatal is widely acknowledged as forming a contrasting pair with vayyiqtol. Their functions within time, mood, and aspect are generally recognized, although a question about veqatal as a volitional perfective aspect has been raised. Such a perfective proposal conflicts with the data, and should be rejected. On the one hand, in past contexts both veqatal and yiqtol default to habitual and imperfectivity. Ironically, when in future contexts, even yiqtol has a propensity to be perfective, and then veqatal is similar. ¶ We would like to look at the singular and problematic usages of ve-qatal. These have often been interpreted as if they were simply a ve, and a qatal appearing together, not as a fused form, veqatal. We must ask how communication happened in antiquity, and decide whether or not veqatal was internalized as a piece of the verb system. If so, how were stories heard by ancient speakers with an internalized veqatal? How was the veqatal received by speakers of mishnaic Hebrew during the Second Temple, or by speakers of modern Hebrew today? ¶ Formerly, we would read בנים גדלתי ורוממתי (Is. 1:2) as two simple qatal forms in something like a hen-dia-dys. However, as we have internalized the biblical use of veqatal through classroom teaching, the thematic veqatal seems the more natural and immediate reading in Isaiah’s poetry. Even Qohelet may contain more veqatal than is normally understood (or vocalized by the MT). The natural reading of שיאכל ושתה is a yiqtol and a thematic veqatal, which shows the writer's familiarity with the thematic veqatal.

The theme of fasting in the Hebrew Bible often indicates both abnormality and hope. The literary portrayals of the bodily human practice formulate a bodily expression of discontentment with the present state of experience (e.g., Zech 7). On the other hand, divine rejection of a fast as supplication ritual entails God’s proclamation of other problems in the people’s practice along with desire for their change (e.g., Isa 58). This paper will explore the dynamics of sorrow and longing in the biblical texts as they connect with the embodied practices of eating and fasting.

Caesarea Maritima and Jerusalem were the two most important cities in Palestine during the first six centuries of our time. Prima facie, no two cities could be more different: the one existed almost as long as people could remember and was thought to be the capital of Judaea (and more), the other was founded only by Herod the Great; Jerusalem was the home to the second temple of the Jewish people, and whoever came by sea to Caesarea could not fail to notice the temple of the emperor. But with time the one city lost its temple completely, and with time the cult of the emperor diminished seriously in importance: what is more, both cities reached the status of Roman colonies, and for roughly 200 years this status determined the way the cities operated. Cities in the Graeco-Roman world were depended mostly on their upper classes, and these upper classes traded involvement, favours, money for social positions in the cities (one of the keywords is euergetism). Now, it seems clear that Jerusalem as a city did not always work in this way, but it seems equally clear that differences and similarities between the two cities can be brought into focus by a study of their upper classes, the way they worked in the city, the places they came from, the way their memory was held up by the city (and their families). At the same time, important breaks in the history of the cities (and of the state they belonged to) will stand out in this investigation, especially if we look beyond the year 324 - and it is an important question, whether religion played a role in this, and how far a city and its upper class was defined by religion.

The testimonium flavianum is so heavily redacted with the inclusion of at least one gloss, it is hard to discern which parts of it are originally by Josephus. It is followed by an even more bizarre narrative, the Tale of Paulina. The Tale of Paulina departs from Josephus’s typical interests of political and military history. Even when he digresses to intrigues or gossip, it is usually part of his interest in leaders and royals. Paulina’s tale is further singled out by its introduction as a sory of a sad calamity that caused confusion among the Jews (ἕτερόν τι δεινὸν ἐθορύβει τοὺς Ἰουδαίους). Notwithstanding, the story does not conclude with any account that would explain how this curious narrative affected the Jews as a whole. The contents of the story showcases a plethora of Hellenistic tropes, including sexual extortion (presented as unrequited love), mistaken identity and deceit, a hybrid sexual interaction between humans and (presumed gods). These are reminiscent of various Greco-Roman myths, as in the stories of Zeus and Leda, Cephalus and Procris, and Hephaestus and Aphrodite. The Egyptian setting of the story with the mention of the Temple of Isis and the god Anubis are uncharacteristic of Josephus, to say the least, and suggest a different provenance. Some have suggested that the tale reflects Roman aversion to the Egyptian cult of Isis, as reported also in Tacitus’s Annales. The particularly Jewish tropes include the denigration of pagan temples as locations of deceit and debauchery. Elements from the Additions to Daniel are manifestly present here, both the deceit surrounding the pagan cult, familiar from Bel and the Dragon, as well as the sexual extortion reminiscent of the Tale of Susanna. The suspected extramarital birth that includes a false claim for a conception by a deity is intriguing in light of the proximity of this tale to the brief mention of Josephus. It is reminiscent of other slanders of Jesus’s origins, some of which survive in rabbinic literature. This has been noticed before, but requires a new appraisal in light of new research on Jewish tales surrounding Jesus, as well as the markedly Hellenistic (and hence non-rabbinic) nature of the tale as a whole. This paper will consider the conflicting elements of this tale as Jewish, Christian, and Hellenistic, in order to reassess the possibilities of the identity and allegiances of its author.

The last chapters of the books of Kings have received much scholarly attention in research on the Deuteronomistic History (DH) in Josh-Kgs. Not only do they constitute the end of this hypothesized work, but they raise several interpretive issues that have long fascinated scholars. Already F.M. Cross pointed out that the narration of the Babylonian conquest does not seem to align with the theological reflections in the former part of Kings. He therefore ascribed these chapters to an Exilic editor. Other scholars observed that the multiple and inconsistent accounts of deportations in 2 Kgs 24 and 2 Kgs 25 contain interpolations, which raises the question of how the writers envisioned the respective significance of the events of 597 and 587. As for the very end of the books of Kings, most commentators treat 2 Kgs 25:22-26, 27-30 as annexes, and consider 2 Kgs 25:22-26 an excerpt from Jer 40-41. Within the model of a DH, all of these questions surrounding the meaning and literary history of these chapters are focused on the DH as the relevant interpretive context. This paper takes a different approach. It discusses 2 Kgs 24-25 in the context of parallel accounts of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in the book of Jeremiah. While the parallels between 2 Kgs 25, Jer 39 and Jer 52 are well known, these texts are often lumped together in exegetical analyses. The result is a combined text-critical discussion of these texts that blurs the differences between them. Yet, the Jeremiah texts themselves have a complex history, as is attested in the manuscript tradition. Taking into account the differences between the Greek and the Masoretic texts of Jeremiah, the paper will particularly focus on the relationship between 2 Kgs 24-25 and Jer 52. The disintegration of traditional DH models requires a renewed discussion of redaction-critical models, such as those proposed by C. Seitz, J. Wöhrle, or K. Schmid. The paper discusses these various suggestions for the redactional history of these passages, paying particular attention to points of contact with the Jeremianic tradition that go beyond the obvious parallels. Rather than proposing a (too) easy one-directional solution for the textual developments, the paper aims to shed light on how the end of the book of Kings developed in dialogue with Jeremianic traditions. In particular, it argues that the literary developments between the two works reflects an ongoing discussion on the memory of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem.

The predominant view of Qur’ānic Revelation in Sunni Muslim Qur’ānic exegesis (tafsīr) and theology (kalām) has the Angel Gabriel verbally dictate the contents of a pre-existent heavenly Qur’ān to the Prophet Muhammad in a piecemeal fashion over twenty years, which the Prophet recites verbatim to his audience. Most Islamic studies scholarship takes this “scriptural-verbal dictation” theory of revelation” as axiomatic and common to all Muslims. This paper argues that the Qur’ānic concept of revelation is one where the Messenger receives non-verbal inspiration (waḥy) from a “Transcendent Kitāb” and expresses it as piecemeal Arabic qur’āns tailored to his audience. Drawing on Qur’ānic studies scholarship by Fiegenbaum (1973), Crollius (1974), Graham (1984), and Madigan (2001), the paper first argues that the Qur’anic concept of kitāb does not refer to physical scriptures, but rather, has the meaning of divine prescription, decree, and guidance, symbolized by “divine writing”. Qur’ānic kitāb is a genus category that includes prophetic revelatory guidance and divine decrees. Second, building on Madigan (2006), Sinai (2006), and Neuwirth (2010), the paper argues that the revelatory process described in the Qur’ān distinguishes between a “Transcendent Kitāb” – a celestial domain of God’s knowledge and decrees called kitāb mubīn – and the piecemeal Arabic qur’āns, which are situated “adaptations” (tafsīl) of the Transcendent Kitāb tailored to audiences. Thirdly, the paper critically engages the arguments of Bell (1934), Jeffery (1950), Izutsu (1964), Fiegenbaum (1973), and Neuwirth (2015) concerning the Qur’ānic notions of sending down, (tanzīl), speech of God (kalām Allāh), and inspiration (waḥy). In doing so, the paper shows that tanzīl/inzāl does not actually describe the revelatory process and that kalām Allāh does not mean verbal linguistic speech. It is then argued that Qur’ānic waḥy denotes a non-verbal form of divine communication conveyed to the Prophet’s heart through the mediation of the Holy Spirit. This entails that waḥy is a process by which the Prophet “reads” the Transcendent Kitāb and verbalizes it into Arabic qur’āns. To corroborate this reading, the paper shows that early Muslim understandings of Qur’ānic revelation, as reflected in the Qur’ān and early ḥadīth, blur the hard distinction between “divine word and prophetic word” (Graham 1977) and elevate the Messenger’s extra-Qur’ānic speech to a level nearly on par with the qur’āns. This idea of waḥy as non-verbal inspiration, entailing revelatory agency for Muhammad, is mentioned in classical works including certain ḥadīth, the tafsīr of al-Māturīdī, Ismaili writings, and later ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān works.  

Far from being sectarian, the pressures felt by Johannine Christianity resulted from their cosmopolitan setting in the Greco-Roman world. In particular, presenting Pilate as miscomprehending the truth, and featuring Thomas making an anti-Domitian confession in John 20:29 reflects an anti-imperial thrust of John’s story of Jesus. Additionally, numerous inferences of the historical backdrop of the Johannine Epistles abound, but a striking lacuna involves the relative dearth of historical-critical treatments of the Roman Imperial Cult under Domitian (81-96 CE) upon the ethical concerns of the diaspora-setting Johannine situation overall. Indeed, tensions with the Jewish leadership of local synagogues were real (1 John 2:18-25), as were debates with hierarchical Christian leaders, such as the primacy-loving Diotrephes (3 John 9-10). However, the socio-religious backdrop of the assimilative teachings of the docetizing “Antichrists” (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 7) was directly impacted by the requirement of emperor laud instituted by Domitian, which was carried forward by further administrations. As echoed by the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan some two decades later, the long-established practice of requiring Christians to demonstrate emperor laud, confess Caesar as Lord, and to deny Christ carried penalties up to and including capital punishment if transgressed. These pressures would have been real in the rest of Asia Minor, even if Christians were not to be sought out programmatically. That being the case, some of the primary ethical concerns behind the thrust of the Johannine writings come into clear view. (a) The miscomprehension of Pilate (John 18:28-19:22) and the confession of Thomas, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:29) were clearly crafted with an anti-Domitian thrust, as such is the way the third Flavian Emperor expected others to reference him. (b) Obviously, the Johannine Apocalypse challenges the numismatic image of baby Domitian holding seven stars in his hand, as such is performed by Christ himself (Rev 1:20). (c) Likewise in the Johannine Epistles, claiming to be “without sin” was less a matter of Gnostic perfectionism and more a factor of disagreement between Gentile and Jewish believers over what things were sinful and which were not—illuminated by socio-religious tensions with the Imperial Cult (1 John 1:5-10). (d) The appeal to love not the world was especially targeted at young adults, tempted to be involved in assimilative practices associated with imperial festivities and pagan celebrations, embellished by Rome (1 John 2:12-17). (e) The threat of docetizing traveling ministers is that they were teaching assimilation with Greco-Roman culture, legitimated by the cheap-grace implications of a non-suffering Jesus (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 7). (f) While venial sins might be overlooked, death-producing sins could not be, and submitting to the requirements of the Imperial Cult would have been first among them (1 John 5:16-17). (g) Finally, all of these issues are addressed culminatively and directly in 1 John 5:21: “Little children, stay away from idols!” That being the case, the last word in the first Johannine Epistle serves as its first word, challenging believers’ participation in the Roman Imperial Cult and its associated practices.

The task of reconstructing Q has always been fraught with challenges, some arising from the inherently nuanced nature of the endeavor, others stemming from skepticism with which such attempts have not infrequently been met. In recent decades the impossibility of a precise reconstruction of Q has been asserted by a number of scholars at least partly on the grounds of what Dieter T. Roth calls in his 2018 monograph “a thought experiment” involving the reconstructed text of Mark’s gospel. As the argument goes, Mark’s gospel, when reconstructed solely from the Matthew-Luke overlap containing Markan material, amounts to a document that does not closely resemble the canonical gospel of Mark as we know it. Consequently, the proponents of this argument conclude, any reconstruction of Q as a document should similarly be viewed with suspicion. In this paper we shall suggest that the “reconstructed Mark” argument cannot be deployed to invalidate the reconstruction of Q as a document, because Mark’s gospel presents an inadequate test case for Q. The multiple ways in which the two documents differ from one another will be highlighted. We shall also revisit the once well-known but perhaps more recently forgotten or underappreciated observations clearly showing that the evangelists consistently treat the double synoptic tradition material, viz., Q, more favorably than their Markan source. The purpose of our discussion will not be to discourage continued critical assessment of Q’s word-level reconstructions in the future. We do hope, however, to shift scholars’ attention away from what is at best a simplistic argument.

This study centers on the relationship between temple architecture (both real and figured) and Jewish religious and cultural values in Greco-Roman Palestine. The Second Temple not only determined the worldview of the varieties of Judaism in its time but also reflected, in its spatial layout, the values and tensions at the heart of Jewish society. Without reducing the purpose of the temple to the establishment and enforcement of social divisions and hierarchy (as some current scholarship tends to), this paper examines how architectural changes at the outer edges of the Temple precincts, the liminal area that distinguished the chosen community from outsiders, relate to complex and diverse Jewish attitudes toward the Greco-Roman world. Such attitudes continued to develop and were at least partially informed by the tumultuous experiences of Jews with non-Jews throughout the period. Analysis will proceed on two planes. First, I consider the very patchy historical record, seeking clues for development from the evidence of Josephus, 1 Maccabees, and the Greek and Latin warning inscriptions from Herod’s Temple. Then, within this historical framework, I turn to roughly contemporary texts portraying ideal temples and focusing especially on their presentation of the boundary between inside and outside as a reflection of core conceptions of covenant and election. Here I intend to focus on the Temple Scroll and related Qumran traditions, as well as some relevant early Christian traditions. The comparison will illustrate not only the centrality of the image of the temple across different Jewish groups, but also, more importantly, how different notions regarding the boundaries of the temple played into distinctive understandings of the covenant, different expectations with regard to God’s plans for humanity, and ultimately, different platforms for the construction of communal identity.

The hijrah of Muhammad and his earliest followers from Mecca to Yathrib in 622 CE stands as an epoch-making event in the historical memory of the early Muslims preserved in the literary works of the Arabo-Islamic tradition. Yet, does there exist any historical evidence for this pivotal event beyond the immense cache of communal memory preserved in this literary evidence? This paper argues that there indeed exists a bevy of evidence for the historicity of the hijrah outside the literary source material—even if one limits the survey of the available data to artifacts dating to the 1st century AH/7th century CE. Moreover, establishing the historicity of this event has potentially monumental consequences for the current debate over the feasibility of applying diachronic approaches to reading the Qur’an and for defending this approach from its critics, who dismiss it as overly reliant on assumptions internalized from the sirah-maghazi literature of the 2nd–3rd/8th–9th century.

Whereas Michael Sells has explored the multidimensionality of meaning across what he identifies as the semantic, acoustic, emotive and gendered modes and has aptly pointed out the use of the feminine grammar in creating impressive feminine ‘sound-scapes’ or barely hidden personifications (or ‘sound figures’, as he calls them), in hymnic surahs of the Qur’an (e.g. Surat al-Qadr [Q97] and Surat al-Qariah [Q101]), I am not aware of any studies of the alternate use of the feminine and masculine grammar in the same verse or couplet and how it may relate to a deeper gender discourse in the immediate passages and in the overall literary intent of the relevant surah (e.g. Q al-Najm 53:38–39, alla taziru waziratun wizra ukhra / wa an laysa li-l-insani illa ma sa‘a). In this paper I propose to study the two terms–nafs and insan–most commonly used in the Qur’an to refer to the human subject. Both terms are semantically gender inclusive whereas the former is grammatically feminine and the latter grammatically masculine. Beginning with some general observations on the interchangeable use of the two terms in the Qur’an leading to grammatical gender fluidity, the paper shall proceed to a more focused study of Surat al-Najm, where there is an explicit and implicit discussion of gender across its semantic, acoustic and emotive modes. The surah’s breathtaking rhythm with its short verses and feminine endings (except for verses 26–32, which seem to be a later insertion), its concern with denial of female goddesses, its use of the feminine and masculine grammar to refer to the human subject and the primacy of the ethical across human differences makes it an excellent candidate for such a study. The paper will also endeavor to determine the degree to which there might be a tension or agreement between the various modes through which the discourse on gender is developed in this surah. Finally, the paper will reflect on how the gender fluidity of qur’anic grammar might open a way for queer Muslims to transcend hetero-normative and patriarchal readings of the Qur’an.

Estimates suggest that of all the books in the Hebrew Bible, the Song of Songs was commented upon more than any other book in the Middle Ages, with the possible exceptions of Genesis and the Psalms. The Song’s interpretative history is a vast and complex field and medieval commentaries and interpretations are very diverse. One central point of agreement, however, is that the literal content of the Song is not something to which a great deal of attention should be paid. From Origen in the 3rd century until John of the Cross in the 16th, the consensus of the vast majority of commentators was that in itself, the song does not refer simply to a human relationship, and if we were to read it in that way, it would, in the words of Denys the Carthusian, “be of no worth, sensual and prurient, and not spiritual, mystical, most excellent and heavenly. It would then not be a prophetic text, but a sort of love song.” Until the 12th century, readings of the Song in the Latin West had centred on allegorical interpretations in which the bride represents the Church. Inspired by Origen, the 12th-century Cistercian monks William of Saint-Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux and the Augustinian canon regular Richard of Saint-Victor popularized the ‘personal’ or ‘moral’ reading of the Song, in which the bride represents the individual soul, and they thus radically reshaped the Song’s reception and profoundly impacted the Christian mystical tradition. This paper will explore whether and to what extent the pervasive moral mystical reading of the Song – in all its diversity – functions as a norm for understanding the Song theologically, despite the fact that contemporary exegetical scholarship has decisively moved away from this reading. The contemporary exegete Jean-Pierre Sonnet (2005) has suggested that allegorical readings of the Song were not only traditional (i.e. dating back to a tradition of Jewish interpretation predating the Song’s definitive inclusion in the canon), but that this book was so popular among medieval commentators because the language of human love and the language of divine love have so much in common. The historical theologian Denys Turner (1995), on the other hand, has suggested that in the Middle Ages, the Song represented the perfect combination of monastic interests – namely Neo-Platonic, Dionysian erotic ontology on the one hand and almost constant scripture reading on the other. Taking its lead from these and other studies, this paper will explore (i) a number of specific medieval mystical readings of the Song, (ii) the extent to which this mystical theology rejects or presupposes the literal, erotic content of the poem, and (iii) whether retrieving medieval approaches to the Song might influence its role in theology today. What might we learn from the way in which the most ‘profane’ of biblical books might impact contemporary understandings of erotic relationships with O/others, both human and divine.

Sacred space and profane space are not mutually exclusive. Cognitive science has proven clear, distinct boundaries are not realized between existential categories. The reality of life space is the sacred and profane may exist in the same space with one taking precedence over the other. A space may become sacred to accommodate a sacred action limited to a particular temporal moment even with the profane present. In this way, sacred space becomes utility based for life focused outcomes. This paper explores the reality of the sacred and the profane occupying the same space. Primary examples are taken from 2 Kings 4:32-35 and 1 Kings 17:19-23 in which death (profane) is at the spatial forefront confronting prophetic power (sacred); and 2 Kings 5:9-14 in the story of Naaman confronted with the dirty Jordan river (profane) and divine healing (sacred). In the one case, the profane space is permanently transformed by sacredness. In the other space, the sacred act is momentary and the profanity of the space remains constant.

The New Testament attests seven instances of μνεία, typically glossed as “remembrance, memory, mention,” all within the Pauline corpus, six of which occur in the epistolary thanksgiving periods. Four of these attestations occur in the periphrastic phrase μνείαν ποιεῖσθαι, which lexica such as BDAG, LSJ9, and GE gloss as “mention, make mention.” Despite such concordance across weighty lexica, English NT translations tend to oscillate, seemingly arbitrarily, between glossing μνείαν ποιεῖσθαι as “mention” and “remember,” and commentators argue over how best to determine the precise sense of μνεία in this collocation. There is tension, moreover, between “mention” as commonly used in contemporary English and the cotext of the Pauline thanksgivings, a disjuncture that appears to have gone unnoticed in lexica and scholarly literature. “Mention” connotes “a reference, comment or remark that is generally brief in nature and incidental to the main point” (OED3, s.v. “mention,” n.), whereas the Pauline prayer reports suggest a depth of intentional prayer incongruent with a mere cursory reference. This disjuncture appears to stem from the lexicological trajectory of “mention” in English. “Mention” has been used as a gloss for μνεία since the sixteenth century, but the sense of a brief and incidental remark associated with “mention” today did not originally exist; rather, “mention” denoted “the action of calling to mind or commemorating something in speech or writing” (OED3, s.v.). It appears that such semantic shift has escaped the attention of translators, commentators and lexicographers alike, most likely due to the neatness of the calque “make mention,” the semantic overlap between “mention in prayer” and “remember in prayer,” and the limited contextual evidence within the NT. Moulton and Milligan’s Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament provides a number of attestations intended to illustrate μνείαν ποιεῖσθαι in the sense of “make mention,” but a fresh examination of papyrological and epigraphical material confirms that the semantic range of μνεία does not include “mention” in the contemporary English sense and that such a gloss is based on archaic usage of the English word that is no longer legitimate. In the papyri, μνεία occurs both formulaically in epistolary proemia, as in the NT, and also in independent usage. These attestations connote three separate nuances of remembering: remembering as a purely internal recollection, remembering as a communicative event intended to draw ongoing attention to the object of the memory, and remembering accompanied by a responsive action, the nature of which is determined from context. These nuances are not adequately captured by the glosses “remembrance, memory” and dictate the need for substantial revision of existing entries in BDAG, LSJ9, and GE. Data from the documentary papyri also facilitates the drawing of an additional conclusion that deserves mention in lexica, namely that μνεία was a high register lexeme whether used formulaically or independently, a conclusion significant for informing assessment of lexical choice within the Pauline epistolary proemia.

Isaiah 44:28 argues that Cyrus is God’s shepherd. At His command, Cyrus has ordered the re-building of Jerusalem and the re-establishment of the Temple. This verse is located at the culmination of a series of literary units (beginning in 43:16) which praise Cyrus’ actions while implicitly undermining the Neo-Babylonian royal ideology Cyrus himself promulgated. The culminating verses of these units (44:26-28) exhibit a very positive view of Cyrus' plan to allow return to Yehud and rebuilding of the Temple. But 43:16-44:27 subvert elements of the Neo-Babylonian royal ideology Cyrus adopted, by appropriating its motifs. Instead of using them, as Cyrus did, to argue that Marduk chose Cyrus, these verses use these motifs to argue that God chose Israel. 44:1-2, which argue that God formed Israel “in the womb,” have long been recognized as an example of such subversion (Paul 1968), but there are many other examples of this technique in 43:16-44:28. These include the claim in 43:19-20 that God creates a path and water in the desert, which recall claims in Nabonidus’ inscriptions (Beaulieu 1989: 173), the claim in 44:3-4 that God revives Israel (reflecting Cyrus’ claim in his cylinder that he revived Babylon), and the argument in 44:5 (repeated in 44:21) that Israel is God’s dedicated servant. Embedded within these adaptations of Neo-Babylonian royal ideology is a clear polemic against Marduk theology and Babylonian iconography in 44:6-20. This polemic begins in 44:6-8, which use the Babylonian belief that Marduk was not present at creation to undermine Babylonian claims that Marduk is the chief god. Only YHWH, the Creator who acknowledges no rivals, can persuasively claim to be the author of future events. In 44:9-11, idolators are called upon to bear witness in favour of Marduk’s claims of chiefness, but they are unable to do so because they cannot affirm a role for Marduk at creation. The polemic continues with an attack on the idol-making and -animating ritual in 44:12-20. In 44:21-28, the two strands of argument articulated since 43:16 reach their joint culmination. 44:21 refers to the polemic against idols in 44:6-20 and also refers to the image found in 44:5 of Israel as God’s servant, an image appropriating elements of Cyrus’ royal ideology. 44:24 goes beyond this; it affirms God’s creation of Israel from the womb, thus recalling the subversion of Cyrus’ ideology advanced in 44:1-2, while also affirming God’s role as sole Creator, thus recalling the polemic in 44:6-8. Finally, 44:27 refers to the cosmic combat motif, thus closing the circle begun in 43:26. The Babylonian cosmic combat story tells how Marduk became supreme, but 44:27 uses this motif to affirm the supremacy of YHWH. Taken as a whole, 43:26-44:28 carefully balance an appropriation of Neo-Babylonian royal ideology with an attack on Babylonian mythology. Both of these arguments reach their joint culmination in 44:28, arguing that Cyrus, who appropriated Neo-Babylonian royal ideology to support his own royal claims, is actually the servant of YHWH.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR annual meeting, Book of the Twelve research group

Luke 24:44-46 raises a number of questions for modern interpreters. First, the curious phrase, “while I was still with you” (v. 44), gives the awkward impression that Jesus, who has just eaten fish in the presence of the disciples (v. 43), may not actually be present with them. Next, Jesus’s statement that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” is intriguingly precise and vague at the same time. It names three distinct sections of the Hebrew Bible but offers no specific examples. Moreover, because Jesus introduces his next statement with the standard citation formula, “it is written,” the reader expects an explicit quotation. But the words that follow (“that the Christ should suffer and rise from the dead”) do not resemble any known OT text or combination of texts. This paper will argue that most, if not all, of these tensions can be resolved if we posit the influence of 4 Macc 18:9-19 on Luke 24:44-46. The awkward phrasing in Luke 24:44 need not imply a docetic view of the risen Jesus. Rather it is probably the result of an intentional echo of the wording of 4 Macc 18:10. In the latter the mother of the famous Maccabean martyrs encourages her seven sons by reminding them of the teaching of their late father: “While he was still with you (ἔτι ὢν σὺν ὑμῖν), he taught you the Law and the Prophets (τὸν νόμον καὶ τοὺς προφήτας).” Similarly, the risen Jesus reassures the disciples by saying, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you (ἔτι ὢν σὺν ὑμῖν), that everything written about me in the Law and the Prophets (τῷ νόμῳ Μωϋσέως καὶ τοῖς προφήταις) and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). To illustrate the father’s teaching from the Law and the Prophets, the mother of the seven martyrs presents a carefully arranged chiastic sequence of OT quotations and allusions. The theme of the first half of the chiasm is the suffering of the righteous, and that of the second half is God’s ability to make the dead live. The two parts of the mother’s list correspond to the sequence of two themes in Luke 24:46, namely, that the Christ should first suffer and then rise from the dead. Notably, even though the mother introduces the father’s teaching as coming from the Law and the Prophets, the center of the chiasm includes a programmatic quotation from the Psalms. It may thus serve as a precedent for the otherwise unparalleled reference to the Psalms in Luke 24:44. Overall, the intertextual connections with 4 Macc 18 suggest that Luke 24:44-46 is not a claim about the fulfillment of texts that refer specifically to the Messiah, but a claim that Christ’s suffering and resurrection are the climactic fulfillment of two themes that can be found in each of the three major divisions of the OT.

Acts 17:16-34, Paul's speech in front of the Areopagus in Athens, is often characterized as his attempt to engage with Hellenistic philosophy. Yet, rather than discussing philosophical dogma or virtues in the abstract, Paul focuses on his experience of the city of Athens and the role of materiality. At the opening of this passage, Paul makes it clear that his opinion of Athenians was informed not by dialogue with philosophers but by walking through the city and observing the ubiquity of pagan shrines and idols. In response to what he saw in Athens, Paul argued that the true God cannot be expressed by or worshipped through materiality. The end of the passage states that some in the audience were swayed and joined him, and modern scholars have pointed to conversions such as these to assert that pagan religious experience was easily cast aside by some. In this paper, I first contextualize Paul's speech by considering the types of religious performances he would have seen while walking through the public spaces in Athens. More importantly, I look at the Pauline epistles to show that early followers of Paul from pagan communities struggled to adopt his program both practically and conceptually while still inhabiting sacred landscapes similar to that of Athens. Greek cities in the first century were filled with temples and shrines that acknowledged the presence of gods within the community and provided a venue for interaction with them. Anyone walking through the city, like Paul, passed and interacted with multiple shrines regularly, usually through the performance of religious rituals such as pouring libations, making offerings, and engaging in theoria with the idol. From the Areopagus, therefore, Paul's greatest challenge in changing the pagan worship practices was actually the physical space of Athens. For Paul's audience, the influence of sacred materiality was not something able to be dismissed quickly. The newly converted followers of Paul may have shifted their religious worldview but they still had to inhabit the geographical space of the Athenian sacred landscape, which encouraged and reinforced the pagan worldview. This paper relies on two theoretical premises. The first is that monuments, such as temples, act as external symbolic storage by conveying and reinforcing cultural narratives to the viewer (Renfrew, 1998). The second is Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social behavior which states that ingrained actions not only reflect but reinforce cultural values and norms. Thus, interacting with pagan shrines through the performance of religious activities strengthened the very pagan mindset that Paul sought to eliminate. Acknowledging the importance of space in shaping religious experience is crucial for our understanding of early Christian communities. In cities like Athens, Paul needed to combat the pagan mindset not only intellectually but also spatially. Evidence from his writings shows that this effort continued well after an individual's initial decision to become a follower of Paul.

The Book of Lamentations is a response to the destruction of the Temple, the punishment of exile, and the painful sense of loneliness and failure. It reflects the feeling that the relationship with God may have come to an end. The nation is depicted in the megilla as a woman, and by portraying her as a widow / nidda / lonely / betrayed / sexually humiliated / abandoned, represents the state of the nation. The image of Jerusalem as a sinful, abandoned woman is precise and powerful. The image is not one of death, which would have provided the painful solace of suffering that is finite, but rather of a woman who was raped and defiled and left to live, forlorn and companionless. A woman like this is a living witness to ongoing pain and anguish without relief. The Song of Songs masterfully paints a picture of the relationship between man and woman, between lover and beloved, between two lovers experiencing the complexities of the love bond, and at its center is the experience of passion and the challenge of consummating it. The megilla gives voice to a woman who loves and is loved and offers a glimpse into the woman's attitude to love, passion, yearning, and desire. It sketches a world that moves from alienation and estrangement to intimacy and harmony. Already in antiquity this megilla was understood allegorically and interpreted as a metaphor for the relationship between God and His people; it reflects the vicissitudes that this relationship has undergone, is still undergoing, and will yet undergo. Concerning both megillot, opinions differ as to whether the megillah in question is an integral work with structural order and conceptual development, or whether these are independent works arranged as an anthology one after the other. In my lecture I will follow the scholars who for different reasons suggested that the work should be seen as an integral unit with an inner logic (even if they were not written entirely by one author). I propose that the megillot be read side by side. I will show various motifs that link them, and most important - I will propose ideological-theological significance to the reading of Lamentations and the Song of Songs, two works that contend with the challenge of existence in the face of the presence and actions of God. Special emphasis will be placed on the fact that in both megillot, the collective is represented by the image of a woman. I will analyze the implications of this representation and of the relationship to God as an intimate partner.

Roman Jakobson, patriarch of literary linguistics, stylistics, and structural poetics, conceptualized parallelism in ways more technical and arguably more sophisticated than how biblical scholars have applied the term to Biblical Hebrew poetry (BHP) since Robert Lowth. Parallelism according to Jakobson is more than the patterned stacking of words and grammatical-syntactic constructions from verseline to verseline. It is also more than the gradual or intensification of semantic domains from verseline to verseline. As such, this paper sets out to demonstrate that Jakobson, in understanding that parallelism operates hierarchically at all linguistic levels (e.g., phonemes, lexemes, and syntagemes), and that parallelism is an integral part of the of the poetic text’s overall artistic architecture, posited that linguistic parallelism ultimately functions to create structural cohesion through subtly variegated linguistic repetitions (e.g., reiteration and collocation), that in turn create a discourse grounding against which foregrounding occur. In short, and for Jakobson, linguistic parallelism has a dual rhetorical discourse function of structural cohesion and foregrounding.

This paper examines the pragmatics of the “city lament” genre by considering the various epistemological and sociological claims embedded in its literary expression (Dobbs-Allsopp 1993). Building upon the notion that the qinah is a discourse which expresses the failure of categories (Vayntrub 2015; 2019), this paper explores how such failure is mapped onto the female body in Lamentations. I will examine how Jerusalem, personified as Daughter Zion, serves as both the site and embodiment of categorical failure. In this analysis, I consider how the motifs of maternal cannibalism and barrenness relate to one another, and together rhetorically and conceptually undo the category of motherhood and maternal exemplarity. These motifs do so through an inversion of procreative imagery. Through these rhetorical examples, the paper more broadly seeks to reframe an understanding of the city lament to encompass the conceptualization and contestation of wholeness as it interrelates gender and embodiment in the ancient world.

My paper aims to offer a fresh understanding of kǝḇôḏ YHWH in the Pentateuch’s Priestly Document (P), considering P’s coherent presentations of the deity and his appearance (both in its narrative and law). Kǝḇôḏ YHWH has been predominantly translated as and thus understood through abstract nouns, like “the Glory of the LORD” or “the Presence of the LORD,” but these translations do not adequately capture the sense of this phrase. According to my hypothesis, the expression may have evoked a more concrete image to the reader. There are some better interpretations. Moshe Weinfeld, Julian Morgenstern, David H. Aaron, and Benjamin D. Sommer suggest that it refers to the divine body, while Moshe Greenberg, Tryggve N. D. Mettinger and Shawn Zelig Aster ascribe it to the person or the self of the deity. Yet I think both views still do not fully grasp P’s technical use of the phrase. It is my thesis that kǝḇōḏ YHWH is a royal robe of the deity, agreeing with Michael B. Hundley who suggests a bright, radiant cloak. There are fifteen attestations of kǝḇōḏ YHWH in P: Exod 16:7, 10; 24:16-17; 28:2, 40; 29:43; 40:34-35; Lev 9:6, 23; Num 14:10; 16:19; 17:7; and 20:6. Admittedly, it is not simple to draw out a definitive concept of kǝḇōḏ YHWH from these instances. Nonetheless, some biblical and extra-biblical clues are available. First, the word kāḇōḏ is used for the priestly garments in Exod 28:2 and 40, even though the word is a modifier for the garments rather than their designation. Also, the Mesopotamian word melammu—often described as the fiery, awe-inspiring garment—is comparable to kǝḇōḏ YHWH in P. Comparing kǝḇōḏ YHWH with melammu has an additional benefit: it gives a royal flavor to the understanding of kāḇōḏ. Yet I part from Hundley who sees this divine garment as an enigmatic, camouflaging device of the divine essence that indicates divine presence; instead I see its purpose to be presenting the official public aspect of the divine quality, a purpose which makes perfect sense within the entire Priestly history that depicts the deity as king. Understanding it in this sense, I will demonstrate that kǝḇōḏ YHWH as the royal garment also accords well with both the remainder of the above instances and consistently with the Priestly deity throughout P. I expect my paper to contribute to the novel understanding of the Priestly God. P’s depiction of the deity including kǝḇôḏ YHWH has often been considered anti-anthropomorphic and transcendent by concealing the essence of the deity. But if understood as a garment as such, it cannot but imply anthropomorphism. Kǝḇôḏ YHWH does not conceal divinity, but rather reveals divine/royal quality and stresses the hierarchic superiority of the deity, so fully anthropomorphic, in the public sphere.

Scholars have long noted the pronounced use of Christological typology in the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel employs numerous typological images for Jesus without apparent concern for negotiating how these typologies overlap and interact. For example, Jesus is cast as the Davidic horn of salvation in the Song of Zechariah, as the heir of the mantle of Elijah and Elisha in Luke 4, and as Moses anew in the transfiguration narrative. How does the Gospel of Luke navigate these typological intersections so that Jesus can be the fulfillment of all these different traditions from the Hebrew Bible? The key is found in the voice from the cloud during the transfiguration. This short speech in Luke 9:35 has a number of curious features. First, it appears to be a composite stitched together from passages in the Hebrew Bible. It most likely sandwiches together an allusion to Psalm 2, Isaiah 42, and Deuteronomy 18. This could be understood as an attempt to rescripturalize accepted texts into a new divine utterance that fuses together the Davidic, Prophetic, and Mosaic traditions. Second, the speech despite its shortness has features in common with prosopopoeia as understood in the rhetorical handbooks. The sequence of citations follows Theon’s recommendations for the chronological arrangement of prosopopoeia, and the choice of material reflects the demands for sensitivity in the creation of speeches. Understood in this way, the speech on the mount of transfiguration uses divine proclamation to cement together the numerous Christological typologies of the Gospel. Thus, it paves the way for the audience to understand how Jesus is the fulfillment of all that is written in “the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms” (Lk 24:44).

In this paper I will look at a number of texts that develop an interpretive tradition growing out of early reading of the Book of Isaiah in which innocent suffering is transformed. I will try to demonstrate that this tradition grows out of a process of interpretation and translation that is embedded in practice: the practices of reading, explaining and translating texts, but also bringing the texts into practice, into lived practice that in itself constitutes an act of interpretation. I will argue that the notion of labour, or toil, brings the dimensions of interpretation and practice together and constitutes a driving force behind the growth of a rich tradition. At this level we are perhaps not speaking of an interpretive tradition but of the emergence of a concept that is embedded in practice: the concept of labour. We cannot relate this directly to the any single passage in Isaiah, but neither can we separate it from interpretive traditions that build on earlier texts, including Isaiah.

The lexeme lāšôn has a wide range of semantics that developed throughout the history of ancient Hebrew. The word underwent semantic expansion based on its physical and spatial properties and on its function as an articulator. The basic meaning of lāšôn is “tongue.” It may also refer to “language,” “nation,” or “speech.” While the semantic history of lāšôn has received a certain degree of treatment, particularly with respect to metaphorical usage, visual semantics embedded in this lexeme are as yet unexplored by any cognitive investigation. That is, how the ancient Hebrews might have visually conceptualized and cognitively processed the term lāšôn when uttering and hearing it. This paper will pay particular attention to the “speech” dimension as a productive site for understanding the visual-semantic property of lāšôn in poetic contexts where the term is used as a synecdoche, typically collocated with abstract nouns (e.g., šeqer, tahpukôt, mirmāh, ḥokmâ), to indicate speech imbued with qualities. By way of appealing to insights from the iconographic representations of the Akkadian cognate lišānu “tongue” or “blade,” I will explore the way in which the ancients conceptualized lāšôn as speech particularly in association with the sword imagery and its inherent characteristics. In this paper, I will argue that lāšôn was imagined as a sharp-edged weapon that leads both the speaker and the hearer to “deadly” and thus decisive consequences. I will also maintain that the speech language is semantically tied to the concept of performance, verbal action that actually enacts or produces what is uttered with intention, and that the ancients perceived speech as a kind of speech act. I will then examine how lāšôn “speech” conveys the concept of performance in passages from Proverbs. This paper hopefully offers some insights on theorizing visual cognition in semantic processing through the use of iconography.

In this paper I will examine the use of the term Nazarene/s (נוצרים/נוצרי) in rabbinic sources. I will outline the sources which use this term, the context in which it is used, and survey the scholarly discussions concerning this term and the group it is meant to represent. These rabbinic sources provide an angle through which to ponder the question of Jewish Christian relations in the first centuries CE, as seen from the eyes of the composers of the rabbinic sources.

Holy Craps: Lot Casting as a Priestly Rite in Acts 1 In the opening chapters of both Luke and Acts the reader encounters an episode involving the casting of lots (cf. Luke 1:8–9; Acts 1:26). In the Gospel of Luke it is clear that this is a custom associated with the priesthood (cf. Luke 1:9), a tradition attested by the Chronicler (e.g., 1 Chr 24:5, 7, 31; 25:8, etc.). Though it may appear that the imagery in Acts 1 is unrelated to priestly traditions, this paper will argue that priestly lot-casting traditions provide the most plausible backdrop for the imagery in Acts 1. First, we will show that the disciples in Luke-Acts elsewhere appear to be associated with priestly imagery (Strelan [2008], Fletcher-Louis [2007]). Among other things, they are identified as the future “judges” of Israel (cf. Luke 22:30), a role most prominently associated with the priests (cf., e.g., Deut 17:9; 2 Chr 19:8-11), particularly in the eschatological age (cf., e.g., Ezek 44:23; 4Q161 VIII–X, 24–25). In addition, like the Levites, the apostles’ commitment to Christ is linked to the renunciation of kin (cf. Exod 32:29; LXX Deut 33:9; Luke 18:29), a commitment in context also linked to a unique “inheritance” (cf. Luke 18:18), terminology also especially associated with the Levitical priesthood (cf. Num 18:20, 23; Deut 10:9; 18:1–2; Neh 13:10). All of this would seem to reinforce the idea that the “office” Judas has turned aside from in Acts 1 is best understood in priestly terms (cf. also Acts 1:20 and Num 4:16). Second, we shall argue that such imagery makes sense since Jewish hopes for the restoration of Israel—something Luke links to Christ—frequently involved not only the expectation of an eschatological temple, but also an eschatological priesthood (e.g., Isa 66:21; Mal 3:3; Ezek 40:45–46; 1Q28b 3:22–23; CD 4:1–6). Third, the broader structural pattern of the narrative of Luke-Acts as a whole reinforces the perception that the casting of lots in Acts 1 is related Zechariah’s lot-casting in Luke 1. As numerous studies have demonstrated (e.g., C. Talbert [1982], R. Tannehill [1991], C. Rothschild [2004]), the events in the Gospel of Luke are clearly paralleled in the life of the community in Acts; e.g., the Spirit descends upon Jesus in visible form at his baptism (Luke 3:22), just as the Spirit descends upon the apostles in visible form at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4); etc. This paper therefore suggests that the apostles’ lot-casting in Acts 1 follows this pattern and intentionally mirrors Luke 1. This reinforces the imagery found elsewhere in the narrative that suggests that the disciples play a priestly role in the Christ-believing community.

The first major theological section of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians begins with a citation from the Greek translation of his scriptures (Isa 29:14) modified under the influence of a Greek Psalms text (32:10). While scholars have seen this connection, none have documented just how far Paul is influenced by the Greek translations of these two texts in what follows, the entire section of 1 Cor 1:10–4:21, as well as how this “divine speech” in the first person from God influences the course of the argument. This paper seeks to analyze the functions of such divine speech, termed theopoiēsis, akin to the Greek rhetorical technique of prosopopoeia, and to investigate the allusions and echoes to both Psalm 32 LXX and Isa 29:14–15 LXX that aid this characterization of God through scripture. The paper proposes that words in these key Greek texts are interspersed throughout the discourse, lending Paul’s argument some of its major themes. Ultimately, the scriptural language (brought into the discourse from these Greek versions of Paul’s scriptures) comes to an important climax in 1 Cor 4:5, where Paul draws heavily from Isa 29:15 (an allusion not detected by interpreters thus far) to make a point about his apocalyptic theological epistemology: that the Lord will reveal secret plans “when the Lord comes” (readers are left wondering whether this “Lord” is God or Christ). With this allusion to Isa 29:15, Paul brings his argument to a climax, which began with theopoiēsis in 1 Cor 1:19 (citing Isa 29:14). Moreover, the puzzling statement, “Not beyond what is written” (1 Cor 4:6), makes much more sense when one recognizes that Paul has now brought to a close an argument based on God’s speech in Isaiah 29:14–15. Finally, these texts emphasize the universal context within which Paul reads his scriptures: a cosmic narrative in which humanity and God play the central roles, and in which God is the principal revealer of Godself to humanity, an epistemological point that overturns the faulty theological epistemology of the proud and boasting Corinthians. From the first instance of theopoiēsis in 1 Cor 1:19 to the last allusion to this divine speech in 1 Cor 4:6, God is characterized as powerful, wise, and other (all attributes which come via the Greek scriptures), as well as speaking and revealing Godself in Christ (aspects of God’s character which are brought to the interpretation of God by Paul).

This paper, in part, re-examines this complicated textual tradition of Joshua 5.2-9. However, while there are many ways one might compare the various textual witnesses and begin reconstructing the complex history of Joshua 5, my goal here is not to engage in this kind of debate, and certainly not to delineate the original or even earliest text. Instead, my analysis examines the various witnesses on their own terms, helping the reader to more clearly see the varied importance ascribed to the act of circumcision in Joshua 5. By encountering each text on its own terms, the reader will begin to see multiple levels of cultic, social and theological meaning attached to this particular instance of Israelite circumcision. After some comments on Joshua 5.2-9’s literary positioning and its basic narrative development—shared by the Hebrew and Greek text traditions—I briefly sketch circumcision’s place in both the biblical tradition and wider ancient Near Eastern world. Upon synthesizing the major interpretive moves of Joshua 5.2-9 in the MT, OG, and Qumran versions, I move to explicate the ways that circumcision functions in this narrative—principally how this ritual removes the enigmatic חרפת מצרים (5.9).

Judith Perkins, in her now classic on the suffering self, helpfully reoriented our understanding of how Christians used the suffering body to articulate the parameters of a unified Christian narrative. Here I draw on Perkin’s work to begin to push our understanding of the suffering self to a suffering gendered self in the fantastical bios written and dreamed of by men. To narrow my focus, I will examine Gerontius’s labor of love, the Life of Melania the Younger. The author makes it clear that this is an intentional exercise in memory making as well as a performance of personal piety. He uses elements of the Greek novel to coax his readers into his vita. The author then insists that it is only when the reader properly interprets the young girl’s early experiences of marital torment that the moral of the story is revealed. I conclude that the young saint’s experience of marital rape is filtered through the imaginative fantasies of late ancient male writer intent on constructing a recognizable (bad) Christian romance.

The idea of a divided soul is familiar to us from Platonic philosophy, where only the triumph of the rational part of the soul over the appetitive and spirited parts will allow for the subject formation of the philosopher. In Stoicism, which depicted the soul as unitary rather than tripartite, a division emerges nonetheless in the form of first and second-order selves in dialogue, and here too, there must be a struggle before the two the philosophical subject can transit from a “person on the pathway to being Stoic” (proficiens) to the ideal Stoic wise man (sapiens). Whereas for Plato, the divided soul proved useful in the formulation of many of the main ideas of the Republic (such as the shape of justice and the hierarchy of the ideal city), Roman Stoicism is entirely about getting the human soul to its ideal state, a state in which the wise man will not be adversely affected by anything that is not under his control. This is the telos of Roman Stoicism (even as its practitioners humbly admit failure) and the most perfectly rational way to live. How then to form such a subject? In Seneca’s writing, this subject is the outcome of the successful struggle of the second-order self to master the first-order self—indeed, to master and become one with it, so that the soul finally is unitary. Unlike Platonic dialectic, in which two people search for the truth together via the exercise of logical argument, the Stoic process is represented as taking place largely via internal dialogue. The dialogue takes place between the prescriptive self (second-order) and the faulty (first-order) self, and relies on the liberal use of military and judicial metaphors and analogies to motivate forward progress, as well as the use of exercises such as “Hermes’ wand” and the meditatio malorum, the former a practice of learning to see and evaluate differently, the latter a reflection on the myriad bad things that could happen to you, a sort of emotional prophylaxis should such an event actually occur. But the Stoic process for the formation of the correctly philosophical subject, through its isolation of that subject, its use of a second-order self, and its privileging of absolute self-control, opens itself up to a number of problems Plato never faced. Strikingly, these are represented, as if on the other side of the coin, in the dark protagonists of Senecan drama, who seem to have taken Stoic spiritual exercises and put them to unauthorized use, and who finally emerge triumphant and happy from their own acts of evil.

Psalm 8, the first praise psalm in the Psalter (tehillim, ‘praises’), is well known for its reflection on the place of humanity and its acknowledged echoes of Genesis 1. There has been much meditation upon and scholarly analysis of this much-loved Psalm, but while scholars have reflected on the function of praise, including its constitutive function, they have not often considered the details of Psalm 8’s anthropology upon its position and function in the Psalter, or indeed the light it sheds upon the genres of praise and lament. Indeed, as a uniquely ‘first person’ praise psalm, it may be that this psalm creates a context for the 3rd person praise psalms which follow. By means of a close examination of the biblical text, with attention to genre, poetics and rhetoric, I will argue that Psalm 8 represents a post-fall re-envisioning of the place of humanity within Yahweh’s world. The psalm’s single human verb ‘I see’ is the key to its anthropology, and to the restoration of the humanity to the privilege and responsibility of their appointed place in relation to Yahweh and earth. The praise of the psalm enables those who voice it to embrace their place within Yahweh’s order and to take up the ‘rule’ with which they are entrusted, and thus to bring about the restoration of Yahweh’s good order. It enables them to ‘see’ the world as Yahweh has conceived it (along with its antithetical notions of power that relativise human rule), and to align their vision with Yahweh’s, and puts a declaration in their mouths that makes these their own. Psalm 8 shows that a life lived within this order is the ultimate declaration of praise, and indeed constitutes a turning aside from ‘the way of the wicked’, upon which turning Psalm 1 (and so the Psalter as a whole) has declared blessing. Within the book of tehillim, Psalm 8 reveals that the lament over the loss of Yahweh’s order in Psalms 3 to 7 is fundamentally an expression of covenant hope for restoration. The praise of Psalm 8 appears as the antonym to this series of laments. It is the voice of the one who lives with the dissonances of the fallen world, but whose eyes Yahweh has opened.

Whether explicit or implicit, many of the predominant desired learning outcomes in undergraduate biblical studies courses relate to the idea of reading. Whether reading closely, or critically, or through particular hermeneutical lenses, faculty expect students in these classes to acquire, practice, and then apply certain reading skills to biblical texts. While these tasks are, arguably, best engaged in-class, through collaborative peer-to-peer and group conversation with the faculty serving as model or guide, the majority of student reading is generally done independently outside of class. Among the many challenges to our reading goals for students, then, is the isolated and unsupervised nature of the bulk of their reading experience. As one way to address those challenges, this paper offers an introduction to online learning tools, in particular Perusall.com, found to be effective in engaging students in guided and collaborative reading outside of class. Perusall is primarily a free, online e-reader platform in which faculty and students can collectively annotate texts. Annotation features allow faculty to define or explain unfamiliar vocabulary in the text, provide guiding questions linked to particular passages, or highlight connections or themes via tags in order to help students understand and critically consider their reading as they go. For students, these same features allow them to raise and respond to faculty and peer questions on particular passages, to create their own hashtags in order to make connections in and between texts, and to report on their own points of confusion (anonymously, if they prefer). This in turn improves in-class discussion by preparing students to engage with particular passages and one another’s ideas. While no tool is perfect, this type of collective annotation work has proven effective for enriching out-of-class reading experiences and reenforcing reading-based learning goals in undergraduate biblical studies courses.

Even though the Covenant of Levi is infrequently attested in biblical texts that date to the Persian Period, its significance for the era in question is considerable, in terms of social identity and group politics. There is an allusion to the Covenant of Levi in Jeremiah (Jer 33:21-22), and it is clearly referenced in Malachi. Malachi, however, situates the glowing Covenant of Levi (Mal 2:4-7) within an oracle that is highly critical of the temple priests in Jerusalem (Mal 1:6-2:14). In this the second oracle of Malachi, the priests’ failure to worthily serve God and God’s people is elaborated in stinging detail. Famously, the prophet excoriates the priests for blemished sacrifices offered at the temple (Mal 1:7-8, 14). This study focuses on Malachi’s juxtaposition of the pro-levitical covenant and the harsh denunciation of priests that serves as its context. First the study considers the commentary tradition, where the Covenant of Levi is typically contrasted not with the Malachi’s second oracle but with notions expressed elsewhere in the book of Malachi that the people’s covenantal relationship with God had ceased to exist in the manner it did before the exile. Employing a literary-critical approach, commentators sometimes argue for continuity between the Covenant of Levi and the oracle that frames it inasmuch as both derive from the Aaronide Blessing in Num 6:24-26. In this vein, Elie Assis has recently suggested coherence between the covenant and the oracle because the figure of Levi both reflects obedience to the teaching of Torah and serves as the sign of a covenant that God has made with priests. Taking a different approach informed by social-identity theory, this study asks whether the Covenant of Levi indicates a group of priests, either a cadre or a coalition, current in Jerusalem in the fifth or fourth centuries BCE. In this scenario, there is tension if not outright conflict between the priests celebrated in the Covenant of Levi and those subject to attack in Malachi’s second oracle. The juxtaposition of these two perspectives in Malachi 2 is a window on inter-group conflict within Yehud, and it further clarifies our understanding of the religiously based politics in this place and time. To develop this contrast, we introduce insights gained from reading 1 Chronicles, understood as a text imbued with characteristics of prophecy rather than a strictly historiographical work of the Persian period. 1 Chronicles 23-27 provides a designation of temple personnel, comprising both religious (chs. 23-26) and secular figures (ch. 27). In this account, distinctions in privilege between the priests and the Levites are subtle but clear. The differences between Levites and priests in this section of 1 Chronicles shed more light on the social fissures reflected in the Covenant of Levi as set in its literary context, the second oracle of Malachi. In concluding, this study considers the place of the Covenant of Levi in the larger sweep of covenant in the Persian Period.

It is no secret that the first-century Jewish writer Flavius Josephus became a favorite author of Christians, but not of Jews, in late antiquity. Josephus is cited and lauded in innumerable early Christian works, but in rabbinic and other early Jewish literature, his presence is notably absent. One of the most interesting early Christian receptions of Josephus’ Greek text comes in the late fourth-century Latin work called Pseudo-Hegesippus, or De Excidio Hierosolymitano. This text rewrites Josephus’ Jewish history into a Christian history about Jews, and along the way redefines the Jewish people in terms of their collective place in divinely-orchestrated history. Half a millennium later, in the early tenth century, a Jewish author based his own historiographical work, written in Hebrew, on De Excidio and a number of other (classical, Christian, biblical) sources. This work, Sefer Yosippon, thus represents the Hebrew reception of the Latin reception of a Greek text, and the Jewish reception of the Christian reception of a Jewish text. Taken together, these three authors – Josephus, Pseudo-Hegesippus, and the author of Yosippon – comprise a particularly interesting and fruitful site for comparison and critical inquiry into questions of reception and Jewish identity as contested by Jews and Christians (and Jews, again). This paper addresses one foundational aspect of the confluence of Jewish identity and Rezeption within Christian and Jewish historiography: the philological-translation aspect. Greek-to-Latin and Latin-to-Hebrew translation constitute in themselves significant cultural-linguistic moves by authors. These translational contexts in turn may inform how negotiation of identity may or must be read. This paper thus explores the ways in which Josephus, Pseudo-Hegesippus, and Sefer Yosippon talk about Jews at the level of language and vocabulary. By selecting salient locations in Josephus’ narrative, locations which also appear in Pseudo-Hegesippus and Sefer Yosippon, this study explores the grammar and syntax that represent the confluence of the art of translation, the exercise of ethnography, and the multifaceted dynamics of Rezeptionsgeschichte. The nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections that appear in Josephus’ Greek have telling afterlives in the ideologically-loaded historiographies of the Latin Pseudo-Hegesippus and the Hebrew Sefer Yosippon. This paper illustrates this culturally-moded and chronologically-dispersed dynamic across these three texts. In the end, it presents a Jewish version of a Christian version of Jewishness by tracing Yosippon’s reception of Pseudo-Hegesippus’ reception of Josephus’ articulation of Jewish identity as manifest at several points in his oeuvre.

This paper argues that the newborn in Revelation 12:5 who “will shepherd (ποιμαίνω) all the nations with an iron rod” and who is “snatched (ἁρπάζω) to God” is meant to evoke the infant Dionysus. Adela Yarbro Collins has demonstrated that the Leto-Apollo-Python myth underlies Revelation 12, but the snatching up of the child breaks the otherwise convincing combat myth pattern, and thus it demands further explanation. Of the several raptured children we find in Greco-Roman mythology, the infant Dionysus shares numerous attributes with the baby of Revelation 12:5, in aspects both manifest and subtle. In Euripides’ Bacchae, which is the classic, but far from only, telling of the tale, Zeus saves his newborn son from death by snatching him up (ἁρπάζω) into his thigh and taking him to Olympus. As an adult, Dionysus returns to his mortal mother’s home as the god of wine to receive his divine due, and he wreaks havoc upon those who refuse to worship him there. Revelation also narrates an adult return, identifying the endangered infant of 12:5 with the warrior in 19:15 through their mutual quotation of “shepherd with an iron rod.” This warrior will “trample the wine press of the wrath of God Almighty” to annihilate those who fail to acknowledge him as Lord. Dionysus, like Jesus, was called shepherd (Merkelbach, Die Hirten des Dionysos, 1988). Multiple inscriptions dating to the late first century BCE and late first century CE in Ephesus, one of the most prominent of the seven cities of Revelation, register priests of Dionysos Phleus Poimantrios, “Dionysus the Shepherd.” The author of the Apocalypse would have ample opportunity to encounter the infant god, since iconography of the birth and childhood of Dionysus was ubiquitous in the ancient world, including Palestine and Asia Minor, and particularly in Ephesus, Pergamum, and Smyrna. In a study of the ancient iconographical evidence of divine children in the Greco-Roman world, Michaela Stark concludes that Dionysus can “rightly be labeled as the divine child par excellence.” There are more representations of him, over a longer time span, and throughout a wider geographic area, than of any other divine child. Even more, Dionysus is an anomaly among the Olympian gods in that his iconography alone portrays him both as a child and as an adult in the same work (Stark, Göttliche Kinder, 2012). In terms of broader themes in Revelation, Dionysus and Jesus also pair well. For example, Dionysus descended to the underworld and returned from it, linking the god of exuberant life inextricably to death. A bone inscription from the Dionysian mysteries expresses this simply as “life-death-life”; cf. Revelation 1:17-18, “I am … the living one, and I was dead, and see, I am living.” This is just a sampling of the literary, inscriptional, and iconographic evidence that the paper employs to demonstrate the likelihood that Revelation 12:5 and 19:15 draw on the myth of Dionysus.

A fascinating and widespread source of evidence for ancient awareness of the complexities and perils of identifying deities can be found in literary motifs reflecting a sudden meeting with a suspected manifestation of the divine. In such encounters found in sources ranging from classical literature to biblical texts, an element of uncertainty and anxiety regarding the identity of the divine being encountered is ubiquitous. H. S. Versnell has insightfully connected such motifs in Greco-Roman literature to pervasive habits of doubt and equivocation in attempting to correctly name and respond to the encountered divine. Yet in discussions of several comparable episodes in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Gen 16:7-14; 18:1-33; 32:23-33; Exod 3:1-15; Judg 13:1-23), explanation of the motif of uncertain divine identity has been underappreciated, misdirected toward the (non-existent) identity of a divine messenger, or explained by appeal to a dubious notion of a quasi-magical power in the possession of a divine name. While the notion of “power in possession of the name” has been more widely critiqued in scholarship on Greek religion, it still persists in discussions of the Hebrew Bible. This paper critiques such explanations of the role of questions about the names of divine beings in theophany episodes in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, it is demonstrated that this motif reflects awareness of anxiety and uncertainty surrounding divine identity, and that the primary impetus for characters in these episodes desiring confirmation of the identify of an encountered divine being is to facilitate proper cultic response to the event, i.e. to know what god to present offerings to and/or pray to. Additionally, it is demonstrated that in the Pentateuch such episodes support a narrative arc in which key characters grapple with the question of how to identify the god(s) of the ancestors of Israel, culminating in the revelation of the divine name to Moses in Exodus 3-6.

This paper explores arguments in support of the developing roles of the Jerusalem temple and its personnel in the economic and administrative organization of Achaemenid Judah. Also explored are how these roles relate to the Achaemenid Persian administration of the southern Levant within the wider empire.

Conditional structures are well represented within the Northwest Semitic corpus, and they vary in some interesting ways. This paper will present a taxonomy of conditional structures with respect to sentence structure and discourse incorporating grammatical features such as the use of a conditional particle to mark the protasis, the presence of the so-called “waw of apodosis”, word order in the clause, and the use of suffixed or prefixed verbal forms. This will be followed by a discussion of the possible semantic and pragmatic features that may condition these features, as well as any phenomena found in typical main clauses that may be blocked within conditional structures.

Based on a precursory study, some of the methodological perils of past New Testament lexica may be true for κατάκριμα: lazy reliance on predecessors, unhelpful dependence on Bible translations (and on Latin in general), improper use of etymology, and the employment of glosses or synonyms rather than definitions to indicate meaning. With regards to κατάκριμα, most lexica give the gloss “condemnation” seemingly portraying it as an action noun. However, both usage outside the NT and the history of -μα ending neuter nouns (predominantly result-of-action nouns by the time of the NT) mitigate against this understanding. The gloss “condemnation” might then be the result of Latin influence from the action noun condemnatio (to condemn, to bring about condemnation of one). This gloss has caused many biblical exegetes and lexicographers to then gloss the parallel δικαίωμα with the action noun “justification” in Romans 5:16 (Latin influence seems a culprit here as well). Κατάκριμα is rare in Greek literature (2x) and inscriptions (4x), and relatively rare in papyri (30x). It may occur once in the Septuagint (most likely a conflation of κατὰ κρίμα), and the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae lists 354 occurrences from the 1st century B.C.E. until the 5th century C.E. (almost all in Christian writings). This study will (1) cover occurrences in Greek literature, papyri, inscriptions, and Christian literature until the time of Hesychius’ lexicon in the 5th/6th century C.E., (2) survey lexical entries throughout history, and (3) interact with any specialized secondary literature addressing κατάκριμα. The goals of this study are (1) to achieve a better understanding of the history of usage, (2) to outline the influences of Latin and earlier lexica upon lexical entries (ancient to modern), and (3) to assemble a more accurate and nuanced lexicographical entry for κατάκριμα than exists in current lexica.

Antiochus' policy in Judea has been aptly defined as carrying a meaningful significance "not only because of the religious and cultural influence of Judaism for which this persecution – and the following Maccabean revolt – proved to be a pivotal moment in history, but also because the episode presents our best-documented example of the tensions between Hellenism and the native traditions in the Near East." The view has even been suggested, that its effects were felt as late as the second century CE, inspiring that carried out by Emperor Hadrian. Both in Antiochus' and in Hadrian times, a military colony, settled by a gentile population, was installed in Jerusalem, a ban on circumcision was issued – whether before, during or after the Bar Kokhba war – and ordinances were enacted against Jewish ancestral practices. The causes which prompted these measures, too, carry some resemblance if they may be identified as a reaction to a problematic political situation. According to Gruen, after having being compelled by Rome to abandon his Egyptian adventure, the introduction of a garrison in Jerusalem and the intimidation of the populace would have announced Antiochus' resumption of control to the diverse peoples nominally under the Seleucid regime. As for Hadrian, the first months of his reign witnessed some kind of rebelliousness in several parts of the Empire, while the Jewish Diaspora uprisings which had started in Trajan's time had not yet been completely quelled. Hadrian's policy in Judea, therefore, would have been meant to prevent the possibility of further armed resistance. Finally, a certain similarity has been observed between the personalities of Antiochus and Hadrian and their enterprises: both of them promoted their own self worship and emphasized the importance of Greek cities and cults, among which a special role was bestowed on that of Olympian Zeus – measures that may have reflected an interest in the unification of the Empire through Hellenism (an evaluation still under discussion). However, that of Antiochus may not have been Hadrian's sole model. Aggressive policies against local cults are well attested in Roman history also. The practice of eradicating cults that functioned as a political or military center of resistance was conceivably longstanding. What happened on the island of Mona in Britain and the suppression of the Druids and the German prophetesses are only the most visible instances of a widespread phenomenon. As for the measures carried out by Hadrian in the wake of the Bar Kokhba war, namely, the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem and from the surrounding area, and the obliteration of the name of the province, Judaea, closely remind us of the policy implemented by leading Roman figures against rebellious peoples and cities. The cases of Carthage and Corinth are but two emblematic antecedents. It therefore appears that several earlier political patterns, both in Hellenistic and in Roman times, may have had an impact on Hadrian's dealings in Judea in the first half of the second century CE.

The hills surrounding the city of Jerusalem create a versatile landscape, scattered with archaeological features which attest to human involvement in the shaping of what we sometimes perceive as the “natural” surrounding. This paper will present the archaeological evidence for the human impact on the city’s rural areas and its importance to the city’s development and sustainability. Our research employs techniques from several fields of study which were integrated into the archeological research. These include different dating methods (14C radiocarbon dating and OSL) as well as micro-archaeology proxies for the identification of the cultivation of various crops (e.g., fossil pollen grains). The image emerging from the archaeological data shows versatile patterns of land-use throughout history. The use of different agricultural systems hints at different subsistence strategies, abilities, and/or outside influences. The implications of these changes through time will be discussed, as well as their potential for furthering our understanding of the city’s past.

One of the main results of the last thirty years in the research of the books of Isaiah and the Psalms is the fact that both are not just collections of individual texts but well organized entities, i.e. compositions. This is nothing unique to these two corpora but applies to each one of the books of the Old Testament. What is instead very special to these two books is the centrality of Zion, the inclusion of non-Israelites into the veneration of YHWH, the singing to God on the one hand and the reservation regarding the sacrificial cult on the other. In various publications of the last years I ventured the idea that temple singers deported to Babylon composed the core of Isaiah 40–55 as their »oratorio of hope«. After the return to Jerusalem this has been connected to the literary heritage of Isaiah ben Amoz and his disciples. In the proposed lecture I would test this hypothesis by analyzing further points of contacts between the subsequent chapters Isaiah 56–66 and the Book of Psalms, especially book IV and V. There seem the be good reasons to suppose that the returned temple singers developed into a guild of scribal experts that made consistent use of texts from the growing book of Isaiah, the Psalms and other parts of the literary heritage of Ancient Israel.

It is well known that early Christian authors often expressed their theological convictions in narrative rather than argumentative form – in the way they selected, framed, and presented their stories about Jesus and the early Christian movement. What is less well studied is how these views were received and transformed when later generations formed their own narratives about Jesus, disciples, and martyrs. This paper identifies discipleship ideals – characteristics of an ideal Christian disciple – in key passages from the apocryphal acts of the apostles John, Peter, and Andrew, and discusses whether these ideals are continuous or discontinuous with similarly expressed discipleship ideals of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Using data compiled from the Tiberias Stylistic Classifier for the Hebrew Bible (https://tiberias.dicta.org.il/#/), this paper assesses the frequency of wayyiqtol and yiqtol verbs respectively in the non-parallel portions of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel. Although it is accepted within the discipline to think in terms of a divide between classical biblical Hebrew and late biblical Hebrew, the syntax of a language evolves over time, and thus it is worthy to examine how the syntax of late biblical Hebrew itself evolves within the books of the post-exilic period. One of the difficulties of tracing the development of late biblical Hebrew from any one of these books to another is their relative brevity; the data pool is small. Many of the telltale markers that distinguish classical biblical Hebrew from late biblical Hebrew do not appear with enough frequency in each book to be able to chart their development from book to book with statistical confidence. Wayyiqtol and yiqtol verbal forms, however, are the most ubiquitous expressions of verbal syntax and thus provide an ample data pool for study. The Tiberias Classifier utilizes the syntactic tagging of the ETCBC IV database, and thus computes data for two forms of wayyiqtol clauses and six forms of yiqtol clauses. Tiberias not only supplies the number of appearances of each form for each book, but also provides a measure of their frequency within each book, and rates their relative significance as telltale markers of that book in a hierarchical scale. Discussion of the data will focus on two issues: 1) the implications for the chronological development of the trend away from wayyiqtol verbs in late biblical literature and greater proliferation of yiqqtol verbs; 2) the implications for the question of shared authorship between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the question of shared authorship between Ezra and Nehemiah.

The paper argues that the explicit and implicit references to Ishmael in the covenant text Gen 17 and the birth story of Isaac Gen 21:1-5* do not belong to the earliest layer of the Priestly Abraham story. Rather, the figure of Ishmael was only introduced here through the hand of later (i.e., post-Priestly) editors, who sought to bring the Priestly text in line with the non-Priestly passages referring to Abraham’s firstborn son (i.e., Gen 16; 21:8-21). Since the analysis demonstrates that the Priestly Abraham story was not aware of (or did not care about) the figure of Ishmael in the first place, the paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the literary history of the Abraham story as a whole.

The Revelation of John is a rich montage drawing upon imagery from the diverse cultures that the author was immersed in. In his vision, John of Patmos describes the experience of the early Christian community living in the midst of the Roman Empire. In the process, he draws upon the myths of the ancient Greeks, the scriptures of the Judaism, the Christian Gospel narratives, and the realities of life under Roman rule in the late first century CE. Revelation 12 incorporates all of these traditions into the narrative of the woman clothed with the sun, who gives birth to a son, a male child, who is snatched away and taken to the throne of God. This paper will focus specifically upon the child in the narrative. I will build upon Kathleen Gallagher Elkins’s study of feminist and childist interpretation, which uses Rev. 12 as a case study to apply both methods to the same text. I will delve further into the issues she defines as central to feminist and childist interpretation: visibility, agency, violence, and consequences. In the process, my paper will examine Hebrew Bible and Gospel antecedents to the child snatched away in Rev. 12. I will also examine two Greek myths, the birth of Apollo and the Hymn to Demeter and Persephone, and focus upon the ways and reasons that the child snatched away alludes to these Greek myths.

Beginning from the end of the fourteenth century and particularly throughout the fifteenth century, the Betä Ewosṭateans were distinguished for their vigorous contention in support of the observance of Sabbath. They argued for this as a Christian tradition that needs to be (re)affirmed in the Ethiopian Church according to the tradition of ‘Apostolic Fathers’ as particularly taught in the Senodos and Didəsqəlya. Despite, the considerable resistance encountered by this movement – and others like it – by the seventeenth century these views were included in the official theological writings of the church. This brief study seeks to describe the role played by this group in the historical and political milieu of Medieval Ethiopia to demonstrate the divisive and cohesive influence of their theology. Towards this end I will make use of primary historical sources as well as tracing theological developments by looking at the translation and indigenous development of biblical interpretation and dogmatic treatise in the period.

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Iphigenia, the mythic daughter of Agamemmnon best known from Euripides’ twin plays, Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris, figures significantly in the earliest Greek and Christian fiction. As Anna Lefteratou has shown, core Iphigenian tropes and plot elements (e.g., the near sacrifice of a virgin, an intervening letter, the recognition of an ostensible stranger, a miraculous escape) reappear in the novels of Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus, as well as the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Apocryphal Acts of John. Each novelistic appropiation repurposes Iphigenian themes in new ways, such as to convey romantic love, negotiate new juxtapositions of barbarian vs. Greek/civilized identity, and/or to illustrate claims of religious triumphalism. This paper argues that the Gospel of Luke and the canonical Acts of the Apostles, so often segmented from discussions of imperial fiction, convey thorough, thoughtful, and strategic appropriations of Iphigenia myth. The core appropriation, a veritable retelling of Iphigenia among the Taurians, emerges in the Ephesian saga of Acts 19:21-20:1. Both share a plot of a major temple of Artemis and her “god-fallen” statue being threatened by foreigners. Both also share two main messengers representing the Artemis cult, detail choral chanting, turn on the delivery of a letter, enact near/mock sacrifice, and picture deus ex machina final redemption. Acts 17:1-9 contains a briefer account following similar Iphigenian plotlines, as does the story of the Emmaus road theophany in Luke 24:13-35. These clear appropriations also raise interesting possibilities for seeing Iphigenian themes elsewhere in the plot twists and character developments in Luke and Acts.

The spectre of philosophical materialism haunted European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: in the Christian imagination materialism was widely associated with atheism, paganism, amoralism, and libertinism. More recently, this worldview has been celebrated in some historical scholarship as the intellectual cornerstone of the ‘radical Enlightenment’ and the birth of modern democratic rights and freedoms. Neither interpretation captures the complexity and nuances of those who aligned themselves with this metaphysical stance. By the late eighteenth century, one could easily find confirmation of the worst fears of Christian theologians in the more sensationalist and lascivious underground literature of the age. From Thomas Hobbes onwards, however, professed materialists brought a seriousness of moral purpose to their interpretations of the Bible and the construction of their political theologies, which belied their reputation as dissolute enemies of the Gospel. This paper enters the early modern history of materialism through the biblical hermeneutics of two opposing factions within the so-called radical Enlightenment, both fighting for the moral soul of Europe and its people: the dissenting Enlightenment of the British Unitarian Joseph Priestley, and the militantly atheistic Enlightenment of the ‘coterie holbachique’, spearheaded by the eponymous French aristocrat Baron d’Holbach. The paper will show the limits of metaphysical commitments as a predictor of religious and political judgements, and sketch the afterlives of their conflicting assessments of the Bible.

In 1968, Ben-Zion Watcholder released an article titled, “The Date of the Mekilta De-Rabbi Yishmael,” in which he challenged some basic foundational presuppositions for an early date for the Mekilta. In section II, he cites particular passages in the Mekilta which seem to echo knowledge of the iconoclastic movement of the Byzantine Empire. All of which, leads Wacholder to conclude that the Mekilta de-Rabbi Yishmael (MRI) is a post-talmudic compilation — a medieval, pseudepigraphic forgery, performed by the hand of a single author, sometime during the reigns of Leo III (717-741 CE) and Constantine V (741-775 CE). While, Wacholder’s arguments are indeed provocative, it is not the goal of this paper to pick apart every textual detail he presents to substantiate his final conclusion. That was already accomplished, successfully (in part), by Menachem Kahana in appendix A (pp. 514-20) of his “‘The Critical Edition of Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael’ in the Light of the Geniza Fragments” (1986). Rather, the goal of this paper is to demonstrate the existence of other allusions in the Mekilta that seem to suggest knowledge of an ancient Roman context, sometime between the 2nd and 4th century CE, rather than a Byzantine one. In particular, this paper draws attention to specific Ancient Egyptian and Ancient West Asian customs and myths, as well as archaeological evidence — such as excavated “magical” lamella with inscribed names of deities for lost objects — which suggest the Mekilta’s knowledge of the ancient world, as well as recently excavated synagogue art, which suggests ancient Jewish knowledge of midrashim present in the Mekilta’s interpretation of Exod 13:19 and 14:1-10.

This paper will explore an intertextual reading between the book of Ruth, Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, and the Hulu TV series inspired by the book. While Atwood references Genesis 30 in the epigraph of her novel, the book of Ruth also lends itself to a reading along The Handmaid’s Tale due to Ruth’s self-declaration as a handmaid in response to Boaz’s question, ‘Who are you?” In addition, Ruth’s setting also matches that of The Handmaid’s Tale, with the dystopian setting, patriarchal social structures, and a theocratic system marked by superficial piety. Ruth’s self-identification as a handmaid and subsequent reading alongside of the character of Offred in Atwood’s novel and the TV series reveals that the ways in which Ruth is an oppressed character. Through the lens of postcolonial critique, a number of factors become evident in the biblical text. While others have noted Ruth’s hybridity, her status as a model minority and a perpetual foreigner, and the ways in which she displays mimicry, I choose to focus on Ruth’s ambivalence and Ruth’s body as a site of colonization. This postcolonial analysis reveals that Ruth is not a passive heroine in the story, but rather resists the colonizing efforts of the text. This decolonial reading then opens up new interpretations of Ruth. In the same way that the TV series offers a more resistant Offred than the original novel did, I too look for a resistant reading of Ruth. This reading considers redemption for Ruth outside of her redemptive purpose in providing a son for Naomi and looks for ways in which Ruth undermines the colonized situation in which she is placed. In this way, the story of Ruth has resonance for today in the same way that Atwood’s novel has re-entered the popular imagination, addressing concerns over what happens when women take back some form of control from a system designed to oppress them?

Mark 14:47 tells an odd episode where Jesus is being arrested and one of his followers, wanting to defend him, cuts off the ear of a slave of the high priest. Jesus doesn’t say or do anything in response to this. There are no teachings in Mark here (or elsewhere) that explicitly affirm non-violence. Is the reader to conclude that there are circumstances where violence might be appropriate? Perhaps Mark 14:47 is one such example? The text provides the reader with no direction on the matter. This story has an interesting shelf life. Presuming Marcan priority, both Matthew and Luke inherited Mark’s odd little tale, and had to make decisions what to do with it. Matthew, seemingly troubled by Mark 14:47, adds a pithy saying: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:51-52). This effectively removes the ambiguity present in Mark leaving the Matthean reader no room for doubt. Matthew’s addition is ideologically supported by Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:38-42, 43, which makes the case for a non-violent response to opposition explicit. Matthew makes it clear that those who seek to advance their cause through violence, will themselves perish through violence – even if their cause is just. Luke develops the episode in an entirely different way by adding new material to what he finds in Mark. Earlier that evening, just after the Last Supper, Luke’s Jesus tells asks the disciples, “the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:35-36). In response, the disciples realize they have two swords already and show them to Jesus, to which Jesus responds, “it is enough” (Luke 22:38). Jesus’ response is unclear, and this lack of clarity sets the stage what comes later. When Jesus is being arrested, one of his followers asks whether they should use the swords they showed him earlier. Without waiting for an answer, one of them strikes and cuts off the ear. Jesus responds with impatience, “Stop! No more of this!” In Luke the reason why one of his followers starts swinging a sword around is presumably because they believed this is what Jesus wanted. They presumably thought this because of what Jesus had earlier said (Luke 22:36, 38). The reader of Mark’s and Matthew’s versions of this story leave the slave missing an ear. In neither of these Gospels does Jesus heal this unfortunate man. Luke is presumably not satisfied with this and adds a healing. Perhaps Luke’s Jesus heals the slave because Jesus is more implicitly responsible for this violence than is the case in either Mark or Matthew?

This paper will examine several issues concerning the collection and attempted donation of funds from various early Christian assemblies in the northern Mediterranean region to the ekklēsia in Jerusalem: (1) Was Paul was associated with collection efforts for the early Christian assembly in Jerusalem only, or for assemblies in other cities as well, and what does this imply? (2) What different rationales have been provided for the collection, both by Paul himself (1 Cor 16:1–4; Gal 2:10 [?]; 2 Cor 8–9; Rom 15:25–28) and by recent interpreters of Paul? (3) Is the donative effort best characterized as an instance of collective almsgiving? (4) How do donative practices, including but not limited to the Jerusalem donation, relate to the issue of class among their recipients? More specifically, we ask whether and to what extent donative practices within and between early Christian assemblies enabled a class of laborers including Peter, James, and John in Jerusalem, and Paul in the northern Mediterranean, to gain a livelihood, in whole or in part, by extracting surplus value generated by the labor of others.

My paper addresses the question of the transmission of the Book of Daniel in the Second Temple Period through study of the physical, paratextual features of the Dead Sea Daniel manuscripts. This means looking beyond the mere words on the page to rather how the page itself conveys meaning, that is, the so-called ‘new’ or material philology. This paper will provide a brief analysis of each of the eight individual manuscripts, assessing the scribe’s general approach to the text they were writing including preparation for writing, writing practices, and evidence of (secondary) use. These descriptions will then be used to gauge measures of manuscript formality and to discover both trends, as well as notable divergences, in the transmission of the Book of Daniel at this time.

The Hebrew Bible is commonly associated with a religion of the written word: the commanding word of the law, the challenging word of prophecy. Yet the temple singers, with their close contacts with the circles which carried forward and contributed to the traditions which eventuated in the book of Isaiah, demonstrated that the word is not incompatible with other modalities of religious experience and expression, affective and even mystical, given personal and social enactment in joyful liturgies, song, dance, ritual prayer and lament. The beauty of the psalms resounds throughout the book of Isaiah, and the Isaian vision of the Creator God, Lord of nature and history beyond the bounds of Israel, is echoed and joyfully proclaimed by the psalmists.

Hazor presents a unique opportunity to study physical remains in conjunction with biblical texts. Detailed publication of the well-excavated, stratified site allows a reconstruction of the site from its Late Bronze Age settlement that ended in a 13th century B.C.E. conflagration through its Iron I-II settlements, destruction in ca. 732 B.C.E., and abandonment. Divergent biblical texts in Joshua, Judges, and I and II Kings may then be considered in light of the actual events that transpired at the site. Together, the physical remains and the various texts suggest a reconstruction of Israelite traditions, both oral and written, of the conquest and settlement of the site.

The near sacrifice of Isaac presents a traumatic rupture in the family saga of Abraham and Sarah. After the fateful journey to Moriah, the family unit is torn apart. Abraham descends the mountain alone, and father and son never again appear together. Replete with gaps and indeterminacy, the sparse yet hauntingly graphic narrative leaves the audience questioning the motivations and emotions of its main protagonists; what was going through Abraham’s mind? why did he comply? why did God impose such a harsh test, and what was achieved through demanding such obedience? The question of the character of God looms large and is open for multiple interpretations. One interpretation, as expressed within the dystopian, post-apocalyptic TV series The Walking Dead (season 7, episode 1 “The Sacrifice of Isaac”) is that the command to sacrifice is an expression of hegemonic masculinity in which coercion and violence are used as a means of gaining control and submission. Whereas The Walking Dead sustains the image of hegemonic and toxic masculinity, the divine portrayal in Gen 22 is, perhaps, resolved by angelic intervention and divine affirmation. Bringing contemporary trauma theory, the biblical narrative and The Walking Dead into dialogue, this paper explores the possibility of reading Genesis 22 as a post-exilic trauma narrative through which the community explores the paradox of a God who both tests and provides.

Literature Circles are an effective way to engage students in classroom discussion of the biblical text and with challenging secondary literature. Developed in K-12 education (Harvey Daniels, Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups, 1994) and proven to be an effective method, Literature Circles are highly adaptable to the college classroom. Offering more than a guided small group discussion, the Literature Circle is a structured, scaffolded activity designed to nurture lifelong readers by fostering curiosity and personal connection to texts. In the elementary education model, students are assigned “roles” for discussion and complete worksheets prior to small group discussion. The worksheets for the corresponding roles (Daniels’ roles are: Discussion Director, Literary Luminary, Connector, Summarizer, Character Coordinator and Word Wizard) prompt students to generate questions and observations specific to their role before gathering for a peer-led discussion. While the role worksheets in their most basic form are effective at generating discussion in an introductory class, the Literature Circle worksheets can also be adapted to prompt students toward discipline-specific concerns at a higher level. This presentation will demonstrate several options for adapting and implementing Literature Circles in both introductory and upper-level biblical studies classes along with assessment techniques.

Pseudo-Philo’s rewriting of Scripture is undergirded throughout by God’s covenant with Abraham, a point observed by scholars of Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB) since Cohn’s seminal article of 1898. What is missing from the scholarly corpus, however, is both the recognition and examination of Pseudo-Philo’s composite allusion to Genesis 15.6, “And [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This short yet profound statement from the covenant ceremony in Genesis 15 is nearly ubiquitous in early Jewish literature as a explicit citation. The allusion in LAB’s Latin has been modified slightly, but enough that most commentators have overlooked the reference. To complicate matters, the allusion is not located in LAB’s rewritten narrative of Genesis, but is voiced by Joshua during the covenant ceremony of Joshua 24. In LAB 23.5, Pseudo-Philo weaves together a composite allusion including elements of Genesis 11.29; 15.6, and Joshua 24.2-3 in a new speech by God to his people. In light of this state of affairs, my paper argues two related points. First, I go beyond Jacobson and Konrad, who suggest the influence of Genesis 15.6, to demonstrate the presence of a composite allusion, through an examination of the relevant text of LAB 23, Joshua 24, and Genesis 11 and 15. Whilst Genesis 15.6 in LAB is not a verbatim citation, as found in other early Jewish writings, it is masterfully woven into a novel divine speech composed by Pseudo-Philo including key elements from the story of Abraham. Second, both the form of the allusion and its location in the narrative suggest thoroughgoing implications for how we understand the theology of Pseudo-Philo. If LAB is a covenant-saturated work, then the allusion to Genesis 15.6 by God himself demands our attention. This paper contributes to the study of LAB through the identification and elaboration of an overlooked composite allusion to Genesis 15.6 and from early Jewish literature.

This paper shall attempt to examine Micah 2:9 and the traumatic effects of depriving children of their parents against the background of Israel’s social ethics of marginalized minority (poor, homeless aliens, widows and orphans). The family is essentially indispensable bedrock for the development of capacity for devotion and intimacy not only with God and other human beings but also primarily serves as the venue where spiritual and moral values are extended across generations. Micah 2:9 is located within the unit of Micah’s oracle (2:8–11) that describes victims of exploitation and oppression as “my people” (עַמִי) while his opponents play the role of enemy (אוֹיֵב). These enemies are not only greedy and ruthless marauders who despoil their helpless victims and captives (2:8), but also those who undermine Yahweh’s honor as patron of women and children of his people. The crimes of verse 9 cut to the heart of Israel’s social ethics (cf. Ex 22:21–22; Deut 24:17–18) which are given special attention in the prophetic critique of the major administrators of Israel and Judah (Jer 7:6; Hos 5:10; Zech 7:10). Micah’s rhetoric indicates progressive intensification as those less-privileged are taken advantage of. The language is extravagant and the hyperbole communicates God’s outrage at such callous behaviour. Micah underscores that children deprived of parents are victims. Separating children from their homes is tantamount to removing them from their potential to be Yahweh’s image bearer, flourishing in the land that Yahweh has graciously given to his people as a glorious inheritance. This again is an egregious violation; namely, stripping God of his הֲדׇרִי (splendor) by taking away the weak and helpless children, the future of the nation, and robbing them of their destiny. Since the family constitutes a fundamental setting for human development and nurture, the traumatic effects of separating or depriving children of their parents, which could be devastating and lifelong, are of supreme ethical concern. Micah’s rhetoric of children deprived of parents, invites readers to the urgent ethical concerns for compassion and care for those suffering especially, the most vulnerable in society. Truly, the tears and suffering of those whose rights are being violated (to imagine and see children weeping, and parents bereft of their children) speaks.

Since the 1970s, the study of ancient Near Eastern iconography has advanced various aspects of Old Testament research. Despite the many insights gained, the precise nature of the relationship between ancient art and the biblical text has remained somewhat under scrutinized within the fields of iconographic exegesis and archaeological studies. In contrast, the image-text relationship is a prominent and persistent topic of concern within the burgeoning field of visual culture studies. Particularly important is the work of W. J. T. Mitchell. In his volume Picture Theory, Mitchell develops a what he calls the image-text dialectic. This theory posits that divisions between visual and verbal representations are neither static nor stable. Rather, all forms of media exist along a continuum of representational practices that exhibit both visual and verbal characteristics at one and the same time while never being purely image or text. While Mitchell’s image-text dialectic is not intended to be a comprehensive theory that adequately accounts for all visual and verbal interactions across time and culture, it does offer a framework for conceptualizing the nature of the image-text relationship in particular historical and intellectual settings. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Mitchell’s theory can inform understandings of the image-text relationship in the Near Eastern world. Two particular dimensions of ancient visual culture will be considered: the textuality of ANE art as a type of linguistic system and the interactions between inscriptions and iconography on discrete mixed-media artifacts.

This study will examine the concept of tradition from the perspective of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory. It will argue that, whether conceived of as a general category of human experience, or a specific group of figures, customs, texts, and past events, tradition does not simply exist as an artifact. That is, it is not a stable entity that can be picked up and used as the explanation for behavior. Instead, this paper will suggest that tradition is created through performance by spokespersons in identifiable settings, along distinct paths, and for precise goals. Investigating tradition through this lens will demonstrate that tradition is never an independent dataset that can be utilized by social actors to support their goals. Rather, tradition is produced by these actors with their goals in mind. This paper will show how this manufacture of tradition operates by highlighting its production in the prologue of Greek Ben Sira, Josephus’ Against Apion 1.38–42, and the prologue of the Sibylline Oracles.

The beginnings of the Books of Hosea and Amos can be seen as a focal point for the composition of the Book of the Twelve. The literary growth of these "early" writings is closely intertwined with the growth of the Book of the Minor Prophets as a whole. Yet, the literary stages as well as a dating of these books are highly disputed. Taking the first of the minor prophets as an example, this paper attempts to interpret selected passages of the book of Hosea against the background of the emergence of the Neo-Assyrian empire. The influence of Assyrian military power and especially the aggressive westward expansion during the reign of Tiglat-Pileser III. has brought fundamental changes upon the small states in the Levant. Hence, it is possible to understand early passages in the book of Hosea as directly reflecting the political turbulences starting with the appearance of the Assyrians on the global scene. Relying heavily on written propaganda, it comes as no surprise that Assyrian presence in the Levant would have influenced the literary production in Israel and Judah. The emergence of the literary kernel of the Book of Hosea (c. 5-9*) and its unconditional prophecy of doom was most likely triggered by the fall of Samaria. Its literary growth and its new addressing to Judah thereby mirrors a process of coping with this disaster. For not only was the Northern kingdom of Israel first truncated, then conquered, dispersed and its cult statue taken as war spoil, a similar situation later also befell its sister nation in the South with the truncation of Judah and the siege of Jerusalem by Sanherib in 701 BCE. So the first literary stages of Hosea can be understood as a theological reappraisal and timely reaction to the historical events. Especially focusing on the divine punishment, this paper will explore how the book of Hosea and its later Judean audience deals with the events of second half of the 8th c. BCE and which theological mechanisms are employed to interpret the behavior of YHWH during the Assyrian presence in Israel and Judah.

Social Identity Theory observes that in-group identity and boundary definition are solidified through adoption of prescriptive group norms. Deviant individuals within the in-group pose a complication by challenging in-group distinctiveness. Subjective group dynamics theory examines the interaction between group members when a member deviates from prescriptive norms. The “black sheep effect” (Marques, Abrams & Serôdio 2001) observes the tendency of in-group members to evaluate other in-group members more harshly than out-group members exhibiting similar behavior. This paper identifies the heuristic value of subjective group dynamics for New Testament interpretation. The social scientific approach is then tested and evaluated using Paul’s response to the immoral man of 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 as a case study. Black sheep effect offers plausible explanation for the absence of in-group bias in Pauline exhortation, demonstrating potential motive for relocation of the immoral man to the outgroup.

Literacy has profoundly affected the history of early Christianity and of individuals in the Jesus movement, yet it received little attention from scholars until the last decade or so. Literacy found only an incidental place in work done on early Christianity; in general historians did not give literacy a prominent place in their efforts to understand social relations or social change. In the past 25 years, social history — interest in studying group behaviour and belief, the everyday activities, ideology, and opportunities of ordinary people — have become prominent, yet literacy still lacks proper acknowledgement. This paper reviews and extends the current perspectives on literacy among early Christians. Though the attitudes of early Christians to texts in general, and to their holy books in particular, was not radically different from that of surrounding society, it can also be shown that in this, as in other domains, the early Christians developed a sense of independence and originality. They did not deem themselves bound by certain cultural and religious traditions/conventions and this permitted them, in many ways, to be innovative. The development and success of early Christianity can, in many ways, be characterised as a religious revolution, and in this vein was the Christian conception of authoritative speech, as well as the status and use of writing. Christianity offered both a less reverential attitude to the written word but also a revolutionary commitment to spoken language. These attitudes resulted in interesting practices associated with authority, leadership roles, diversity in ritual, nuances in self-identification, gender roles and social relations among and between classes.

Among the debates over the significance of Mark’s Last Supper, none is more hotly contested than Jesus’s saying over the cup, “this my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24). No doubt part of the issue is that Markan scholars trade in varying definitions of key terms such as “sacrifice” and “atonement.” Perhaps a more pressing issue, however, is the persistent obsession with detecting the singular intertext or type of sacrifice submerged just beneath the surface of Jesus’s words. While this approach is not without value—for instance, most interpreters would agree that Exod 24:8 informs Mark 14:24—it has tended to dominate the discussion in unhelpful ways. This paper proposes to intervene in the current debate by proposing an alternative entrée into the language of Mark 14:24: the rhetoric of Markan blood manipulation. What we encounter in the cup-saying, I suggest, is not a theory about atonement or the death of Jesus, but, rather, the evangelist’s decision to index a particular element of the ritual complex—the application of blood to altars. This sacrificial metaphor would have significant purchase among early audiences of the Second Gospel, mitigating potential associations of the Lord’s Supper with meat sacrificed to idols, while at the same time preparing an appropriate meal for “the many,” all who desire to participant in the rich benefits of the Christ-event.

The ongoing excavations in the fifth-century synagogue at Huqoq in lower eastern Galilee have revealed a series of impressive floor mosaics. Among the mosaics discovered at Huqoq, none has elicited more interest than the enigmatic Elephant Mosaic. In our view, the panel depicts the siege of Jerusalem in 132/1 BCE under Antiochus VII Sidetes and the subsequent military alliance between the Seleucid king and the Hasmonaean high priest John Hyrcanus. This historical episode appears in a wide range of extant sources from the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, from Diodorus Siculus to Josephus to Plutarch, and continued to circulate within the tradition of both classical and Christian historiography throughout the first millennium. The present paper analyzes the use of urban architecture within the panel, in particular the arcade in the middle register whose nine arches frame the armed Judaeans and their leader. In mosaics, representations of cities, including Jerusalem, frequently incorporate colonnaded streets, an indication of their importance in the visual vocabulary of urbanism. Their presence in mosaics reflects the increased significance of the street as a primary site of religious and civic displays in late antiquity. We argue that, within the context of the Elephant Mosaic, the arcade was intended to conjure for the viewer the city of Jerusalem and, moreover, to connect the synagogue building in the village of Huqoq to this renowned setting of momentous events in Jewish history. We consider the role played by colonnaded streets in late antique depictions of Jerusalem, in particular the relationship of the arcade in the middle register of the Elephant Mosaic to Jerusalem in the fifth-century mosaic in the apse of the Church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome. The representation of Jerusalem in the church’s apse mosaic offers the Christian viewer an opportunity to visually participate at street level in the religious life of that city and thus feel a sense of kinship with a community whose sacred center was a city located nearly 1500 miles to the east. We argue that the arcade in the Elephant Mosaic served a similar function. Through its visual encomium to the glorious past and built environment of Jerusalem, the Elephant Mosaic made the holy city present to synagogue-goers at the heart of a rural village in the Galilee. The panel, thereby, forged a link between the space of communal worship in this relatively modest village and the wider network of urban centers, both in Palestine and beyond.

This paper offers a reading of Revelation from the cultural context of marble-workers in Roman Ephesus. I begin with a brief introduction to the Ephesian marble economy and the various jobs such a large enterprise demanded. Next, I explore two passages from the cultural context of Ephesian marble-workers – the final “great earthquake” (16:17-21) and John’s description of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12-27). First, an earthquake destroys not only marble-clad Rome and her imperial provincial cities, such as the seven addressed in chapters 2-3, but also the empire’s source of marble – its mountains (6:17-21). Through the destruction of the imperially enmarbled cities of Asia Minor and the elimination of mountains, John’s God erases the entire imperial marble economy. Second, while other condemned imperial goods from the cargo list (18:11-13) are mentioned in John’s description of the New Jerusalem (21:12-27), marble is left out. John’s New Jerusalem is marbleless. The effect of John’s rhetoric, therefore, is not merely to scorn the marble economy, but through the silent force of omission, to eradicate it. In his eschatological visions of the establishment of God’s world, John erases the livelihood of marble-workers making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to imagine their future in the new city.

The phrase b.ẓl.ḫmt appears often as a restoration of KTU 1.14 ii 12 in El's instructions to Kirta, translated as “in the shade of the tent.” This restoration seems certain given its occurrence in KTU 1.14 iii 55, which is the parallel narrative passage. However, this restoration and the passage in KTU 1.14 iii 55 are the only occasions where the word ḫmt appears in the Ugaritic lexicon and therefore its translation has been debated. Gray, eschewing the notion of “tent” or “pavilion,” opts instead for “pen” or “coop,” viewing the word not as the place for incubation rites or cultic dwelling for people, but rather as a structure where the king went to get “sacrificial animals.” Given its sparse attestation in Ugaritic, the translation “tent,” which is based on related roots elsewhere in Ugaritic and comparative linguistic data, is non-descript. The function of such a word in the Kirta Legend and a more precise understanding of what the word ḫmt connotes would be beneficial for interpreting KTU 1.14 ii 12 and its parallel passage KTU 1.14 iii 55. Various avenues of study, including an examination of related words in Ugaritic, a contextual assessment of the relevant passages in Kirta, and comparative evidence in Geʿez and Arabic (as well as an excursus regarding a proposed cognate in the HB), will be presented. I argue that, although Ugaritic texts are sparse and as a result these local attestations and literary contexts are inconclusive, comparative evidence indicates that the occurrence of ḫmt in KTU 1.14 iii 55 and restored in KTU 1.14 ii 12 likely has the notion of a cultic tent and not a mere “pen” or “coop,” as Gray suggests.

This paper will examine Targum Ruth’s explanation of why the sons of Naomi died in the land of Moab, its relationship with Midrashic traditions, and relevance for dating the exegetical strata of Targum Ruth.

Discovery of a Late Bronze Age temple at Tall al-‘Umayri, Jordan, provides insight into Bronze Age religious practice in the southern Levant. Analysis of the architectural plan and use of space suggests modes of community participation in cultic activity. Improvised clay figurines and a predominance of platter bowls found in several of the rooms indicate worshiper participation in votive and sacral activity. Comparison with contemporary cultic sites elucidates similar ritual behavior at sites typically designated Canaanite.

Sayings of Jesus are all over in Christian writings. They are found in the New Testament gospels, of course. They are also found in canonical material outside of the gospels. They are found in apocryphal gospels, acts, and apocalypses as well as works of early Christian writers. But the papyri, those incomplete fragments of theological tracts, homilies, commentaries, liturgies, hymns, and who knows what else, also contain mention of sayings of Jesus. This paper examines four logia that occur in three relatively early papyri (P.Amh. Gr. 1 2, AD/CE 300–399; P.Iand. 5.69, AD/CE 300–399; and P.Gen. 3.125, AD/CE 150–249). These logia are not cataloged in Stroker's “Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus,” which organizes and presents extracanonical sayings of Jesus from a wide array of sources.

The Acts of Thomas version of Christianity requires complete sexual abstinence even within the bonds of marriage, a requirement treated by his Indian audience as a wholly new concept. Given that the Greco-Roman world was fascinated by all things Indian including their sexual asceticism and given that the Church in India, or elsewhere, apparently did not follow Thomas' call for extreme celibacy, Thomas presents a puzzle. I make sense of this puzzle by looking at how Buddhist stories contain a similar rhetoric of aversion in order to teach acceptance and generosity.

Recent scholarship has convincingly shown that the various references to ‘chains’, to ‘prisons’ and to the apostle being a ‘prisoner’ in Paul’s letters were not meant to be metaphorical, but should rather be understood as many proofs that the apostle suffered several imprisonments in the cities he visited in Asia Minor and Greece. Thus, these mentions should be added to the many cases where, in Acts, Paul is depicted as undergoing law enforcement actions, as in Philippi where the apostle is said to have been put in jail or in Corinth where he is said to have been brought before the governor himself for a hearing—not to mention the long judicial sequence in Judaea of Acts 21-26. Whereas the narrative of Acts suggests that the apostle, when facing repressive measures, had direct contact with prominent representatives of provincial or local authorities (governors, local officials and institutions, members of the local elite), a different picture emerges from the multiple experiences of prisons described in Paul’s letters. In particular, the references to the staff of the governor’s headquarters (which is most probably the meaning of praitorion in Phil 1:13) as well as to the members of the emperor’s household (Phil 4:22) hint at a substantially different social connectivity for Paul during his imprisonments. This paper will address the issue of the discrepancies in the way the experiences of prisons of the apostle are depicted in Acts as opposed to Paul’s letters and will discuss the legal and social context of Paul’s imprisonments in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, relying on evidence other than NT. It will be argued that: 1. The reasons which led local or provincial authorities to take measures against Paul had mainly to do with the basic requirements of law enforcement in local communities of Asia Minor and Greece and were not primarily related to the Christian nature of the apostle’s preaching; for that reason, Paul was considered and treated as any other individual disrupting public order. 2. Contrary to what is suggested in Acts, Paul certainly had few opportunities to have direct access to local officials or to Roman governors to argue his case; Paul’s connectivity, in particular within provincial administration, was limited to people of much lower rank. These remarks will shed additional light on two interrelated issues that are much discussed in recent scholarship: the attention paid to the first Christian groups by local and Roman authorities in the mid-first century, and the intention of the author of Acts in emphasizing the procedural dimension of Paul’s arrests and his connection with high-level people.

Silence is a key feature in the Gospel of Mark, but most attempts to analyze silence get overshadowed by the “Messianic Secret” motif. This provides a monochromatic or simplistic understanding of silence in the gospel. On the contrary, silence is, as Michal Beth Dinkler has argued, “multivalent, contextually-driven, and rhetorically powerful” (2013: 17). This often goes unnoticed in one of the key moments of the gospel—Jesus’ trial (14:53–65)—where Jesus’ silence (14:60–61a) is seen as a seemingly positive action. Morna Hooker went so far as to claim that Jesus’ “silence emphasizes his innocence” (1991: 359). Like Hooker, a majority of commentators fall back on the lack of any formal charge to justify the silence. However, many treatments of this pericope fail to take into account the broader narrative motif of silence or consider the socio-historical implications of failing to reply to an accusation (14:60). This study seeks to better understand Jesus’ silence during his trial by looking at the narrative multivalence and the socio-historical context of honor challenges and ripostes. By comparing Jesus’ silence to other instances of silence in the narrative and attempting to understand this scene as an instance of an unanswered honor challenge, Jesus’ silence is no longer seen as a positive action but instead a further instance of his increasing shame in the Passion Narrative.

This paper was invited for the joint session with the Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom unit. It juxtaposes Paul's ambiguous statement about the opportunity for an enslaved person to be manumitted in 1 Corinthians 7:21 with two sets of texts, one from the Greco-Roman world and one from post-Reconstruction America. Both ancient and modern texts place significant limits on how far formerly enslaved persons can benefit from their labor. In the Greco-Roman world this occurs through the obligations of freedpersons to their former owners, now their patrons. In modern America racial and gender divisions of labor prevent freedpersons from exercising skills they may have acquired while slaves. In both historical contexts the Pauline statement reinscribed the economic vulnerability of the formerly enslaved.

A new study of the inscription on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazor II, king of Sidon, now preserved in Louvre Museum, suggested a new reconstruction of the history of his reign. It will be argued that there was only one expedition in Egypt, at the beginning of his reign, which can be linked with that of the Persian king Cambyses.

I am asking how recent studies in brain signaling and memory intersect with New Testament texts. My analysis moves beyond mental reflection and seeks to engage, at the foundational levels of the brain, recent insights into neural signaling. This brings into play the dynamics of human evolution. The genetic legacy of the brain is subsequently shaped through experience, and this shaping is expressed in the form of neural signaling. These pathways flow naturally into memory and narrativity. Every engagement with a text is a neurological event, a type of remembering and reformulating. Thus, it is clear that we who work in narratives have much to learn from the field of neurology. I wish to demonstrate the interconnection of neurology, narrativity, and iconography in the genealogy of Matthew 1:1-17. Here I seek to move from thinking about the genealogy to thinking, as much as possible, from within the genealogy—to move from the focus on what it says to the question of how and why. This approach unveils the way in which the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthew may sponsor different manifestations of God’s history with Israel. I will employ from brain research the established categories of semantic memory and episodic memory, but I will also propose a new category of iconic memory. I will demonstrate this new realm through two iconic representations of the genealogy—the Byzantine image of Michael Damaskenos and the modern illumination of Donald Jackson. If the category of iconic memory can be sustained by critical analysis, then it represents a contribution from narrative studies to the field of neurology. The genealogy of Jesus, when seen through the intersection of narrative and neurology, may serve as a semantic memory, as an episodic memory, and as an iconic memory. In its function, the genealogy may be compared to a Hebrew Torah scroll. The scroll has semantic value as a revered object, it has episodic value as the story of Israel, and it has iconic value as a window onto a particular form of Jewish experience and identity. The more the semantic value transits to episodic and iconic mode, the more this tradition becomes adaptive, autonoetic (self-aware), and autobiographical. Through these processes, the roll of the dead becomes a scroll of living tradition. Moreover, the genealogy points to a much larger process of remembering. In forthcoming publications I will argue that the entirety of the Gospel of Matthew is shaped by such neural and narrative processes.

Martin Luther never wrote a systematic theology. But in his mature years he did respond to the demands of the students he was training for the reformed ministry for a comprehensive survey of his views of God and the Christian life. He undertook this task by embarking on the gargantuan journey of a line by line commentary on the biblical book of Genesis. For the last ten years of his life Luther lectured twice a week on the book of Genesis, completing the final chapter only months before his death. Luther’s pedagogically and theologically motivated decision to display the coherence of his mature though in the genre of theological exegesis instead of a systematic survey was methodologically significant. Two methodological assumptions for his decision to present his mature theology in exegetical form stand out. First, Luther’s Logos-Christology foregrounds the enscripturated mediation of Christ in Christian life. For Luther studying scripture is a work of familiarizing one’s self and the believing community with the contours of the living voice of Christ that is the essential component of faithful Christian thought and action. Second, teaching Christian faith and belief by following the sequence of divine acts as set out in the narratives of Genesis highlights the ebb and flow of God’s activity. God gives Godself to creatures not as “system” but within the sequences of historical events. Luther’s decision to teach his theology by exegesis thus represents a rejection of the claim that the coherence of theology is best preserved by third order reflective and systematizing description of the intellectual coherence of God and creation. Believing faith is instead best handed on through the imaginative reentry of the details of the complex events of God’s life with the patriarchs. These presumptions allow Luther to read the canonical book of Genesis as encapsulating the essence of the life of faith necessary for believers in all subsequent times and places.

To address the question of what led Jesus to embark on his final and fatal trip to Jerusalem, we must consider the aims of his ministry. At the heart of that ministry was his proclamation of the reign of God, which stood in stark contrast to the unjust and oppressive social, political, economic, and religious realities that he encountered in Galilee. Jesus’ love for others and his conviction that he had a special and unique authority from God to speak and act in his name led him to dedicate himself to teaching and healing those in need and to call on others to follow him, trusting fully in the God he proclaimed so as to be able to live in his same love, free from fear. In order to prepare the disciples closest to him to carry out a ministry similar to his own, he adopted an itinerant lifestyle. This itinerancy not only enabled him to teach his disciples and followers to depend on God to meet their needs, but also helped to keep Jesus out of the reach of those who might seek to arrest him or do him harm. At some point, Jesus evidently came to the conclusion that he had gone as far as he could in accomplishing his objectives both among his followers and the people he had served in Galilee. He must also have believed that prolonging his ministry in Galilee would put his life in greater danger due to the conflict which that ministry was increasingly generating. After reflecting on the options open to him, he apparently decided that he could only hope to accomplish his aims fully by going up to Jerusalem to announce his message regarding God’s reign there and continuing to denounce aggressively the injustices perpetrated by the system imposed by Rome and by the Jewish authorities whom the Romans had established in power. Jesus must have been aware that sooner or later those authorities would seek to silence him by arresting him and perhaps even having him executed. From his perspective, however, if his activity on behalf of others was going to cost him his life at any moment, the best option was to go to Jerusalem to speak out and stand up boldly and openly to those authorities. Only in that way could his life, message, and death have the impact he desired on his followers and the population as a whole, bringing many to trust fully in God as he had so that they might practice freely the type of love he had proclaimed and embodied throughout his ministry, all the way to its end. Although we cannot know what Jesus expected to happen following his death, he appears to have believed that God would not let his death be in vain, but would instead make it the means by which many would be transformed and liberated as they followed him in dedicating themselves to serving God and others in the way that he had.

Interpreters have identified numerous themes in 1 Corinthians 1-4: party strife, conflicts of leadership, human wisdom, baptism-based allegiance. Over the last thirty years, the dominant way of explaining the coherence of these themes has centered around the figure of Apollos and the domain of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Interpreters reduce the four “parties” alluded to in 1:12 to two parties, a Paul party and an Apollos party. They understand “human wisdom” as a reference to the practices and values of Greco-Roman rhetoric. And they impute to the Corinthians a preference for Apollos as a superior orator to Paul. This paper offers a different account of these chapters. It identifies the dominant reading as an “apologetic reading,” which sees Paul defending himself and trying to reassert his preeminence over Apollos. Against this reading, the paper offers an “exemplary reading,” which sees Paul establishing a wisdom of the cross, consisting in a message of cruciformity and embodied in himself and Apollos.

This paper explores the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch as a ritual-like practice. It is theoretically informed by Frend’s (1965) and Bowersock’s (1995) emphasis on the importance of respectively the Jewish and Roman context for the origin of martyrdom. While highlighting the role of these contexts that structure thought and action, they overlook the role of the martyr as a ritual agent. This study, using Bell’s (1992) ritual theory, interprets the martyrdom of Ignatius as performance, a ritual-like practice. The source material used consists of Ignatius’ letters to the churches, which do not describe his martyrdom but give his anticipation and perspective on it. Bell (:164) distinguishes between three features of performance: multifaceted sensory experience, framing, and a totalizing objectification of values. Performance is about experiencing something. Yet, even when martyrdom is assumed as performance, it may have had non-performative elements. Besides “multi-sensory experience,” the “framing” is another important aspect of martyrdom as performance. The “framing” sets an experience off from routine reality. An actor is ‘framed’ by various elements such as a stage, curtains, tickets, audience, etc. Yet, taken separately any of these elements do not necessarily involve an actor in a theatre production. Curtains may refer to a living room in a home, and tickets may have been purchased for a boat ride. Therefore, the framing refers to the whole set of elements. The “totalizing objectification of values” is done through a “microcosmic portrayal of the macrocosm” (Bell 1997:160). Bell (:160) further comments “since the real world is rarely experienced as a coherently ordered totality, the microcosm constructed on stage purports to provide the experience of a mock-totality, an interpretive appropriation of some greater if elusive totality.” All three elements can be recognized in the martyrdom of Ignatius. “Spectacle,” Bowersock (50) writes, “was an important element in martyrdom in the early Church. . . . No early martyr was taken aside discreetly and executed out of sight, just as no interrogations were conducted in small towns.” Martyrdom was ‘framed’ by various elements such as an amphitheater, audience, wild animals, etc. The “microcosmic portrayal of the macrocosm” is present as well. Ignatius adopted the Hellenistic idea that entities on earth have their counterpart in things in heaven. He assumed a relationship between microcosm and macrocosm and applied this idea to his understanding of the Church and its ministry (Chadwick 172). The earthly Church is a microcosm which reflects a heavenly counterpart, the macrocosm. The key contribution this study seeks to make is help us understand Ignatius’ eagerness for martyrdom. While showing that the martyrdom of Ignatius was primarily a ritual-like practice, this practice is found to be ambiguous. It was not simply an instrument to achieve social integration or the transmission of beliefs. His martyrdom did not resolve the tension within the churches. Ignatius knew that this tension was part of a larger apocalyptic picture, the battle between Christ and Satan. Through ritual-like practice he participated in this battle, employing a “poetics of power” fostering unity of the church.

First articulated by Burton Mack (1996), and maintained through three SBL volumes, the project of Redescribing Christian Origins focused on two themes: providing a social theory of religion with early Christianity as the data and imagining new beginnings for Christianity apart from the Luke-Acts-Eusebius narratives. In many respects, and especially within the Seminar and among its members, this project has succeeded. But to what extent has the redescriptive project affected scholarship outside of the seminar? To what extent can an SBL seminar’s redescription gain traction in and influence a field already oversaturated with publications? Is it even possible to affect our field in such a way? This paper reviews the impact of the Redescribing publications, assesses that impact, and suggests a new location towards which our redescriptive efforts might be focused: the classroom. Redescribing Christian Origins may not be able to impact the field in the ways that we hope, but there is untapped potential in redescribing the ways in which we introduce early Christianity to students. It is here, in the introduction to early Christianity, that I argue our redescribing project can be the most effective.

The Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR) at the Catholic University of America has ‎recently launched a project to catalogue the more than 180 Ethiopic codices in our collection, ‎the majority of which are a part of the Gerald and Barbara Weiner collection of Ethiopian ‎manuscripts. This presentation will describe the process by which the catalogue is being ‎prepared and will give a report on the progress of the project. This will include an exploration ‎of a number of the remarkable manuscripts in this collection. Special attention will be paid to a ‎number of uncommon scribal features as well as to the texts and illuminations contained in the ‎manuscripts.‎

The line between biblical transmission and reception is fluid and open-ended, as new editions of the texts themselves routinely incorporate interpretive elements directly on the page. Such paratextual forms of reception include added glosses, clarifications, “double translations” and section titles, inserted into the text, as well as marginal notations, interlinear translations, footnotes, sidebars, colophons, prefaces and appendices, set before, after, and around it. Such elements appear in a wide range of manuscripts and printed editions from earliest times until today, and often exercise an outsized influence on the text’s interpretation. This paper will focus on the phenomenology of rewriting within such paratextual comments on the Hebrew Bible, with a focus on the case of the sin of Moses (and Aaron) in Numbers 20:12. This verse is famously obscure, condemning Moses and Aaron to die in the wilderness for failing “to trust in me [that is, YHWH], to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites,” without explaining how they failed to do so. This has led to a massive amount of commentary, of various kinds, in various contexts. This paper will compare examples of paratextual commentary on this verse from antiquity to modernity, with a focus on how they reuse and modify the text on which they are commenting. What do they repeat from the verse? What do they omit, rephrase, and add? Such a comparison offers a concrete basis on which to consider the nature of (paratextual) commentary more broadly.

Over a century ago, William M. Ramsay suggested that Paul’s movements in Asia Minor, as reported by Acts, were partly dictated by the region’s physical terrain coupled with the apostle’s propensity to suffer from recurrent malaria. Ramsay’s claim, now largely ignored, is reexamined in this study through a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to assessing malaria risk for travelers on ancient Roman roads. A GIS model for malaria risk in antiquity, based on risk factors refined by contemporary studies, was constructed, refined, and verified against control data obtained in Italy prior to malaria eradication efforts. The resulting model provides a tool for assessing various text sources from antiquity, including travel accounts. An overlay of Roman road data permits assessment of malaria risk to travelers on specific routes in antiquity. In this case-study application is made to the journeys of Paul, specifically to travel decisions by Paul in Acts 13:13-4 and 16:6-10. The model results and related research strongly suggest a reevaluation of Ramsay’s premise, with potential implications for understanding the Acts passages and Pauline studies. This contribution is only one of many possible applications of the model and demonstrates the potential for adapting the technical capabilities of GIS to the task of evaluating nuanced textual sources.

The term and analytical tool of rhetography emerged in the practice of sociorhetorical interpretation (SRI) in the early 21st century to bring the persuasive impact of graphic images prompted by the visual elements of biblical texts into the consideration of interpreters. Rhetography has matured into a critical and initial element in the interpretive analytic of SRI. However, cognitive science, which encouraged the development of rhetography, has expanded to explore how other senses and embodied experiences affect cognition. This paper will propose expanding rhetography to rhetosomatics, broadening the scope of analysis to include all kinds of embodied simulation in our consideration of how sacred texts persuade human beings. The story of the call of Levi in Luke 5:27–39 will serve as a test case for analyzing the role of embodied simulation in the rhetoric of a gospel text.

Beginning with a basic explanation of the halakhic method of interpreting the Jewish Scripture, this paper explores how the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament expanded the purpose and parameters of Sabbath observation as found in Gen 2.1-4, Exod 20.8-11, and Deut 5.12-15 for their respective audiences. By considering 4Q216 vii.5-17, 4Q218 i.1-4, CD x.14-xi.18, and the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 12.1-8, Mark 2.23-28, and Luke 6.1-5 and Matt 12.9-14, Mark 3.1-6, and Luke 6.6-11), we will consider how the observation of sacred time and space serves as an act of renewal that is believed to prepare humanity for eternity. The authors of the DSS and the NT used halakhah to emphasize their perspectives of how the Sabbath law should be observed and practiced within the context of their communities. Both have similar intentions (to follow the example of God for “resting” from work on the Sabbath Day) through a halakhic approach, yet the emphasis seems to be on sanctification (becoming more like God) by pulling away from society and focusing on what cannot be done in the DSS and by embracing society and focusing on what should be cone in the NT. The tentative conclusion is that the authors of the DSS seem to tighten halakhic rules and admonitions for Sabbath conduct as based on their concern for worshipping God in the correct way and on the correct day. On the other hand, Jesus seems to loosen Pharisaic halakhic rules of Sabbath conduct all the while maintaining the integrity of observing the Sabbath. Jesus was not concerned about the calendar. Rather, for Jesus, human need overrides the halakhic prohibitions for the Sabbath.

It was common practice in the ancient world to have both male and female cult functionaries to attend to the needs of gods and goddesses. In Mesopotamia the entu-priestess functioned opposite the en-priest; in Egypt the female heneret entertained the deities while male priests organized their daily meals. Democratic Athens left regal religious functions to the Arkhon Basileus and his citizen wife, the Basilina. Even Rome had its vestal virgins to balance the city flamen. But this paradigm breaks down in the Levant. Unlike Mesopotamia, Syria, or Egypt, there was a palpable dearth of female cult functionaries in Bronze Age Canaan and Iron Age Israel-Judah, as is evident in the texts from Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible. What few female cult functionaries did exist were actively resisted in the texts. This paper examines this lacuna and considers how the absence of women from public religious roles as expressed in the Hebrew Bible is a continuation of earlier, non-monotheistic practice as well as an enforcement thereof. Finally, I consider the impact of this absence in the social status of women.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, History of Interpretation research group

Despite translations such as “foreigner” or “resident alien” which highlight the otherness of the ger, the Hebrew term itself holds no such connotation. In promoting its ethic of love towards the vulnerable, Deuteronomy does not talk of “the foreigner” or “the stranger”, instead using language associated with Israel’s ancestors: ger/guwr. This paper will argue that the choice of the word ger was chosen to help frame the debate about how certain outsiders were to be brought in to the community. Ger does not hold the negative connotations of other words for foreigners and its association with the word guwr is critical to understanding the empathy that is being sought through Deuteronomy’s use of the term ger. In commanding love for the ger, rather than the foreigner or the stranger, Deuteronomy frames the vulnerable outsider in light of Israel’s own experiences, evoking sympathy and prompting action. How we frame the debate in modern times is of equal importance: migrant, immigrant, refugee, foreigner, Mexican, Syrian, European; the language of the debate can be as important as the subject of the debate, and learning from Deuteronomy’s vision for the ger, we can better put forward a positive and persuasive biblical answer to contemporary crises.

Concentrated within Galatians 3:19-4:31 are four different slavery terms Paul uses to describe the Law metaphorically: the Law is a παιδαγωγός (3:24-25), an οἰκονόμος (4:2), an ἐπίτροπος (4:2), and Hagar the παιδίσκη (4:22, 23, 30, 31). Paul’s extended treatment of the Law as a slave has largely gone unnoticed by interpreters of Galatians, who have focused instead on Paul’s images of humanity’s enslavement to the Law. While not discounting the importance of these images in Galatians, this paper also maintains that Paul’s Law-as-slave cluster of metaphors is a heuristic key for interpreting Galatians 3:19-4:31. Paul characterizes the Law as a slave with remarkable consistency, given his tendency elsewhere in his letters to pile up apparently mixed metaphors to make a complex point (cf. 1 Cor 3). This consistency is not linguistic; each Law-as-slave metaphor within the cluster depicts the Law as a different kind of slave with a different title. But this paper suggests that Paul’s Galatian auditors, entrenched in a slave society, would naturally have drawn on their experiences to connect the dots between these images that appear disparate to the modern reader. In doing so, these auditors would have understood the Law not as a menacing overlord (as interpreters are wont to characterize it), but as a vulnerable entity that proved insufficient to give life to the Galatians. Cast as a slave with some measure of influence, the Law may have limited power to figuratively “enslave” humanity. But it remains a slave, an entity under authority.

In this paper, I gather and analyze twenty-three inscriptional examples of calculations of Greek names with numbers, many of which are unknown to most scholars. This evidence suggests that John the prophet uses a standardized form of name calculation that appears in ancient Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt to calculate the name of the beast with numbers (Rev 13:18). In addition, I show through analyses of the archaeological contexts of some of these epigraphic name calculations that the practice was geared towards a group who possessed enough knowledge to calculate the name: the person who calculates the name, typically the person whose name is calculated, and their associates.

One of the important artifacts in the study of Coptic Gnostic and apocryphal literature is the so-called ‘Berlin Gnostic Codex,’ BG 8502, which contains The Gospel of Mary, a short version of The Apocryphon of John, The Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and the Act of Peter. Although this single-quire papyrus codex was acquired and studied by Carl Schmidt even before the twentieth century, it was not published in its entirety until after the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945, and in some ways this petit codex was and remains overshadowed by the NHC in scholarship. Fine work on the codicology of BG 8502 has been conducted by Schmidt, Till, and Schenke, as well as Robinson, but much work remains to be done, as highlighted by Krutzsch. BG 8502 also assumes new importance today, given the legend of its discovery in a tomb (cf. Nongbri), and the role that its leather cover plays in research into the possible monastic provenance of the NHC (Lundhaug/Jenott). In light of Nongbri’s monograph God’s Library and other recent contributions to codicology, this paper will re-introduce BG 8502 in comparison with other early Christian papyrus codices, asking new questions about its dimensions, binding, folia, ink(s), and—last but not least—its leather cover, which is famously said to contain an autograph testifying to its ownership by a monk.

William Faulkner’s *Light in August* (1932) rewrites the story of Jesus from the Gospels, transforming him into Joe Christmas, a (possibly) mixed-race man passing for white in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. The novel revises particular NT scenes (e.g., the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke; John 12’s account of Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet; Jesus’ cleansing of the temple; his betrayal by Judas; etc.). The points of contact between the Gospels and the novel are clear and become increasingly troubling as the narrative reveals Joe to be a tragically broken, but nonetheless violent and misogynistic criminal. Chapter 19 rewrites Pilate’s condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus. Percy Grimm, a representative of the U.S. government, shoots the fugitive Joe and mutilates his body. He does this under the presumption that Joe is a black man who raped and murdered a white woman, but Joe’s parentage is never established and he did not commit the crimes of which he was accused. (He rather killed in self-defense a woman with whom he had been having an affair.) Students often find the bigoted and brutal violence Joe suffers in this scene tremendously shocking, perhaps because it reveals their own violent expectations, or perhaps even fantasies, by overtly fulfilling them. From Percy’s point-of-view, which the novel may not entirely repudiate, Joe is a villain who gets his due; yet on the other hand, literally every accusation leading to his death proves either untrue or unverifiable, and from the moment of his birth to his lynching, he is as much a victim as a perpetrator of misogynistic violence. Arguably, the vomiting of the lynching’s onlookers materializes the readers’ response to the violence depicted: their appetite for retributive violence becomes over-sated and recoils on itself, making them sick. Faulkner brings his troubling recasting of Jesus’ crucifixion into dialogue with other depictions of brutal violence integrated within various Christian ideological settings. *Light in August* features an abolitionist terrorist who transmits his faith to his children (a version of John Brown), a domestically abusive Calvinist patriarch, a white supremacist prophet, and a “defrocked” clergyman, all of whom overtly reflect on Jesus’ redemptive death. This reflection is particularly important to chapter 19 since Joe Christmas’s lynching so closely parallels Christ’s crucifixion—both, in the end, as a result of false accusations. The scene therefore brings into disturbing focus the violence at the heart of the NT accounts of Jesus. It forces students to question the social, political, and ethical implications of certain Christian theological interpretations of Jesus’ violent death, some of which originate in the Gospels themselves, and to ponder the costs that “Christian” communities might pay for embracing an ideology that centrally celebrates a divinely authorized act of unjust violence. *Light in August* prompts students to consider whether certain traditional interpretations of the passion narrative have the effect of normalizing or even glorifying—creating an appetite for—the kind of brutality that (mostly) black people actually experienced in the United States in the Jim Crow-era South, and beyond.

For most of the last century translators and commentators have read John 2:6 as if it were answering the question "Why were there six large containers?" According to the chorus, they were for the purpose of Jewish ceremonial washings and cleansings. But that answer does not explain the mention of stone. More importantly, it does not deal fully with the Greek text κατὰ τὸν καθαρισμὸν τῶν Ἰουδαίων. We will survey the claims that κατά can mark a purpose or goal. Within cognitive linguistics we can ascertain the core meanings of κατά and raise the question about whether an additional meaning of "purpose" or "goal" is justified. In the past fifty years there have been remarkable discoveries of stoneware in Judea and Galilee. The discoveries have increased scholarly appreciation of the clean status of stoneware within the Jewish halaxa. Incidentally, that included drinking water. These stoneware have rightly been compared to the text in John but fuller discussions need to correctly read the Greek text. The additional phrase in John 2:6 is not necessarily answering why the containers were there, but also why they were made of stone, in accord with Jewish cleanliness prescriptions. Our Greek lexica and perhaps many recent translations may need amending.

Do inscriptions channel power? In the Islamic world, the written word of the Qur’an induces awe in its beholders. But can qur’anic imagery tell us about the ethical arguments for authority and command? As authors of this study, we argue that qur’anic verses, when inscribed on monuments, act as signposts for power. Our main inquiry in this study was to find out whether our initial assumptions about our argument were valid theoretically. Also, were these assumptions backed by any evidence from actual monumental inscriptions? In light of the immense work on Islamic architecture, we found a chasm in the study of Islamic art. Scholars did not perform a hermeneutical scrutiny of monumental qur’anic inscriptions. Although qur‘anic inscriptions have been studied both in their formal and functional aspects but apart from a few exceptions, their hermeneutical aspects have largely been ignored. Therefore, there is a huge scope for studying the content and the interpretation of qur’anic inscriptions, making our study both methodologically and theoretically valuable. The purpose of this paper is to explore the deployment of qur’anic verses within various types of Islamic monuments, primarily from the Umayyad and early Abbasid eras. We study two monuments: the Nilometer and the Ahmad ibn Tulun Mosque in Egypt. We chose these two sites because they were both embellished between the seventh and ninth centuries CE, making them some of the first Muslim structures to feature qur’anic inscriptions. We raise two questions: Is the content (or meaning) of the inscriptions relevant? And, are qur’anic inscriptions a symbol of power? We argue that qur’anic monumental inscriptions can be mined for justifications of Islamic conquests, and for the transformation of dar al-kufr (sphere of unbelief) into dar al-islam (sphere of Islam).

Most scholars acknowledge that the slave manumission laws in Deut 15:12-18 in some way replace the slave laws of the Covenant Code, found in Ex 21:1-11. The focus of such comparisons is often of the equivalence that Deuteronomy places on the time of service for male and female slaves. While Exodus frees the male slaves after six years, the female slaves are only freed if, having displeased their master, they are redeemed or if their master diminishes their rations. Consequently, lifetime slavery for females is a distinct possibility. In Deuteronomy, though, male and female slaves both go free after six years of service, and they are both to be sent out with flocks, food and wine. What has been overlooked, however, is Deuteronomy’s position on the practice of slave-concubinage. Ex 21 appears to provide that any female slave is subject to slave-concubinage while in slave status and that they could only be freed by redemption, if they displeased their master. Conversely, Deuteronomy has a predilection against unmarried females who have been sexually active. Deuteronomy prefers that sexually active females be married. It will be argued in this paper that Deuteronomy revises Exodus 21 in, not one but, two ways. First, as noted already, Deut 15 caps the time that a female slave is required to serve at six years, like her male counterparts. Second, Deut 15:12:18 and 21:10-14 constructively eliminate the practice of slave-concubinage among female Hebrew slaves altogether. Not only that but Deuteronomy even eliminates the practice of slave-concubinage upon females who have been captured during war. This revision of the Covenant Code meshes well with Deuteronomy’s overarching program of increased humanitarianism as well as its desire for sexually experienced females to be married.

The Tomb of Mnemosyne (c. late 4th century) lies in a necropolis just south of the Daphne Gate of ancient Antioch on the Orontes River. Excavated in a single, two-week season in 1935, the tomb derives its name from the spectacular mosaic pavement found inside of its main chamber, which depicts six female figures poised for the beginning of a funerary banquet. The mosaic’s exclusive depiction of women in a funerary setting makes it unique in the ancient world. I intend to expand upon the description of the mosaic with regard to the serving-wear, the figures represented in the both the central panel and border, and homosocial and aspirational aspects of the women’s self- representation. Furthermore, I believe that previous interpretations of the epigraphic evidence is inconsistent with iconography of the central panel, and I problematize the assumption that the mosaic is a product of a women’s funerary association. In my presentation, I will give an overall assessment of the mosaic pavement, as well as a summary of my findings in line with, or departing from, previous scholarship. I accept the suggestion that the funerary mosaic represents a women’s association, though I am careful neither to overstate the association’s funerary aspects, nor specify the women’s commercial ties. Scholars have asserted that associations in general comprised primarily middle and lower-class members with such commercial ties, while archaeological evidence has shown that these associations frequently included both women and regulations pertaining to funeral rites. The women’s ability to purchase and remodel the Mnemosyne tomb complex speaks to a degree of wealth, a suggestion strengthened by the grave steles found in the tombs connected to the central chamber that primarily depict women in banqueting settings. The sub-elite status of these women is given by the rough quality of the steles themselves, as well as the fact that all of the tiles were repurposed from other mosaic. Furthermore, I suggest that the mosaic is as much convivial as it is aspirational; the wealth displayed in table-wear and costume, the ratio of servants to diners, and the posturing of the guests all speak to a self-representation on the part of the women that emulates the elite and imperial while stressing female kinship. Finally, I hope to expand upon previous descriptions of the mosaic by incorporating previously overlooked archaeological evidence recovered from the site, as well as secondary scholarship on the nature of associations, and identifying troubling features of the mosaic such as the table-wear and status of each figure. In the end, these women chose to depict themselves as enjoying the company of other women, sharing in the bounty of the living while commemorating dead. Their material remains have much to tell us about the nature of female homo-social relationships, autonomy and self-presentation.

Jeremiah is an unlikely subject for children’s literature, but he shows up persistently in various forms of Bible story books beginning in twelfth century France. In every age he is newly fashioned to embody religious ideals, pedagogical principles and the perceived needs of different social classes. The Jeremiahs of this literature continually slip from one persona to another, mirroring and challenging their young readers. As part of the reception history of the prophet, children’s Bibles reflect a range of political and cultural readings that illuminate a multivalent and changing Jeremiah. Jeremiah for young readers began in the twelfth century, in Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica designed for university students between thirteen and sixteen years old. Fusion of biblical and apocryphal traditions into a compelling story created a new Jeremiah that engaged adolescent readers by offering them a prophet who was more magician and hero than stern preacher. By the fifteenth century its many readers had shifted down from university to school children. Medieval youth may have known a dour Jeremiah from stained glass windows and statues in their cathedrals, but in their story Bibles they met a feisty, colorful character. In the seventeenth century Jérémie, as he was called in France, appeared again in a text for school boys. Nicholas Fontaine’s narrative Bible replaced the traditional presentation of Jeremiah as prefiguring of Christ with a bold rebel who began his work at the age of fifteen and was in trouble with the authorities throughout his life. Fontaine wrote from the Bastille, and his feisty Jérémie reflected his own embattled position as a Jansenist charged with treason as well as his pedagogical goal of training his students to resist tyranny. A very different Jérémie inhabited the French countryside, where peddlers sold inexpensive books of Bible stories. In the eighteenth century Rousseau’s writings about education were popularized into guidelines for pedagogy around the time the Sunday school movement started in England. One of its founders presented Jeremiah to her young charges in order “to produce a rational faith, and a right practice.” Her Jeremiah shows no hint of resistance or anger, but is like a prescient adult among naughty children whose foolishness is made apparent to her readers. Nineteenth and early twentieth century American Jeremiahs for children were a moral exemplar, but the morals, like the prophet himself, were shifting. By the end of the century historical-critical scholarship had influenced even children’s Bible stories, though not with scenes “such as would be repulsive to people of taste.” From mid-twentieth century to the present young readers have been encouraged to emulate Jeremiah’s steely courage. From a 1942 comic book to a 2007 Japanese manga Bible Jeremiah is a defiant young man challenging political authority. The paper includes theoretical observations about the use of children’s Bible stories as evidence for all readings of Jeremiah as cultural adaptation.

When students in an introductory New Testament course first encounter the diversity of the representations of Jesus among the four canonical gospels, many are often distressed. It can be challenging to help students negotiate this diversity without minimalizing or trivializing it, and to do so in way that they can relate to. I propose to simulate a brief demonstration of strategies that I have used in my own classroom that students have received positively. First, by having students read two brief newspaper articles that relate the same historical event, but each having their own editorial interest which reflects their respective audiences. This is roughly analogous to what students have to date learned in class about the evangelists. And second, by using myself as an example and the variety of ways perspectives of me differ depending on who I am engaging with at the time. For this latter component I find a bit self-deprecating sense of humor tends to be particularly well-received, injecting a note of levity to a situation which can otherwise be rather discomforting.

This essay examines retrospectively the characteristic interests expressed in the work of the late Jonathan Z. Smith whose advocacy of a method of "redescription" has inspired the work of the Redescribing Christian Origins seminar. Among his many interests, Smith's leading preoccupation was in theorizing the cognitive role that difference plays in making things interesting, leading him to his emphasis on the importance of understanding systems of classification and taxonomy. Smith's theoretical contributions to the study of religion are appreciatively assessed as methods to be employed in the ongoing scholarly project of imagining religion in light of Christian origins.

Romans begins by presenting Paul as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God concerning his Son, the messiah of Israel, through whom the ethne have been called in the new era in which the righteousness of God has appeared apart from the Law. Paul seeks to explain the implications of this revelation in Christ to the gentile Christ-followers in Rome especially as it impinges upon the Law and the Jewish people. Wrong inferences, perversions of Paul’s teaching, e.g. that ‘the Law is sin’ (7.7), that ‘God has rejected his people’ (11.1), have been drawn by some, (3.8). Paul presents these indirectly in diatribe style in chs. 2-11 and constructs his letter around them. These rejected options indicate what Paul opposes, and in contrast to these Paul presents his own alternative pattern of life in Christ for ethne. Paul uses this indirect style to oppose misunderstandings of his gentile mission teaching, and to demonstrate what pattern of life he recommends for the ethne in Christ particularly for those who have conscience problems in relation to food and drink possibly associated with idolatry. Paul stresses that Jesus Christ comes from the Jewish people firstly to affirm the promises to the fathers as well as to enable the ethne to glorify God for his mercy (15.8-9). Since Israel has neither been rejected nor bypassed, customary Jewish patterns of behavior among ethne in Christ are still viable, and what seems ‘good’ to these must not be blasphemed (14.16). Nor is it acceptable for some Christ-followers to view themselves as displacing Israel in the purpose of God (11.19). Paul envisions both a restored Israel and non-Jews rejoicing together in a common worship, and his planned mission to Spain, with the help of the Romans, will work to that goal (15.24).

Study of the relationship of the Book of the Four (Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah) to the Deuteronomistic History is currently underway. As for the book of Amos, scholars have discerned deuteronomistic additions in a few passages. The earliest oracles and sayings of the book have usually thought to have originated with Amos, the mid-eighth-century B.C.E. prophet. Some scholars have supposed that the earliest layer was composed then, and others have suggested that the earliest layer was composed at some time after 722 B.C.E. In this presentation I will examine the relationship of the four major passages in the book of Amos that discuss Israel’s exile to Assyria (Amos 4:1-3; 5:25-27; 6:1-14; and 7:7-17) to the Deuteronomistic History. Many of the texts in these passages are considered to be of the earliest layer of the book. These include Amos 4:1-3; 5:27; much of 6:1-14; and 7:7-8. Some of the rest of the texts are already considered to be of a deuteronomistic layer. Those widely accepted currently are: Amos 5:25-26 and 7:10-17. I will argue that the four Amos passages (4:1-3; 5:25-27; 6:1-14; 7:7-17) are deuteronomistic in their entirety. This means that date-of-composition models for the foundation layer of Amos should be adjusted and that the deuteronomistic layer should now include these four passages. This model will also affect the study of the relationship of the Book of the Four to the Deuteronomistic History. Although the four Amos passages are about Israel’s exile, only Amos 7:10-17 is thought to refer to the Assyrian exile. Deportations that occurred before 722 B.C.E. are considered instead for the other three passages. I will demonstrate that the four Amos passages have long-range historical views similar to those of the books of Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea. I will offer brief comparisons to passages in those books. Those passages also make evident that the four Amos passages blame the Israelite kingship for having caused the exile by it neglect of keeping YHWH’s covenant and commands. The sins described in the four Amos passages primarily belong to the kingship. I will show that the address to the cows of Bashan in Amos 4:1 does not refer to a group of eighth-century wealthy women, but to the kingship. I will also suggest that because Amos 4:1-3; 5:25-27; 6:1-14; and 7:7-17 are deuteronomistic and draw from books such as Kings, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea, they should be ascribed an origination date after 587 B.C.E. The four Amos passages should also be considered as supplements to the Deuteronomistic History.

From the text critical point of view, the different texts of the book of Esther create a complex picture that still needs to be clarified. In particular, some readings of the Vetus Latina seem to be noteworthy especially in comparison with the main textual witnesses (the Masoretic Text, the Old Greek, the so called Alpha Text). With regard to the Book of Esther, Haelewyck counted at least ten readings in which Vetus Latina agrees with the Masoretic Text against the Old Greek and the Alpha Text. In this paper, I would, however, like to focus on those readings where the Vetus Latina is identical with or very close to the Alpha Text against all other texts (VL = AT ≠ MT = OG). For example, I will present the data for the reading "qui est Andicus", parallel to ὅς ἐστι Δύστρος Ξανθικός in Esth A 1; for the reading "magnum", parallel to μεγάλην in Esth 1,9; and the reading "et non adoras Aman?", parallel to καὶ οὐ προσκυνεῖς τὸν Αμαν in Esth 3,3. The said examples and some more will be presented and possible solutions will be offered.

Apocalyptic discourse presented a rich array of resources, some of which prove fundamental to the literary development and theological presentation of Acts. After examining alternative accounts of apocalypticism in ancient texts, this paper identifies discrete topoi, or building blocks, that animate Acts. From the outset Acts apparently defers apocalyptic expectation (1:6-7), but Peter’s speech marks the Holy Spirit’s arrival as a sign of the last days, linking the Spirit’s presence to the resurrection and glorification of Jesus. Dreams and visions, interpreted by Peter as gifts of the Spirit, drive key moments in the narrative, thereby rendering the mission to the nations as manifestation of the Spirit’s end-time work. Although angels are not unique to apocalyptic discourse, angelic speculation frequently occurs in apocalyptic texts, and angels intervene at key moments in Acts. The resurrection of Jesus, an inherently apocalyptic motif, constitutes a critical point of emphasis and controversy in the narrative. Acts is not a literary apocalypse, nor does it voice the keen cultural critique and urgent expectation of the literary apocalypses, yet its fundamental premises and narrative devices identify Acts as an appropriation and interpretation of apocalypticism.

It has often been assumed that one of the primary functions of pseudonymous writing in early Judaism was a desire to legitimize anonymous or little-known works by means of attributing them to earlier, more authoritative figures. Without necessarily denying ‘authorization’ as an aspect of this phenomenon, several recent scholars have presented supplementary models for understanding pseudonymous writing in antiquity that attempt to transcend modern presuppositions around intellectual property and authorial intent (e.g. Hindy Najman, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Eva Mroczek). This essay aims to contribute to that discussion by comparing examples from early Jewish Pseudepigrapha with anthropological and ethnographic studies of contemporary spirit cults around the world where the spirits of dead ancestors are regularly hosted by professional mediums. Though at first glance, the cultural distance between these contexts may seem to prohibit such a comparison, I argue that so-called ‘possession studies’ can be enlightening for the study of early Jewish pseudepigraphy at a theoretical and analogical level. Four connections are highlighted: First, in contrast to popular stereotypes, as practiced in numerous contexts, spirit possession is often a positive and cultivated practice (rather than an affliction or a cause for social alienation). Possession is also often a corporate experience that is central to a community’s religious life. Second, these possession practices are usually regulated by established modes (and not just freeform nonsense). Anthropologist Michael Lambek has characterized this kind of spirit possession as a sophisticated “system of communication” that alludes to and comments on itself—even as it innovates. Third, spirit possession can function as a commentary on the “climate of affairs” for a community or individual. This is especially true in cultures that have experienced colonization. Fourth, spirit possession has been called a non-historiographical mode of describing the past and prescribing the future. It is a way of calling up trusted voices from a culture’s heritage and gaining their wisdom on new situations. It also puts historic figures into conversation with one another, though they were not contemporaries in life. Primary texts discussed include Daniel, Jubilees, and 11QPsa. Theorists include Lesley Sharp, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, and Paul C. Johnson.

The three epistles penned by ‘John’ in the New Testament are exciting, if challenging, documents with which to work as they offer a fascinating glimpse into the real-life struggles of early Jesus Followers. And yet, for all the insight these letters provide into the goings-on of such communities, the Johannine epistles are not always read with an eye toward the urban milieu whence they most likely originate. More significantly, what they may say regarding the issue of socio-economic scaling and/or stratification is seldom pursued. Though scholars do occasionally make mention of the presence of wealthy members in the community on the basis of language in 1 John 3.17 and the presence of Gaius and Diotrophes in 3 John, little is said beyond the fact that there might be some ‘wealthy’ church members. Furthermore, no scholar of which I am aware has offered an economic scaling of the church(es) represented in the epistles. To be sure, there are good reasons for this. While the letters clearly bear witness to a concrete struggle in the life of early Jesus Followers, much remains opaque in the letters. Little is known about the author(s?) or the audience, nor is there any location for the communities mentioned. References to specific communities (i.e. the ‘elect lady’ and her ‘sister’ of 2 John) and/or people (Gaius, Diotrophes, Demetrius (3 John) occur, but the particulars of the life of the community remain few and far between. While it may not be possible to say much about stratification in the Johannine community, I would contend it is possible to say something. Thus, in the present study I propose to take what little can be said about the Johannine epistles regarding their socio-economic setting and bring it into conversation with Longenecker’s work on wealth scaling in order to help put as fine a point as possible on what one might ascertain about social stratification in 1–3 John. Indeed, when salient details of the Johannine letters are read in light of Longenecker’s wealth-scale, they can be seen to attest to members in their respective communities that run the gamut from ES4/ES5 to ES7. One catches a glimpse of a stratified group of Jesus Followers, with those in greater economic security responsible for bearing some of the key financial burdens in the community. This comports both with the broader attitude maintained by early Jesus Followers regarding wealth as well as the composition of some Pauline churches that featured a mixture of people from various social strata.

The biblical creation narratives have been a major focus of animal studies, from Derrida’s 1997 address to the Cérisy conference onward. Recently, the work of Hannah Strømmen (2014, 2018) has extended this focus to post-flood narratives about Noah, albeit with an overall synchronic focus on how the P (Gen 9:1-17) and non-P (Gen 9:18-27) might be read in relation to one another. Building on work done on Genesis 1-11 for the Kohlhammer International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament, this paper explores the related and yet distinctly different accounts of human - ‘animal’ difference in the non-P and P strands of the Genesis primeval history, also as they relate to earlier Near Eastern cosmological reflections on the relations of humans to other beings. With Strømmen, but adding a diachronic dimension, this paper will argue that the discourses about humans and other species in the ‘creation’ narratives of Genesis are part of a broader cosmological treatments that extend to the end of the primeval history. This perspective then allows us to perceive these competing discourses about non-human beings as key initial foundations to broader biblical discourses about distinctions among beings and domination, from human-animal to male-female to Israelite-Canaanite and beyond.

Simon Mimouni, Ray Pritz, and Petri Luomanen are the primary authorities on the Jewish Christian sect of the Nazarenes or Nazoreans. Both Mimouni and Pritz have denied a connection between the historical Nazarenes with the Mandaeans of Iraq. All three of the aforementioned scholars have also not incorporated eastern witnesses into their assessment of the Nazarenes, as they primarily focus on Greek and Latin patristic sources. As a corrective, I focus on the Semitic/Eastern witnesses to the Nazarenes; particularly in the Didascalia, the Kerdir Inscription, the Julian Romance, the Toledot Yeshu, the Book of Nestor Ha’Komer, and Quranic/Islamic references to the Nasraya/Notsrim/Nasara. Per the research of Francois de Blois, this paper will argue that the Nazarenes were a historical Jewish Christian group of a Syriac background. The name ‘Nazarene’ came to signify Christianity beyond the boundaries of the Roman empire, particularly by hegemonic forces seeking to denigrate Christians by reminding them of their Jewish origins. This term is also found as a self identification in the literature of the Church of the East, also known as ‘Nestorian’, classic examples being the Julian Romance or Vita of Mar Aba. This Church also retains a number of Jewish practices in terms of its exegesis, demonology, liturgy, scribal-scholastic traditions, and folk religious traditions. The assessments of Petri Luomanen, Annette Yoshiko-Reed (particularly Ch.’s 2,3, & 5 of Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism), Patricia Crone, Guy Stroumsa, and Francois De Blois will form the main theoretical and historical interpretation of the term ‘Nazarene’; while concurrently describing its use in Syriac, Judaic, and Arabic sources.

This paper takes a prompt from Botticelli's 'Mordecai's Weeping', a sixteenth-century Italian painting, which depicts the scene from the scroll of Esther in which Mordecai mourns over the published threat to the Empire's Jews. The paper will challenge the presumed passivity of weeping to explore the complex political claims and implications of public mourning in this and other aesthetic works inspired by Esther 4.

To what end does the strange text of Matthew 24:28 refer to eagles (aetoi): “Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered? Some interpreters and translations try to make sense of the sentence by rendering aetoi as vultures (not eagles) and claim it depicts a common scene of vultures feeding on corpses. But various ancient writers are convinced that aetoi (Latin, Aquila) does not mean vulture; the term gyps (Latin, vultur) denotes vultures. Writers spanning Aristotle, Pliny the elder and Aelianus distinguish the two birds consistently with vultures eating carrion and eagles catching their own prey; eagles (aetoi 28x) and corpses (ptoma 21x) never occur together in the Septuagint nor in the rest of the NT nor in the Pseudepigrapha, nor in Philo, Josephus and Plutarch. Significantly, eagles in the Septuagint are commonly associated with imperial powers (16 of 28 uses) namely Assyria, Babylon, Egypt. God uses such powers to inflict punishment and then in turn punishes these empires. In six uses God is the super-eagle who saves from imperial powers. This association of eagles and imperial power is in the first century represented by Rome whether in texts (4 Ezra), on buildings, omens of eagles before battles, on coins, and of course the eagle standards (aquilae) carried into battle at the front of Roman legions that bear an image of eagles because “it is the king and bravest of all the birds; it is regarded by them as a symbol of empire…an omen of victory…a sacred emblem” (Josephus, JW 3.123). No one confuses these eagles with vultures. In this light, the eagles gathered with the corpses in Matt 24:28 in the context of the return of the triumphant son of man suggests a scenario of battle in which the eagles are not actual birds but the standards of Roman legions that represent defeated Roman power. The eagles are “gathered together with the corpses.” Rome, an agent of God’s judgment in the events of 70 is now punished and destroyed at the return of the Son of Man to establish God’s empire. The verb “gathered together” (sunago) regularly appears in Matthew in scenes of eschatological judgment and condemnation. It must be noted, though, that in representing destroyed Rome as eagles gathered with corpses, the Gospel presents God’s triumph through the victorious son of man as a grotesque mimicking and reinscribing of the imperial strategies and worldview that the Gospel resists.

In considering fan culture, the phenomenon can fairly easily be mapped onto pervasive models of the religious. What emerges from this is a novel space for engagement of how fandom reacts to the potentially “heretical” within its own definition of tradition—perhaps most interestingly, how it reacts to such threats from in-universe and real-world threats to established beliefs and texts. This can include new additions to canon, new interpretations of canon, interference by meta-gods (original authors/creators), and the treatment of gods, the deitical, and religion in-universe. By affirming the ways in which fan culture does mirror religion, we are able to then dig deeper into analyzing the interaction of elements of non-fandom religion and/or god-like action within the fandom community, helping us to consider the weight of fan culture as a religious community that operates and sustains itself with a level of integrity well worth serious consideration and further exploration.

According to 2 Kgs 4:8–37, a barren woman from Shunem miraculously gives birth after demonstrating her faithfulness to the prophet Elisha. Later, when the boy becomes sick and dies, the woman once again displays her faithfulness to Elisha, which results in him resurrecting the child. Thus, unlike other miraculous birth narratives in the Hebrew Bible in which the promised child is destined for greatness (e.g., Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Samson, or Samuel), the child in this pericope serves no function other than to be born, die, and be resurrected. Using the “Woman in the Refrigerator” trope as an analytical tool, I argue that, due to his complete lack of agency, the text treats this miracle child as a nothing more than a plot mechanism benefitting the central characters, particularly Elisha. Comic book writer Gail Simone first articulated the “Woman in the Refrigerator” syndrome in 1999 to describe a common comic book trope where female characters are injured, killed, or depowered for the sole purpose of developing the male protagonists’ storylines. Since its inception, this trope has gained prominence in feminist critiques of popular culture in the West, particularly in comic book and gaming cultures. Simone named the trope after the death and literal refrigeration of Alexandra DeWitt, the girlfriend of the superhero main character, in Green Lantern #54 (1994). Not a fully-developed character in her own right, Alexandra's death acted as a plot device in the hero’s story, providing the motivation for Green Lantern to confront the villain. In this paper, I use the trope to analyze the child and his role as an innocent victim and plot device in this account. Though the “Woman in the Refrigerator” trope originated with female characters, any character, regardless of gender, can receive such a label. The tragedy of all these characters comes from the lack of agency they possess in their own lives, in their own stories, due to the fact that their plot lines only serve to further the hero’s arc. We, the readers, perceive the boy in 2 Kgs 4:8–37 as an innocent victim because, unlike other miracle children, he lives only to die, in order to highlight the miraculous power of Elisha.

As one who has used the UBS text since its third edition in my days as an undergraduate student until now in its fifth edition as one who teaches such students, I would like to express my personal remarks regarding its format and style as I’ve seen students use the text. There is a reason that the presentation of its text has not changed radically from edition to edition over the years—it has much to commend itself. But as the field of textual criticism advances and new resources become available—most notably the publication of the Editio Critica Maior—some of the original needs of the UBS text are no longer quite as necessary. This presentation will discuss recent and proposed changes to the UBS edition as it affects students learning Greek for the first time, with specific examples from the New Testament.

Clement’s petition on behalf of earthly, political leaders and his exhortation to submit to them in the closing prayer (59–61) has prompted several investigations aimed at parsing his and his community’s relationship with Rome and imperial rule. Was it friendly—as is suggested by his call for Christians (in Rome and Corinth) to submit to their rulers, with no reservations—or is there a counter-imperial subtext to be found therein? This paper will argue that Clement’s subordination of the Christian to secular forms of government fits within his broader rhetorical argument that God has established and ordered the world (e.g., cosmos, nature, society, military, and the church) according to his will and that this order should not be transgressed. By deposing and replacing their presbyters, the Corinthian church has defied God’s order, and it is necessary for them to restore it by reinstating those presbyters. However, Clement’s reasoning from “order” opens his argument up to criticism. Christianity itself was an unsanctioned religion and Christians were known to refuse to participate within the imperial cult. This refusal to conform could be offered up by the Corinthians an example where the Christians in Rome refused to obey their God appointed rulers and were themselves guilty of transgressing the bounds of “order” established by God. Clement navigates this possible charge by emphasizing God’s sole claim to sovereign rule and the Christian’s ultimate submission to him alone. All other rulers exist to exercise power according to his will. He reinforces this cosmology with the nexus of political titles he uses when speaking of or addressing God: God is ὁ μόνος ὕψιστος ἐν ὑψηλοῖς (59.3), εὐεργέτης (59.3), σωτήρ (59.3), βασιλεύς (61.2), κύριος (59.3; 60.1; 61.1, 2), δεσπότης (59.4; 60.3; 61.1, 2), and the giver of peace (60.3). Secular rulers, on the other hand, are υἱοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων (“sons of men”; 61.2) and simply ἄρχοντες καὶ ἡγουμένοι (“those who rule and lead”; 60.4). Thus, Clement avoids entirely epithets such as βασιλεύς, κύριος, or δεσπότης. Within this context, this paper will contend that a large swath of designations used for God in the closing prayer have close ties to the political world and that in their attribution to God there is a counter-imperial subtext that functions as a reminder of where the Christian’s true loyalties lie, even when their rulers transgress their God-appointed bounds (61.2).

In this paper, I argue two points, both of them relating to the way in which Greek Christianity transmitted the text of the Septuagint and relevant to our modern text-critical approach. First, I reflect on the fact that the transmission of the biblical text is an expression of Christian biblical interpretation as valid as (and in fact: more influential than) other forms of exegesis. Buried in text-critical apparatuses and hardly noticed, variant readings of the biblical text in fact inform us of different kinds of Christian interpretation, both reactive and active. Second, I underline that Christian views on the Septuagint have shaped our current text-critical approach to that text in a manner the profoundness of which is not always realized enough. Some modern-day, Western scholarly conceptions of (and tools to deal with) the origins, transmission… of the Septuagint are still very much shaped by the views Early Christianity had on those topics—also those that are now known to be problematic. Referring to the Hexapla and Jewish revisions, I discuss the difficulties (and at time: reluctance) we experience when trying to escape what the late M.L. West called the ‘dogmatic drag’ (i.e., ‘obsolete views go on exercising a pull even after having been discredited, and they put a brake on progress towards a new position’; The Making of the Iliad, Oxford, 2011, p. 16).

Epiphanius’ Panarion is an experiment in writing Christian difference into existence. A hefty work on heresies by a celebrity bishop who provoked strong personal reactions in his own time and ours, it has come to define a modern scholarly category of heresiology. It has also seen an uptick in recent attention, in work including (but not limited to) that by Alain Le Boulluec, Aline Pourkier, Averil Cameron, Andrew Jacobs, Todd Berzon, and David Maldonado-Rivera. The Panarion, however, at least in its full three volumes, never gets much ancient airtime. Heresiologists who explicitly refer to Epiphanius use the anonymous Anacephalaioses, within a short time attached to circulating manuscripts of the longer text. Augustine even thinks that the epitome was Epiphanius’ famous polemical work. And centuries later, when John of Damascus shapes his own extended De Haeresibus around the catalogue, he uses, again, the shorter Anacephalaioses. In this paper, I use the panel focus on the biography of books to unpack the curious discrepancy between the Panarion’s effects and the evidence we have – or rather, that we lack – for its late antique readership. By attention to the Panarion between two historical moments and their different responses to information overload – the late antique and the early modern – I construct a case study that complicates the relationship between the trajectory of a text, its attributed author’s reputation, and its contents. My paper has three brief components. First, I introduce the Panarion and justify understanding it, in its late antique context, as something of a poor fit for wide usage. Second, I note how the work, nevertheless, comes to function as prototypic for heresiography in early modernity. Third, I briefly suggest how this biographic approach helps us theorize not only how texts communicate differently through time, but how the conditions governing text use interface with real and imagined features of the texts in question.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, Early Historical Books research group

The Chinese government’s market-based economic strategy has attracted many rural people to urban areas in search of better employment opportunities. However, despite its prosperity, there is wide income disparities in urban cities and many people are living at the subsistence level. Those migrant workers’ lives are bound by the government’s “hukou” migration policy. Some of them need to leave their migrant children in the rural areas as “left-behind children.” In view of this, some churches in China narrowly define evangelism as the making of converts. The parable of the prodigal son (15:11-32) becomes one of the most frequently engaged parables that only focuses on the theme of repentance and forgiveness. The prodigal son represents sinners who are accepted by God; and the older son represents Pharisees who do not understand God’s forgiving grace. However, this traditional interpretation only connects 15:11-32 with the preceding two parables without noticing how it can be related to the subsequent parable of the dishonest manager (16:1-13). Michael Austin challenges this reading by arguing that isolating Luke 15 as one unit would allow the theme of “lost and found” to be the “dominant interpretative criterion.” This reading also misses Luke’s social teaching (14:1-24; 15:1-32; 16:1-9). In this paper, I argue that Luke 15:11-32 and Luke 16:1-13 form a two-part challenge to the Pharisees regarding their use of resources, a challenge that requires active solidarity with those outside the socio-religious boundary, from acceptance to active sharing of resources. In regard to the issue of poverty and migration in China, this paper provides an alternative understanding to the parable of the prodigal son by demonstrating how 16:1-13 can provide an “interpretive clue to the meaning of the prodigal son.” This reading also pushes the church to engage more in society to bring both social and economic transformation. To do that, this paper starts explaining how the “hukou” migration policy has resulted in the issues of poverty and discrimination among migrant workers. Then, in relation to the context of Luke 15-16, I argue that the core issues for some Pharisees are their seeking of self-glory and love of money that establishes a socio-religious boundary between them and the marginalized. Luke 15-16 is then set against the context of the growing tension between Pharisees and Jesus and the two parables (15:11-32; Luke 16:1-13) serve as consecutive responses to the Pharisees in relation to God’s social message. Afterwards, by showing the similarities between the younger son and the dishonest manager, I argue that they are both wise planners who can utilize their social resources to establish relationship with others for future benefit. This ironic appreciation forms the basis of Jesus’s social message that it is important to share the worldly resources with the poor for eschatological benefits. In contrast, the older son ironically fails to demonstrate this solidarity by refusing to join the celebration. The open-ended question from the father appears as a challenge to some Pharisees to break down the socio-religious boundary to align with God’s redemptive purpose.

A programmatic expression of Second Temple piety, Psalm 115 contains a distinctive nexus of theologoumena depicting Israel’s religious life as a drama of gratitude, trust, and praise. The psalm turns on conveying a proper understanding of blessing, which is presented not only as performative speech but an act of divine imitation or mirroring, a means of “replacing” (Andrew Davison) the worshiper and worshiping community in right relation to God and God’s creation.

In its effusive description of the Eshet Chayil, Proverbs 31.10-31 invokes several spaces: the home, fields and vineyards, foreign lands, and city gates. Mention of these is not incidental but fundamental to the work of the passage in promoting its utopian vision. Thus far, attention to the spaces of Proverbs 31 has been limited largely to implications of city gates in characterizing the Eshet Chayil’s husband (e.g., Biwul) and to exploring the extent to which the Eshet Chayil’s occupation of public spaces informs as to the lives of women in antiquity (Lang, Meyers, Yoder). This paper draws upon space theorists Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, and Tim Cresswell to understand more fully the function of spaces mentioned in Proverbs 31. What ideology do these promote? The spaces mentioned contribute to the text’s construction of gender, as male and female figures occupy distinct locations, either acting or constrained from acting with regard to various tasks and in relation to other persons also present in the spaces. In addition, distinctions in the poem between rural and urban spaces reinforce projections of class, with both peasants and elites asserting their own interests. This study clarifies the power dynamics ongoing between all these groups as asserted via mention of spaces. Understanding the function of spaces in Proverbs 31 also involves noting instances of boundary transgression. What do these accomplish? Liminal spaces produced by such transgressions supply an opportunity to rethink prevailing social structures and systems in light of current conditions. Migration, shifts in leadership, developing urban areas and expanding trade — such challenges or many others could invite conversation within an ancient community regarding how it ought best conduct itself. This paper argues that both reinforcing and renegotiating of social practices is taking place via the mention of spaces in Proverbs 31. The insights produced through analyzing the use of space in Proverbs 31 prompts a new understanding of the poem’s opening question: “An Eshet Chayil, who can find?” She may not be as rare as the rhetorical question would imply. Rather, the struggle to locate this woman represents a community’s effort to discover how best to preserve and exert its own chayil (“strength”).

While many would agree that wisdom can be defined as the skill of living well, few enough have sought to give a comprehensive answer as to the question of what the end result of a life well-lived would look like. If one is to properly understand the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible, and that of Israel’s neighbors, then it is necessary to examine what these documents present as the picture of the life well-lived. This paper seeks to address this question by examining one particular genre of both Israelite and Egyptian Wisdom Literature in an attempt to discern the necessary elements of the good life as presented in theodicean literature. As theodicy presents vivid images of what is wrong with the world, by working backward from these statements, one can discern a vivid picture of what constitutes a life well-lived. Especially as theodicean literature often portrays the sufferer as beyond reproach, this line of inquiry can yield significant insights by examining what has gone wrong for the sufferer. Moreover, by comparing the various conceptions of the good life in the wisdom traditions of Israel and Egypt, one can see how the major concerns of the two cultures represent their respective worldviews. While the Egyptian presentation of theodicy presents the good life as one lived in accordance with maat (and subsequently the sufferer as one unable to experience maat), the Israelite sages present the good life as one lived in congruence with the creation narrative(s) of Genesis 1-2. This paper helps to build a clearer picture of just what the sages of the ancient Near East attempted to achieve through their work and what kind of life their followers could anticipate with careful attention to their words. While theodicy is inherently concerned with violations of the expected natural order, it is nevertheless a valuable enterprise to see how this genre fits into the conversation.

In light of the discoveries of 4Q242 Prayer of Nabonidus and Nabonidus’s Harran stele, scholars generally agree that the narrative tradition of Daniel 4 originally pertained to Nabonidus. Such has also been suggested for other narrative traditions underlying Daniel 2–3. During the compositional development of the book of Daniel, however, Nabonidus was eventually replaced by Nebuchadnezzar. While scholars such as Carol Newsom have offered sound arguments concerning why the Jewish community would have composed stories about Nabonidus, less attention has been given to questions concerning the character substitution from Nabonidus to Nebuchadnezzar. Why did a later redactor(s) choose to ascribe narrative traditions originally about Nabonidus to Nebuchadnezzar, especially considering the ongoing presence of Nabonidus traditions at Qumran? What was the rhetorical and ideological intention behind such a transformation? In other words, what could Nebuchadnezzar "do" for the redactors of Daniel that Nabonidus could not do? This paper, thus, seeks to offer a contribution to these key literary questions. Jan Assmann, in his description of mnemohistory, astutely notes: “The present is ‘haunted’ by the past and the past is modeled, invented, reinvented, and reconstructed by the present.” Analysis of these transformations, in turn, evince the (un)conscious logic that shapes the nature of cultural memory. Haunted by the memory of Nebuchadnezzar, indelibly etched into the psyche of the diasporic Jewish community, innovative portrayals of Nebuchadnezzar began to emerge that effectively reshaped and reimagined the king’s role in their history (e.g., MT Jer 27:5–6; OG Bel 28, 41–42; Judith). Although the Nabonidus traditions may not have derived from the various redactors of Daniel, I argue the transference of Nabonidus to Nebuchadnezzar, mutatis mutandis, affects the same reimagination—viz., reconfiguring the image of Nebuchadnezzar cast in the Deuteronomistic History, Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah. This innovative reimagination would not only offer encouragement to the Jews under Greek hegemony; it would also serve as a foreign king template, so to speak, within which any Gentile king could be inserted while the Jewish community remained under foreign dominion.

The theory of so-called Trito-Isaiah is challenged because it reveals varieties of dissonance in Isa. 56–66 and intertextual interdependence within the final form of the Book of Isaiah. For example, the incompatible themes and tones between chs. 56-59; 63-66 and 60-62 lead scholars to hypothesize different redactional layers or to reconstruct social circumstances to shape the characteristics of the author’s critique. These kinds of approaches easily overlook the possibility of polyphony within a single text, voice, or character. This idea leads us to focus on how the narrator expresses and delivers his internal and external struggle to the reader. The sensitive reader might catch the narrator’s expectation and frustration. For this process of reading, first, if chs. 56–66 could be considered as a literary unit, contradictory statements could be related to the narrator’s self-identity and experience. Second, I will put the narrator of chs. 56-66 within the circumstances between 520 and 515 BCE. His dual message about the temple is that it is deeply related to the context of temple reconstruction, which was encouraged by Haggai and Zechariah. From this point, it is possible to say that the narrator has a different idea about this building project than two prophets. Third, I will try to show how he reveals his ambivalence by using Isaian languages to debate with the other party. Perhaps the narrator, although he was an immigrant Jew who was had immigrated from Babylon, would be related to nonmainstream Yehud politics. This liminality makes him reveal his dual feelings on his social conditions. Fourth, I will consider that the narrator utilizes his social memory of the temple as a frame of reference to interpret his context. Through utilizing these presuppositions, I will analyze Trito-Isaiah’s rhetoric against the temple-building project in chapter 66.

Matthew 2:16-18 records 1) Herod’s massacre of infants and 2) the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15, Rachel weeping for her children. Modern historical-critical and reader-oriented methods, which study the text’s historical origins and its modern readers respectively, fail adequately to address questions about the passage’s meaning and relevance by neglecting its long history of interpretation. In this paper, I focus on three Renaissance painters who have produced visual-exegetical and actualized readings of Matt 2:16-18. I first define visual exegesis and actualization before proceeding to works by Matteo di Giovanni, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Peter Paul Rubens. These three artists decry violence of European wars in interesting ways, by use of subtle artistic motifs and details. Visual exegesis is a unique requirement for understanding visual representation of Scripture. Contexts, motifs, purpose, artistic limitations, and identities of beholders are all important to understand such works that differ in many ways from textual counterparts. Actualization is the process of reading a passage of Scripture in comparison with present circumstances and application. Three Renaissance artists exegete Matt 2:16-18 visually and actualize the text. Matteo di Giovanni reveals the contemporary fears of the Turks’ invasion of Italy in his depiction of Herod. Not only is the tyrant is depicted massively oversized with a skin tone darker than the victims’, Herod in his second painting is donning a turban. The artwork serves to warn fellow Italians that all is not well in national security. Pieter Brugel the Elder, faithfully represented by the Younger, pictures the massacre in a snowy village of Netherlands. Brugel expresses in his work the Dutch resentment of the oppressive Spanish occupation administration. The imperial insignia on the herald’s tabard and men with red coats, the uniform of the bandes d’ordonnance, the brutal enforcers, is an important clue. In this manner, Brugel contributes to confrontational art common at that time. Peter Paul Rubens borrows from Raphael’s successful combination of two most often-revisited artistic motifs of his era: 1) Leonardo’s “depiction of the savagery of war” and 2) Michelangelo’s “dynamic mastery of the male nude in action,” a common sight in ancient Greek art. What is distinct in Rubens is the figure of Rachel in the second of his paintings on the subject. She is at the center interceding for the victims with arms raised toward heaven. She again appears in another later work of Rubens entitled, The Horrors of War, which is an artistic protest of the Thirty Years’ War. This reprise proves how fluid is the exchange of roles between Rachel and the Unfortunate Europe. In conclusion, these three Renaissance artists reveal the potential of the actualized and visualized text to express opposing opinions concerning the contemporary problems, not just memorialize the past. Specifically, artists’ paintbrush can be a weapon of protest against violence, just as mighty as the pen, which is mightier than the sword.

Increasingly, study of the senses is becoming an element of disability criticism within biblical studies. Hector Avalos in his article “Introducing Sensory Criticism in Biblical Studies” is one of the few to have thoroughly examined the motif of blindness in the Hebrew Bible. According to Avalos, the reader can find in 1 Samuel 3 the stark juxtaposition between Eli, who cannot see what others see, and Samuel, who even hears what others cannot hear; and this juxtaposition represents the Deuteronomistic History’s audio-centric tendency, i.e., the tendency to “valu[e] hearing above sight.” When it comes to understanding God and the world, Avalos contends that sight usually skews reality, whereas hearing leads to correct conclusions. Though the Deuteronomist’s general emphasis on hearing is indeed remarkable, I think that Avalos overstates his case. The narrative of 1 Samuel 1-3 shows that seeing also functions as a channel by which to receive God’s messages. Ironically, this positive representation of sight is most highlighted at the very moment that Eli begins to lose his sight and Samuel sees ‘the vision’ from the deity, a vision, moreover, that shows the demise of Eli’s priesthood. I thus suggest that in this narrative, it is less a matter of either hearing or seeing, but of disability versus the (super)ability to perceive God’s will. “Ability” correlates to an ability to understand the divine will, and disability indicates an inability to do so. Therefore, the loss of senses, though considered a disability in modern society, does not necessarily equate to being a disability for the Deuteronomist. (For the open session)

What is a beast? And what is a being? These questions initiate the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a Hogwarts text book from the fictitious universe created by J. K. Rowling. The book exemplifies that bestiality, monstrosity, and the fantastic are ongoing, significant, and well-attested phenomena, not only in contemporary culture but also in the history of religions (cf. e.g. Cohen 1996). In this paper, I will therefore pose two additional questions: In what ways and why do holy scriptures such as the Qur’an and the Bible contain renderings of beasts and monsters? What are their function? One example of a biblical monster is Leviathan, the dragon that God defeated at the beginning of time (Ps 74, 12–17, cf. Ps 104, 24–28; Is 27, 1). Leviathan represents life-threatening chaos, the chaos called “without form and void”, which God made into order through his creation. Whereas monsters, such as Leviathan, have been studied extensively within Biblical Studies (cf. van Bekkum et al. 2017), the monstrous features of the Qur’an have never been duly investigated by qur’anic scholars. This may be due to the fact that, compared to the Bible, the Qur’an only contains few fantastic beasts (e.g. Q al-Naml 27:39; Q al-Saffat 37:64–68). Besides the so-called ‘beast from the earth (dabba min al-ard)’, mentioned in Surat al-Naml (Q 27:82), which is described in vivid terms in the later Islamic tradition, the qur’anic application of monstrosity mostly pertains to its constant ‘othering’. It is the ‘Other’, embodied by the unbeliever, the ‘associator’, or the hypocrite, that is the monster of the Qur’an. For example, in the polemical metaphor used in Q al-Anfal 8:22: “The worst of beasts is in God’s view the deaf and dumb who do not understand (inna sharra ’l-dawabbi ‘inda llahi ’l-ṣummu ’l-bukmu lladhina la ya‘qiluna).” In this verse, the disabled body, deviating from the cultural model of a human body, is used to condemn the unbelievers’ lack of understanding. Another example of deviation from physical integrity and health occurs in qur’anic descriptions of the so-called tree of Zaqqum: “It is a tree that comes out of the root of hell/Its spathes are like the heads of devils (tal‘uha ka-annahu ru’usu ’l-shayatini)” (Q 37:64–65). Here, the normal borders between humans, animals, and natural phenomena become blurred. This paper will dive into the (lack of) monstrosity in the Qur’an in comparison to the Bible (cf. Brunschvig 1953). Leaving most of the details and typical fantastic features of the beasts to later Islamic traditions, the qur’anic monster is a theoretical one. I will argue that monsters and monstrosity are used in the Qur’an as a didactic and rhetorical tool to explain destabilizing and dangerous bodies and situations where the given qur’anic order is at stake. As is evident in Q 8:22 and Q 37:64–65 cited above, ignorance of the qur’anic religious message or ending up in hell due to wrongdoing constitute such situations. It is also something that should be feared and avoided by the Qur’an’s adherents.

Did Paul Expect His Ex-Pagan Gentiles to Go to Synagogue?

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch, Ebed-Melech, that intersects with one of the stories that narrates the prophet Jeremiah’s imprisonment amidst an imperial context offers intriguing possibilities for developing an multi-layered understanding of resistance. Jeremiah’s survival in this story of incarceration, which mirrors the suffering the people of Judah are experiencing amidst the Babylonian invasion, and will continue to experience during the Exile, is closely connected to the person of the Ethiopian Eunuch who, both in terms of his ethnic and sexual identity, can be considered to be an outsider to the community. Ebed-Melech, who likely had experienced his own share of exclusion and hardship, is the one to notice the injustice done to Jeremiah, and subsequently goes on to rescue Jeremiah before he dies (Jer 37:8-10). This classic story of seemingly powerless individuals resisting violence speaks a word of hope amidst disaster, and opens up the possibility that the people of Judah might survive after all even when things are looking most dire.

Growing organically out of the excavations at Tall Hisban (1968-1976), the project at Tall al-`Umayri (1984 onward), at this point the Madaba Plains Project, immediately yielded up a treasure trove of archaeological and architectural data demanding multiple approaches in the project’s research design. These ranged among a continued quest for biblical connections (even if distanced from the need to prove biblical history connected with the exodus and “conquest”) and expanded anthropological and ethnographic explorations (ancient and modern), along with continued attention to paleobotanical and paleozoological phenomena as well as aDNA research and residue analysis. These goals for historical and social reconstruction have been coupled with a spate of new technologies: enhanced photographic/photogrammetric and 3D scanning processes, and an explosion of sophisticated technological advances in GPR, GPS, and digital data harvesting, storage, and open-source access. Beyond these more traditional concerns, acute land-ownership issues have curtailed all archaeological research onsite and recent impulses in community archaeology have nudged the project toward more regional efforts to protect and preserve the Madaba District’s cultural heritage.

As a Christian minister in Conservative Evangelical circles, I have found that the Biblical Prophetic (and Apocalyptic) Texts have been used to simply “predict the comings of Jesus the Messiah.” This creates a distance between reader and prophet as the texts only “point to” a future fulfilling. However, in my writing, teaching, and ministry I have found connections between IPV, SA, and trauma survivors in reading the prophets as the “venting” of a hurt, and suffering God. Rather than viewing the reader at the end of a “pointed or condemning finger” we place the reader alongside a suffering God who speaks from pain, anger, and emotional trauma. Through this view of the prophets (especially the exilic prophets) readers learn not only empathy for survivors but also feel a sense of trauma and hurt as a bystander or witness to power and violent systems. In this presentation I will discuss our work bridging the prophets (including select prophetic/apocalyptic texts) with congregational members, college students, and survivors who seek to apply the difficult Biblical texts to not only confront oppression, but offer healing to those seeking comfort in faith congregations.

In a marvelous passage on artistry in the wisdom literature, the book of Wisdom describes God as a craftsman (ὁ τεχνίτης) who can be discovered analogously (ἀναλόγως) by contemplating (θεωρεῖν) things existing in nature (cf. Wis 13:1–5). Indeed, the lower cosmos is teleologically ordered toward the contemplation of divine things, and the author argues that no one can be excused for failing to discover the Author of beauty as the first cause of the beauty in things. The passage then shifts toward the craft (τεχνή) of idol-making, which stands in contrast to the Creator’s work that fills all things with power and activity. The idol maker engages in an evil craft (κακότεχνος) not recognizing that his life and breath is on loan from the One who fashioned the foolish idol-maker from the clay of the earth (15:4). But human craft itself is not futile, as it is clear that wisdom is the one who crafts (τεχνῖτις δὲ σοφία) the vessel that passes through the sea through divine providence, as in the time of the ark of salvation (Wis 14:1–7; cf. Gen 7:1ff.). Expositors of the book of Wisdom—Bullard and Hatton, Perdue, Holmes, and Bergsma and Pitre—have traditionally described these chapters as a digression or excursus. I argue that such a label misses the point that is fundamentally central to recognizing the logic of the condemnation of idolatry throughout the latter half of the book. It is precisely creation as craftwork that animates the logic of judgment in sacred history. From this section in Wisdom, this essay exegetes the notion of the craft of creation and how human craft is meant to be a participation in the creative work of God. Because the lower cosmos is meant to be filled with beauty, the essay concludes with an evaluation of the consumptive manipulation of nature. I hope to make a compelling case against the technocratic domination of the lower creation. The most fundamental way the lower creation participates in the common good is by their reflection of the divine wisdom. All beings, inasmuch as they are beings, reflect a manifestation of the divine plan. This, of course, applies preeminently to humans made in imago Dei, but also to other creatures in a lower way. There is something more to the cosmos than mere matter, something there that is something deeper than appropriation and consumption of private goods.

In De Genesi contra Manichaeos (Gn. adv. Man.) Augustine provides an extensive response to familiar Manichaean criticisms of Genesis. Toward the end of the second book, Augustine stops to address the Manichaean interpretation of the Serpent in Genesis 3. For the Manichaeans, Augustine says, the Serpent is Christ (2.26.39). This claim, which seems bizarre given the Manichaean rejection of Genesis, might be explained through the elaborate Manichaean cosmogonic narrative, which allows for different iterations in the struggle between the Light and Darkness. However, in this paper I consider how this interpretation reveals Manichaean exegetical principles and how Augustine conceives of and responds to the Manichaean understanding of Christ. To this end, I will review Manichaean exegesis of the Gospel of John. At several points in his writings, such as in De duabus animabus and Gn. adv. Man, Augustine responds to Manichaean citations of the Gospel of John. Moreover, Manichaeans like Adimantus and Faustus both use John’s Gospel in a positive manner to critique ‘catholic’ interpretation of the Old Testament, particularly Genesis. As the Gospel of John employs some of the same imagery as Genesis, it is this exchange that highlights some aspects of Manichaean exegesis of Genesis and Augustine’s response. Moreover, Manichaean uses of John also reveal how the interpretation of the Serpent reflects contours both of the more extensive Manichaean hermeneutic and Manichaean Christology. Beyond discussing exegetical dimensions of Manichaeism and Augustine, this presentation seeks to provide a new approach to the scholarly debate concerning Augustine’s knowledge of Manichaeism, particularly Manichaean Christology. Decret argued that Augustine had a minimal understanding of Nicene Christianity and a modest knowledge of Manichaean Christology. In relation to this observation, Coyle and van Oort contended Augustine’s knowledge of Manichaeism to be minimal or maximal respectively. Through a consideration of the exegesis of Genesis and John, I argue that we gain more insight into Augustine’s complex diagnosis of Manichaeism.

This paper starts from the observation that the online milieu has become a lively place for scholarly debate, but is still not considered as such in scholarship. Nevertheless, parts of the scholarly debate happen nowadays online, in multimodal productions. To illustrate this new situation, we will take Mark 16 as test-case: one can find online videos of Bart Ehrman or Dan Wallace, commenting the famous enigma of the endings of the second Gospel, whereas the Bible Odyssey SBL project has produced a formal interview by Helen Bond on the topic, with the full transcript (https://www.bibleodyssey.org/tools/video-gallery/w/what-is-the-ending-to-marks-gospel). Can such a material be used in research? Is it quotable in details? Can we consider it as reliable material format from a computing point of view? To these concrete questions, more fundamental questions can be added, since the emergence of multimodal material in research could lead to a deep transformation. Indeed, rhetoric has been progressively withdrawn from academic teaching at the 19th century. Leopold von Ranke’s point of view has won during that century: the historical rhetoric must be cleaned up from all emotional features, considered as subjective intrusions. But this Modern evolution is recent: in Antiquity notably, rhetoric and historical discourse were not separated (see e.g. Lucian of Samosates, How to Write History 49). If multimodal online material invites rhetoric back into exegesis, it means a notable change in our usual way to perceive and produce historical discourse. What does it change for Mk 16 exegesis to have now videos of researchers, with the presence of ethos, pathos and logos, from a rhetorical point of view? To consider this question, this paper will compare what scholars tell about Mk 16 by written and by oral, and evaluate the impact of a multimodal expression on the state of the art of Mk 16.

This presentation concerns the textual history of 1 Enoch and originated in Brill's Textual History of the Bible: Textual History of the Deuterocanonical Scriptures.

The debate on the historical conceptualization of the Hebrew language, as reflected by texts from antiquity, has been ongoing in the last two decades. The specific characteristics of Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) have been a particularly pivotal topic. The starting point for the current lecture is the gap that exists between the ‘traditional’ description of the linguistic features of LBH, on the one hand, and the famous declaration by Nehemiah (13:23-24), namely: “Also in those days, I saw the Judeans (that) had married women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab. And their children, half spoke [in the dialect of] Ashdodian, and they do not speak [in the dialect of] Judean...”, on the other. In order to narrow this gap, we take an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of various syntactic phenomena in LBH. We begin with a brief historical survey of the linguistic milieu in the Southern and Central Territories of Palestine during the Persian Period. As various lines of evidence show, beneath the administrative Aramaic remnants one can uncover dynamic relationships between three Canaanite dialects, which correspond to three main administrative units: Edom – Southern Trans-Jorden Canaanite; Ashdod – Northern Coastal Canaanite; Judah – Central Canaanite. These relationships are then re-interpreted based on a historio-geographic approach (for example, as represented by the work of historian Marc Bloch), that emphasizes the assumed correspondence between the current and the historica states-of-affair in a particular geographic domain. We thus superimpose insights from the modern study of Arabic diglossia in general and the study of the multiglotic milieu of current Palestinian Arabic dialects in particular on the findings from LBH. Our premise is that despite many differences between the ancient and modern periods, there are also aspects of similarity that can be used as a theoretical model for understanding historical processes. Among the central aspects of this comparison are the similarities in the following elements: polyglot communities; language contact between close Semitic languages; a description of the dialects according to geographical, social and ethnic aspects; and the diglottic linguistic continuum (Mesolect) between the canonical language (Acrolect) and colloquial varsities (Basilect). Linguistic evidence for the re-interpretation of the Hebrew data from the Second Temple period is provided from different syntactic structures that function in isoglosses investigated in two written corpora (LBH and Phoenician / Punic). We suggest that these isoglosses are an echo of the language contact that occurred at the level of the colloquial spoken varieties. In accordance with Nehemiah’s declaration about the intense language contact between these varieties, we show that these isoglosses do not occur at the periphery of the linguistic system (as compared to Persian), but rather at the very core of that language – that is, in the morpho-syntactic system.

Zechariah 6:9–15 is a useful test case for the criteria and purpose of inner-biblical allusion because it appears to contain numerous allusions to other biblical texts. In the end, this may simply be a mirage. Nevertheless, the appearance of numerous allusions invites attention to this text as a fecund test case. Moreover, Zechariah 6:9–15 contains serious exegetical difficulties and the possibility of solving these difficulties through inner-biblical allusion is appealing. In the end, the potential allusions may only complicate the exegetical difficulties but the possibility of exegetical assistance from inner-biblical allusion is alluring. Therefore, this paper analyzes five potential allusions in Zechariah 6:9–15. First, it analyzes potential allusion between Zechariah’s “branch/shoot” imagery (6:12–13) and Jeremiah’s “branch/shoot” imagery (Jer 23:5–6; 33:15–17). Second, it analyzes potential allusion between Zechariah’s temple-builder (6:12–13) and the temple-builder in the Davidic covenant (2 Sam 7:1–16). Third, it analyzes potential allusion between Zechariah’s returned exiles (6:14–15) and Isaiah’s returned exiles (Isa 43:6; 44:26–28; 49:12; 60:4, and 9). Fourth, it analyzes potential allusion between Zechariah 6:9–15 and Psalm 110. Fifth, it analyzes potential allusion between Zechariah 6:13 and Job 40:10 and Psalm 104:1. Each potential instance of inner-biblical allusion is a matter of plausibility. Thus, in this study, I propose a spectrum of plausible allusions. I argue that the allusion to Jeremiah and Isaiah’s branch/shoot language is highly plausible. I argue that the allusion to the Davidic covenant is plausible. I argue that the allusion to Isaiah 43:6; 44:26–28; 49:12; 60:4, and 9 is relatively plausible. I argue that the allusion to Psalm 110 is possible but uncertain. I argue that the allusion to Job 40:10 and Psalm 104:1 is possible but highly tentative. Thus, the graded scale moves from highly plausible on the one end to highly tentative on the other.

In this paper I will use an ecological hermeneutic with a rhetorical critical methodology in order to examine the depiction of women and Land in Jer 3:1-5. I draw connections between the female body and the fertile Land, which are both identified as being polluted and must suffer punishment for this defilement. The Land becomes a metaphor for the woman’s body which, in turn, is symbolic of the social body. As the indiscretions of the people are transferred – in terms of sexual deviance – onto the woman, so the contamination that resulted from the woman’s wrongdoing is carried over onto the Land. I will argue that within the context of this metaphor, pollution should be understood as a violation of property. As the woman’s pollution violates the husband’s right to exclusive possession of his wife’s sexuality, so the Land’s pollution has violated God’s position as supreme deity and sole owner of the Land. My paper will problematize the violent and coercive relationship between God, Land/woman, and people, before outlining an alternative ecological interpretation of these verses, which understands the Land as co-equal partner with God by sharing in the creative process.

This paper explores the links that connected Corinth to the broader Mediterranean, paying particular attention to evidence for trade, mobility and connectivity. The paper looks specifically at descriptions of movement to and from Corinth and, in particular, at evidence for networks of early Christians.

“Votive” has historically served as catchall designation for apparent archaeological excess at ancient and late antique sanctuaries and shrines. The category tends to include terracotta figurines, anatomical body parts, exuvial or personal items, paintings or other images, inscriptions on tablets or stelae, lamps or other such “utilitarian” pieces, “decorative” items such as textiles and mosaics, and any other objects (particularly if small or crude) of unclear or imprecise function. While the breadth of the category presents opportunities for broader comparative analysis, this paper suggests that the under-theorized label reflects a lingering discomfort regarding the precise status, significance, and function of dedications left at religious sites. Such discomfort is perhaps best reflected in the widely-used designation “ex-voto,” favored because it evokes models of exchange and accounts for textual and inscriptional descriptions of individuals offering up items “on account of a vow.” The designation also allows dedications to fit, if somewhat uneasily, within more contemporary, mostly Protestant models of human-divine interactions—wherein the object is rendered secondary, a mere by-product or physical symbol of an elevated, “spiritual” human-divine exchange. This paper offers a new methodological approach to the study of dedications—one that does not simply treat them as external, material expressions of internal states, but more accurately considers the potentiality and efficacy of the objects themselves. Recently, influenced by the theoretical contributions of “New Materialisms” scholarship, Emma-Jayne Graham and Jessica Hughes (among others) have sought to take seriously the capacity of dedications to act as agents or forces. Nevertheless, questions remain about how to best consider dedications’ material-ritual affordances while still maintaining the capaciousness of the broader category—that is, without returning to or reaffirming inherited classification systems based on form or apparent function. This paper argues that an effective strategy lies in considering dedications as socially, materially, and theoretically related a broader class of efficacious objects. Focusing specifically on the material contexts of late antique saints’ shrines (such as St. Artemios in Constantinople, St. Demetrius in Thessalonike, SS Cyrus and John and St. Menas in Egypt, and St. Simeon Stylites in Syria), it suggests that re-situating dedications within a more expansive network of agential objects at these sites—namely relics, icons, and eulogiae—invites new considerations of their distributed agency, social roles, and transformative and mediatory potential. That is, while it is increasingly common to grant dedications deposited in ritual contexts a certain potentiality, scholars still limit such a potentiality to the individual expression of psychological desires to give thanks or record gratitude. This paper contends instead that dedications, as collaborative agents, might facilitate “presence” across time and space (like relics), act as visual and material mediators of human-divine relationships (like icons), and/or be rendered efficacious through association, contact, and exchange (like eulogiae). Such approaches demonstrate how dedications are both ritually-indexed to individual entities, and yet also constituted in relation to other material and human agents, as well as by their social and spatial environments.

The paper explores the shared mythology between ancient and contemporary renderings of the construction of women. While many have recognized the role of the Greek Pygmalion myth in shaping science fiction accounts of men building women, this paper argues that the mythic creation of the biblical Eve also contributes to sci-fi depictions of artificial women. The paper focuses first on what is arguably the first science fiction novel, L’Eve Future by Auguste Villiers d’Ilse-Adam (1886), before turning to more recent science fiction narratives that feature the construction of artificial women. In tracing the common motifs between the biblical account of Eve’s construction and later depictions of artificial women, I argue that past and present instantiations of this cultural myth of women-building reveal the coalescing of male fascination with and fears of women and technology.

Collections of biblical songs and prayers extracted from their contexts in other biblical books and compiled into anthologies are known as biblical odes. The phenomenon is attested in almost every language with Christian literary remains from antiquity and the Middle Ages (Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic). Despite a family resemblance and some relatively stable component texts, collections of biblical odes differ significantly in contents, sequence, and textual form. The various collections might best be characterized as related instances of an anthological phenomenon rather than a single “work.” This paper surveys the textual history of collections of biblical odes, focusing on the relationship between macroform (the selection and sequence of component texts) and microform (specific linguistic content) across languages and textual traditions. This paper is proposed as part of the session on The Textual History of the Bible, vol. 2, and summarizes the author’s research on collections of biblical odes for that volume.

From the second century onward, early Christians engaged the pluriformity of textualized Gospels in various ways. This paper explores one dynamic of the early Christian bibliographic imaginary: the metaphoric alignment of a fourfold Gospel with the structure of the physical cosmos. Numerous thinkers employ metaphors drawn from meteorology, geography, music, mathematics, and astronomy in order to theorize a library of Gospel literature consisting of precisely four texts. Famously, Irenaeus of Lyon imagines a fourfold Gospel reflected in the physiognomy of the heavenly beings described by Ezekiel and the Apocalypse of John (A.H. 3.11.8). The enormous reception of evangelist symbols, however, obscures the diverse metaphoric spaces in which a fourfold Gospel is negotiated. Irenaeus himself spends considerable time comparing the fourfold Gospel with the meteorological and geographical quadriformity of a cosmos which is governed by four winds and divided into four zones. Ephrem, Hippolytus, and Cyprian, among others, imagine the Gospels in the figure, at once geographic and biblical, of the four Edenic rivers. Eusebius of Caesarea draws on physical, musical, and mathematical idiom to envision a fourfold Gospel as a “holy τετρακτύς” (H.E. 3.25.1). The Gospels are embedded in the structure of the cosmos just like the four elements, a musical fourth, or the first four positive integers which form the basis for Pythagorean numerical theory. The Eusebian canons (which coordinate Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as a unity) continue this imaginative practice by echoing the visual idiom of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables; the structure of the fourfold Gospel corresponds to the order of the heavenly bodies. As these variegated examples illustrate, an early Christian bibliographic imaginary wove a fourfold Gospel into the fabric of a quadriform cosmos. The bibliographic and the cosmic merge: the fourfold Gospel corresponds to the structure of the universe itself.

All six possible orders for subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) are attested in Biblical Aramaic, prompting the description of its word order as “free” (Rosenthal 2006: §183). Various proposals have been made as to either the basic (underlying) or dominant (statistically most frequent) order in BA, including SVO (Bauer and Leander 1927; Hayes 1990), VSO (Buth 1987), VSO derived from an underlying SVO (Lambrecht 2001), and both SVO and SOV (Yakubovich 2011). Complicating the analysis of BA word order is the likelihood of interference with Aramaic syntax through contact with other languages, including verb-final Akkadian and Persian (Kutscher 1970; Folmer 1995) as well as Hebrew. In this paper I adopt the scalar classification between subject-prominent and topic-prominent languages suggested by Li and Thompson (1976) to argue that BA has a basic SVO word order that historically developed from VSO (as BH; see Holmstedt 2013), but that it has been influenced towards topic-prominent ordering through the interference of Akkadian and Persian, the latter of which has been identified as a topic-prominent language (Hale 1988). Adopting the theory of pragmatic word order movement from Holmstedt 2014, I illustrate the explanatory sufficiency of my theory through an analysis of part of Daniel 2.

If texts are living only so long as they interact with readers, how can we reconstruct the lives of texts in the ancient near East? The ancient readers of texts can be very difficult to locate because it is difficult to asses the nature of ancient media. If we detect a reference to another text in the Hebrew Bible, for example, should we envision the author as making this reference to a physical text in his capacity as reader or as making a reference to an oral tradition? To combat this difficulty and harness the many source layers that we can perceive in ancient texts, I suggest that we consider ancient redactors as readers who offer evidence of texts as living and who, in their work, dictate the afterlife of a text by fusing it with other sources. This fusion of sources is a textual re-framing that differs between redactional parties and is especially distinct in the Pentateuch. By understanding redactors as readers, we can come to a better understanding of the lives of ancient texts and a better understanding of redactors s individual agents who carry out their work with individual agendas and purposes.

This paper will both some of the connections between the ways in which economic culture has altered religious-practice in both the ancient and modern worlds. These insights will be used as the basis for a response to the sessions papers.

Scholars who study Christian origins now take for granted that when the earliest Christ-followers assembled, particularly at their community suppers, they adopted and adapted the format and customs of the Greco-Roman social meal. This perspective has led to fresh interpretations of both Christian table rituals and depictions of those rituals in Christian texts. With respect to the eucharistic cup, it has been argued, for example, that the cup is a Christian variation of post-supper libation ceremony (e.g., Christian version of a libation in Luke’s version of the Last Supper), even a protest against the custom of libations to the emperor. This paper re-examines the history of Greek wine ceremonies and suggests that the Synoptic language about Jesus taking a cup and sharing it with the disciples closely resembles a toast (πρόποσις). A methodological principle of the paper is to pay close attention to the dating of evidence for meal customs and their evolution through time.

The single most important deficiency in contemporary understandings of the role of Eve in early Jewish and Christian theology is (arguably) a failure to address adequately the traditions that recount Satan’s seduction of Eve. In spite of the widespread presence of these narratives, in Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic writings, they have been very largely overlooked by much contemporary scholarship. This oversight is problematic because these narratives impute to Eve a far worse crime than merely eating the forbidden fruit. She is implicated in a second seduction where her criminality extends to cuckolding Adam with Satan himself, and then bearing Cain, the evil child of her malfeasance. In this ‘seduction narrative’, Adam is not in any way complicit; he is the innocent victim, and Eve comes increasingly to bear responsibility for two primal crimes. While this narrative is certainly present in later Christian sources (cf. the Protevangelium of James 13, ca. 150 CE; Tertullian, Modesty in Apparel Becoming to Women: De cultu feminarum 1.2; cp. 4 Maccabees 18:7-8), it is arguable that it even underlies parts of the New Testament in passages such as 2 Corinthians 11:2-3, 1 Timothy 2:14, and 1 John 3:12. This paper will present some examples of this ‘seduction narrative’ and then argue that this narrative was indeed known to some of the New Testament authors.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, The Relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament research group

This paper takes up the question of Peter’s “conversion”—or “return”—in Luke-Acts. The event is tersely gestured to by the phrase ποτε ἐπιστρέψας in Luke 22:32, but the adverb ποτε leaves open its timing and nature. To complicate matters, Luke maintains a curious silence about Peter’s conversion in the remainder of his double work. In an important study of Luke 22:31–32, Markus Bockmuehl suggests that the timing of this conversion can be pinpointed: it does not occur in Acts 10—Peter’s rooftop vision of the sheet—nor in his subsequent visit to the house of Cornelius. Rather, on analogy with John 21, Peter is converted after the resurrection in the silent report of Luke 24:34 (ὤφθη Σίμωνι). While Bockmuehl’s argument makes an ingenious intervention, his analysis of the Lukan pericope does not fully satisfy in i) its seemingly punctiliar definition of conversion; ii) its narrative analysis of the relationship of Luke 22:31-33 to John 21:20 and Acts 11:10; and iii) its unpacking of the narratological function of Lukan silences. In the first section of this paper, I will argue that Luke’s silence about the timing of Peter’s conversion suggests that the third evangelist has a more expansive process in mind for Peter’s “conversion.” Rather than referring to a single moment of recognition in Luke 24, Luke is thinking of a variety of turns or conversions—not the least of which is Acts 10–11, where Peter is newly enabled to strengthen “the brothers” (Luke 22:32; Acts 10:23; 11:1). To support this view, I will first construct a picture of gradual, philosophical conversion, using the writings of William James, Arthur Darby Nock, and Philo of Alexandria. I will then supplement this picture with the model of conversion proposed by Bernard Lonergan, SJ, in Method in Theology—one in which both “religious” and “intellectual” conversions are subjectively integrated through a process of “psychological conversion,” which unites the other elements. Something akin to this is conveyed in Luke’s account of the conversion of Peter. In a second section of this paper, I will situate Luke’s silence about the “conversion” of Peter within the framework of the larger Lukan silence about Peter’s martyrdom. Presuming that the story was widely known, I will suggest that the participle ἐπιστρέψας (Luke 22:32) might have signaled to Luke’s readers not only Peter’s conversion, but also his “returning” (cf. Luke 2:39) on a number of levels. Here, I consider potential links between Peter’s “return” and i) the martyrological account of Peter’s return to Rome (Acts of Peter 35, ὑπέστρεψεν εἰς Ῥώμην) from the Quo vadis legend, as well as ii) the tradition of the martyred Peter returning spiritually to exhort early Christian communities pseudepigraphically as a living voice in both Acts and 1 Peter 5:1. Just as Luke views Peter’s conversion as a process rather than a point, so Luke negotiates various ways of construing Peter’s return to strengthen the church—not least through his own composition of Petrine speeches.

The abrupt announcement in Jeremiah 31:26 of one who suddenly awakes from a "pleasant sleep" (ûšǝnātî ‘ārǝbâ lî) is a well-known crux in biblical interpretation. It has been subject to numerous emendations over the years, and among scholars who refrain from emending the text, no consensus exists as to its interpretation. So much so, that after reviewing the various exegetical proposals, John Bright concluded simply: "I confess that I am baffled." The central difficulty concerns the identification of the speaker, for which an array of possibilities have been put forward, ranging from the prophet to a redactor to a casual reader scribbling notes in the margins. Notably absent from recent scholarship, however, is perhaps the most straightforward interpretation—namely, that the speaker is the same as the speaker throughout the rest of chapter 31: Yahweh. The eradication of the divine speaker interpretation can be traced back to Heinrich Graf, who in his influential 1862 commentary argued forcefully against an allusion to divine sleep in Jer 31:26. Evidence from Mesopotamian balag-laments and Hittite prayers to the Storm-god, both of which portray divine sleep as an act of divine anger, allow for a rejoinder to the arguments levied by Graf and others. Particularly noteworthy is the characterization of divine sleep in the Hittite text KUB 36.89 as "pleasant, sweet" (šanezzi-) even as it appears as a manifestation of divine anger, which elucidates the long-held problem of characterizing Yahweh's sleep in the context of the exile as ‛ārǝbâ "pleasant, sweet."

Examining the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed raises some interesting questions regarding what elements of their sources Syriac- and Arabic-speaking Christians heard in the Qur’an. In particular, the passage on Jesus’ crucifixion (Q al-Nisa’ 4:157–158) reverberated with Christian articulations of his crucifixion, death, burial, raising, and appearing, though the particular terms employed are unique to Christians and Muslims. Divisions between miaphysites, dyophysites, and Chalcedonian Melkites meant each community worked out their statements of faith to reflect their particular christology, beginning in Greek and Syriac and moving later into Arabic. As these communities were continuing to dispute confessional differences, the circulation of the Qur’an provided not only a new religious framework but a new religious language. The Creed became a topic of discussion in and of itself in polemical engagements, as Muslims critiqued disagreement about the Creed as evidence of Christianity’s defectiveness. Moreover, the Eastern Christian traditions frequently defended their positions through appeals to creedal phrases, yet the particular terms and word order they employed often differed when they wrote against one another in comparison with their writings against Muslims. This study is a preliminary examination of biblical and conciliar creedal formulations of Jesus’ Passion in Syriac and Arabic before and after the dissemination of the Qur’an, in order to better understand how Christians heard the qur’anic crucifixion account in light of their internal disputes over how to express the person of Christ. Before Islam, Christians debated how to phrase who or what nature died on the cross, boiling down to the question of whether or not one could say “God died.” Muslims home in on this intra-Christian controversy as it related to the crucifixion: divine beings do not die; therefore Jesus cannot be divine. However, some Eastern Christians had already come to speak of Jesus dying in his humanity and not dying in his divinity, or dying in his body but not his spirit. Some began to include “he died” in their articulation of the Creed. In this paper, I first outline the terms and formulaic expressions of Jesus’ death, crucifixion, and resurrection in biblical statements (i.e., not narratives) found in the earliest extant Arabic witnesses of 1 Corinthians 15 and the Acts of the Apostles. Next, I examine how Christians formulated the Creed in Syriac and Arabic before the enculturation of the Qur’an in Narsai, Isho‘yahb III, and a contemporary anonymous Syriac text. The remainder of the study focuses on how three Christian authors—Theodore Abu Qurrah, Severus Ibn Muqaffa‘, and Yahya ibn ‘Adi—presented creedal formulae, comparing and contrasting their expressions when speaking with Christians and Muslims. My initial results indicate shifts in terminology and word order reflecting the clear influence of qur’anic Arabic, as well as the reformulation of intra-Christian christological controversies in light of the Qur’an’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion. That some Christians saw it possible to make these changes and arguments calls for a reconsideration of the divide over the crucifixion itself, as Theodore Abu Qurrah exclaimed about the Muslim and Christian position: “We are right both ways!”

In this paper I survey different manifestations of the notion that archaeology, and the images it produces, serve as sources for “illuminat[ing] the Bible” (Thompson 1987). I begin with the major attempts to think about the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and images in the ancient Near East, especially coming from the Fribourg school and its intellectual descendants. I then move to discuss particular instances of objects (recovered archaeologically) that pose challenges to modern conceptualizations of the word-image nexus and to similar conceptions that inform biblical interpretation. These include the Kuntillet Ajrud pithoi, the Kattumuwa Stele, and the statue of Idrimi. I argue from these and other examples that the theoretical attention given to the question of archaeology and biblical history has been slow in coming to the question of biblical word and ancient image. I lay out some possibilities for greater theoretical and methodological rigor in approaching the question, drawing especially on the work of cultural theorists and art historians (e.g., Mitchell 2015, Squire 2009). I conclude with an exploration of the possibility that the relationship between bible and archaeology be figured as a particular case of the set of text-and-image relationships investigated broadly in the academy. In doing so, I point to other attempts to see these relationships at the level of disciplinary discourse, for example, in Art History (e.g., Elsner 2010). Finally, I attempt to lay out some of the ideological and political ramifications that emerge in so viewing this relationship, and how it is implicated in competing epistemologies in biblical studies.

Having worked in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls for over 30 years, I have witnessed many changes in the field. Two of the most profound have been our understanding of the nature and history of the "biblical" text, and challenges to the "Qumran-Essene Hypothesis," first proposed by scholars such as Frank Moore Cross, Roland de Vaux, and J. T. Milik. My paper will survey both of these questions from the earliest days of Scrolls scholarship to our present understanding. Finally, I will discuss future directions for the field, proposing in particular the final elimination of a separate subfield of "Dead Sea Scrolls" and the integration of the Scrolls into all aspects of the history ancient Israel and early Judaism.

The Apocryphon of John is a sustained rewriting and interpretation of Genesis 1-9. Although Moses is explicitly corrected at five points in the text, Genesis’ account of creation is nonetheless the basis for the Apocryphon’s cosmogony and anthropogony. The ambivalent treatment of the biblical text is especially curious in that Moses is only “corrected” at points where there appears to be little disagreement. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the four extant versions of Ap. John (five if you include Irenaeus’ summary of the first third of the text) reveal that the text is evolving over time and in spite of the critiques of Moses, the redactors appear to return to the biblical text. But is the citation of the biblical text and return to the language in Genesis intentional? The 1998 article by Mark Goodacre, “Fatigue in the Synoptics,” in New Testament Studies 44 (1998): 45-58, may offer helpful insights into the question. In the article, Goodacre explores the impact of editorial fatigue when copying texts. He suggests that as copyists worked deeper into texts they would out of familiarity with the original text return to the wording in the source they were copying, even if it created interpretive problems in the resulting text. This paper will examine the possibility of editorial fatigue in the Apocryphon of John’s retelling of the aftermath of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (NHC II 23,32-37). Both the recognition of nakedness in NHC II 23,32–33 and the cursing of the earth in NHC II 23,37 return to the language found in Gen 3:7-10 and Gen 3:17, respectively. If editorial fatigue explains this return, what does this mean for our understanding of the authorship and audience of the Apocryphon? Note to chair: I think that this paper will work for the session on ancient exegesis of Gen 1-3 or for the session devoted to Karen King. My work with the Apocryphon of John was initially inspired by Professor King’s article, “Approaching the Variants of the Apocryphon of John,” in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 105-37. Many of her books and articles informed the conclusions in my book, The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John: A Diachronic Analysis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). This paper is an extension of that research.

Painters of miracles: sacred networks, narratives and devotional art in Gargano. The Votive Tablets of Saint Matthew’s Sanctuary

This paper approaches the problem of pain in biblical and later Christian sources in light of current neuroscience of pain and emotion. Modern conceptual categories of “pain” and “emotion” are difficult to differentiate on a biological level. Pain, like emotion, does not “exist” in the body, and does not flow through fixed or discrete circuits or pathways. Rather, pain, like emotion, is a “concept” applied by the mind/brain through prediction and cognition, making meaning of bodily affect, sensed and predicted through the interrelated processes of interoception and nociception, alongside exteroception through bodily senses (e.g., Barrett 2017). To feel pain is a conceptual act, terminology I draw from neuroscientist and psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, and is constructed by neurological, psychological, and social forces, including language. This approach to pain and emotion is important for the study of early Christianity and for biblical studies more generally, especially in assessing the past three decades’ attention to pain in the biblical world and the application of more recent conceptual formulations of pain, such as trauma. For example, take the discourse of pain in 2 Corinthians, which has been described as the “painful epistle” or the “therapeutic epistle.” Here, Paul’s lupē looms large, and commentators vary considerably in their interpretation of it, whether it is best rendered as pain, grief, or sorrow. That the Greek word lupē itself incorporates all these meanings, from “bodily” pain to “emotional” sadness, is not a problem for interpretation (Is the pain bodily or emotional? Is lupē better translated as distress or sadness?), but an important window into the conceptual worldview and, thus, lived experience of ancient Christians. It is also not unlike other concepts related to pain and emotion in Greek and Latin (e.g., pathos, passio, dolor), and other ancient languages. The peculiarity lies not in ancient conceptual imprecision, but in modern medicalized concepts of pain. Attention to the overlapping conceptual constructedness of pain and emotion, not to mention related concepts of “thoughts” and “memories,” is relevant to recent historical accounts of martyrology, and to the widely observed changes in pain as a feature of ancient subjectivity or of negotiating imperial power’s encroachment over elite bodies. Scholars of the ancient world may thus be wary of talk of “the body in pain” since the “body” as such does not feel pain; it is the brain (or the mind, or the “person,” as Ariel Glucklich puts it). It should be no surprise that much as emotion forms a matrix for world construction and communication, pain is extraordinarily communicable through language, as Glucklich demonstrates (against assertions of pain’s unique incommunicability). Much as Barrett demonstrates that “[e]motions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world,” pain has incontrovertible power to “make and unmake worlds” (cf. Elaine Scarry). Attention to the neurological, psychological, and conceptual natures of pain and emotion clarifies the way that this construction of worlds played out among ancient Christians.

Despite the fact that many consider Mark to be a Gospel with a particular concern over the Gentiles, most commentators would hesitate in going so far as to say Mark’s Jesus has undertaken a Gentile mission. In fact, some of the more cautious go as far as to state that when Jesus ministers to the Gentiles in Mark, these instances are exceptions rather than “the norm.” Curiously though, many of the echoes of Hebrew Bible that Mark embeds in his Gospel suggest that he is undergirding it with the God of Israel’s care, concern, and arguably even mission to the Gentiles. This paper will evaluate the Gospel of Mark’s use of Jonah and the story of Noah and the flood (Gen 6-9) in Mark 4 and 11, as well as his utilization of the “song of the vineyard” from Isaiah 5 in Mark 12, to argue that Mark’s attention to the Gentiles is more than just instances and exceptions, but that it is perhaps the major point of his entire Gospel.

Recent challenges to ideas of “class” as an analytical category for understanding Galilee at the time of Jesus repeat the similar liberal objections (and interests) that have been made since the nineteenth century: social status was performed in different ways in different contexts and class is, at best, too “reductionist”. While it is clear that people did (and do) self-identify and were (and are) identified according to context, using this approach to define “class” as reductionist and as another identity effectively (and conveniently) avoids the basic materialist sense of the category. If we restore class to its materialist roots in notions of means of production and the socioeconomic relations involved in property, exploitation and struggle, we can instead revitalise its use in the study of Galilee. What this also helps us do is to critique and qualify the discussions (for and against) of class conflict in Galilee beyond speculations of “standard of living” to how urbanisation and significant changes in land use throw up a range of potential reactions. I will highlight this point with particular reference to materialist understandings of so-called “pre-political” millenarianism and its relevance for understanding the historical Jesus.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, enters the biblical narrative burdened by social and economic disadvantages. She is young, poor, and pregnant. The last of these circumstances was severely complicated by the fact that, according to the gospel narrative, she had not yet married Joseph, her betrothed. As Judith S. Musick observes (Young, Poor, and Pregnant: The Psychology of Teenage Motherhood), this combination of hardships creates a certain psychology that engulfs a young woman, leading to the interplay of risk and resilience. The study of these circumstances in the lives of modern teenagers sheds light on the social and psychological burdens that Mary bore. Bearing a child in antiquity was, in itself, perilous. The addition of youth, poverty, and social stigma exacerbated an already dangerous situation. This paper will examine the circumstances that Mary faced, moving from more general to more particular. (1) Female: The ancient world, even more than the modern one, was male-dominated. Women faced disadvantages as a biological accident of birth. (2) Young: In accord with Jewish norms at the time, Mary was almost certainly a teenager, possibly even a pre-teen. This would entail fewer resources and less life experience, although a first century Jewish girl might have a greater communal network than many “young, poor, and pregnant” girls in the modern world. (3) Poor: Even apart from the hardships attending pregnancy, Mary seems to have belonged to a lower echelon of society. While perhaps not a “peasant,” as was sometimes assumed by an earlier generation of scholarship, Mary’s family belonged to the modest economic level of artisans and laborers. (4) Pregnant: In the modern world, pregnancy has attendant risks of illness or death, much more so in the ancient world. It complicated economic and social independence or made them impossible. (5) Engulfed in Scandal: The final circumstance was probably the most challenging in terms of Mary’s psychology and social network. Regardless of the nature of her pregnancy – the Gospel account obviously differing from the social perception – Mary had to deal with the stigma of an irregular and seemingly illicit pregnancy. How was this circumstance like and unlike the dilemma faced by modern women who are “young, poor, and pregnant”? Is this situation ever welcome or empowering? Is Mary’s response one of resistance? reluctance? resignation? resolution? Finally, the psychological categories of guilt and shame will be compared with the anthropological categories of honor and shame. Definitions of and distinctions between these terms will be offered, especially vis-à-vis sexuality and pregnancy. Here I will draw upon the resources of June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing (Shame and Guilt) and the abundant bibliography on honor and shame in biblical interpretation. Which of these social and psychological states did Mary experience, and what was her strategy for dealing with them?

This presentation will review Gail O'Day's contributions to the interpretation of the Gospel of John with special attention to her Commentary on the Gospel of John in the New Interpreter's Bible (1996).

During the 1962 excavations at the synagogue at Ostia, two mold-made terracotta votive statuettes came to light (Ost. Inv. 12540, 12541). Although they were known from archival photographs, they have never been published. Two type-written inventory cards provide the precise context of their discovery in a trench by the door of the passage between the corridor and the meeting hall, beneath the packed-earth level designated as the “fourth surface.” The card of each statuette indicates that it was found together with the other. This paper first presents an iconographical and functional interpretation of the figurines before assessing the significance of their findspot in the synagogue. The first statuette is a representation of a nude, veiled Venus flanked by her sons Eros and Priapus. For this figurine we have identified precise comparanda from contexts dating to the first century C.E. The second statuette is more enigmatic; it is a representation of a barefoot, bareheaded young man wearing a belted tunic. In his left hand he holds a patera and in his right he holds a bucket of fruit (grapes?). He carries a wicker, half-ovoid rucksack on his back. The youthful countenance, the short curly hair, and the belted tunic suggest that this young man represents a Lar. Lares are often depicted carrying a patera and a cornucopia; in this case, a simple bucket of fruit replaces the more elaborate cornucopia. The proximity of these statuettes, discovered in the same context, suggest that they represented part of a group from a lararium. Statuettes of gods and goddesses are frequently in the shrines along with the twin Lares, but Venus is by far the most common. The presence of lararium figurines in an ancient synagogue requires careful examination, because Jewish law prohibited the use of idols. The final portion of the presentation turns to an analysis of the precise find-spot of the statuettes based on a comparison of the stratigraphy we identified in 2011 when the Ostia Synagogue Project excavated in the area adjacent to the trench in which the objects were found. The context in which the statuettes were discovered appears to be a floor that was in use in a very early phase of the building.

The Redescribing Christian Origins seminar has prided itself in “problematizing current consensus views” and “unexamined assumptions” in the field of Christian Origins. But what happens when a consensus or canon begins to form within the seminar itself? One cannot think of Redescribing Christian Origins without the names Burton Mack, J. Z. Smith, Ron Cameron, etc. coming to mind. Not only have these scholars figured prominently as contributors to the sessions and publications themselves, but their work is continually cited throughout in recent years’ sessions. While the impact of these influential scholars should not be understated, emphasizing the contributions or methodologies of the same set of scholars runs the risk of isolating the work of the unit from other contemporary approaches. In other words, if we are always looking back, how can we look forward? While prevalent in other sections of the SBL and the field of Christian Origins in general, gender critical approaches have not been seriously considered in this seminar. This paper reconsiders the original ending of the Gospel of Mark through the lens of gender analysis to demonstrate how effective these types of approaches can be for the overall redescription project of the seminar.

The myriad exegetical issues attending Jesus’ logion at John 7:37-39 cannot be resolved beyond question. They do, however, allow several options for the referent and imagery in this saying that have not been (fully) explored; and in the interests of evoking further discussion this papers suggests three. First, that, when seen in its broader biblical and Johannine contexts, the phrase conventionally rendered ‘from his belly’ (ek tes koilias autou) denotes something proceeding from the loins/womb and refers, not to Christ or the believer, but to the Spirit—that is, ‘from the Spirit’s womb’. Second, that the motif ‘rivers of living water’ derives from what J. van Dijk identified as the ‘chthonic’ (over against Chaoskampf) creation myth and, thereby, thematically coincides with the motif of ‘new birth’ in the phrase ek tes koilias autou. And last, that the juxtaposition of two such disparate motifs (the natal and the chthonic) reflects a dynamic that would later serve as the hallmark of surrealism and is, in fact, not foreign to the Fourth Gospel’s repertoire of images: at John 1:51 Jesus similarly speaks of angels ‘ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’.

Scholars once read the Acts of Paul and Theclas as a “gynocentric” text circulated by female ascetics. In recent decades, they have explored how gender figures in it rhetorically to promote sexual asceticism. Thecla’s gender transformation marks, it has been argued, her social transition moving from a feminized virgin to a masculinized sexual ascetic by the text’s end. What such readings regularly notice, but less regularly account for, are the curious gaps and contradictions around gender and desire that redound in this colorful tale, such as: Thecla’s seeming erotic attachment to Paul; Paul’s initial support for and then sudden and repeated abandonment of Thecla when danger looms; Thecla’s threat that she will “cut her hair” so that Paul might baptize her (a threat that she does not pursue; she is able to baptize herself in a pool of ferocious seals); the text’s repeated (prurient?) attention to Thecla’s nakedness; and the text’s privileging of mother-daughter networks, Thecla and Queen Tryphaena and Thecla and her own mother. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, ultimately, provides a complex commentary on gender and desire. This paper asks: are these narrative tensions a reading of Paul’s own confounding statements on gender and sexuality in 1 Corinthians? Scholars have presumed that Paul’s appearance in this text to be positive, a source of authorization for a gospel of chastity. Thus, Dale Martin argues that Paul appears “to promote a woman-centered, though admittedly androgynous, form of ascetic Christianity set up in direct opposition to the male-dominated, traditional household as promoted…by the Pastoral Epistles” (Sex and the Single Savior, 116). On this account, the Acts of Paul and Thecla cuts through the tensions in Paul’s discourse by emphasizing his pro-ascetic statements, where texts like 1 Timothy amplify Paul’s concessions to marriage. This paper considers the Acts of Paul and Thecla as participating in a more complicated hermeneutic, which can be traced in other contemporaneous early Christian texts. Benjamin Dunning’s Specters of Paul reveals how a series of early Christian readers of Paul’s letters grappled with the apostle’s tensive constructions of sexual difference, ultimately leaving their own accounts of difference unresolved. Taking a somewhat different approach to Dunning, I suggest that the Acts of Paul and Thecla reads Paul, but perhaps not in a complementary way. Considering whether satirizing the apostle was its initial design, I show that certainly some early readers of the text understood it as engaging with and exposing Paul’s discourse on eroticism and gender as ambiguous, so as to undermine it. The paper offers initial conclusions about what sustained this satirical reading (one that can account for this narrative’s circulation independent of the larger Acts of Paul). Tertullian’s use of Paul’s letters in his inter-communal debates about gender and sexuality provides historical clues as to what motivated the drive to present Paul not as an authority, as scholars have often assumed, but rather as a caricature.

The field of gender and ancient Israel has come a long way in the last forty years, incorporating many different methodological twists and literary turns. Perspectives vary as to the rightful focus of investigations, questioning whether the “objects” of study should be actual ancient women and their material culture or the ideologies of gender inscribed in the textual record. In the last several years, artifacts have resumed an important role in these inquiries but in a new way. Instead of using artifacts merely to reconstruct the lives of ancient women, studies have increasingly adopted theories from the fields of visual studies and material religion to approach artifacts as structuring agents that create and influence human identities. Borrowing theoretical positions from Bourdieu and other modern theorists, these approaches purportedly bypass the tricky task of reconstructing ancient women’s intentions and interiors, using, instead, the formal characteristics of objects to establish how individuals would be structured by them. While these methods are producing creative research, now is the moment to investigate their theoretical underpinnings more thoroughly, lest we inadvertently cloak an overly positivistic historiographic enterprise in an aura of theoretical mystery. To that end, this paper will briefly review the main approaches to material culture in the study of history and gender, summarizing some of the primary historiographic problems. The paper will then discuss the influence of material religion in the field and the necessary baseline of data needed to do this analysis well. Finally, the paper will use the case of figurines to illustrate some of the pitfalls that could emerge when either the data are too weak or the methods too undertheorized to accomplish the goals of analysis.

BM 40474 was published by Irving Finkel (1999), translated again by Foster (2005), and re-edited by Oshima (2011). The tablet contains the prayer of Nabû-šuma-ukīn the son of Nebuchadnezzar II. This text promises to be an informative parallel to the biblical psalms. Past research in comparing Mesopotamian prayers with the biblical psalms of lament has often focused on the incantation-prayers, a group of prayers that were used in a variety of rituals by ritual specialists, like the āšipu. There are some important differences between the incantation-prayer corpus and the biblical psalms that make BM 40474 such an interesting parallel. Although both incantation-prayers and the biblical psalms are often put in the first-person voice of the supplicant, they understand their origins in very different ways. The incantation-prayers are considered to be part of āšipūtu, revealed to humankind by the gods; whereas many of the biblical psalms are assumed to have their genesis in specific situations in the life of King David. BM 40474 claims, like the psalms, to be used by a royal figure at a specific biographical moment. BM 40474 indicates the existence of a genre of prayer that was composed for and tied to specific life situations that was different than the mere personalization of incantation-prayers. Additionally, the biblical psalms often mention human enemies, unlike incantation-prayers which, if they talk about other human beings, refer to them as witches and warlocks, users of black magic. In BM 40474, however, human adversaries are front and center, not for their use of illicit magic, but for their deceit and slander. Even though this was ostensibly used for a specific situation in Nabû-šuma-ukīn’s life, the description and language are vague enough to be applicable elsewhere. This paper will explore the points of contrast and comparison between BM 40474 and the biblical psalms of laments. In particular, this cuneiform parallel may offer a closer glimpse at the genre that the editors of the Book of Psalms had in mind as they attached so many prayers to King David.

Sarai and Abram’s ill-fated journey into Egypt in Genesis 12 and 20, and the possibility of scandal swirling around Sarai’s body as a result of that journey, is deeply problematic. What, exactly, happened to Sarai in Pharaoh’s house? If such silence is difficult for the modern commentator, it was deafening for the ancient mindset that guarded the female body and its would-be progeny with a jealous gaze. My purpose is to examine 1QapGen’s embellishments of the biblical accounts, especially the new poem dedicated to a description of the minutiae of Sarai’s body. From the perspective of body theory and new materialism, this expanded description of Sarai’s body is most telling. Scholars such as Elizabeth Grosz and Samantha Frost have destabilized the entrenched mind/body dualism—a dualism that strips from the body any superior value—by demonstrating each body’s agency in its specific environment. And indeed, in the Genesis Apocryphon, the human body generally and the female body especially function as the central plot point at every turn. It is the needs of the body—survival—that necessitate the journey to Egypt and Abram’s deception. It is the possible danger posed to Sarai’s body that triggers exegetical maneuvering. And it is a description of Sarai’s body that assists in assuaging androcentric angst. Theorizing the body as an agent in its historical and literary contexts clarifies not only the characters’ movement within the story but also their movement across multi-generational retellings.

A marginal, though nevertheless lively, debate has ensued over the last three decades concerning the meaning of the term προστάτις in Rom 16:2. The debate is found explicitly in articles and commentaries on Romans and has factored into the wider controversy of the roles of women in churches established by Paul and, by extension, women’s roles in churches today. But one can also observe a more implicit debate, or perhaps trajectory, that has taken place in the understanding of this term in the major Greek New Testament lexicons and Bible translations, where various meanings and renderings betray its ambiguity. In this paper, I will trace and evaluate the history of the treatment of προστάτις in several major Greek lexicons to demonstrate how they have contributed to the present scholarly consensus on this term—that is, how they have over time narrowed the possible senses this word can have through separation from its masculine counterpart and through elimination of potential senses. Then, based on my own lexicographical analysis of the term, I will demonstrate that the various senses that προστάτις could take on in Hellenistic Greek have not all been fairly considered. To accomplish this, I first show how scholarship on the patron-client relationship in antiquity has come to dominate the discussion of προστάτις and that this in some ways has obscured the possible senses of this term. Then, I will argue that one rendering of the term is just as viable as the other renderings that have enjoyed popularity—namely, “protectress” or “guardian,” which bears significant implications on the interpretation of Rom 16:2 and the particularities of Phoebe’s relationship to Paul. These matters, too, will be briefly explored. As methodological parameters for this study, I will assume a lexical monosemic bias—that is, the notion that words, rather than being polysemous (i.e., having multiple inherent meanings), have a single, highly abstract meaning, but where this meaning can be modulated to assume different senses according to how words are contextualized and routinely used by language communities. Further, the concepts of text semantics and thematic formations as developed by systemic-functional linguist Jay Lemke will be employed as interpretive tools to socially locate the potential meaning of προστάτις in the context of Paul’s recommendation of Phoebe to the church in Rome.

This paper will argue that Isa 65:25 is a passage that dialogues with the earlier Isa 11:6-9 and Gen 3:14. Although the intertextual links with Isa 11:6-9 are clear, scholars do not agree on an intertextual link of Isa 65:25 with Gen 3:14. The paper will argue that there is indeed a link between these two passages, not only because the combination of “serpent + dust” appears only in Gen 3:14/Isa 65:25 – Micah 7:17 does not apply here because the parallel line “like the crawling things” suggests that “the snake” should be taken as a collective plural, thus speaking of “snakes” in general – but also because of a shared view of the “snake” as a symbol of evil. The author of Isa 65:25, therefore, while dialoguing with Isa 11:6-9, has an eye on Gen 3:14. The paper will argue (following Childs) that Isa 65 is an “… eschatological return to the primordial age.” This return is made explicit in the insertion of “as for the serpent, dust will be its food,” which is lacking in Isa 11:6-9. The paper will then finish with diachronic considerations, advancing that Isa 65:25 post-dates Isa 11:6-9 and that its scribe comes from the same circles as the one who composed Gen 3:14. The main difference between the two circles is that in Gen 3:14 the snake “eats dust” as the result of a curse imposition, while Isa 65:25 envisions a new creation in which the snake appears subjugated from the start, certainly as a symbol of the defeat of evil. Bibliography Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah (OTL; Louisville: John Knox Press, 2001). Odil Hannes Steck, “: '... ein kleiner Knabe kann sie leiten': Beobachtungen zum Tierfrieden in Jesaja 11,6-8 und 65,25” in Alttestamentlicher Glaube und biblische Theologie: Festschrift für Horst Dietrich Preuss zum 65 Geburtstag (1992): 104-113. Robert Martin-Achard, “L' espérance des croyants d'Israël face a là mort selon Esaïe 65,16c-25 et selon Daniel 12,1-2,” Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses 59:3/4 (1979): 439-451.

This paper analyses how forms of embodied experiences (i.e., vices and virtues) are personified as demons or other spiritual beings in second- and early third-century Christian texts. This interpretative step was a new development in the ontological understanding of demonic and angelic beings in Judaism and Christianity. The Shepherd of Hermas, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Origen’s Homilies on Joshua all reify specific psychological processes as spiritual beings. These three works build in various ways on Second Temple Jewish conceptualizations of evil and demonic beings, creating a collection of non-human forces that influence the individual. These authors are arguably theorising and theologising similar situations to those that led to the Rabbinic idea of two yetzerim, yet postulate a fundamentally different ontological solution. They focus on the imagery of a human mind that should remain neutral, yet is constantly under the influence of non-human, demonified vices, and as such these three texts represent an important step in the conceptualisation of evil in ancient Christianity. In this paper, I explore the link between texts and experience by examining the way evil spirits are presented as the personification of vices in early Christian texts. I also contrast and compare the ways these three specific authors uniquely undertake this ontological task. For instance, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs locates demons in specific parts of the human body, the Shepherd of Hermas creates a dualistic system of mutually incompatible, reified spiritual beings, and Origen creates a hierarchy of vice-demons. An exploration of these texts will give us deeper insight into the diverse ways ancient Christians conceived of the nature and characteristics of demonic beings, offering a nuanced understanding of their demonology that has not previously been considered.

Studying possible conceptions of nature in literature and iconography requires methodological considerations; it is an interdisciplinary, hermeneutical endeavour. Besides the question of whether one can speak about a concept of nature while respecting the ‘Eigenbegrifflichkeit’, there is the epistemological task of outlining the requirements for approaching the perception of our ancient fellow human beings. This paper considers feasibility of studying the ancients’ perception of natural phenomena and possibly their sense of symbolism paired with it by taking the perspective of the text—image—artefact connection, as interdisciplinary studied in cognitive science, art history, archaeology and their applications in biblical studies.

This paper presents two novel linguistic indicators for the identification of literary text types in the Hebrew Bible: clause length and part of speech distribution. It uses corpus-based linguistic methods to study the distinctiveness of Biblical Hebrew poetry. Since the twelfth century it is argued that the “shortness of the verses […] is the marked characteristic of the greater part of [Psalms, Proverbs, and Job]” (Wickes 1881, 8–9). In a first experiment, I describe how clause length and clause length consistency predict how poetic texts are with far more explanatory power and more intuitive results than verse length or line length. Although verse length sets books such as Job, Proverbs, and Psalms apart from the remainder of the corpus, it only captures poeticity to a very limited extent. Clause length and clause length consistency are more fine-grained, linguistic measures: clause length is an inherent linguistic property of the text and not the transmission process. Clause length reflects both syntactic and semantic complexity and it varies with the informative or imaginative goals of a text. This experiment distinguishes predominantly poetic literary text types from non-poetic texts. In a second experiment, I present the results of a promising method that uses parts of speech to identify literary text types. This model extracts meaningful correlations between specific parts of speech and specific text types. These correlations are visualised into higher-dimensional spaces that allow the researcher to visibly distinguish text types from each other whilst also obtaining crucial data about the linguistic features that make up the core elements of the Bible’s genres. This innovative approach has multiple advantages over and against often used linguistic features in Biblical genre theory. The linguistic features of both experiments have significant exploratory and explanatory power.

An apocalyptic scene or discourse may be defined as the direct unveiling or disclosure of divine secrets to a human being. The word “direct” in this definition refers to visions, dreams, or pronouncements by a heavenly intermediary. The secrets revealed may be purely heavenly in nature, such as a glimpse of God’s glory, or they may be heavenly realities with correlative components or effects on earth. Apocalypticism then is not extra-historical or a-historical but seeks to understand history in light of the divine plan. From this perspective, Acts includes many apocalyptic moments of direct revelation. This paper investigates appearances by angels and the visionary experiences of characters in Acts, considering the political dimensions of these apocalyptic elements in the narrative.

In the introduction to his new translation of the Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter is quite explicit about the task he set himself: “The present translation is an experiment in re-presenting the Bible in a language that conveys with some precision the semantic nuances and the lively orchestration of literary effects of the Hebrew and at the same time has stylistic and rhythmic integrity as literary English.” Alter explains this in more detail in the introduction and in his book The Art of Bible Translation, with explicit criticisms of other English translations. This paper will explore Alter’s own norms for translation and how he has applied them, with special attention to Hebrew and English word order, as well as what Bible translators can learn from Alter’s translation.

Leonard Greenspoon and Septuagint Studies

Whereas the topic of emotions in the Book of Esther has been thoroughly studied, the correlation between emotions and leadership needs some further scrutiny. Moreover, the paper will analyse how the MT portrayed the promotion procedure as applied to Haman and Mordecai and how respectively the Old Greek rendered and the AT reworked these promotion procedures.

Joshua 1:4 describes the so-called Euphratic Israel, an idealistic territory that we encounter in Gen 15:18 for the first time. It is repeated in Deut 1:7 but does not occur very often in the Hebrew Bible. In the book of Joshua, it is the only occurrence. All other descriptions of the land differ from it. There is another peculiarity in Joshua 1. Within this chapter, we encounter two perspectives. “The other side of the Jordan” can refer to the territory to the west of the Jordan but also to that to the east of this river. Can territorial depictions and perspectives betray anything about the redaction-history of Joshua 1 within its smaller and wider context?

It is a remarkable though rarely remarked fact that the verbal paradigms supplied in grammars are not Tiberian Hebrew. As Gesenius notes, to take on example, the hithpael should properly be renamed the hithpaal based on the Tiberian data. How to resolve such confusion is the burden of this paper. Among the big facts of Tiberian Hebrew phonology, those facts that a theory worthy of consideration must address directly, the biggest is the characteristic pausal alternations. It is not simply that an actual Tiberian paradigm would consist of pausal forms only, since a native speaker would assuredly produce a pausal form in isolation. It is not simply that the pausal forms are necessarily both derivationally and historically primary. Crucially, it is the pausal phonology that maintains phonemic contrasts that are subsequently lost when pause is lost. Thus, another big fact is that there is necessarily at least a fourfold phonemic contrast among Tiberian Hebrew vowels: /i, e, o, u/. On this view, there is no Canaanite Shift, rather there is the loss of the contrastive low front vowel *e in pause. The second part of the paper examines specifically the pausal alternations in the third person of the past tense. On the basis of the facts outlined, the seemingly arbitrary vowel reflexes in the qal stative, piel and hithpa'al are shown to be perfectly regular. Arising from the confusion is instead a robust lexico-semantic contrast. In addition to the regular alternations of a binyan and its characteristic vowel, there is revealed a class of verbal roots that cuts across the binyanim, characterized by an invariant [e] = /i/. Here the Tiberian Hebrew piel provides extensive and systematic evidence for the lexical contrast, which naturally extends to the hithpaal. In conclusion, the interaction of the phonological and lexical classes identified in the Tiberian Hebrew piel past tense is briefly considered in light of Ernst Jenni's study of the lexical classification in the Hebrew piel.

Book Five of the Psalter is an interesting collection of psalms. After the opening Psalm 107, celebrating God’s rescue of humanity from various dangerous situations, psalms attributed to David appear again after a virtual absence since Book Two. These Davidic psalms (Pss 108-110 and 138-145) “frame” a grouping of festival psalms that are introduced by two brief alphabetic acrostics (Pss 111 and 112). Seemingly tucked away just after the Songs of Ascents (Pss 120-134), and before the resumption of psalms of David, lie Psalms 135-137, two magnificent community hymns followed by a heartfelt community lament. This essay will explore the role of these psalms in the “shape” and “shaping” of the story of the Psalter. It will conclude that the psalms offer a highly stylized recitation of Israel’s history that made a world for the postexilic community, recounting Yahweh’s work in creation, summarizing the Pentateuchal stories of the ancestors (Pss 135-136) and providing a snapshot of exilic life in Babylon (Ps 137). Their assurance of Yahweh’s presence and provisions allow David, in Psalms 138-145, to lead the people in blessing, praise, and thanks to the sovereign God.

This paper investigates how modern scholars characterize Yahweh and Aššur in order to explore a network of unstated assumptions that implicitly informs comparative studies. Already in the late 19th century scholars adduced similarities in ancient portraits of the two gods, including: (1) an association with a centralized cult city (Jerusalem and Aššur, respectively); (2) social distancing from other deities and supernatural beings (apparent in, e.g., their respective bachelorhood); (3) the use of martial imagery to figure each god. More recently, scholars have explored how texts from Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah directly engage Assyrian imperial ideology in their characterization of Yahweh. Despite a general consensus on these points of similarity and even direct dependence, scholars evaluate the personalities of the two gods very differently. Aššur’s elevation over other deities is seen as a simple reflection of the Assyrian empire, making him, in essence, a hypostasis of the human Assyrian king. By contrast, Yahweh’s similar elevation is seen as a form of abstract transcendence over the political realm. This characterization of a terrestrial Aššur and transcendent Yahweh provides a concrete example of how our comparative method remains implicitly indebted to an Orientalist paradigm in which Assyrians were viewed as incapable of abstract or creative thought. In addition, the continued characterization of Yahweh as transcendent reveals an aesthetic preference even among secular scholars for monotheistic religions. I conclude that responsible comparative work requires critically engaging our own social and historical context to avoid prejudicing our selection and analysis of data.

The main characteristics of the Masorah of the Cairo Codex of the Prophets in Perez-Castro's edition will be explained. Moreover, it will be shown in a practical way how to use it.

The sixth-century pilgrimage church of Bir Ftouha at Carthage was excavated systematically from 1994–1999, which is when the majority of extant mosaic pavements within the nave and auxiliary liturgical spaces, such as the baptistery, were discovered. However, several of the finest figural examples from the eastern end of the church, most likely from the peristyle adjacent to the baptistery, had already been removed after they were discovered by accident in 1895 and subsequently excavated by Paul Gauckler in 1897. Those fragments—now distributed between French and Tunisian collections—show scenes of confronted deer (one stag, one doe) either kneeling or standing before the mountain of paradise, drinking from the four rivers of paradise that flow outward across the implied landscape of Eden. The fragments, though small, suggest a recurring theme of the Garden of Eden in or around the baptismal space at Bir Ftouha. And with the more systematic excavations of the late-1990s, a far more comprehensive picture of early Christian theological and iconographical tropes in the eastern end of the church can be reconstructed. The deer and rivers of paradise motifs were integrated strategically into a patchwork of other singular motifs of flowers, birds and other animals, and kantharos or krater fountains on the floor that functioned as synecdoches of paradise. The eastern mosaics within the church, therefore, offered to pilgrims receiving baptism at the church a processional roadmap that connected the space of the baptistery—where baptismal initiates were cast as new Adams and Eves in a prelapsarian Garden of Eden—to the adjacent nave and likely also the location of the high altar, where they would have received their first eucharist after the ritual initiation. Using Gauckler’s archival reports, the archaeological investigations of the 1990s, and comparative studies of paradisiacal motifs in other contemporaneous Tunisian baptisteries, this paper seeks to elucidate a comprehensive ritual program within the visual repertoire of Bir Ftouha.

This paper analyses how ancient readers with a Hellenistic education could understand Jesus’s words and deeds in John 6. Jesus is described not only as a new Moses but as an ideal sage in the early Roman Imperial period. Many of Johannine Jesus’s characteristics point this out. He is the one who renounces the glorification of men and rulers (6:15; Plutarch, Virt. prof. 77e), while his opponents, like the sophists, seek human recognition (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 55.7). For this reason, Jesus resignates as the people want to make him king (6:15) and later he appears again to offer men the “true bread”, thus to bring them to the knowledge of the truth. Like Platonic Socrates, Johannine Jesus compares physical hunger and thirst with the mental states of ignorance and folly (Resp. 9.587; Plutarch, Virt. prof. 77a-c.) and reveals the truth by engaging his interlocutors in cooperative argumentative dialogue. Similarly, Jesus appears as a physician in a literal (6:2) and metaphorical sense (12:40) for he offers his body and flesh as a medicine that prevents its partakers from dying (6:54) in a time when philosophy is described as medicine leading to immortality (Philo, Opif. 77) and the philosopher becomes as a doctor according to the Socratic model (Plato, Resp. 4.444c–d; Plutarch, Tu. san. 122c-e.; Musonius, Diatr. 3.61–65) This profile fits the author’s (or authors’) intention to transcend boundaries between ritual-material and abstract-spiritual reality in the Bread of Life Speech. The author offers an amalgam of biblical, ritual and philosophical elements similar to the Logos-sophical speculations of Philo. The divine Logos is understood by Philo as Manna (Her 79.191; Leg. 3:175) or as a metaphorical drink of the soul (Leg. 2:86; Somn. 2:249) for the soul needs heavenly foods and contemplation (Leg. 3:162). However, Philo did not exclude rituals from contemplative life but interpreted them philosophically. This is due to the fact that mixed forms of philosophical religion emerged in the Roman Imperial era (Luipold 2009) where the combination of philosophical life with participation in the rituals can be observed and material reality is understood in more positive way (Plutarch, Septem sap. conv. 146b-164d; Philodemus, De pietate (pars i), 26–27). Against this backdrop, it is not necessary to omit parts of chapter 6 as later additions or to prefer only one interpretation of John 6:51–58, either in relation to the practice of the communal meal or with regard to the role of the Spirit or faith in Christ. The author of John 6 delivers an amalgam that combines diverse biblical, ritual and theosophical aspects and simultaneously creates new ideas. The reflections in Jn 6 combine revelatory-historical and metaphorical concepts in a more radical way than the one that can be attested in the works of Plutarch or Philo. The Johannine amalgam can be conventionally described as a form of „cultural hybridity” as it transcends the dichotomy between philosophy and religion or the trichotomy between Hellenism, Early Christianity and Judaism and provides new concepts with a solid Christological foundation.

The portrayal of gender in the many fascinating texts of ancient Christian North Africa may seem to have an exemplar ad nauseam in the narrative Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis. After all, with an enthusiasm received by modern scholars as nearly voyeuristic, this early third-century account depicts the suffering of two female martyrs in multiple graphic scenes. Such portrayals initially could appear to participate in the generic suffering-as-subversion motif so often ascribed to early Christian martyr accounts. Within such an interpretation, the female martyrs’ bodies go on exhibition as insubordinate displays of ‘manly’ endurance. The Passio as a whole, however, may complicate the matter: the construction of gender throughout its narrative is far from a dichromatic activity. Instead, as was the case within the account’s wider social contexts, gender inherently and inextricably occupied another paradigm: that of socio-economic status. That is, for example, the body and experiences of the female slave are simply not perceived or portrayed in the same way as the body and experiences of the female matron. When the Passio narrative is examined within these wider frameworks, several different constructions of gender, particularly that of the female, can be observed. There are no straightforward presentations of ‘the suffering of the female body’, but distinct portrayals of distinct females. There is no one interpretation of the victory of the suffering woman in this text, but divergent interpretive explanations of the endurance of different women. This paper will present such a reading by addressing various scenes in the Passio that reveal intriguing contrasts between the narrator’s depictions of the suffering of two women, Perpetua and Felicitas. This exploration draws from and can contribute to various interrelated conversations among scholars, not only regarding early Christian identities within the constellations of their cultural settings, particularly socio-economic norms, but also (more broadly) gender studies in antiquity.

One hundred years ago, Albrecht Alt reconstructed a Judahite counteroffensive during the Syro-Ephraimite War on the basis of Hos 5:8–10, which begins “Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah.” By dividing the verses into short separate oracles and with the help of some textual emendations, Alt was able to reconstruct a series of events during this alleged campaign that took place over the course of several months. Alt also traced Hosea’s reaction to these events, as Judah (rightly) retook its former Benjaminite territory from Israel, but then shortly thereafter (wrongly) pressed on into historically Ephraimite territory. While no scholar follows Alt in all of the particulars of his reconstruction, his work has served as the starting point for almost any examination of the passage since then and his general conclusion that these verses represent a Judahite campaign into the Northern Kingdom during the Syro-Ephraimite War remains the majority position. This paper explores three issues regarding this alleged campaign and the biblical texts used to support its existence: First, it lays out the evidence that any such counteroffensive ever existed and concludes that the campaign is spun entirely out of these three verses in Hosea, circumstantial evidence, and scholarly speculation. Second, the paper proposes an alternative date for the oracle, during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, which better aligns with the general picture of the historical relationship between Judah and Israel over the course of the second half of the eighth century. Finally, it explores methodological issues at play in using prophetic oracles as historical data, especially how the originally oral nature of prophecy and the scribal activity that transformed oral performance into written text impacts how we are to conceive of the phenomenon of written prophecy and in what ways we can and cannot (or at least should not) use it for historical purposes.

For the past two years, Aristeas has marked the end of his week with a communal meal, surrounded by fellow textile workers in the city of Ephesus. The meal itself is nothing special—bread, olives, and wine constitute the spread—but the conviviality that Aristeas enjoys in these weekly association meetings has begun to make him feel like he has a support network again. Of course he has always had his partner, Cornelia, at his side: they met as teens and were manumitted ten years ago when their master died. This was around the time that the Emperor Nero assumed the throne. Those first few years after the passing of their pater were rough, but they managed to scrape by using the skills they had acquired as slaves. They quickly found employment in the textile industry, with Aristeas working as a wool weaver and Cornelia as a seamstress. Three years ago, Aristeas and Cornelia moved to Ephesus with their son in tow. Aristeas, chatty and outgoing, became well acquainted with the other weavers in town, and he soon joined the local association of textile workers, finding great collegiality in this fold. The pater of the association is a generous and well respected man, and he reminds Aristeas of his former master. Aristeas is hopeful that being a member of this association will enable him to steadily increase his earnings and provide support for his son’s education. Meanwhile, Aristeas’ partner, Cornelia, has found a new support network as well. In seeking treatment for chronic abdominal pain, Cornelia has met Phoebe, a local healer. Phoebe has largely alleviated Cornelia’s pain by calling upon the power of a god known as Jesus Christ. Cornelia, thankful for this respite from her physical infirmity, has begun giving thanks to this deity, along with other gods, at the start of every morning. Aristeas typically joins her, happy to be “in Christ,” given what this god has done for Cornelia’s chronic pain. In this paper I elaborate further on Aristeas’ daily life and religious behaviors, drawing upon first century sources such as Paul’s letters and inscriptions produced by voluntary associations in Asia Minor to construct the historically plausible but fictitious character of Aristeas. Then I use the character of Aristeas to analyze 1) the impact of religious self-identifications on the behaviors of everyday people living in the early Roman imperial period, and 2) the variability of the norms that everyday people associated with their religious self-identifications. In particular, I argue that while certainly there were everyday people in the first century CE who identified themselves as brothers in Christ, these people’s religious practices and behaviors were often barely distinguishable from people who did not identify as Christ followers. Moreover, I argue that the norms and behaviors that everyday people associated with their religious self-identifications as Christ followers varied in comparison to one another, and in comparison with the experts and specialists who sought to prescribe, maintain, and clarify the boundaries of their respective religious groups.

The past forty years have witnessed an upsurge in the formation of apocalyptic new religious movements (NRMs) as well as the resurgence of robust apocalypticism in mainstream religions worldwide. Many of these NRMs have engaged in ultra-violent behaviour or else have been involved in violent public situations. Likewise, many resurgent apocalyptic streams have bonded with nativist political movements that comprehend the world in apocalyptic categories, which can translate to violent action. In both cases, this kind of violence is apocalyptic violence, i.e., harmful actions and responses in consequence of an apocalyptic worldview. Although the overlap of violence and apocalyptic religious groups has been the subject of much good scholarship (especially historical case-studies), the epistemological roots of apocalyptic violence remains poorly understood. This paper, the first of two parts, explores apocalyptically motivated violence in NRMs, with special reference to i) its basis in the underlying worldview and ii) its social contexts as part of a contemporary global “apocalyptic shift,” which since 2001 has been progressively increasing in scope and degree (DiTommaso 2019).

This paper explores the visual semantics of carved and molded faces from 8th – 4th century BCE Levantine and Mediterranean Phoenician sites, drawing on extant terracotta masks, anthropoid sarcophagi, carved stelae, and other image-material. In particular, Simeon Chavel’s 2012 study on “The Face of God and the Etiquette of Eye-Contact: Visitation, Pilgrimage, and Prophetic Vision in Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Imagination” serves as a jumping-off point for this analysis. Chavel’s work explores, as he puts it, “the trouble with God’s face” through textual witnesses from biblical and rabbinic corpora. Though Chavel explicitly works to imagine the range of Israelite artifacts that may have been the source of encounters between worshipper and deity, he ultimately concludes that social etiquette and court encounters likely served as the rich source of referents at play in references to looking (or not looking) at the face of Yahweh. To the Phoenicianist, however, the Iron Age Levant seems to offer a material landscape rife with powerful disembodied or emphasized faces—the faces of gods, an array of transformative masks, and the idealized faces of the elite dead, to name a few. This study goes beyond a typology of iconographic features to think more broadly about the religious aesthetic of the face, offering a tangible glimpse into how Levantine worshippers imagined and interacted with unseen beings in the Iron Age II-III periods.

Title: The Joban Animal Menagerie: Parents, Killers, Negligence, and Thriving In this paper I examine the role of animals in the book of Job, focusing on the wild and contradictory creatures in the divine speech (chs. 38–40; with special attention to the ostrich in 39:13–18, the hawk in 39:26–30, and other images of animals as parents with children). Few books in the Hebrew Bible focus on animals the way that Job does, and close analysis of the book reveals an animal narrative that tracks closely with Job’s own life and the fate of Israel in the post-exilic period of Job’s composition. Though many analyses of the divine speech are simply content to notice God’s obvious mastery over nature, most have stopped short of naming the profound literary and ideological indeterminacy created in these chapters, which, through its strange cocktail of beauty and cruelty, asserts a vision of animal nature that compares humans and animals in surprising ways. Because the Divine Speech is so directly concerned with providing resounding statements on animal behavior, I conclude that it is most appropriate to read the speech not as an avoidance of the key moral questions at stake (as many readers assert) but rather as the most direct engagement with the book’s central metaphors, i.e., the ecological world that serves as a cipher for the human body as well as the broader Israelite community. In addition to literary analysis, I frame my argument within a discussion of animal iconography relevant to Job chs. 38–40, as well as a historical argument about the composition and early reception of the book of Job as an ecological text in the early post-exilic period of resettlement in the land.

The deep engagement with Israel’s scriptures evident throughout Hebrews has ensured that this aspect of the epistle has been thoroughly treated by commentators in every age. The subject has been explored from all angles, with substantial and valuable studies available on everything from the nature of the author’s textual sources to his characteristic exegetical techniques, and from his overall understanding of scripture to the theological and rhetorical functions of specific citations. This paper aims to navigate a way through this almost bewildering wealth of material by drawing out from it the key areas of current debate and highlighting any potentially significant new approaches. It will set the scene, therefore, for the wider discussion in this session of Hebrews’ intertextual connections with the OT and Jewish Literature, by asking what scholars are saying now about how Hebrews uses scripture, and what they might be saying about this in the future.

In his commentary On the Titles of the Psalms, Gregory of Nyssa weaves together the musicality of the psalms, the human body, and the universe to adumbrate the notions of ascent which are more fully developed in his mature mystical writings. This paper argues that the Nyssen reappropriates elements of Pythagorean, Platonic, and Neoplatonic thought into a theological framework wherein music is intrinsic to God’s creation, ordering both the macrocosm and the microcosm. As Gregory sees it, the praise of God is both the beginning and end of humanity’s journey; even in its fallen state, humanity still possesses an affinity for music at the individual level: the body manifests it, the mind perceives it, and the soul pursues it. The Psalter guides this pursuit into l’expérience mystique: its order directs the soul’s ascent, its text instructs the reader in virtue, and its music reveals the psalms’ loftier signification.

Daniel Smith-Christopher reminds us that we cannot “evade the fact that reading about trauma – ancient trauma and the models from modern trauma – has made us all ‘secondary witnesses’ to the suffering of others in both the ancient and modern world.” Unfortunately, interpreters romanticize the little slave girl in 2 Kgs 5 and gloss over her trauma, focusing on her wish in v 3: “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” Verse 3 presents “the public transcript” (that is, the Deuteronomistic view) of the little girl’s situation: accept your punishment and “pray for the welfare of the city where I have sent you” (Jer 29:7). The text does not tell us why she suggests a cure for Naaman. This gap in the text invites us, the audience)to speculate as to the reason. It is in this gap and in the space between verse 2 (describing her status as captive) and verse 3 (her wish for Namaan’s healing) that we find “the hidden transcript” of the text and a glimpse of the trauma of war. The little girl in most interpretations seems to tell the exiles what they yearn to hear – that God works across national boundaries for restoration.The hidden transcript here suggests that her voice has been co-opted to make a theological point about God’s sovereignty over all political power. I contend that the point is made at the little girl’s expense; her trauma is glossed over in subservience to a larger purpose: survival. Throughout history, women and children as spoils of war have understood the brutality of war that drowns out hope (cp. Jael and Sisera’s mother in Judg 5 and Daughter Zion in Lam). In our recent global history, children have been recruited to serve in rebel armies and young girls have been sexually abused by soldiers. Modern examples of children caught in the cross hairs of political strife abound - in Mali, the Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, and most recently, at the Mexican border with the United States. Perhaps these interpretations of the little girl are our wishes for our own steadfastness and faith in the face of adversity. So often we desire to see in biblical characters what we want to see in ourselves. My fear is that the little girl’s tiny shoulders cannot bear the weight of the expectations we have placed upon them, and that our unrealistic demands for resiliency from those like her who struggle with trauma today can make developing resiliency more difficult. What remains for us as readers after stepping into the gap of this text is the necessity of examining our own role as individuals and nations in contributing to or overlooking the trauma of others and then to imagine a different way of being and acting as we work toward a more wholistic future for all.

This paper examines the strange re-emergence of Ancient Near East gods in two famous contemporary white evangelical works of supernatural speculative fiction: William Paul Young’s The Shack and Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. These novels’ divine beings are not just contemporary analogs of ANE gods, but are actually their historical descendants. In crafting their respective popular theodicies, Young and Peretti have inadvertently rediscovered the ancient Israelite polytheism of three millennia ago, for the simple reason that justifying the gods’ ways to humans is an easier task than justifying God’s ways to humans. Young’s novel is a modern day theodicy that tells the tale of a man’s loss of faith when his daughter is kidnapped, abused, and murdered. When he returns to the scene of the crime years later he discovers not the murderer but an unusually multicultural Christian Trinity who help him accept his ignorance about questions of free will, evil, and God’s justice and goodness. Though the Father says they are not “three gods,” the divine beings proliferate into five persons, as a Native American man as God the Father is added, and, in an allusion to Job, Sophia (Wisdom) is discovered underground in a cave to counsel him. Peretti’s similarly-bestselling This Present Darkness is premised on an evangelical theology of “spiritual warfare” and “territorial spirits,” in which a town in the Midwest slowly becomes aware that New Age gurus and psychology professors are inviting “Ba’al Rafar,” a demon lieutenant of Satan, to have dominion over their region. Through prayer, the evangelicals in the town, “the saints of God,” must power angelic defenders to beat back the demons and reclaim their spiritual territory. I examine these novels through the lens of historical-critical Bible scholarship and ANE studies to see the way in which, as Mark Smith and Daniel Boyarin’s works attest, both the Trinity and angels are historically descended from the traces of the gods of an ancient Israelite polytheism. As monotheizing reformers collapsed the pantheon into a single God, merging El and YHWH, the other gods were disappeared or demoted to angels. But traces remained, as is seen in ancient apocalyptic theology in Daniel of the “Son of Man” and named patron / territorial angels, as well as the lingering imagery of Two Powers in Heaven, Metatron, the apotheosis of Wisdom, the Word, and others. Both novels, in different but significant ways, undo the monotheism that had caused such problems for theodicy, and which initially prompted a “retreat” into “semipolytheism […] when a semidivine being of demonic nature was introduced” (James Crenshaw). In The Shack, the array of renewed divine beings of the expanded Trinity work to distribute responsibility for the problem of evil embodied in the murder of Mack’s daughter. In This Present Darkness, the angels and demons who had been demoted from godhood return as named divine beings who have supernatural agency and power, and whose combat displaces and makes more abstract the distant monotheistic God who becomes less directly responsible for human suffering.

Often in the apocryphal acts, Jesus appears on the scene in a new form or in multiple forms simultaneously. This polymorphic depiction of Jesus, as it shows up in the apocryphal acts, is thought to be a development of the Gospel’s nascent polymorphic tendency. In turn, the Gospel writers themselves are thought to be influenced by the various metamorphoses undertaken by gods in Greek literature. The possibility of Jewish origins for the phenomenon, however, remains largely unexplored by scholars, if not outright denied. This paper seeks to disrupt the notion that Greek sources are the sole influence on early Christian polymorphic depictions. I accomplish this by comparing the polymorphic depiction of Jesus in the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of Cannibals with the depiction of angels assuming very human-like forms in the Jewish novels of Tobit, the Testament of Abraham, and Joseph and Aseneth. The payoff of this strategy is two-fold. First, the literary development of anthropomorphic angels in the novels is often overlooked in favor of the more supernatural and otherworldly depictions of angels that become popular in the Second Temple Period. Taken together, the examples of angels assuming human form in these novels show a development of the concrete anthropomorphic depictions of divine or semi-divine beings present in the Hebrew Bible. Second, the anthropomorphic characterization of divine beings in these texts help us populate the world of ideas wherein Christian authors strove to depict Jesus. Consideration of a human-like class of angelic characters in the ancient Jewish novels can help to fill in the landscape of the type of divine beings Christian writers might have known. By collecting these examples of divine beings that appear as humans, we not only see the development of a literary thread that traces back to the anthropomorphic angel encounters in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis; we also see how the sometimes startlingly human depiction of the post-resurrection Jesus in the apocryphal acts is not necessarily foreign to the Christian writers’ Jewish literary roots.

Demons or devils feature extensively in the Qur’an, with the noun shaytan, from the same root as the Hebrew sh-th-n, occurring 88 times in 36 surahs. In addition to references to generic demons or devils, the Qur’an also shows clear affinity with Jewish and Christian traditions in its association of a singular, definite figure, al-Shaytan, with the same figure who led Adam and Eve astray in the Garden (Q al-Baqarah 2:36; al-A‘raf 7:20, 22, 27; Ta Ha 20:120), and who represents evil personified (Q 2:186, 208, 268, 275; Al‘Imran 3:36, 155, 175; al-Nisa’ 4:38; al-Ma’idah 5:90; al-Anfal 8:11; Yusuf 12:5; al-Nahl 16:98; al-Isra’ 17:53; Maryam 19:44; al-Fatir 35:6; Ya Sin 36:60; Fussilat 41:36; al-Zukhruf 43:62; al-Mujadalah 58:10, 19). After his expulsion from heaven (where he is known as Iblis), for refusing to bow before Adam (Q 2:34; 7:11; 15:31–32; 17:61; al-Kahf 18:50; 20:116; Sad 38:74–75), he attempts to lead believers astray (Q 4:60, 83, 120; 5:91; al-An‘am 6:43, 68, 142; 7:175; 8:48; Ibrahim 14:22; al-Nur 24:21; al-Furqan 25:29; al-‘Ankabut 29:38; Luqman 31:21; Muhammad 47:25; al-Hashr 59:16). Besides the story of Adam and his wife in the Garden (Q 2:35–37; 7:19–35; 20:117–121), there are a number of other biblical characters who appear in the Qur’an in connection with al-shaytan/ shayatin – Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Q 2:102; al-Anbiya’ 21:82; al-Naml 27:24; Saba’ 34:12–13, 38:37; 27:24); Joseph (Q 12:42, 100); Moses (Q al-Qasas 28:15), and Job (Q 38:41) – which reflect or even mirror, specific (extra-)biblical texts and traditions and thus constitute key evidence for the reception history of Jewish and Christian traditions about demons. With this in mind, this paper will outline the following details about qur’anic demons: -The terminology used to refer to them; -Their nature(s), characteristics, and activities; -Their appearance in narratives that reflect specific Jewish/Christian texts. It will do this from the point of view of the Qur’an as a repository of Jewish and Christian lore, ask what this tells us about the reception history of such texts, and analyze the value of the Qur’an as a reflection of (extra-)biblical traditions.

The debate over the eschatological nature of Muhammad and his movement has a long history. Most recently, Stephen Shoemaker has argued forcefully that he was a fully eschatological preacher, one who envisioned the world coming to an end in his own lifetime. This paper draws on late antique studies of eschatology to argue that the Qur’an’s eschatological discourse must be seen in a more multifaceted and contingent way. Specifically, it is necessary to distinguish between a strict and a loose sense of eschatology. Following Gustav Hölscher, the former entails “that grand drama of the end times in which worldly time comes to an end and a new eternal time of salvation dawns.” Contrastingly, a loose eschatology is an end that does not involve the destruction of the cosmos or the ultimate cessation of history but rather inaugurates a new era of fundamental difference that remains within the existing temporal framework. The most obvious parallel to “loose eschatology” in the Qur’an is the punishment narratives, which can be understood as God intervening in history to punish those who disobey Him, inaugurating a time of righteousness. This theorization allows us to better understand the early Islamic movement’s eschatological mode. Instead of Muhammad preaching that the end of the world was coming in his lifetime, we should understand his eschatological traditions as referencing a coming upheaval that will essentially change the existing order. Thus, in Q Maryam 19:75, a distinction is made between “the Punishment” and “the Hour”: “when they are confronted with what they have been warned about—either the Punishment or the Hour (imma 'l-‘adhabah wa-imma 'l-sa‘atah)—they will realize who is worse situated and who has the weakest forces.” These events should be held distinct: the “Punishment” is a this-worldly eschaton that anticipates but does not coincide with “the Hour,” the ultimate end of history. This distinction is echoed in a number of places in the Qur’an, most directly in Q al-An‘am 6:40, al-Hajj 22:55, and al-Sajdah 32:21. Finally, having developed the notion of “loose eschatology,” I contend that we may have some support for this theory in early sources. In particular, it seems that the Battle of Badr was remembered by Islamic tradition as an eschatological event in this loose sense. Examining the traces of this memory in the exegetical literature shows that the Qur’an combined two eschatological timeframes—one, an immediate, communal punishment, and the other, an end to history and occasioning of final judgment—in a flexible way that was able to shift with changes in the fortunes of the early community.

Forced migration and exile are foundational experiences for Jewish life in the Diaspora. The book of Esther details the complexities of diasporic living not only for the Jews, but for young girls forced to migrate from their native homelands spanning from India to Ethiopia, to the Persian Empire’s power center, Susa. In this paper, I will argue that attention to forced migrations in the book of Esther illuminates the establishment of a sexual trafficking economy by Persian imperial subjects. Persian officials make strategic use of anxieties over gender and sexuality in order to legally engage in forced migration and sexual trafficking as they gather, abduct, and transport countless minority/minoritized girls across national borders for the king’s sexually pleasure. In the process of migration, national, home, and bodily borders are crossed as the girls are transported from their native provinces to Susa; from their homes to the king’s palace; and from harem, to the king’s bedroom, to another harem as the king sexually exploits the girls each night, for several years. After Esther is chosen as queen, the nameless girls remain in exile as they are not permitted to return to their homes of origin but remain in the king’s palace, a violent and unsafe space, where they experience prolonged exposure to threat, trafficking, and trauma. Parallel to the experiences of contemporary minority/minoritized subjects from Asian and African geographies, the girls in the narrative world are exploited based on gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and class, intersectional oppressions that leads to heightened vulnerability to sexual trafficking. Forced migration thus materializes as threats to bodily, sexual, physical, spatial, and psychological security and constitutes collective trauma for minoritized female bodies from these locations and places

This paper celebrates the career of Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

How did Christians in rural regions perceive and present their communities in late antiquity and the Middle Ages? Christian identities have been studied mostly through elite forms of cultural production and expressions heretofore. Pointing out the need for the study of rural Christianities, some scholars have recently turned to texts and material culture to discover manifestations of Christianity in regions far from major urban centers in antiquity. In this talk, I approach the question of “Christian identity” through the lens of monastic patronage in rural northern Mesopotamia. In light of local historiography, hagiography, epigraphy, and architecture, I argue that Christian families cultivated local monastic identities by means of patronage of buildings in the region. And they competed with one another through such patronages. This analysis shifts our focus from theological disagreements and confines of parishes as paradigms of community-formation, and nuances our understanding of Christians’ self-understandings and self-representations in rural landscapes.

The present paper interrogates literary and material evidence from monastic communities in the late antique eastern Mediterranean to address a specific question: how did the built environments of monasteries help to shape the emotional experiences of their occupants? I argue that the formation and practice of monastic “affective piety” (how one should feel towards God) was intimately entwined with the texts and paintings displayed on the floors, walls, and niches of the spaces in which monastics lived. Drawing on late antique monastic self-help literature in Greek and Coptic, I argue first that a primary goal of monastic affective piety was the cultivation of “fear” towards God as eschatological Judge. The paper highlights how exhortations to mobilize “fear” towards God that instructed monastics to meditate on the end of their lives, the final judgment before the throne of God, and the punishments allotted to those in hell created affective “scenes” that monastics could visualize to cultivate feelings of fear. Such scenes, I contend, were widespread not only in monastic literature, but also in the material environment in which monastics dwelt, insofar as monastics were “primed” by their audiovisual surroundings to experience the same scenes of fear emphasized in monastic literature. In arguing for this assertion, the paper turns to a particular material context, the Monastery of Apa Jeremiah in Lower Egypt, active from the fifth to ninth centuries. On the one hand, inscriptions and dipinti on the floors and walls of this monastery point to a pressing and continual awareness of the final judgment that accumulated in the material record over time. Monastics wrote prayers for the souls of others (or themselves) on the surfaces around them, and in turn such highly visible prayers were viewed by other monastics, prompting the inscription or painting of additional prayers on the walls of the monastery. Finally, the paper argues that the emphasis on the final judgment found in the literary and epigraphic records also influenced how monastics viewed the depictions of Christ enthroned which adorned many of the apsidal prayer niches situated in the eastern walls of monastic cells. Without discounting other interpretations of these apse paintings, I argue that in their local context they were most likely to have been experienced by monastics kneeling or standing before them as depictions of Christ as eschatological Judge.

Psalm 71 is possibly the only psalm written by an old man. It has also been long ignored in the literature and often discounted in commentaries as an amalgam of short phrases. In this paper, I will argue that Psalm 71 has an internal integrity and individuality that speaks into some of the issues facing our ageing population today. For many, old age is a time of vulnerability and despair. Physical, cognitive and mental decline can leave the ageing individual at the mercy of others – family, friends and staff employed to care for them. In a western society that values independence, self-reliance and agency, these losses are often magnified. However, old age is also often a time of spiritual and emotional growth. It can be a time of reflection on all the blessings and fortunate times of a life lived in faith. It can be an opportunity to think deeply about one’s relationship with God and to prepare for the next part of the journey. These themes are both present in this poem of lament that allows us to hear both the vulnerability of old age and the spiritual fortitude that has been developed over many years. The psalmist can be seen to swing between the negativity of fear and the positivity born of praise. In this way, it gives us a template to deal with our own fluctuating emotions and the language of hope and despair. The psalms, as liturgical poetry, allow us to connect with the concerns and fears that are often hidden or dismissed in Christian cultures that encourage a focus on blessing and wealth. The ‘I’ of the psalmist’s voice can be heard as our own in this plea to connect with ‘thou.’ The strength of God is contrasted with the weakness of humanity. Although the psalmist was almost certainly a man, I will also consider how this psalm is heard differently when it comes from the voice of an older woman. I will consider the way biblical poetry can cross the gender divide and provide a voice for many members of our faith communities. The language, metaphors and imagery will be considered for the way it includes or excludes vulnerable listeners. Finally, this paper will propose that in terms of considering the psalms it is just as important to consider what is being heard, as what is actually being said within the psalter.

Ever since its conception, the UBS Greek New Testament has been claiming to be a critical Greek text edition prepared primarily for translators. This promotional tag has its strongest appeal particularly to those who are on the ground working with translation teams worldwide. But what exactly makes the UBSGNT the Greek text edition for Bible translators? What’s in it that’s not found in other Greek text editions available in the market today? With all the textual and paratextual features historically integrated throughout all its editions (including those that are no longer in use), what picture of a translator being targeted emerges? Accordingly, with the rapidly changing contexts of Bible translation globally, this paper will probe alongside the profile of Bible translation teams in the field, particularly from the global South, who are actually using UBSGNT in their translation task, to assess the adequacy (if not relevance) of the current features of UBSGNT.

A series of excavations by archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority in and around Jerusalem and two newly discovered inscriptions regarding Hadrian's visit to the province in 130 CE revive the discussion regarding the local circumstances preceding the Imperial advent and the impact of the subsequent foundation of Colonia Aelia Capitolina. In this lecture I will present a synthesis of these new materials with well-known historical sources and less-known papyri and inscriptions. The evidence suggests that Jerusalem, before the foundation of the colony, was a legionary camp surrounded by satellite civilian settlements that belonged to different administrative units. Some of these settlements can now be mapped and their administrative roles can be postulated. The occupants of these settlements were Jews, Christians (with bishops of Jewish descent), soldiers, veterans and their families. All seem to have reached some sort of modus vivendi, in a process reminiscent of the "Middle Ground" model pertaining to the formation of colonial societies. Regardless of whether Hadrian decided to establish a colony in Jerusalem before or after the Bar Kokhba Revolt, his decision undoubtedly handed Jerusalem over to the soldiers, the veterans, and their wives and children, at the price of offsetting the delicate equilibrium reached over the years with the Jewish population. This was the first time in the history of Judea that the Roman Army directly influenced the processes of urbanization. I will argue that this, as precedent, signaled the end of the so called "Jewish Region" in Judea and the demise of its toparchy system, thus opening the way for the completion of the urbanization of the province.

The Book of Chronicles opens with the genealogy of Adam, which leads directly into other genealogical material found in Genesis, and throughout Chronicles are citations and references to various Pentateuchal laws and parenetic material. Moreover, there are multiple references throughout the book to the “Torah of Moses” and the “Torah of Yahweh”, which are occasionally combined with the citation formula “as it is written in.” The question of the form of the Pentateuch presumed by Chronicles and the authority it held for the Chronicler needs to consider not only the overt mentions of the Torah of Moses or Yahweh, but also the references to acts performed in accordance to what was “commanded to Moses”, as well the range of Pentateuchal citations and references in Chronicles. For instance, which Pentateuchal passages are cited, and which are not, and what citations occur in Chronicles’ Sondergut? Pressing methodological questions arise in evaluating implications of the purported citations and intertextual references. For example, to what degree does lack of reference imply intentional disregard of Pentateuchal material or motifs, and in which cases is it feasible that the material was not available to the Chronicler and represents post-Chronistic development within the Pentateuch? Furthermore, does the selection of citations indicate what was authoritative in the eyes of the Chronicler, while what was not considered authoritative was left out? Or might the references have been selected at random in order to impart to Chronicles the authority of the work revered as the “Torah of Moses”?

Scholars have compared the scholarship on magic to riding a rather rickety bicycle; we continue to make progress in understanding ancient magic as we pedal forward working with the evidence, but every once in a while we need to stop and do some maintenance on the bicycle itself, our definition of the category of magic. We always start with etic definitions, with the presuppositions we bring to any inquiry from our own culture and upbringing. Ultimately, we end up with etic definitions as well, since we cannot analyze another culture as though we were part of it. For the modern scholar, ‘magic’ is always an etic category, formulated for the purposes of analyzing and understanding the ancient world. We cannot do without definitions altogether; any attempt to do so just ends up bringing back in implicit – and therefore unexamined – etic definitions. However, we can come up with better etic definitions if we look to the way the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world made their own emic definitions and drew their own categories. If we refine our intuitive modern etic definitions with reference to the evidence for the ancient emic classifications, the bicycle may still end up a bit wobbly, but we will be able to make better progress. To begin with, magic is not a thing, but a way of talking about things. It is thus a ‘discourse’, like sexuality, or religion, or science, or literature, and the label of ‘magic’ thus depends on who is doing the labeling. When we speak of ‘magic’, therefore, we should always explain: ‘magic for whom?’. Any specific piece of evidence from the ancient Mediterranean world provides an example of magic for that particular person, from one particular perspective. To speak of ‘magic in the ancient Mediterranean world’ is thus to refer (loosely) to the whole range of things that various people in those cultures during those times could label as magic. I therefore propose that: Magic is a discourse pertaining to non-normative ritualized activity, in which the deviation from the norm is most often marked in terms of the perceived efficacy of the act, the familiarity of the performance within the cultural tradition, the ends for which the act is performed, or the social location of the performer. Each piece of this definition needs unpacking, and its usefulness can be demonstrated through a closer examination of some of the evidence for that most famous of ancient magical tricks, drawing down the moon. This act is explicitly labeled magic by some of the earliest sources, and many different examples of this Thessalian trick appear throughout the entire range of the evidence. The examples stress different aspects of the non-normativity of the act: some the social location of the performers, some the non-normative ends for which it is performed, some for the weirdness of the performance, and others for the extraordinary power and efficacy of the rite.

John Chrysostom has often been described as a moralist, and a Stoic one at that. But can this Christian preacher’s moral teaching be described as Stoic, when biblical exegesis forms the greater part of his work? Chrysostom’s 'Quod nemo laeditur nisi a se ipso' is a fitting test case for this question, since the treatise is a sustained reflection upon the pseudo-Stoic dictum “no one can be harmed unless he harms himself,” and at the same time is taken up primarily with exegesis and re-narration of Old Testament narratives. It has been claimed that this treatise is mostly Stoic and contains hardly any genuinely Christian teaching; the biblical narratives employed are instead molded to the whims of this apparently Stoic preacher. However, this paper will argue that the influence instead runs in the opposite direction: this Stoic moral teaching becomes so thoroughly incorporated into the Christian commentary tradition that it ceases to be Stoic in any meaningful sense. Instead, like other moral gnomai found throughout Chrysostom’s works, the phrase “no one is harmed unless he harms himself” functions as a distillation of scriptural narratives, thus transforming the dictum into a single, now distinctly Christian, moral teaching. Further, Chrysostom puts forward the phrase to be used as a sort of spiritual exercise: one that is both metonymic—standing in for these extended biblical narratives—and mnemonic—serving as a pithy reminder of the narratives which might otherwise prove difficult to recall. Thus, as one is confronted with a disturbing circumstance, by recalling the phrase “no one can be harmed unless he harms himself,” one is reminded of the expanse of biblical narratives which all witness to this same truth. In this way, the gnomic expression is packed full of scriptural—and not Stoic—meaning. In addition to this more constructive argument, it is noted that the Stoic “backgrounds” which are so often the hallmark of contemporary patristic scholarship are less helpful in this case because (1) Chrysostom’s thought does not engage with Stoic teaching in any significant way, and (2) many Stoic teachings, such as this one, had long since ceased to be Stoic, and had been thoroughly assimilated into the thought of various other philosophical schools. Thus, rather than arguing that Chrysostom Stoicizes, and so does violence to, the biblical narratives which he interprets, this paper will show how this moral teaching becomes Christianized, as Chrysostom baptizes it in the waters of the Christian scriptural commentary tradition.

At first glance Paul’s relationship to Jerusalem seems ambivalent. He stresses that he did not go there after his call - he went to Jerusalem only after three years (Gal 1.18-19), meeting ‘only’ with Kephas and James. He further stresses that he was part of the Antioch delegation to Jerusalem due to his revelation (Gal 2.2), presents himself in a leading role in the negotiations with the ‘pillars’ (Gal 2.7-9), and seems to part company with colleagues from Jerusalem after the so-called Antioch incident (2.11-13). However, the brief notes on these events need not be seen as indications of a separation, but rather the opposite, as evidence of continuous links between the emerging Pauline network of Christ-followers from the nations and that in and around Jerusalem. The fact that Paul considers it of upmost importance to collect funds from the ἐκκλησίαι τῶν ἐθνῶν, which he eventually intends to transport to Jerusalem himself (Rom 15.25), indicates that he considers Jerusalem not only of crucial importance for himself but for these ἐκκλησίαι as well. Jerusalem is the center of Paul’s perception of the world (Rom 15.19), geographically as well as in any other aspect, as it is for any Jew of the first century (Cf. Philo who formulates, Jerusalem is the metropolis of the Jewish people). It is the center of the world for those who through their entire way of life express their relationship to the one God. Now that through Christ people from the non-Jewish nations also are relating to this God, Paul, through his fund raising activity is determined to establish a link between the ἐκκλησίαι τῶν ἐθνῶν and Jerusalem. In this paper I will argue that the Philippians serve as a decisive base for Paul’s fund raising activity, building on Julien Ogereau’s emphasis that the koinonia discourse in that letter reflects an economic interaction between the partners involved. But rather than seeing this as a partnership for the advancement of the euangelion generally, I consider it specifically tailored to serve the purpose of fund raising in order to establish a decisive link between the ἐκκλησίαι τῶν ἐθνῶν and Jerusalem.

In 49 BCE, while levying troops in Ephesus, the consul Lentulus Crus exempted Jews from serving in them. A group of six documents preserved by Josephus in AJ 14 relate to this decision, including three slightly different copies of the edict itself (AJ 14.228f., 234, 238ff.) and three documents that refer to it (14.230, 231f., 236f.). The documents themselves present a tangle of textual problems, owing in part to a complicated history of transmission that began before they came into Josephus’ hands. They also present three questions concerning Lentulus’ decision that can be clarified (I will argue) by considering these documents in the context of what we know about the Roman dilectus, or military levy. First, Lentulus exempts from service in the legions πολῖται Ῥωμαίων Ἰουδαῖοι (‘Jewish citizens of Rome’). Doubt has been expressed whether these were Roman citizens in the full juridical sense by (e.g.) Troiani (1994, 14) and Pucci Ben Zeev (1998, 151-3). Lentulus, however, was in Asia raising citizen legions in which only Roman citizens normally were eligible to serve. A second problem is how wide the exemption was meant to apply. Lentulus mentions only Ephesus, but the letter of Ampius Balbus refers to this decision applying to 'the Jews of Asia'. Gruen (2002, 294 n. 15) and Pucci Ben Zeev (1998, 164) explained this as an error on the part of either Balbus or a copiest (cf. also Juster (1914, 144)). But that is probably unnecessary: to judge from Polybius’ description (6.19-20) of the Roman dilectus, citizens were required to report from far and wide, so citizens from outside of Ephesus were expected to report. Indeed, Lentulus’ reference to Ephesus in his edict refers to the place where the dilectus was held, not the residency of exemptees. Third, and finally, considering Lentulus’ exemption within the context of the dilectus highlights the strangeness of the document introduced as a 'Decree of Delos' (AJ 14.231), which reports official instructions not to harass the Jews because of the exemption. The document cannot come from Delos (Eilers, 2005), but the concern over the possibility of a negative reaction outside Ephesus would nonetheless be noteworthy. I will argue the document comes from Ephesus itself. All this goes to reinforce the important observation of Rajak (1984, 112ff.) that the exemption was not meant to be a universal ruling applicable henceforth. Again, the context of the dilectus implies that Lentulus’ decision applied only to this particular levy. Eilers, C. 2005. "A Decree of Delos Concerning the Jews?" SCI 24, 65-74. Gruen, E. S. 2002. Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Harvard. Juster, J. 1914. Les Juifs Dans L'empire Romain. Geuthner. Pucci Ben Zeev, M. 1998. Jewish Rights in the Roman World. Mohr Siebeck. Rajak, T. 1984. "Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews?" JRS 74, 107-123. Ritter, B. J. 2015. Judeans in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire. Brill. Troiani, L. 1994. "The πολιτεία of Israel," in F. Parente and J. Sievers, eds., Essays in Memory of Morton Smith, 11-22. Brill.

The Qur’an makes ample reference to God’s many acts of revelation. We may regard wahy as revelation to a prophet, while tanzil is a broader category of revelation to humankind. Revelation to mankind includes various objects (scripture, water from the heavens; wages; etc.) There is ample modern literature on the biblical and Judeo-Christian echoes of these qur’anic passages, but little to nothing about its more ancient female, pagan structure and imagery. The male or female characteristic of these objects, often gleaned from their very names, are too rich in meaning to ignore. This presentation examines three cases where revelation takes place through a female vessel, and where the vessel is accompanied by two female helpers. The first case is that of the God’s “tranquility” or (female) “dwelling” (Arab. sakinah; Q al-Tawbah 9:26; al-Fath 48:4-26; cf. Q al-‘Imran 3:154). Finding His believers in duress and homeless God sends down his sakinah within which they find tranquility after battle. This is the same tranquility found in a man’s “dwelling” within his wife (Q al-Rum 30:21), the dwelling of birds in a tree, and the dwelling of divinity among its people in rabbinic literature (Heb. shekinah) and echoed in Matthew 18:20. The second case is the parallel story of the Qur’an’s revelation and the birth of Christ (Q al-Qadr 97). God’s revelation is planted deep in Mary’s womb, as it is planted deep in the “night of darkness” (laylat al-qadr; cf. Aram. qdr). Out of this darkness emerges a constellation “brighter than a thousand moons” (khayr min alf shahr; cf. Aram. h-y-r; sh-h-r). This discussion leads to the third case, the revelation of the Qur’an in the “month of Ramadan” (shahr ramadan), the ninth month of the Arabian calendar. That is to say the Qur’an is formed over a nine month period, as Jesus did in Mary’s womb and coinciding with the harvest season or rebirth of the earth. Through this presentation, I argue that the Qur’an’s story of its own creation is composite, reflecting more ‘recent’ Judeo-Christian counterparts, but also ancient pagan imagery hard-coded into its Arabic language. The most ancient layer in this story, I argue, is the imagery of the goddess Allat/Ishtar: the winged goddess (crane) of the heavens, the morning and evening star, and the resurrector of the earth (Tammuz).

Students better retain content when they have actively engaged a topic, synthesized and evaluated material related to that subject, and “chunked” the new information into coherent, interconnected structures. In this presentation I offer a teaching tactic that requires active engagement, synthesis, evaluation, and “chunking.” I call it a “Top Five.” The tactic begins with students’ individual engagement with a new subject. After completing an assigned reading, students are asked to identify the top five most important things to know about that topic, person, or text. Students move from #5 down to #1 following specific formatting guidelines that help them see that presentation matters in a document. The assignment not only requires students to identify important information, but also to summarize that information in their own words and rank it. The initial part of this assignment thus develops the skills of information retrieval, synthesis, and evaluation. Students then bring their “Top Fives” to class wherein they further engage the content with their peers and the professor in various ways. The presentation outlines several options for further engaging students’ “Top Fives” in class. One way to do so is by means of a “Snowballing Discussion.” This discussion method has individuals join into pairs, present their “Top Fives” to one another, and then create a new “Top Five” for their pair. Students are asked not simply to pick three pieces of information from one person’s “Top Five” and two from another’s, but rather are to find ways that they can further synthesize items in their respective lists. Pairs then join another pair to form quads and create another new “Top Five,” before these quads join together for the final synthesis of a new “Top Five” in groups of eight. There are several pedagogical advantages to this tactic. First, the assignment asks students individually to evaluate and “chunk” new information into units that are more memorable. Second, centering class time around students’ “Top Fives” allows for supplementation through peer modeling and instructor correction. Third, the assignment creates a natural segue to both discussion of and instruction on a given topic. And fourth, the tactic is highly versatile. It can be employed in a variety of contexts for a variety of topics. I have used it for introducing biblical books in New Testament Overview classes, as well as for introducing new religious or theological concepts in introductory Theology and Religious Studies courses. The presentation will itself be demonstrated in my “Top Five” format. This format mirrors how I often provide instruction following students’ individual completion of the assignment and peer engagement in the classroom. By presenting the tactic as a “Top Five” I will articulate both the instructions for the tactic and also the various pedagogical advantages that it offers.

Why teach courses on the Qur’an in colleges and universities? An obvious answer to this question is “to learn more about he Qur’an.” But a more complex and specific answer must consider details. To what extent does institutional context matter, or even personal taste? What does it mean to learn about the Qur’an as an undergraduate student? In my experience teaching courses on the Qur’an over the past several years, I continually negotiate how much emphasis to put on the text versus the context: institutional context, current events, cultural baggage that each student (and instructor) brings to the course, and how the study of the Qur’an fits within the study of Islam, religion, or even the humanities more broadly. This presentation will focus on a particular liberal arts context at a Jesuit Catholic college and consider challenges and questions that arise as a result of my own learning and teaching goals, which include equipping students with skills and awareness to build compassion and work toward social justice. Through sharing a number of assignments and learning activities, in conversation with scholarship on teaching and learning, this presentation argues that courses on the Qur’an can offers students both a deep engagement with the text itself—with attention to language, hermeneutics—as well as an inroad to any number of disciplinary vantage points such as literature, history, theology, and art.

Autobiographical narratives in the authentic letters of Paul are an interpretive crux in any effort to write a biography of the historical Paul. In this paper, I consider various fundamental questions and literary dynamics in relation to the autobiographical segments of Philippians. I propose that to whatever extent we separate the writing Paul from the self-represented Paul, the distillation that remains is still something other than the sort of historical fact that would satisfy the exigencies and expectations of modern biography. My argument is not that the project of writing a biography of the historical Paul is untenable, but that Paul’s own autobiographical narratives in his letters force us to think differently about the nature of any such biography and of the historical Paul it seeks to elucidate. The speaking subject of a letter seems more accessible than the authors of so many other genres. Self-narratives within a letter, therefore, seem to provide a degree of transparency rivaled only by a personal diary. However, even though New Testament scholars have discerned a single authorial hand behind the authentic letters of Paul, that is not the same thing as knowing the actual historical person responsible for writing those letters. Critics agree that Paul does not write autobiography for its own sake but rather actively patterns and presents himself in particular ways relative to his audiences so that he can employ his autobiography in some fashion pertinent to his argument and purpose. But taking such a position requires already knowing the writer behind these statements. What, then, is the basis of that knowledge? If each autobiographical vignette is a performance and thus provisional, then what is ultimately the subject of any biography we write? In his autobiographical statements Paul must, of necessity, write himself as an other. His self becomes a character subjected to a narrative emplotment. In these vignettes, various narrative aspects (e.g., character-narration, characterization, focalization, time, selection) intersect and mutually shape one another. The reliability of a character-narrator is tremendously ambiguous by virtue of the fact that it is at once both within and outside of the story. If we recognize that Paul’s depictions of others in his letters likely does not match what they would say about themselves, what impact does this have on our understanding of what he says about himself? My paper illustrates ways in which the Paul inscribed by the writer of Philippians complicates the Paul described in any subsequent biography because his own writing often resists the sort of stable and consistent subject we associate with the genre of autobiography. I argue that these dynamics have important implications and consequences for writing any reconstruction of the historical Paul.

Blessings are palpable in both biblical accounts and contemporary African contexts. Blessings are more than polite niceties or kind words with spiritual undertones; they are imbued with phenomenological effectiveness and empowered by the fundamental nature of a God who blesses. The ontological efficacy—transmitted through words—is life-giving. This research goes beyond previous intercultural analysis of biblical curses in an African context and focuses on developing the other side of the blessing and cursing conceptual word pair in poetry. This project curates a “red thread” of women’s blessing in biblical Hebrew poetry (select examples include: Gen 2:23; Ruth 1:16–17; 1 Sam 2:1-10; Prov 1:8–9; 31:10–31; Song 8:6–7). An intercultural dialogue regarding African blessings creates a harmony with representative biblical poetry, developing a fuller understanding of women’s ways of blessing.

My 2011 book The Matter of the Text: Material Engagements between Luke and the Five Senses (Sheffield Phoenix) drew on new materialist theory, in particular the work of Jane Bennett (Vibrant Matter) and Carl Knappett and Lambros Malafouris (Material Agency) to consider the hermeneutic implications of engaging with the biblical texts as matter. In that work, I underscored the unique materiality of any instantiation of a text – whether papyrus, parchment, codex, thin bible paper, light and shade on screen, and so on – and asked how we might read a text with its materiality, and material agency, in mind. The Matter of the Text performed readings of selected texts from the Gospel of Luke, using the senses as hermeneutic keys for mediating and finding connections between the text as matter and the text as word, to the extent that such distinctions make sense in relation to the material turn. In this paper, I build on that earlier work and focus on the materiality of breath. The breath is encoded in languages and texts, for example, through the quality of letters/characters, punctuation, space. David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) refers, for instance, to the pointing in Hebrew as the ‘written’ breath. I argue that attentiveness to matter situates human bodies and textuality in their more-than-human contexts, where breath like the senses, acts as mediator of human and other-than-human material relations and knowing. The breath connects human bodies with their habitats, with air and atmosphere, with the ecological exigencies of climate and pollution. Breath is a key concept for a new materialist evaluation and explication, for example, of the Earth Bible ecojustice principle of voice and the related ecological hermeneutic of retrieval. Orality studies and performance criticism have implications also for exploring the materiality of breath in relation to reading biblical texts. Texts as oral performances are ‘brought to life’ through the material medium of breath. With reference to Theodore Hiebert on ruach (‘Air, the First Sacred Thing’ in Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, ed. Habel and Trudinger), William Bryant Logan (Air: The Restless Shaper of the World), Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (eds, Material Ecocriticism) and Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (eds., Material Feminisms), and the work of Elaine Wainwright on habitat (Habitat, Human and Holy), this paper explores the materiality of breath as a way of engaging with the materiality of a text against a contemporary background where air and atmosphere are often strained. I offer a reading of Luke 4:16–30 from the perspective of the interlinked materialities of breath and text, arguing for a multilayered approach to reading that attends to the markers of breath in the reader, the ways the text affects the reader’s breath, the characters’ breath, and the way the text might speak into the strained breath of a climate change and pollution affected Earth.

The task of dating biblical texts is widely recognized as a difficult one, and the specific problem of dating individual psalms presents even greater challenges. Unlike many biblical books, the Psalter lacks many of the common elements necessary for dating texts—dateable events, people, and places. Despite such difficulties, the field of inner-biblical exegesis and allusion, with regard to the Psalter, demands the need for scholars to date psalms to a general era, or at least a relative standing to a source text. The present paper represents a modest contribution towards meeting the present challenge of dating psalms by evaluating the present dating methodologies practiced on individual psalms and proposing a methodological approach for the responsible application of dating evidence. The paper begins with a discussion of common pitfalls that frequently plague scholarly attempts at dating texts, such as, overreaching conclusions from limited data, and failure to collect all available evidence. Following this, the discussion turns towards evaluating evidence within the Psalter that serves as an indicator of date. Naturally, datable vocabulary and syntax play an important role in this process. And though recent volumes—such as Hendel and Joosten, How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?: A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study, Hurvitz, Dictionary of Late Biblical Hebrew, and Gar and Fassberg, A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew—have re-established the validity of Early, Transitional, and Late Biblical Hebrew, identification of such elements in a psalm need further evaluation before they are considered as evidence for determining a text’s date. Together with linguistic contributions to dating texts, the present study evaluates additional components—for example, a psalm’s genre, and the identification of literary dependencies—that determine a psalm’s date. In conclusion, the present paper outlines a process and guidelines for the responsible dating of psalms. Furthermore, it reasserts the idea that despite the challenges of dating psalms, the task remains a worthwhile endeavor for the benefits of furthering the field of inner-biblical allusion and exegesis.

This study contends that the Fourth Evangelist portrays Jesus as the patron par excellence in the farewell discourse of John. The presentation will focus on the usage of φίλος in John 15:13–16, suggesting that the term conveys a regent who is obedient to a king. Thus, the role of Jesus’ friend is one of subordination, not equality. This best explains the saying “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (John 15.13).” An examination of Roman patron-client relationships suggests that Jesus is portrayed as a patron in John 15. Patrons, especially high-ranking officials, often gave clients the honorary designation of “friends.” Such friends were not equals, but subordinate to their patrons in loyal obedience (cf. John 15:14, 16). After Jesus’ self-designation as lord (13:14), the discourse of John 14–15 is characterized by calls to obedience and loyalty, in accordance with their subordinate relationship. The phenomenon of patrons acting as brokers further bolsters the argument that Jesus is portrayed as a patron. Brokers gave clients access to otherwise inaccessible favors and services from another patron. With Jesus’ farewell discourse emphasizing oneness with the Father and affirming himself as the only way to the Father (14:1–14), he promises to broker the Spirit from the Father and (14:16) and declares that the Father will give his friends whatever they ask for in his name (15:16). In addition, a patron-client relationship often resulted from a master manumitting a slave. Becoming freedmen, former slaves became clients of their former master, providing services out of willful reciprocity. This type of patronage is consistent with Jesus’ saying “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends (John 15:15).” Again, such friends are not equals, for they obey his commands (15:14) and maintain a relationship of loyalty. Furthermore, Roman patronage language points to Jesus as a royal patron with regents who act in his place. Recent numismatic studies demonstrate the prevalence of φίλ- terms like ΦΙΛΟΚΑΙΣΑΡ on Roman provincial coinage, which publicized the relationship of local regents to the emperor. This is reflected in Pilate’s designation as φίλος τοῦ Καίσαρος in John 19:12. In accordance with the Gospel’s purpose for its hearers to believe that Jesus is the Messiah (20:31), the content leading up to John 15 emphasizes Jesus as the king. After his anointing (12:1–8) and triumphal entry (12:12–19), the disciples are commissioned to obey and bear fruit in his absence (14:15–16; 15:16). These elements support the notion that “friend of Jesus” is a title for a subordinate who acts in the king’s place. With language consistent with reciprocal patron-client relationships in John 15:13–16, Jesus declares that his act of love is greatest. His ultimate sacrifice on behalf of subordinates makes Jesus’ patronage greater than Caesar’s. Thus, the evangelist urges loyalty to Jesus, the patron par excellence.

Gender and, often along with it, body and race emerge in texts of the Hebrew Bible through speech acts. I would like to show how on the one hand philological research and on the other hand so called metacritical theories like gender/feminist studies and cultural anthropology shed light on the way texts create and delineate between genders and races. The restraint concerning metacritcal tools and theories like gender or others as sensory perception may be confronted by a through philological analysis. As a showcase shall serve the Hebrew term niddah which undergoes a dramatic change in the Hebrew Bible. niddah is coined as a technical term for the cultic condition into which women are placed by their menstrual cycle in the so called priestly literature. In later literature it adopts a polemical overtone and draws boundaries along gender, religious and ethnic lines. Hence, I shall argue that metacritical theories and terms help us to unravel the category the text implicitly or explicitly makes use of like gender, body and race.

Caleb and the Territory of Judah

1 Samuel 28 is the penultimate act in the tragedy of King Saul. Interpreting the interaction between Saul and the woman, a diviner not “witch” of Endor, initially entails investigating the process of summoning the spirit of the deceased Samuel in the light of comparable material from the ancient Near East and from ethnographic research in modern cultures. The results are then related to the wider narrative of Saul in 1 Samuel. This analysis, together with an assessment of the concluding meal, produces a more precise appreciation of Saul’s situation and a more favorable understanding of the woman than is usually the case. Challenging issues of theodicy arise from this picture of a man whom God has not only abandoned but also become hostile towards on arguably questionable grounds, yet a man who, when facing the death of himself and his sons and his people’s defeat by the Philistines, pulls himself together and on the morrow summons the strength to meet his fate with dignity and resolution. 1 Samuel 28 will be confirmed as a passage of profound exegetical interest and theological significance.

When studying the reception history of the Bible, should students be asked to suspend judgement on a particular interpretation for the sake of the pedagogical goals of the course? Or is their Judgement essential to the process of learning and understanding? I have, in the course of teaching surveys on reception history, asked students to put aside questions of right interpretation and wrong interpretation, and to instead ask: What is this particular interpreter doing with the Bible? What are they responding to? How do they contribute to the life of the Bible and the biblical tradition in their historical moment? This has been especially important when students are first exposed to a form of interpretation that is from a biblical tradition they have had little knowledge of, such as rabbinic Midrash for some Christian students. I have, however, come to see this method as unsustainable. The week of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh my class was assigned a Reformation-era reading with overt notes of anti-Judaism. My own inability to withhold judgement that day in class exposed the flaw in my approach. I have since recognized that asking students deny their own “historically effected consciousness” contradicts what we have come to understand about the role of social and theological location in the hermeneutical process. This paper will explore the pedagogical puzzle of right interpretation and wrong interpretation. In particular, it will consider the approach outlined by Gary Weissman, who argues for an embrace of student misreading of texts for the sake of the process of understanding in his book The Writer in the Well. “Misreadings” Weissman argues, “can be interpreted as creative responses to troublesome or curious aspects of a text that other readers—particularly those more versed in literature and literary analysis—disregard in order to write cohesive and compelling interpretations.” The suggestion that such misreadings can be productive is a provocative approach, and its application to biblical studies presents special challenges, but this paper will argue for its relevance to the pedagogical puzzle at hand.

Martin Luther’s rejection of the Epistle of James is very well known to students of church history. His statement about James being an epistle of straw, for example, has become part of common knowledge in introductory church history courses. Although Luther’s hostility toward James is well known, few are aware that similar hostility was shown much earlier toward James and the epistle bearing his name. Since the mid-nineteenth century, patristic scholars such as Angelo Mai, Adolf von Harnack and Charles Gore have recognized that in his Commentary on Galatians Marius Victorinus, the first known commentator on Paul in the West (ca. 280/290-365), penned the most hostile statements against James the Brother of the Lord ever expressed by a Christian author before Martin Luther. Although Victorinus’ anti-Jacobean sentiments have been well known to scholars of fourth-century Christianity, the impact of those negative sentiments has yet to be fully explored. Before the past two decades, scholars either maintained without demonstration that Victorinus was not read by his younger contemporaries (i.e., Ambrosiaster, Jerome and Augustine) who also commented on Paul, or scholars simply refused to fully engage this question by carefully comparing their commentaries on Galatians to detect any influence of Victorinus’ commentary. In this paper, I will argue that not only did Ambrosiaster and Jerome read Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, but I will also argue that Victorinus’ criticisms of James and key soteriological ideas in his epistle shaped the use these two younger contemporaries of Victorinus made of the Epistle of James in their commentaries on Galatians. By first establishing that Ambrosiaster and Jerome both used Victorinus, I will demonstrate that their reclaiming of James’ orthodox status and episcopal office within the early church was a significant milestone in the further integration of the Epistle of James among the canonical authorities recognized by the Western Church (Ambrosiaster and Jerome were at one point spiritual leaders within the Roman community). For it was in the second half of the fourth century that the local Church of Rome began to recognize the canonical status of the Epistle of James. Before this point, this epistle struggled to gain wide acceptance in the local Roman Church. Jerome and Ambrosiater’s rejection of Victorinus’ anti-Jacobean sentiments can be viewed as a prelude to the Roman Church’s acceptance of James shortly thereafter into its canon by Pope Innocent. Moreover, Ambrosiater and Jerome’s use of the Epistle of James reveals the unintended impact of Victorinus’ original critiques of James. Victorinus’ critique prompted them to reject Victorinus’ strict understanding of justification by faith alone, that is, a belief that justification is not obtained by any works whatsoever, including a Christian’s good works, and accepted the place of good works within the process of salvation. Despite Victorinus’ vigorous attempts to discredit the spiritual authority of James and the epistle bearing his name, these two younger Western contemporaries made deliberate efforts at re-incorporating the Epistle of James into the conversation about the fuller scriptural message concerning human salvation, faith and good works.

Motherhood was the most highly valued role of women in the ancient Greek and Byzantine world, yet two of the most visible lived experiences of mothers, pregnancy and breastfeeding, are not prominent in the surviving visual record. This is particularly surprising when considering the Byzantine cult of Mary who was praised as the Mother of God, and therefore a powerful intercessor and protector of the faithful. The surviving literary record includes frequent references to biblical pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, including Mary; and recent research suggests that in the Greek-speaking Byzantine world mothers would often breastfeed their children up to 3 years old. Depictions of Mary pregnant or breastfeeding would have been relatable and potent visualizations of the theology of the Incarnation and of Mary’s role as a loving and compassionate mother of all. So why are such images so rare in the surviving visual record? This paper examines literary and visual evidence to suggest that an answer to this intriguing question must consider dominant patriarchal attitudes that censored female agency and power since antiquity. In the ancient Greek world, the male-dominated establishment considered children and the wealth of the household as the property of men and saw women only as stewards rather than as sources of life and wealth in their own right. Images of women pregnant and breastfeeding, therefore literally generating, briefly “owning”, and independently nurturing their husband’s children might have been avoided because they could have conferred special agency and empowerment to mothers. Indeed, the usual scholarly justification for the absence of pregnant women from the visual record as protection against the evil eye is not particularly convincing. If visibility was of concern, protective symbols could have been used around pregnant women to invoke a successful term. At the same time, breastfeeding was a widely practiced maternal activity. In fact, recent scholarly claims about breastfeeding as limited primarily to wet nurses are not supported by the textual record and socioeconomic considerations. Yet despite the importance of maternal breastfeeding, the nurturing nature of female breasts was marginalized in the visual record while their sexual connotations were given prominence. Similar patriarchal notions about the role of women survived in the Byzantine world, where the male-dominated Church establishment often worked to distance Mary from all other women, even though women themselves could have looked up to her as an empowering and relatable model. The so-called Blachernitissa iconography popular from the 12th century onwards (Virgin orans with a medallion of Christ on her bosom) can be considered a multivalent symbolic representation of Mary both pregnant and unlike other women. Literal images of the Virgin pregnant or breastfeeding remained rare in Byzantium, while they proliferated in Western Europe form the 12th-16th centuries. The paper focuses on the cult of Mary in the context of a broader sociocultural and visual tradition regarding motherhood, with roots in antiquity, and attempts to explain why certain lived female experiences at home and in the street did not gain the visibility they deserve in Byzantine Christianity.

This paper looks at the character of Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, and reads her as a critique of the misogyny in the David story. In a patriarchal society where women derive power from their family position (and a royal woman from her relationship with a ruling man), as secondary wife (pilegesh) of Saul Rizpah may once have held a measure of influence, though she is not mentioned in the narrative at that point. However, when we first hear of her in the narrative, her husband has died, making Rizpah’s status precarious. In her initial appearance (2 Samuel 3:7), Rizpah is not granted any words by the narrator and is also denied any action, but is instead acted upon. Rizpah is a powerless secondary wife of a deceased king who is at the center of a power struggle for the kingship in Israel. A pawn in the hands of powerful men, she would have been left a disgraced woman (perhaps cloistered as David’s concubines violated by his son become later in the story). Yet, in her second appearance in the narrative (2 Samuel 21) Rizpah emerges as instrumental to Israel's salvation. Heroically watching over the corpses of those slain by the Gibeonites, throughout the heat of the summer, Rizpah functions as a rebuke to David’s failures and shames him into action. Furthermore, this forgotten and neglected character functions to show God’s concern for the victim and the powerless. It is Rizpah’s actions, and not David’s, that initiate a change the course of this narrative. Rizpah will be read as one of several women (and not the first Saulide) in the narrative of 1–2 Samuel who act to save David and his monarchy.

Houses are not only shelters from the elements; they accommodate households and families of various types, sizes and social configurations, and therefore embody a variety of social and cognitive aspects. The built environment allows for certain types of social activities and interactions, and therefore structure the inhabitants' perceptions. This clearly seems to be the case in Iron Age Israel. In this period a house of a very rigid plan – known as the four-room house – became very dominant, and this rigidity in itself might hint at its social importance. The social significance of the house as a social unit is also exemplified by the language – the word for the physical, structure, or "house" is also used to designate a "family" and even larger kinship units. The issue was addressed at length by a number of scholars, including Shlomo Bunimovitz and myself, and we argued that this house was a microcosmos of the Israelite world, serving as a window into all aspects of Israelite society, from family structure and wealth, to ethnicity, cosmology, perceptions of space, and even notions of social justice. Temples, which served as the dwelling of gods, had always fascinated scholarship, and consequently received an un-proportional amount of studies. While Iron Age Israelite temples are a rare phenomenon, both the textual information on Solomon's temple and the finds at the temple of Arad (until recently the only Iron II Israelite temples excavated, and the only one whose full plan is clear) had received much attention. While some had suggested that Arad temple bore some resemblance to the period's dwellings, the differences are clearly more striking. An analysis of the dwellings of the mortals and the dwelling(s) of Israel's God, in light of the understandings gained from previous studies, reveals that they transmitted different, and even opposing messages regarding hierarchy, purity, and exclusivity. These insights help to clarify the way many members of the Israelite society understood the differences between the realms of the holy and the profane, which in turn appear to present a complementary picture of the way they perceived the world.

The Coptic translation of the OT, there is no doubt, was made on the basis of the Septuagint. As we have a number of important manuscripts in different literary dialects of Coptic which obviously antedate the famous Greek pandect bibles B, S, A, they are, of course, very interesting for the textual history of the OT. Since the Greek manuscript record is rather sparse for the early 4th century, it is still largely not clear which were the Greek Vorlagen for the Coptic versions. The few available text critical studies on the Coptic versions have revealed so far that some Coptic texts show a close relationship to the oldest available Greek LXX text (Minor Prophets, Job), while others (Jer, Lam) show clearly the influence of a recension, which must have used Origine’s Hexapla, regularly giving variant readings which deviate e.g. from the text of Codex Vaticanus (B). The biggest obstacle for a more detailed picture of the Coptic versions is the extreme dispersal and fragmentation of the manuscripts. However, a positive aspect of this is that new textual witnesses keep appearing to add to this picture.

This paper considers how Late Antique biblical retellings compare to the “source text” of the Hebrew Bible. It draws upon my dissertation, which investigates constructions of biblical mothers and motherhood in Jewish art and literature in Late Antiquity. In this project, I ask how these texts “think with” biblical mothers in an attempt to re-articulate gender roles and Jewish identity in a way that was meaningful in the multicultural and pluralistic Late Antique world. Part and parcel of this project is a careful comparison of the constructions of biblical mothers in post-biblical literature with their constructions in the Hebrew Bible. These comparisons reveal how retellings of biblical mothers in different Late Antique communities reveal wider beliefs, assumptions, and anxieties about gender, family, and Jewish identity. In this project, comparison is accomplished through the methodology of reception history. Reception history examines the “afterlives” of texts, which are given new meanings in different times and places in history. In Late Antiquity, Jewish communities found themselves in a precarious position in relation to the majority culture in which they were located. The production of texts (both written and visual) that retold biblical narratives provided an imaginative space for Jewish self-definition over and against hegemonic forces. Ancient authors lighted upon biblical mothers as rich sites for retelling: biblical narratives established mothers as protective figures who would intercede on behalf of their children, and biblical retellings expanded mothers’ roles to include resistance against outside forces which threatened the safety of Jewish communities and the integrity of Jewish identity. This paper will begin with a brief overview of my project as a whole, including methodological considerations. I will then provide a “case study” in which I compare Rachel as a bereaved mother in Genesis and Jeremiah with the reception of Rachel in the Late Antique rabbinic text Lamentations Rabbah. I will ultimately argue that the rabbis depicted Rachel as capable of interceding with God on Israel’s behalf precisely because of the power she had as a grieving mother. This comparison contributes to our understanding of the community which created Lamentations Rabbah in Late Antiquity.

This paper takes a close look at two miniature scrolls published by J.T. Milik as tefillin (4Q147) and mezuzah (Mur 5). Milik was unable to decipher these two texts. Still he classified them as tefillin/mezuzah, because they were inscribed in a minuscule script and folded. The preliminary edition of 4Q147 has just been published in DSD 26, whereas a tentative reading of Mur 5 will see light in the forthcoming issue of RevQ. Since none of the two texts contains the passages from Exod and/or Deut one would be expect to find in a tefillin/mezuzah, this paper asks whether these are tefillin/mezuzot or rather unique specimen of Second Temple Jewish written amulets.

One of the shared conclusions of pentateuchal scholarship over the last two centuries has been the identification of a discrete stratum of the Pentateuch which has been labeled “priestly.” Debates continue about its nature and scope, but in this talk I will experiment with the idea that this Priestly Narrative may once have existed on its own as an independent piece of literature. This book, or “history of the heavens and the earth,” to borrow from one of its earliest internal refrains in Genesis, is first and foremost a story about Yahweh’s movement from the heavens to a mobile tent shrine in one corner of the earth. Far from a disjointed list of sacrificial rituals or cultic law, this priestly pentateuchal text is a coherent narrative composition that tells its own version of the history of the Israelites and their god, Yahweh. More specifically, it tells the story of a deity who, despite the best of intentions, is surprised time and again by the behavior of his creation, and must continually adapt and reconfigure the relationships between these parts of creation. Yet, this sweeping and dynamic mythological narrative has largely been obscured from plain view. This is because at some point in the Persian period it was combined with other non-priestly materials, a process that resulted in the Pentateuch. The Priestly Narrative must be source critically reconstructed—untangled from its combination with these non-priestly materials. Much of the work of pentateuchal scholarship in the last two centuries has been precisely this. Despite such extensive work on this priestly text, few scholars have looked seriously at the source as an independent narrative whole. This talk will provide a biography of a source-critically reconstructed pentateuchal Priestly Narrative, with particular attention given to its literary artistry and scribal context. What is the literary profile of this Priestly Narrative? What can we learn about this story when we read it from beginning to end? What vision of the origins of the ancient Israelites does it present? And what, if anything, can reading this text as an independent story tell us about its compositional context? This talk will explore the idea of an independent Priestly Narrative, and seek to describe this piece of literature that can now only be accessed by undoing the work of a Persian-era scribe.

When Jesus dined with wealthy persons or Pharisees (Luke 7:36), what did they eat? For that matter, what did he eat in the house of Peter and Andrew (Mark 1:29)? There is a debate as to what constituted the average diet in ancient Israel. O. Borowski published a well-known essay on the “Mediterranean Diet” which compared the Old Testament texts with the current Bedouin and Druze practices. He concluded that Israelites in the Iron Age rarely ate meat, but mostly ate fruits, vegetables, milk products (yogurt, cheese, and butter), and of course, grains (either as bread or as a porridge). Nathan MacDonald has challenged Borowski’s notion of a Mediterranean diet. Many of those items specifically referred to in the Bible (e.g. pomegranates and nuts) were probably rarely seen by the average Israelite. The Old Testament speaks hyperbolically, maintains MacDonald, in describing a land flowing with milk and honey. The promises of extraordinary fertility and abundance (e.g. Deut 8:8) are metaphorical. The reality probably was, writes MacDonald, that the average Israelite ate a very narrow range of foods: the Mediterranean triad (grapes, grains, and olives) and pulses. Their narrow range of foods has led some historians to conclude that there were health results: cribra orbitalia. Other historians have opined that the residents of Judea and Galilee were near starvation and this condition led to a socio-economic protest: the Jesus Movement. We will turn to four types of evidence to answer the question what did they eat in Late Second Temple Israel: 1. Literary evidence (supplemented by ethnographic informants): What does the literature from our period (mostly the Mishnah) reveal about the typical meals for a person of modest means? 2. The archaeological remains of food processing (wine presses, olive presses, grain grinders, etc.): If they processed certain foods, we presume they must have eaten them. 3. The archaeological remains of food preparation (cooking ware): One changes the cooking ware to suit the type of food cooked. 4. The actual remains of food (seeds, fruit pits, fruit peels and husks, bones, etc.): Some sites have left behind carbonized or desiccated remains of plants and seeds. Bones of animals are also coming into light. Our conclusion will be that the average diet was closer to Borowski’s suggestions.

This paper examines the Book of Jeremiah as a resource for the understanding and repair of moral injury, which can include shame, guilt, regret, grief and loss of meaning following a violation of a person’s sense of right and wrong. Firstly, I will briefly outline recent trends in moral injury research. The term originates with psychiatrist Jonathan Shay (1994). Symptoms such as anger, depression, insomnia and substance abuse may be shared with PTSD, but the treatment of moral injury is focused on moral violation rather than fear. Though the experience of moral injury has been described over centuries (e.g. Homer’s Iliad; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway), it has come to prominence as the ‘signature wound’ of veterans of war such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, due to direct or indirect participation, witnessing, following or giving orders which violate their moral code (e.g. Green, 2015; Wood, 2016; Meagher, 2018). Moral injury is also experienced by survivors of torture and rape (Bernstein, 2015), and domestic violence. Programs addressing moral injury can be found in psychological settings such as the Moral Injury/Moral Repair Group at the Naval Medical Center, San Diego and in religious settings (e.g. Brock and Lettini, 2012). Secondly, I will use the lens of moral injury to examine the prophet Jeremiah’s experience in wartime Israel in the sixth century BCE, and to note aspects of moral repair which are discussed in the literature. Jeremiah’s experience seems analogous to that of a soldier who has moral discomfort in following orders, or who is a bystander at atrocities. Jeremiah complains that he did not understand the rules of engagement when he signed on, and claims that he was deceived and enticed by God, and forced to follow God’s instructions against his own judgment (20.7). Jeremiah feels betrayed by God when his own life is endangered (11.19), and his moral values and personal identity are injured by God’s decision to destroy Jerusalem, by his own complicity as God’s representative, and by having to witness women and children dying (4.31; 6.21). He feels powerless to achieve a morally satisfactory outcome when he is forbidden to pray (7.16; 14.11; 15.1), and his prophecies seem ineffectual (25.4). Resources in the text include Jeremiah’s narration of his story, including his sense of shame (20.18), grief and anguish (4.19; 8.18; 9.1), difficulty in trusting God (15.18), and struggle with acceptance and self-worth (15.10; 20.14, 18). Conversations with God help Jeremiah grasp the exigencies of wartime, and help him realise that responsibility for danger and disaster is shared with God, Judah’s leaders, and the people. God offers reminders of his love and grief for Israel, mourning rituals, a new beginning, and reaffirmation of Jeremiah’s call (2.2; 9.17; 15.19). Jeremiah recovers resilience, agency, and self-respect, and is able to continue as God’s prophet despite further social isolation, death threats, unjust imprisonment, siege, warfare, and forced migration. Finally, I reflect on the possible use of Jeremiah in moral repair in practical ministry settings including churches, chaplaincies and prisons.

Central to the plot of the Book of Judith is the female protagonist’s change in identity. In the story of Judith it is her change in identity, her shedding of her widow’s clothes and transformation into a beautiful woman before heading to Holofernes’ camp, which allows her to later behead Holofernes and save Israel (10.3-4). The story begins with the rise of king Nebuchadnezzar through his general Holofernes, whose armies converge on Judith’s hometown of Bethulia (chapters 1-7). After hearing that the leaders of Bethulia were going to surrender to Holofernes, Judith takes the matter into her own hands (chapter 8). After putting on sackcloth and scattering ashes in her hair (9.1) and then taking them off, the story tells us that Judith removed her widow’s attire (10.3) and made herself beautiful to seduce Holofernes (10.4). My paper will examine how the literary trope of ‘identity transformation’ functions as a key part of the Book of Judith. I will address the use of female gendered characters to highlight insider and outsider identities by analyzing the transformation of Judith. Judith’s character, the loyal and faithful Jewish widow, takes on an appearance that is pleasing to the outsider (Holofernes), in order to infiltrate his camp and kill him. After analyzing this literary trope in Judith, my paper will ask how the use of female literary figures, particularly amongst the Jewish Novels of the Greco-Roman era (see e.g. Wills, 1995), might be used in order to represent complex issues surrounding identity. I will compare the transformation of Judith to the character of Aseneth, who goes through a similar transformation, in order to ask whether or not the identities of women are malleable in the Jewish Novels. Finally, I will broaden my examination to ask whether male characters of the Jewish novels also go through similar transformations.

It has long been clear that the account of Israel and Judah in 1 and 2 Kings was constructed in part from prior materials that included the interlocking chronology that begins with Jeroboam and Rehoboam in 1 Kings 14. Attached to the evaluations of each king as doing good or bad in the eyes of Yahweh, this framework for a dual monarchic history has been discussed in relation to deuteronomistic composition, especially with focus on where it ends and whether an original text might have concluded with Hezekiah or Josiah rather than continuing through 2 Kings 25. It is generally taken for granted that any extended work that included the chronology and its evaluations would also have incorporated elements from the account of Solomon in 1 Kings 2-11 and from the David narrative in 1 and 2 Samuel. A composition much closer to the Babylonian chronicles published by Grayson (1976) is yielded by recognizing the introductory character of 1 Kings 12, which names Solomon but does not assume any previous narrative, when Rehoboam loses Israel by his arrogance. I propose that a “Two Kingdoms Narrative” was created principally from prior chronicle-type documents, cited explicitly as dibrê hayyāmîm, that included chronological basics for each reign and short reports of political crises, without interest in prophets or other gods. Its religious interest was shaped by opposition to a sanctuary at Bethel that was regarded as competition to Jerusalem, given new life by Jeroboam, revived under Assyrian authority, and only destroyed by Josiah. This narrative was framed by the retold Rehoboam tale and an account of Josiah’s cultic purge, and the author’s critical evaluations, which originated as simple approval or disapproval, became magnets for elaboration as the text was extended and incorporated into larger compositions. This new hypothesis of a Two Kingdoms Narrative places at the center of early monarchic historiography a systematic account of Israel and Judah that had no original relationship to the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon.

This paper will explain the use of Philippians in triumphalist narratives about the rise of Christianity. By focusing on two key terms in the reception history—“praetorium” (Phil 1:13) and “Caesar’s household” (Phil 4:22)—the paper will critique the underlying assumptions and ideologies that have guided interpretations of the letter. After offering a brief survey of the evidence for these two key terms in their original context—literary, epigraphic, lexicographical—the paper will then show the ways in which new interpretive possibilities open for understanding Paul’s life and letter.

This paper will undertake a postcolonial reading of the “parable of the wicked tenants” found in Mark 12:1-12, with a particular focus on the economic context of the Roman empire and the impact of its colonization of Judea and the surrounding regions. It will explore and interrogate the ways that the landowner and the tenants of the parable are represented within the colonial context as well as the ways that Jesus seeks to subvert these representations through parabolic discourse. This reading will take seriously the experiences of land seizure, labor exploitation, and economic oppression that would have informed both the telling and the hearing of the parable in its historical context. The acts of violence by the tenants will be examined through the lens of both Homi Bhabha’s descriptions of stereotype and ambivalence and James C. Scott’s concept of hidden transcripts. Against the traditional readings that interpret the landowner as God and the tenants as religious leaders, this paper will argue that Jesus employs the stereotype of tenants as greedy and violent in order to expose it as an ambivalent projection of the wealthy landowners who exploited their labor. The parable, as Mark renders it, is ostensibly told to the chief priests, scribes, and elders, but it represents a hidden transcript made public that serves to galvanize the crowd of peasants and villagers following Jesus. Ultimately, Jesus also uses the parable to warn his followers about the dangers of inflicting the violence that they experienced upon others who are also victims of the colonizers’ greed.

The character of Joseph both faces traumatic events and struggles with his masculinity throughout the Joseph story. Joseph’s youth is a traumatic one. Joseph is a boy, but the text offers ambiguity concerning his gender. For example, Jacob gives Joseph a garment described as כתנת פסים, sparking much debate about what it is. The only other occurrence of this garment in the Hebrew Bible occurs in 2 Sam 13:18, worn by Tamar when Amnon rapes her. So, Jacob gives Joseph a garment intended for young female royalty. In response to jealousy over their father’s favoritism, Joseph’s brothers throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. Joseph falls silent in response to this traumatic event, but he does not adopt a hegemonic masculinity as a result. Later, while enslaved in Egypt, Potiphar’s wife attempts to sexually assault him. Here, the text describes him as having a beautiful form (יפה תאר) and beautiful appearance (יפה מראה), the description also granted to his mother, Rachel (Gen 29:17). So, the text refers to Joseph’s beauty just before Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce him and then eventually attempts to assault him (Gen 39:6). Not only is he described in the way women are, a woman makes advances on him. In short, Joseph’s identity in the Joseph story is that of a man, but his character has blurred gender lines to the point of fracturing his identity. The traumatic events he faces seem to be caused or at least impacted by his fractured portrayal of masculinity. Joseph responds to the traumatic events surrounding his ambiguous masculinity not by adopting a hegemonic masculinity that dominates the Deuteronomistic History, a warrior/king masculinity defined by violence, sexual dominance and control, progeny and making a name, and protection and provision. Instead, Joseph adopts a scribal masculinity exemplified later in the book of Daniel. Scribal masculinity, a concept developed by Brian DiPalma, embodies different ideals like producing texts, possessing and conveying knowledge, and service to a king. Joseph gains power not through violence, but through his ability to interpret dreams and develop plans. Indeed, while Joseph does bear children who become great tribes, these tribes do not carry his name. In fact, Joseph’s tribes are the only ones to not do so. So, Joseph’s ambiguous gender at the beginning of his story develops into a scribal masculinity by the end.

Much has been written, and much explored from many angles about the Syrophoenecian woman’s conversation with Jesus in Mark 7:25-30. This paper seeks to distinguish and examine the exegetical, theological and interpretive challenges of Mark 7:25-30 in order to ask two questions. First, what is at stake today in our interpretations of this gospel story for our understanding of humanity and for our Christian responses to migration and border crossing? And second, what happens when we draw a theology of incarnation from this passage and its larger context in Mark, rather than allowing our existing theologies of incarnation to shape our interpretation of the passage?

In the conclusion of his 1959 book Allegory and Event, R.P.C. Hanson describes the Church Father Origen as ‘…the best justification for the Anglican reliance on the Bible as interpreted by the early Fathers.’ This, Hanson argues, is because of Origen’s use of, ‘…the Bible, the Church’s interpretation of the Bible and the insights of the individual scholar himself’, in other words, the classical Anglican doctrine of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. This paper picks up where Hanson leaves off by contending that Origen’s pre-modern mode of exegesis is normative for Anglicanism. Anglicanism’s doctrinal roots are to be found, not in the Reformation, but in the Church Fathers and as such, Origen can be said to stand out as a ‘proto-Anglican’. This paper demonstrates that, contrary to his popular caricature, Origen was in, fact, committed to Church orthodoxy, ‘…I hope to be a man of the Church’ [Hom Luke 16:6], and his reading of Scripture was based upon a carefully worked out formula which can be characterised as: Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Origen’s position aligns closely with the Sixth Article of the Church of England’s founding doctrinal statement the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, showing there to be a remarkable affinity between Origen and Anglicanism. To highlight the affinity, this paper introduces the 19th century Anglican Bishop of Durham Brooke Foss Westcott, whose Theology and Biblical Exegesis are both quintessentially Anglican and yet characteristically Origenist. To enable a direct comparison between Origen and Westcott, Origen’s homily on Luke 10:25-37 is juxtaposed with a sermon by Westcott on the same passage. The comparison demonstrates the remarkable similarities in Origen and Westcott’s methodology and highlights their clear commitment to Sccripture, Tradition and Reason. This clarifies Origenist thinking in an Anglican context. This paper concludes with two Church Documents. Firstly the 1938 Doctrine in the Church of England report which clearly shows the lasting effect of Westcott’s Neo-Origenist perspective on the Church. Finally, this paper looks briefly at the findings from the Bible in the Life of the Church Project (2012) which demonstrates the normativity of Origenist thinking within the Church and thus confirms that Origen is the exegete who never went away.

This paper attempts to illuminate two topics pertinent to the recent Hendel and Joosten book: S-curves and confounding/explanatory variables. 1) Since (inverse) S-curves are constructed assuming monotonic variable evolution, inherent data fluctuations can lead to their invalidation. Consequently, their use has been criticized or even banned in diachronic studies. I show how actual language data from Middle English yields an inverse S-curve containing useful information regarding feature evolution. At issue is whether fluctuations in the linguistic data for Biblical Hebrew defeat S-curve analysis. 2) In general, however, reliance on multiple variables is far more powerful than single-variable analysis. Some variables may confound even multidimensional analysis. But if a seemingly confounding variable can be reliably quantified, it may have explanatory power. Its inclusion may well improve analytic outcomes. As an example, consider the application of multidimensional analysis in Biblical Hebrew studies to assess the temporal evolution of spelling practice. Using seriation, text portions approximated a horseshoe-shaped curve. But the text portions scattered rather broadly to either side of the horseshoe, making it a “fat horseshoe.” That is, the results exhibit undue departures from simple (timeline) linearity. Was this because the analysis omitted some important variable(s)? I show how the horseshoe scatter is affected by introducing a further variable.

This paper uses a feminist decentering approach to consider how ancient and modern readers respond to 1 Corinthians 15:8 in which Paul inserts himself into the history of resurrection appearances when he describes Jesus’s final and late appearance to him as if he were one untimely born. Interpreters have often suggested that Paul is claiming to be an aborted or miscarried apostle as one who is born at the inappropriate time or in an abnormal way compared to the other apostles. This is a gendered metaphor—women bear children and anticipate their due dates. According to Antoinette Wire and others, gender is at the fore of conversations between Paul and the Corinthians. Paul uses a metaphor about childbirth to claim authority for himself in a community of strong women and women who prophesy. As Wire suggests, his use of this metaphor attempts to put a definitive end to the list of people who experience the resurrection of Jesus. By appealing to the limits of pregnancies, he argues that there is a limit on revelation. He experiences a resurrection appearance of Jesus, but others, like those in Corinth, cannot. Yet, Wire argues that some in Corinth formulated a different theological perspective in which they could themselves experience the living Jesus. Building from Wire’s work on 1 Corinthians (1994) and Moss and Baden’s work on biblical perspectives on procreation (2015), this paper initially argues that a decentering approach to this gendered argument about childbirth beckons forth alternative historical possibilities in Corinth regarding revelation, childbirth, and pregnancy. Female creative capabilities and societal contributions are not limited to childbirth. Then the paper will turn to modern readers, using a philological analysis to consider the queerly redemptive possibilities of Christ as the miscarrier of this aborted apostle. While the modern language of miscarriage suggests that the carrier, or the woman, has “wrongly,” or “badly,” carried a child, the ancient expression of one untimely born does not. The image of Christ as a mother who has a miscarriage, or even an abortion, can be read as redemptive for readers who have felt the pain and shame of miscarriage or abortion.

In his major treatments of the biblical homicide legislation, Philo gives substantial attention to the provision of places of refuge for perpetrators of involuntary homicide. Following a brief overview of Philo’s approach towards this legislation across multiple passages, the paper focuses on Philo’s consideration of the roles played by (a) the Levites and (b) the High Priest in his interpretation of the laws concerning places of refuge. Building on this analysis, the paper explores the distinctive identity and relative significance of each party, the Levites and the High Priest, within Philonic thought, and that in comparison with other early Jewish sources and perspectives. The analysis also facilitates an assessment of Philo’s handling of certain interpretive difficulties for which the biblical legislation remains well known: the peculiar significance of the death of the High Priest, and the diversity of detail within the laws concerning the identity of the places of refuge.

The introduction of Mesopotamian creation myths, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, is a time-honored method for helping students contextualize biblical texts, particularly the creation stories of Genesis, and rightly so. However, these ancient Near Eastern texts often prove to be even more difficult for students to grasp than the biblical texts themselves. This presentation will offer a creative approach to teaching the story of Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh through a student-led analysis of the lyrics of “Furr,” a contemporary song by the folk-rock ensemble Blitzen Trapper. Through this approach, students gain confidence in their ability to discern motifs and themes in accessible, contemporary lyrics and then transfer those skills to their analysis of a similarly themed text from antiquity, helping them comprehend the central concepts of the creation myth and recognize the contemporary relevance of mythic themes. Once students have become acquainted with the story of Enkidu through this exercise, they are well equipped to contextualize the Yahwist’s account of creation.

This paper engages with myth theory and philosophical dismissals of myth in order both to defend the meaningfulness of myth – indeed, its centrality in human existence – and to explore the significance of history’s mythic or fictional character. The term “mythopoeic,” which specifically refers to myth-making, is used for the purpose of this presentation to suggest, too, the relatedness of myth and poetry (and more fundamentally of myth and meaning-making). The sort of language Frege graciously dismisses in “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry” and “On Sense and Reference” falls under the umbrella of the mythopoeic. In considering the mythic, focus will be placed on the substance or content of mythic or fictional language. With regard to the poetic, more attention will be given to language’s form, its logical structure and its physicality, which are understood to be pragmatically related to and characteristic of poetic language. History, grounded in the material traces of the past and yet shaped as an ordered and compelling symbolic representation, is thus an excellent exemplum of the mythopoeic.

What can be learned about Second Temple Judaism from the Writings of the New Testament?

Abel’s mention in Heb 11:4 has long been a challenge for interpreters. He is credited with faith and righteousness, two characteristics conspicuously absent from the laconic scriptural record of Gen 4. While from the earliest days commentators of Genesis have sought to fill in the gaps of the narrative, exegetes of Hebrews have wondered where in the tradition Abel came to be associated with faith. In 1961, French Targum scholar Roger Le Déaut claimed to have found the missing link: a significant haggadic tradition, reflected in the Palestinian Targumim (PT) and capable of providing the context for an adequate understanding of the Abel trope in Heb 11:4 and 12:24 (see his article “Traditions targumiques dans le corpus paulinien ? [Hebr 11,4 et 12,24; Gal 4,29-30; II Cor 3,16],” Bib 42 [1961]: 28–48). In Tg. Neof. Gen 4:8 Cain and Abel are portrayed as discussing the existence of a judge, a final judgment, and retribution in the world to come. What Cain denies, Abel steadfastly defends, and his profession of faith leads to his being murdered by his brother. This tradition, Le Déaut claims, belongs to the older strata of Targumic material and was known to the author of Hebrews. Le Déaut’s proposal was hesitantly received and can be found in the footnotes of some later commentaries. Upon the whole, however, NT scholars showed the usual misgivings about the possibility to rely on Targumic material to explain NT tropes—the main source of doubt being the late dating of the Targumim, at least as regards their final redaction. Was Le Déaut right in his assessment, or did he succumb to the temptation of an anachronistic parallelism? In my paper, I begin by surveying other ancient texts containing traditions about Cain and Abel (i.a. Life of Adam and Eve, 1 Enoch, various works of Philo), trying to establish whether any of them could provide a more suitable background to explain Abel’s characterization in Hebrews. None of what this survey yields seems to be what Hebrews has as its immediate backdrop. Nevertheless, a close inspection of the Philonic material concerning Abel reveals at least a certain kinship both with Hebrews and the PT. I then turn to canvass Rabbinic texts that refer to Abel. The result is intriguing. While the NT and subsequent Christian literature is consistent in portraying Abel as a hero, the Rabbinic sources are far from exclusively positive in their assessment. Their lack of enthusiasm, it seems, stems from the desire not to overemphasize a biblical character that had been christologically colonized by the Church. My investigation thus partially confirms Le Déaut’s argument. The PT’s positive stance toward Abel reflects an early origin, possibly contemporary to the exegetical traditions found in Hebrews and Philo. However, the recensions of the PT containing a detailed description of Cain and Abel’s faith-centered debate, more likely belong to a later generation of Jewish exegesis where the dialogue between believer and unbeliever had become a common trope.

Herod the Great was the King of Judea from approximately 37 BCE until 4 BCE. Known for his ruthless behavior to get, keep and maintain his power in Judea, he was a person who looked for and created refuges for himself and his family in the event that the people rose up in revolt. He also found himself traveling, especially to Rhodes and was a benefactor there for the rebuilding of some sites. In Judea and Jerusalem Herod’s building projects included the Temple Mount and its retaining walls (Western Wall) which were fashioned using the so-called “Herodian Stones” (with ashlar margin frames) that together with some distinctive aniconic decorations characterized imperial power without violating Jewish taboos against representational art. Herod played a key role in creating the most famous architecture of Roman period Judea and Galilee. His port city at Caesarea-Maritima and the palaces at Masada and Herodion, and especially the Temple area are very distinctive and very easily compared with the work he commissioned at the Temple of Apollo in Rhodes after the earthquake there. This paper will track some of the visits of King Herod to Rhodes in the first century BCE and how they may have had significant influence upon the Jerusalem, Judean and Galilean landscape through the lens of the mini-travelogues preserved by Josephus Flavius.

Elsewhere I have noted that the holiday of Sukkot as described in Nehemiah 8 does not conform to any of the prescriptions for the holiday in the Pentateuch (“Sukkot in Ezra-Nehemiah and the Date of the Torah”, in thetorah.com. May 21, 2015). I have further noted in my commentary that the historical Ezra does not know the holiday of Pesach (Ezra 8.31), nor does he know about a torah scroll since among all the numerous items listed that he brings from Babylon, a torah scroll is not among them (Ezra 8). Perhaps as a Persian official there is no reason why he would know any of these things, but it is telling that the biblical author who incorporated Ezra’s letter into his text did not think to rectify these omissions. In this paper I direct my inquiries to Nehemiah 9 and ask what its author knew and when did he know it. Was Nehemiah 9 written before the torah was finalized, and when would that have been? The answer has implications for dating the pentateuch.

The textual history of the dedicational poem in 1Kgs 8:12-13 / 3Kgdm 8:53a is one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the account of the dedication of the temple. The meaning(s) of this poem are highly debated and its textual development extremely complex. The text-critical key-question is the following: What is the Hebrew Vorlage of the OG phrase “Build my house, a remarkable house for yourself” (NETS) and how does it relate to the MT? Juha Pakkala and Mattheu Richelle propose to restore the OG-Vorlage of this phrase from a Old Latin reading (Aedifica mihi domum pulcherrimam), which is unattested in the Greek witnesses and found only in the margins of medieval Vulgata codices (La91-95; Moreno, Las Glosas Marginales, 137-138). In this paper, I will suggest a reconstruction of the OG-Vorlage different from that of Pakkala and Richelle. I propose that the textual development is best explained by assuming a scribal mistake. The textual history then appears as the following: The dedicational poem has originally been placed in 8:12-13. In the common archetype, the consonantal text of the phrase under question has been “I have indeed built you an exalted house” as witnessed by the MT. On the level of the OG-Vorlage, one Nun dropped out. This scribal mistake has changed the meaning of the dedicational poem significantly from “Indeed, I have built you” to “Build my house!”. Furthermore, it has caused the transposition in the OG from 8:12-13 to 8:53. One scribe placed the building-command at the end of Solomon’s pleas to God (8:22-53) as a more appropriate context for an imperative. In this way, the enigmatic OG phrase “Build my house, a remarkable house for yourself” came into being. In the successive textual history, many textual witnesses – including the Old Latin – have altered the text to make better sense. Through this solution, we are able not only to reconstruct the OG-Vorlage but also to explain the transposition as well as the textual development from a common archetype to the separation of MT and OG.

Recent studies in the field of “early Christian identity” have begun to seriously examine, qualify, and in some cases even reject some of the categories that modern interpreters most take for granted, like “Christian,” “religion,” and even “monotheism.” As the boundaries of these categories dissolve, possibilities for understanding New Testament and other “Christian” texts--and the lives of their authors and earliest audiences--multiply. This paper takes up these insights to investigate the problem of sacrificed meat as it appears in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. Instead of prioritizing Paul’s teachings, the paper looks behind his reconstruction of the conflict to find the Corinthian Jesus worshippers as participants in the social world of their city. Using literary, historical, and archaeological data to underpin the investigation, this paper decenters the “Pauline assembly,” with its connotations of group cohesion exclusive of other categories of belonging, and instead approaches Jesus worship in Corinth as a matter of cult--that is, a set of practices existing as a part of the fabric of social, political, and cultic life in the Roman colony. Using the issue of sacrificed meat as a test case, the paper asks how Paul’s audience may have integrated the Christ cult into their lives, and how they may have negotiated theology, social belonging, and cultic practice with Jesus as a new addition to the Corinthian pantheon.

Travel has always involved inherent risks, especially in the pre-modern world. Yet ancient people were clearly mobile. This presentation considers an important element of civilization, namely, the necessary mechanics of moving people and messages, in the context of the dangers travelers faced. My goal is to lay out two inter-locking models of travel, public and private, and to show the methods by which people moving under each model could safely and securely complete their journeys. Starting with Homer, we will trace the relevant cultural beliefs of hospitality for private travelers, and the sacred inviolability of heralds, ambassadors, and other official messengers. The first five books of Livy’s history of early Rome reveal important aspects of the Roman conception of the universally understood laws of all civilized peoples (ius gentium), which were supposed to safeguard diplomatic travel, on the pain of divine wrath against those who might violate these unwritten codes by engaging in violence against official envoys. A background survey of piracy, which was endemic to the Mediterranean, reveals important state developments which were prompted by states trying to make sea travel less dangerous. In the case of Augustus and Rome’s awkward transition from Republic to Empire, making travel safer was absolutely fundamental to the ideology and legitimization of the new regime. Much of the Roman emperors’ institutional effort to make travel safer were aimed primarily at the needs of travelers on official business. Issues of state power and stability motivated Augustus to create the institution of what would become the cursus publicus (state system of requisitioned transport; Suetonius Augustus 49). Despite propaganda suggesting otherwise, the reach of the Roman imperial state was never so great that ordinary travelers could rely directly on Roman power to secure their movements. So we will explore the “private model” to see the favored tactics of ordinary travelers on non-state business. These methods include such common-sense precautions as bringing weapons on the road, which is well attested in Judeo-Christian literature (e.g. Josephus BJ 2.125 on the Essenes; Luke 22:36). We will also note the importance of religious vows and prayers for the safe completion of journeys, recently analyzed and enumerated by German scholar Ulrike Ehmig. Ultimately, this paper argues that private and public models of travel were never too distinct during the Roman imperial period, partly because of corrupt misuse of the state’s system by soldiers and travelers who had no legitimate right to use cursus publicus resources. We will end, however, on a more positive note, by proving that while travel was never risk-free, ordinary people innocently derived real security benefits from Rome’s state-focused apparatus. In this way, then, the pax Romana should be acknowledged as a significant blessing for those living under Roman imperial rule.

This paper will explore quotations of and allusions to the Minor Prophets in Biblical compositions from the Second Temple period. These quotations and allusions will be particularly interesting in those Minor Prophets which are dated to the Second Temple Period, such as Haggai, Zechariah, Jonah, and Joel.

In the Jacob cycle (Gen 37:2-50:26), explicit attention is allotted to Judah, Joseph, and their progeny. While the stories of Judah and Joseph share numerous similarities, one significant distinction between them centers on the status of their mixed offspring: Judah’s children (Selah, Perez and Zerah) were considered legitimate heirs of the covenant immediately, whereas Joseph’s children (Ephraim and Manasseh) were required to be adopted into Jacob’s family prior to inheriting the Abrahamic promise. I posit that there was a two-fold reason why Ephraim and Manasseh were required to be adopted: they were (a) mixed offspring who were (b) born outside of Canaan. While a mixed status alone would not disqualify one from the Abrahamic community (e.g. Shaul in Gen 46:10), a mixed lineage in conjunction with foreign residency appears to have been problematic in the Jacob cycle. In this paper, I will first examine the Judah narrative (Genesis 38:1-30) and highlight the author’s emphasis on Judah’s progeny as well as the birth location of Shelah, Perez and Zerah. Next, I will analyze Genesis 47-48, which includes the migration of the Abrahamic community to Egypt, as well as the adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh. I will argue that, in light of emphasis on land and lineage in these texts, the author of the Jacob cycle considered geographical residence to be a function for identity formation for mixed children.

There is a growing consensus that the “parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians was a protracted process (as in Skarsaune and Hvalvik, eds., Jewish Believers in Jesus [2007]). Yet the methodology for classifying ancient writings has not caught up to this development. Too often scholars fall into categorizing works according to the binary of “Jewish” or “Christian.” The OT Pseudepigrapha provide a helpful illustration. Since their authorship is often in question, and neither modern Jews nor Christians claim them, they provide “neutral” test-cases for determining provenance. Until the early 2000s, the widely held assumption was that a pseudepigraphon without visible marks of Christian influence was “Jewish.” Some scholars, such as Rivka Nir (e.g., Destruction of Jerusalem [2003]) and Lawrence Schiffman (e.g., “2 Enoch and Halakhah” [2012]), have countered that halakhic debate, of a form akin to later Talmudic literature, is the sine qua non of a “Jewish” writing. James Davila (Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha [2005]), who contends that the earliest tradents of a work — often Christians — are the proper starting point for provenance, also makes Mosaic law critical. It is explicit with his continuum of Christian writings (from Torah-observant to non-) and implicit in his continuum of Jewish and Jewish-allied works (e.g., proselytes, sympathizers, syncretistic Jews). While these projects represent an important advance, it is instructive to move to the NT to test the methodology against relatively undisputed works. Here some surprising results obtain and signal the need for more progress. Judging by the standard of halakhic exegesis, James would fail to be “Jewish” (as Metzner, Jakobus [2017], 13, argues), despite the fact that James is usually considered a prime example of “Jewish Christianity” in the NT. Indeed, it has occasionally been regarded as Jewish with only superficial Christian touches, and Allison (James [2013], 32–50) understands it to downplay Christianity to maximize Jewish continuity. By contrast, 1 Corinthians would qualify as “Jewish,” given, for instance, Paul’s ruling on food sacrificed to idols (chs. 8–10) (so Tomson, Paul and Jewish Law [1990]). Now, to be sure, Paul’s letter is Jewish, but it is odd if it comes off as more Jewish than James. Indeed, more or less “Jewish” over against “Christian” confuses categories at this period. Better in line with a late date of the “parting” would be a threefold method. First, determine whether a work is “Jewish,” broadly defined as deriving from Israelite heritage. Second, classify as “Christian,” “proto-rabbinic,” or “priestly” as additive to “Jewish,” and not necessarily mutually exclusive. First Corinthians is “Jewish,” then “Christian” — but also “Pharisaic” of a type (compare Phil 3:5). Some writings that do not have a clear secondary classification (like Joseph and Aseneth), need not be pressed beyond “Jewish.” Third, in some cases, a rival form of Judaism is contested. James contests a less rigorous form of Christian Judaism, much as 1QpHabakkuk opposes the Jerusalem priesthood. This threefold classification schema better locates ancient works and better captures the historical complexity of Roman-era Judaism.

Over 150 years of explorations in Jerusalem have exposed many important architectural remains dating to the Iron Age—the days of the Kings of Judah. These finds stand at the heart of many multi-disciplinary debates regarding the size, location, and nature of Jerusalem as the royal and cultic capital of the kingdom. In recent years, with the advent of science-based method into archaeological research, a more detailed and nuanced image of the city began to emerge. In this lecture I will present the recent finds dating to the Iron Age revealed in the many excavations being conducted in Jerusalem by Tel-Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority. This will be followed by highlighting their importance for reconstructing Jerusalem’s social, political, and economic history.

The deuterocanonical books appeared in Latin as early as the protocanonical books, mostly during the second and third centuries, at which we point we have little evidence that these books carried reduced authority. During the fourth century the Greek hesitations regarding the deuterocanonical books influenced certain Latin writers (e.g., Hilary of Poitiers, Rufinus of Aquileia). Jerome, the most influential Latin biblical scholar, promoted the narrow Hebrew canon, which he considered the traditional Christian canon, thus reflecting influence from contemporary Jews and Greek-speaking Christians. Jerome's insistence on the Hebrew canon as the proper Christian Old Testament influenced the discussion on the canon within Latin-speaking Christianity for the next millennium, through the controversial period of the sixteenth century. But Jerome did not completely reject the deuterocanonical books from Christian use; he translated some of these books, and he considered them edifying and appropriate for liturgical use. This paper explores Jerome's use of the deuterocanonical books and shows that his view toward this literature throughout his career is less negative than often supposed. Nevertheless, Jerome's more negative statements made a significant impact on subsequent Latin biblical theory, contributing to the uncertain status of the deuterocanonical books until the sixteenth century.

Forthcoming

`Aḳedah (`Aqedah; Heb., “binding” of Isaac) narrative in Gen 22:1-9 is of central importance in the life of the Patriarch Abraham and in the destiny of Israel. It narrates the obedience of Abraham to God’s command to offer his longed for and beloved son of old age, Isaac, as a `olah (“holocaust,” burnt offering) on a mountain that God will show him in the land of Moriah (Gen 22:2). At the sacrificial moment, however, a malakh HaShem (‘angel of the Lord”) bids Abraham to forestay the filial offering and an ‘ayil (“ram”) is offered in place of Isaac. In Jewish history, liturgy, and theology `aḳēdat Yiṣḥaq (’Binding of Isaac”) emerges as a supreme example of obedience to divine will, pivotal in Christology (Crucifixion), and apologizes for acts of medieval and contemporary martyrdom (Kiddush HaShem) in the lands of Christendom. I examine issues of textual exegesis and eisegesis; the “Binding of Isaac” and “Crucifixion of Jesus”; questions of justice and mercy related to God’s omnipotence and omniscience and Abraham’s silence and obedience; the dilemma of sacrifice related to preserving life; `Aḳedah and the Shoah; and other ethical and moral issues.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR annual meeting, Contemporary Currents in Majority World and Minority Theology research group

The affinity between Ezekiel and the Priestly texts of the Pentateuch have long been documented. Similarly, scholars have long noted the antipathy between Ezekiel and his brethren in the Latter Prophets. This paper will analyze the spectrum of intertextuality, allusion, and quotation within the book of Ezekiel and compare the book’s connections with the Pentateuch and its neighbors in the Latter Prophets. Simultaneously, the study will attend to the spectrum of orality and textuality to determine the nature of the memory of the book’s author and his dependency on the various texts. In particular, the paper will examine the relationship between Ezekiel 7:26 and Micah 3:11. Both verses share certain precise lexemes along with several synonyms for three social leaders in Israel (prophet, priest, and elder) and the jobs they were to perform (or fail to perform). However, the order of the stanzas is reversed between the texts along with some small variations. The paper will determine if Ezekiel’s similarity to Micah is based on a textual quotation, an oral memory, or incidental similarity based on shared cultural context and thematic concerns.

The study of shame in the Bible has generated a plethora of material in theological literature. In the philosophical study of shame, on the other hand, biblical material has been used to illustrate or bring forth a theory of shame, such as with David Velleman’s use of the story of Adam and Eve in his article “The Genesis of Shame.” In this paper, I will bring together a theological and philosophical analysis of shame in the book of Revelation. It is a theological analysis in the sense that it delves into the text with an eye towards the broader biblical theme of shame and takes into account the theological influence of the Hebrew Bible on the author of Revelation. It is philosophical in the sense that it attempts to give a more nuanced understanding of the feeling of shame found in Revelation and utilizes influential philosophical theories in order to do so. I will argue that, in this book, shame appears in contexts of divine judgment and is symbolized in the image of nakedness. I will also argue for three necessary characteristics of shame that seem to be implicit in Revelation. In the first section of the paper, I will do a reading of the texts of Revelation where the topic of nakedness in divine judgments appears, namely chapters three, sixteen, and seventeen. I will also survey the allusions the author is making of the Hebrew Bible in these texts and will show that he is most likely making extensive use of the symbolism of Hebrew Bible prophets (Ezequiel, Hosea, Micah, and Nahum). It is through the lens of these writings that we can best understand the nakedness of the passages of Revelation as a feeling of shame in the face of divine judgment. In the second section, I will analyze the feeling of shame seen in these texts in light of the philosophical and sociological theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriele Taylor, David Velleman, and Charles Cooley, arriving at three necessary characteristics in order for the feeling of shame to be evoked in the characters within the judgment context of the chapters: (1) the presence of an audience, (2) a socially accepted standard of judgment and (3) the uncovering of the private.

Accepted Paper for the Pauline Theology Section

Because the dating of every text in the Hebrew Bible is disputed, one desideratum is objective criteria for dating texts. Since the dating of the biblical texts is disputed, using only the biblical texts as a means of assigning dates risks the accusation of circular reasoning or using subjective criteria to date the texts. What is needed are clearly objective criteria and texts that can be independently dated as a basis for dating texts. One can use some general linguistic criteria to date texts but these criteria are often inconclusive. They give a general indication of the date but cannot give a definite date. In the last five years, over a thousand texts dating to the Persian Period have been published. Contrasted with pre-exilic texts, these provide objective criteria for dating texts to the Persian Period or the pre-exilic period. I will discuss the objective criteria and demonstrate how they provide a clear distinction between pre-exilic and post-exilic texts. While these criteria do not appear, and thus do not apply to every text in the Hebrew Bible, they can be used to identify a corpus of clearly Persian Period texts based on objective criteria derived from independently dated texts.

A distinctive feature of the Gospel of Mark are the so-called commands to silence, which have attracted the attention of the exegetes, and in the course of time various interpretations have been made – sometimes more convincing, sometimes less. This paper looks at these proposals and offers a new, fresh, and plausible interpretation which builds on importance of the military and warfare for establishing and maintaining power in antiquity. It considers the Gospel of Mark in the context of the Jewish-Roman War and the rise of the Flavians, exploring not only “ideological discourses of power and domination,” but also military contexts and the semantics of war.

The experience of war in ancient Israel and Judah had a profound influence on the literary traditions of the Hebrew Bible. One aspect of this experience in both Israel and Judah was the geopolitical reality of forming alliances with neighboring polities or larger imperial powers, a fact on which certain biblical and extrabiblical sources agree. Yet there are many other texts in the Former Prophets featuring the motif of military alliances that have a legendary or even mythic quality. This paper will take two such texts as case studies: the narrative about the Ammonite-Aramean coalition against David in 2 Samuel 10 and the Israelites’ pact with the Gibeonites and battles against the Canaanite coalitions in Joshua 9–11. These texts, whose authors were not limited by the inalterability of certain historical events (such as in the reference to Hezekiah’s alliance with Egypt in 2 Kgs 18:21), provide unique insights into how Israel and Judah’s historical participation in military coalitions (both successful and unsuccessful) was reinscribed within biblical memory and evaluated theologically. When brought into dialogue with texts such as the covenant prohibition in Deuteronomy 7, the motif of military alliances in texts such as 2 Samuel 10 and Joshua 9–11 is also of significance to the ongoing discussion of the literary development and theological profile(s) of the so-called Deuteronomistic History.

Recent scholarship on ancient Jewish scribes suggests that these scribes had much in common with scribes in the ancient Near East. Specifically, it is proposed that (1) ancient Jewish scribes, like their Near Eastern counterparts, underwent a rigorous education whose goal was the memorization and internalization of an extensive corpus of tradition texts; (2) they were trained to be literary artists and not mere copyists; (3) as a result separating the composition of a text from its transmission is not always possible; (4) ancient Jewish scribes approached the task of writing with an oral mentality; and (5) consequently the texts they produced are highly self-referential and abounding in synonymous variation. My analysis of Jeremiah’s doublets supports this emerging scholarly perspective. The doublets of Jeremiah abound in (a) intra-Jeremianic links that contribute to Jeremiah’s highly self-referential character, in (b) intertextual (extra-Jeremianic) links that interweave Jeremiah within an emerging canon of Jewish scripture and in (c) synonymous variation. These observations suggest that the scribes of the Second Temple Period who are writing Jeremiah approached their task with an oral mentality and made use of a memorized corpus of traditional Hebrew texts ingested during their scribal schooling. Their liberty to expand and adapt the text of Jeremiah through duplication suggests that these Jewish scribes were trained to be literary artists and not simply copyists or administrators. In short, the duplicating scribes of Jeremiah fit with the conjectured scholarly profile of Second Temple scribes as the ancient Jewish equivalent of Near Eastern scribal scholars.

The Edict of Cyrus was arguably situated at the end of the Hebrew Bible according to certain canonical traditions to not simply function as a “programmatische Schlusstext” to both the book of Chronicles and the entire canon but also as a partial fulfillment of certain eschatological anticipations present at the beginnings and endings of the various subcanonical collections. This paper will explore the possibility that 2 Chr 36:22-23 was placed at the closing of the Kethuvim and Hebrew Bible by the canonical editors to function as a sort of harbinger for the fulfillment of their eschatological expectations, intentionally interacting with the other canon-conscious structural markers as part of a hermeneutical construct which placed a longing for the consummation of the canonical witness and the fulfillment of the divine promises into the coming of a prophet-king like Cyrus who would conquer the nations and restore the temple in Jerusalem. As a result, the Hebrew Bible therefore arguably ends with what appears to be a prophetic proclamation by King Cyrus, whose edict has lexical and thematic parallels with the opening of both the Nevi’im and Kethuvim. Therein, Cyrus is presented as a forerunner to the coming of an eschatological figure likened to Joshua in Josh 1:1-9 and the man/king in Pss 1-2. As a prophetic figure, does he also function as a forerunner to coming of a prophet like Moses in Deut 34:10-12 and Elijah (Mal 3:22-23 [ET: 4:4-6]) who attempts to restore Israel not only to the land but also to faithful devotion to God in a newly built temple? Perhaps the closing of the Kethuvim and the entire Hebrew Bible ends with not only the binding together of the Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Kethuvim into a unified witness but also anticipates the coming of a prophet-king like Cyrus who will restore Israel and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

This paper will offer a fresh reading of the book of Esther in dialogue with the book of Samuel as intertext. Building on links identified in Y. Berger’s study “Esther and Benjaminite Royalty,” (2010), this essay will focus on Esther 1-2 and emphasise another parallel: Vashti and Saul’s arbitrary rejections, and their replacement through a trial and error process by Esther and David respectively. The role of God in Samuel as the one who chooses and rejects his king is parallel to the vain and perpetually feasting King Ahasuerus in the book of Esther, who chooses and rejects his queen. Thus, there is an interesting shift in hierarchy, gender, and ethnicity between actors in the intertextual links. Moreover, in another reversal of expectations, Esther’s ancestry is traced to Saul son of Kish instead of David. This paper will argue that the intertextuality and parallel between King Ahasuerus in Esther and God in Samuel, as well as between Esther and David and Saul, emphasises the unpredictability and “chance” of God’s actions, a theme also suggested in the story of Saul’s rejection in Samuel and the absence of explicit mention of God in the plot of Esther. The role of protagonist is given to a woman Esther, but so also the role of divine actor is given to a foreign king, Ahaseurus.

Haggai 1:8-9 has often confused translators. When the prophet instructs the people to “go up to the hills and bring wood” (ăʿlû hāhār wahăbēʾtem ʿēṣ), commentators disagree over the significance of the wood. While older interpreters viewed it as indicating wood for the construction of the new temple, more recent scholarship has brought this view seriously into question. Since the land surrounding Jerusalem would not contain lumber suitable for monumental building, scholars have proposed alternative understandings: that the wood would only be used for constructing tools and scaffolding (Meyers and Meyers 2008), that the wood only signifies the first stage in the building process (Wolff 1988) or that the wood is a metonymy for all necessary building materials (Kessler 2002). In response to these unsatisfactory solutions, this paper will propose a new analysis on the basis of the verb usage of this pair of verses. The verbs indicate that perhaps the prophet is not telling the returnees to obtain lumber for building, but rather to bring (bwʾ) firewood as an offering for cultic use at the temple site where the Lord will be “glorified” (kbd). Based on 1:6, scholars and translators have often assumed an agricultural context for v. 9 which says “you looked for much, but behold, little,” thinking that these words indicate a poor harvest. Yet if a cultic context is in view then the prophet is scolding the people for their failure to bring plentiful firewood. Instead, they bring only “little” for the Lord to blow upon it (npḥ), that is, to supply air to the fire’s embers for combustion. If the wood of v. 8 is understood as firewood, then this passage would corroborate the otherwise unattested “wood offering” mentioned in Nehemiah (Neh 10:34; 13:31). The prophet is indeed encouraging his compatriots to build a temple, but his request for wood does not center on the construction of the building, but on the cultic activity at its core.

Paul's presentation of Adam as the type of Jesus, "the coming one," provides a touchstone for Paul's theology of the relation between old and new, especially in Romans. The habit of many theologians, including the great Augustine and many Western scholars of modernity, has been to render the Adam of Paul's teaching as what is wrong with the world and what Christ has overcome. The relation between old and new is thus conceived as Irenaeus could never have conceived it (and did not conceive Adam), that is, as fundamentally negative, such that the new replaces the old. Paul's use of Adam in Romans to ground certain limits of the law in the scriptural story of the human has thus encouraged especially negative interpretations of the law and Israel, whose putative inadequacy is made the fossil fuel of the gospel and the church. To be Christian is to escape Adam and the death he unleashed, and, for champions of Western multiculturalism, to overcome the confines of Jewishness (as for early New Perspective interpretation). Practically lost is the solidarity of Christ with Adam, that he is Christ only as heir of Adam, that he did not escape Adam but carried him through death to life, and that life in Christ is to share in the gifts and the burdens of Adam with Christ’s power. Correspondingly lost is the solidarity of the messianic life with Israel or any patience for Paul’s teaching on the Christian commitment to the law. In place of these lies a dehistoricized replacement (e.g., of human “natures”) that cannot but oscillate between a hollow triumphalism that denies corruption and a suspension of the eschaton that enables and justifies it. Toni Morrison signaled the catastrophic ramifications of this Christianity of old and new with the dedication of Beloved, “Sixty Million and More.” Yet, she also invoked the hope of Paul’s gospel, and Hosea’s, with her epigraph, “I will call them my people which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” (Rom. 9:25; Hos. 2:23). Implicitly she tells of an Adam whom God does not give up on, a faithful remembrance that haunts the life that refuses it and only as such feeds hope for all of Adam’s descendants. My paper identifies the prominent, if not universal, tendency in the Christian tradition to divide Adam into two rival humanities. I then draw in some detail on Paul’s teaching in Romans to argue for the oneness of Adamic and messianic humanity, observing the resonance of this teaching with the indivisibility of Adam emphasized by the rabbis (e.g., t. Sanh. 8.4, where the corrollaries are the proscription of killing, peace rather than hierarchy, the wonder of God’s diversification of a single humanity, and the presence of all humanity in each human person). Finally, I clarify how Paul presents the Adamic limits of the law as witness to its fulness in Christ and Israel’s election as the Adamic hope of the gentiles.

In The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Beacon, 2017), historian Daina Ramey Berry explores ways that enslaved people in the United States “recalled and responded to their monetary value throughout the course of their lives” (p. 3). On the auction block, even a small child would learn what it meant to have a market price, an exchange value. Not only does Berry quantify the prices put on the bodies of the enslaved, from the premiums commanded by those peddling the reproductive potential of enslaved women to traffic in corpses and body parts of the deceased, but she also investigates how enslaved persons came to understand what it meant to be classified as property. She is additionally concerned with how they understood their own worth beyond what they would bring in the market, how they valued themselves—what she calls their soul value. In dialogue with the theoretical contributions of Berry and other scholars of slavery in the Atlantic world, this paper offer an intertextual analysis of scenes of sale in a variety of ancient sources, including the sale of the apostle in Acts of Thomas, the sale of Joseph in the Septuagint and extracanonical texts, and the sale of philosophical lives in Lucian’s Philosophies for Sale. The paper incorporates readings of documentary sources and ancient legal codes into interpretation of these literary representations of sale. Time permitting, the paper may wrap up where Berry concludes The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, with a brief comparative treatment of the emergence of a new kind of body market—biotechnological markets in human biomaterials (with an emphasis on dissimilarities as well as similarities, discontinuities as well as continuities).

Scholars comparing Heliodorus’ fourth century CE novel to contemporary Christian fiction frequently highlight how Christian authors were influenced by classical thought and paideia. They point to common themes such as virginal and suffering bodies and the defense of chastity as examples of common concerns in both genres. While fruitful, this approach does not consider the potential influence of Christian thought on the Hellenic tradition. Heliodorus’ mise-en-scène of near-martyrdom in Book VIII of the Aethiopika demonstrates this relationship. I argue that Heliodorus’ representation of the afflicted Theagenes and Chariklea plays with the socio-cultural constructs of gender and class exhibited by the Christian authors of martyrologies. Accordingly, this paper will analyze verbal and body language of the protagonists, as well as several distinctive plot points—like dreams and their interpretations—in order to demonstrate how the ideas and ideals concerning the body, chastity, courage, and death associated with Christian experience influenced reflections on Classical ideas into the fourth century. The markers of gender traditionally associated with the Greek novels, and assumed to have been constructed in opposition to Christian idea(l)s, thus become malleable in Heliodorus’ depiction of martyr-like affliction. This narrative is syncretic and integrates both Hellenic and Christian literary traditions: the brutal torture of the protagonists, the attempted murder of Chariklea, and the protagonists’ resistance through rhetoric, which are at times earnest and then suddenly tongue-in-cheek, exist in a context of both empathy and disgust for what appears at times to be a sought-after death. In this way, it demonstrates a persistent fascination with such remarkable events as can be read in The Martyrdom of Polycarp or Lucian of Samosata’s The Passing of Peregrinus. While Lucian and Heliodorus were likely aware of Christian martyrdom, the high seriousness of Christian hagiography is undercut by both author and audience, and in the case of Heliodorus, genre. In Book VIII of the Aethiopika, the tropes of danger and near-death, specifically the torture of the protagonists and near immolation of the heroine, are recast in salvific terms that show a considerable debt to martyrdom narratives, even as Heliodorus weaves the protagonists’ resistance into the archaicizing aristocratic values which are thematic of the idealized novels. In this way, Heliodorus uses contemporaneously popular literary styles both to reaffirm class based-virtues, and interrogate the boundaries of gender. Heliodorus’ work, when viewed against the backdrop of the variegated religious experiences of the fourth century CE, reveals a more complex exchange of thought in Late Antiquity, and invites a significant revaluation of his œuvre.

While a good majority of the recent spate of scholarship on the Paidika fixates on questions related to the fixation of this collection of tales—propagating its pro-Jesus propaganda, as it were—and defends the good-newsiness of seemingly anomalous aspects of Jesus’s character by reading the Paidika alongside other ancient representations of idealized childhoods, typical childhoods, or conventional portrayals of deities, in turn and/or in combination (Aasgaard; Burke; Cousland; Kaiser; Litwa; Paulissen; Upson­-Saia), the present study is not an(other) attempt to explain (away) such anomalies. In conversation with such prior and other (Davis; Frillingos) reception critiques of Jesus in the Paidika, I offer here an aligned study focused on some of the collection’s secondary (more implicitly) gendered concerns that intersect with the reception of the biblical figure of Joseph (of Nazareth). Joseph makes a substantial appearance in this work as well, and, as has rarely been acknowledged or put to gender-critical and queer reflection, Joseph is never far from the narrative center (even when he is). Similar to his showings in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 1-2) and the Protevangelium of James (PJ 9-19)—and unlike in the Gospel of Luke—all of the Paidika tales that feature Joseph (Paidika 2-8; 11-14; 17) are arguably narrated from his (not Jesus’s or Mary’s) ‘point of view’. Especially considering the literary significance of this unique reception of Joseph (rather than Jesus) throughout the tales, then, in this paper I unpack how this Joseph, too, exhibits a range of ambivalent and disruptive engagements with notions of ancient, Graeco-Roman masculinities—exposing the unstable worlds of ‘everyday’ men in times of trial and hardship and a number of concerns that intersect with and unevenly cite indices of hegemonic (and other) masculinity (Connell), namely: household governance and provisioning, observance of laws/norms, and self-mastery; (pro)creative capacity, heir generation, and paternity; and verbal prowess, persuasion and (storytelling?) performances. I am concerned here, as in my other reception work on the figure of Joseph, not just with description of the makings (the ‘everyday’ constituents) of Paidika’s ‘Average Joe’, but I also attempt to expose and destabilize the various mechanisms behind and in front of the making (discursive construction of the ‘everyday’) of Paidika’s ‘Average Joe’. This work, too, is arguably Joseph’s tale, and, as suggested by James H. Liu and János László with regards to prototypical in-group characters in historical narratives, Joseph’s point-of-view characterization in the Paidika feasibly plays a key role in mediating collective memory and putative group identity, concurrently bound up with the processes of ‘everyday’ gendered self-fashioning. In the Paidika tales Joseph is putatively our guide, but his ‘hegemon’-y (ὁ ἡγεμών σου; Paidika 4.1) is far from stable. My findings expose some of the ideological contours behind Joseph’s colorful reception in the Paidika and open interpretive possibilities for queering even ‘everyday’ “fantasies of masculine power and plenitude” (Brintnall) in early Christianity and beyond.

Scholars have long recognized the centrality of speech as a topic for instruction in the Book of Proverbs. The emphasis on control over one's tongue derives in large part from the great potential for words to harm or help. What has not been well understood, however, are the mechanisms by which the sages thought speech could accomplish things in the world. Words were not understood simply as ephemeral sounds carried on the breath. Rather--as this paper argues through an exploration of the materiality of oral language--the sages considered words to be physical objects. As tangible matter, speech possesses certain physical characteristics. In Proverbs, words--and metonymically the organs that create words, namely the lips, tongue, and mouth--may be soft, sharp, level, twisted, hot, straight, crooked, or smooth. Ascriptions of such physical properties to speech are not merely metaphorical but rather point to the sages' view that words possessed the capacity as things to do things. Words, for example, made literal impressions on recipients. And, given speech's ability to damage or edify, the sages categorized its physical properties as positive or negative. By examining the materiality of speech in Proverbs, we can understand better how the sages imagined that words gave physical representation to thoughts, as well as how words left physical impressions on their recipients.

The Masora parva notes comment on a variety of scribal, textual and grammatical phenomena in the text of the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretic compendium Okhla we-okhla is one way of systematization of notes, and a certain number of lists from this compendium are already attested in the oldest Oriental Masoretic manuscripts. Okhla we-okhla does not contain all types of notes attested in the manuscripts. The both extant manuscripts of Okhla we-okhla, the Codex Halle and the Codex Paris, are not identical in the amount of sections and in their arrangement. These manuscripts feature different recension of the compendium, which indicates that already in medieval times Masoretic material was grouped and systematized according to diverse principles. The paper attempts at a systematization of types of notes in the books of Prophets of the three manuscripts: the Aleppo Codex, the Cairo Codex, and the Leningrad Codex. Since Masoretic notes of these manuscripts are available in editions, and, partly in commented editions, a comparison of notes related to linguistic categories and commenting on grammatical forms allows establishing a typology of notes. One the one hand, a systematization of notes according to the types of material they comment upon helps to understand the principles behind Masoretic commentary, and, on the other hand, it supports grouping of manuscripts according to the notes attested in them. The typology of notes can later be expanded on other parts on the canon and on more manuscripts, and it can also be put in relation with the types of notes attested in manuscripts of other scribal traditions, like, e.g. the Ashkenazi ones.

Discussions of John’s relationship to the Synoptics Gospels have often focused on parallel wording and parallel traditions, to the neglect of the basic conceptual agreement between the evangelists’ projects. While any case for John’s familiarity with the Synoptics has to include the minutiae, the most striking agreements are at the macro-level. John’s Gospel parallels Mark's in story, structure, Christology and fundamental literary conceit. Both write a Passion narrative with an extended introduction that features a hidden Messiah who is only retrospectively understood by those he called. This is not a question of individual parallel traditions but of overall parallel literary concepts. The idea that John independently hit on the exactly the same project as Mark assumes that Mark’s Gospel is somehow normative, and its way of telling Jesus’ story inevitable. John is more plausibly understood as a creative re-imagination of Mark, inspired by his project, but critically reinterpreting it.

The Pauline epistles are replete with references to suprahuman, anti-god powers, such as Sin, Death, Satan, and demons. The presence and relative importance of these powers is a key difference between Paul’s theology and that of the Hebrew Bible, where such powers are far less pronounced. Even so, there remain important though insufficiently acknowledged grounds for believing that Paul himself recognized no such disparity between his own worldview and that projected by the Hebrew Scriptures. This paper seeks to demonstrate as much, showing primarily in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Ephesians how Paul establishes continuity with the Hebrew Bible on the matter of the powers by finding their existence and eventual defeat prefigured in the Scriptures themselves, especially in Psalms 8 and 110. Such an examination of Paul’s demonological exegesis helps to explain the continuity and discontinuity that exist in Pauline theology with respect to the cosmic plight and its solution. Thus, after analyzing the demonological exegetical pattern in the Pauline epistles, I then close by reflecting on some of the theological implications of these findings for contemporary discussions in Pauline theology and how it is that Paul’s own religious experience led him to adopt such a reading of the Hebrew Bible.

At first glance, Wisdom of Solomon does not appear to be a text with a heavy emphasis on prayer. Prayer and related terms occur in only four passages with the first mention not occurring until Wis 7. Nevertheless, in the overall appeal to the reader to hold on to the traditional Jewish practices and beliefs in the face of pressure to turn away, the four passages in which prayer occurs are significant. As the wisdom “of Solomon,” part of the strategy of pseudonymity is carried forward by references to Solomon’s wisdom as a gracious gift of God in response to his prayer. Solomon’s prayer itself is provided to the reader, in part, as a model prayer (Wis 9). In addition to promoting prayer by the model of Solomon, the text reveals the folly of prayer offered to idols. Some of the sharpest and most pointed rhetoric against idols is deployed in a section which vividly describes the absurdity of praying to inanimate objects (13:17-14:1). Finally, lessons from Israel’s history are drawn out from narratives including the obligation to pray and give thanks to God at dawn (16:18). In the text as a whole, both positive and negative examples show the reader the desirable path in their current age. Attention both to the rhetoric of prayer and to the functions of Solomon's prayer in its wider contexts reveals that references to prayer are an important part of the author’s larger strategy to promote adherence to Jewish tradition in a Hellenistic context.

In this presentation, I will identify and examine two key subjective commitments evident in premodern scriptural exegesis that can inform contemporary theological engagement with Scripture. In Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, Frances Young notes that patristic exegesis exhibits “a critical stance towards a literalizing view of religious language” (35). Young also notes that premodern exegetes, of course, were undoubtedly concerned to identify the referents of the text. They did not literalistically multiply referents, however, but saw them as pointing to Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Those commitments are often unstated but nevertheless present in countless exegetical works of the patristic era. It would be impossible to prove that such commitments are present everywhere in patristic exegesis, but I will briefly examine exegetical work by Origen and Augustine which exhibits such commitments. The premodern commitments against literalizing and for identifying referents combined into a powerful tool for engaging Scripture. Those commitments ultimately forced the early Christians to not only go beyond the letter of the texts—which is inevitable and necessary because of the plurality of perspectives represented in the texts, and the cultural exigencies of translation and explanation in different times and places—but to recognize the legitimacy of going beyond the letter in developing nuanced technical language for speaking about God, God's creation, and God's redemptive work. Doing so is necessary because of the commitments to faithful speech entailed in Christian faith. Ultimately, for premodern interpreters, commitment to the texts of Scripture—of both Testaments—is sublated by commitment to ask and answer questions concerning the identity of the God who has acted in reality in the oikonomia of creation and redemption. While the “products” of the history of interpretation, that is, particular interpretive decisions in past scriptural commentary, can fruitfully serve as a rich resource for contemporary reflection, the subjective commitments to critical, nuanced use of language for identifying the referents of the texts of Scripture are more fundamental than those achievements. Moreover, identification of and recovery of those commitments can provide a fruitful means of recovering the genius of premodern exegesis alongside the achievements of modern historical and contextual approaches. Historical approaches promote the authentic goal understanding of the particularity of the texts, and contextual approaches promote the authentic goal of understanding the particular experience of reading communities. The critical and referential commitments I have identified promote the authentic goal of understanding the realities, divine and human, to which both the authors of Scripture and premodern Christians referred. Individual interpreters and communities can recognize and hold together such premodern, modern, and postmodern commitments. They provide neither the “meaning” or “sense” of Scripture, but instead transform readers to measure up to the particularities of the text, and the challenges of faithful, nuanced, and moral speech and action in contemporary Christian communities.

In the past three years since Duterte became president, the killings under the administration’s War on Drugs have continued unabated with suspected drug addicts and their families from poor communities subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and death without due process; prominent individuals who were previously charged with plunder and corruption and for drug dealing were released and their cases dropped for purportedly “lack of evidence”; and those who dared to criticize the government for human rights abuses, including the Chief Justice, senators, and the media, are harassed, charged, imprisoned, or removed from office. Despite all of these, Duterte continues to enjoy widespread support, even among Christian groups, with as much as 80% approval rating among Filipinos. The reason for this is the belief that Duterte is God’s ordained instrument to solve the ills of Philippine society, especially the problems of drugs and criminality. This paper analyzes the main biblical passages and analogies invoked to promote the election of Duterte as president in 2016 and to justify the continued support of his policies in the present. These biblical materials include the appointment of Cyrus as God’s anointed; biblical characters with flaws (like David, Moses, etc.) under the slogan “God does not call the qualified but qualified the called”; Jeremiah’s injunction to submit to Babylonian rule; and Romans 13. The sources of analysis include social media memes, facebook posts, blogs, and newspaper columns of religious leaders. The paper contends that the particular use of the Bible to justify support for Duterte is undergirded by the strongman narrative, which goes this way: The Philipines faces festering problems, such as drugs, terrorists, corruption, insurgency, etc. because of the people’s lack of discipline and the oligarchs’ control of the system. Thus, a president who has the political will to fight the elités and instill discipline is needed. But in order to do this, he must be given extraordinary powers to do the job, including eliminating those who stand in the way. This strongman narrative resonates with Filipino culture and colonial history, while continually being reinforced by government propaganda through historical revisionism and social media memes. Thus, it is important to challenge this narrative using biblical and theological resources.

One of the fundamental and pervasive assumptions of modern Qur’an scholarship is the idea that the Qur’an conceptualizes all prophets as variations of the same basic prototype and their revelations as essentially identical. In the first part of this paper, I argue that this conception of prophetic and scriptural history can be traced to the scholarship of Aloys Sprenger, a highly influential historian of early Islam in the nineteenth century. Sprenger believed that Muhammad was under the influence of Jewish-Christian ideas. Using the Clementine literature as a repository of these ideas, Sprenger attempted to find some of their qur’anic counterparts, an attempt that resulted in his particular understanding of the Qur’an’s scripturology and prophetology. I next examine more than two dozen works of tafsīr to show that pre-modern Muslim scholars espoused a diverse array of opinions on the question of the consonance of divine scriptures. While some writers considered scriptures to be more or less identical, others posited a far more limited degree of overlap between prophetic revelations. According to Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767), for example, the common denominator of scriptures is to be found in Q 6:151-3 —a qur’anic version of the Ten Commandments—while al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1272) maintained that the teaching shared by all scriptures is simply “the rejection of polytheism and the affirmation of monotheism.” Continuing the examination of exegetical writings, the presentation draws attention to an often overlooked but highly significant feature of post-classical Muslim scholarship: the Islamic exegetical tradition came to embrace a division of scriptures into two distinct categories, what we may call “major” and “minor” scriptures, mapping the former to the qur’anic designation kutub and the latter to the terms ṣuḥuf and zubur. According to this division, technically-speaking kutub is a qur’anic label for scriptures that contain substantial legislation, a category that includes the Torah, the Gospel, the Qur’an, and sometimes also the Book of Psalms. On the other hand, ṣuḥuf and zubur designate writings that were revealed before the Torah and had a sapiental, non-binding nature. I briefly outline this idea’s genealogy and its meandering lines of propagation from a report of Wahb b. Munabbih (d. ca. 110/728) to the influential tafsīr works of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) and al-Bayḍāwī (d. ca. 700/1300) and thence to the writings of later commentators. Having charted the complexity and dynamism of exegetical reflection on the relationship between scriptures, and having sketched the genealogy of certain modern scholarly assumptions on this subject, the presentation closes by reflecting on the implications of these observations for the study of the qur’anic text.

The laws, as detailed within the Torah, provide specific instructions concerning what must take place in the case of their violation. However, throughout the narrative of Israel’s history, these detailed instructions are often ignored by key characters within the narrative, a point most vividly demonstrated in the stories of David in the book of Samuel (Michael Avioz, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Books of Samuel, 4). The study of reception history as a testimony of the interpretive history of a text has particularly increased in influence in the last three decades, and Josephus’s works have begun to be utilized for this purpose (See Avioz, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Books of Samuel; Brill’s translation with commentary on Josephus; Also see the following authors: Louis Feldman, Christopher Begg, J. M. G. Barclay, P. Spilsbury). However, one area that has not received sufficient attention is the manner in which later interpreters represent these narratives in their writings (Avioz, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Books of Samuel, 3, 10). In this paper, I will examine Josephus’s retelling of particular events—in which there is a conflict between the event and the laws specified in the Torah—from the story of David within the narrative of 1 Samuel 16–1Kings 2. Specifically, I will examine how Josephus retells these events, giving particular attention to details that are added and/or subtracted from the original narrative. Furthermore, I will then compare these findings with other interpreters such as the superscriptions within the MT tradition, the Septuagint and the Aramaic Targums, as well as Qumran and other Second Temple Jewish interpreters. The goal of this examination will be twofold: first, it will be to determine what Josephus’s retelling of these narratives communicate about the relationship between the laws as they are stated in the Torah and how they are reflected outside the Torah. Second, the goal will be to compare Josephus’s retelling of these narratives with other interpreters to identify similarities and differences for the purpose of attempting to isolate ideologies, goals, and agendas within these interpreters.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, Linguistics and the Biblical Text research group

Jerome of Stridon probably started learning the rudiments of Hebrew in the late 370’s CE, and by the mid-380’s he was actively strengthening his Hebrew reading skills. Nevertheless, before embarking on his complete translation of the Hebrew Bible iuxta Hebraicum, Jerome produced Latin translations of several books in the late 380’s based on Origen’s recension of the LXX, the “hexaplaric edition.” One of the books that Jerome translated from the hexaplaric Greek text was the Psalms. Because of its reception in Gaul, this translation came to be known as the “Gallican Psalter,” which eventually became the official Psalter of the Latin Vulgate. The iuxta Hebraicum Psalter appeared a few years later, in the early 390’s. This means that the Gallican Psalter is a secondary translation, a Latin rendering of a Greek version of the Hebrew Psalms. At the same time, the Gallican psalter was based on a Hebraized Greek edition, produced by someone who at the time knew at least the basics of Hebrew. In his long Epistle 106 (actually, a treatise on the text of the Psalms), Jerome discusses his translation decisions in the Gallican Psalter in light of the different Greek versions and sometimes with the Hebrew in view. This paper will present and analyze several examples of texts discussed in Epistle 106 that illustrate how the Gallican Psalter as a secondary translation was influenced by the Hebrew at different levels. The fact that Jerome reflects on his own process gives special insight into how such a procedure might work in antiquity. Although what Jerome says about his thinking process needs to be evaluated critically and his methods may not be same as those followed other translators, some space will be given to reflecting on the general process of producing a secondary translation while consulting the original.

The margins of the book of Jeremiah are haunted by cannibals. While cannibalism is only an occasional narrative event (e.g. Jer. 19:9), the cannibal/cannibalistic appears across the text, whether as a marker of reprehensible foreign nations (e.g. Jer. 10:25), a form of reciprocal punishment (Jer. 30:16), or an anxiety of incorporation (Jer. 51:34). The specter of the cannibal also animates the book’s many representations of eating, consumption, and desire. Prophetic textuality, too, is represented as a cannibalistic process. Prophets and texts cannibalize earlier texts and prophecies; a prophetic book, like a cannibal’s body, is constituted of pieces taken, willingly or otherwise, from other (textual) bodies. Centering the cannibal in reading Jeremiah, I will argue that cannibalism, while a powerful symbol, is never fully stable, and that the imagery of people eating people opens itself, and the biblical text, to multiple and oppositional readings. Frequently, cannibalism serves as a marker of extreme suffering. In addition, the cannibal directs attention to boundaries: geographical boundaries (in ancient travel literature, cannibals are frequently found at the boundaries of the known world), category boundaries (what qualifies as food, what differentiates the human and the animal), and boundaries of acceptable desire (what if I wish to eat others? Or to be eaten?) Cannibalism also provides a form for thinking about the relationship between older and newer texts and traditions, which “cannibalize” older material. The cannibal is significant precisely because it illuminates the working of a number of significant categories, in the book of Jeremiah and beyond it.

Saul’s encounter with Nahash the Ammonite in 1 Samuel 11 stands at the core of a larger set of traditions concerning Saul’s emergence as one of monarchic Israel’s first prominent leaders contained in 1 Samuel 9–14. After a jarring shift in setting from the lot casting event at the end of 1 Samuel 10, Saul emerges “from the field” in 1 Sam 11:4–5 to rescue the Jabeshites from their Ammonite oppressors. Some have argued that, in its present form, this pericope serves as the tradition legitimating Saul’s consolidation of political power, already anticipated by the donkey tale in 1 Sam 9:1–10:17. Consideration of composition-critical issues regarding the formation and development of the larger Saulide complex alongside more recent models of state formation theory, however, yields new interpretive possibilities for Saul’s encounter with Nahash. Namely, that the underlying core of 1 Samuel 11—i.e., vv. 1–11*—represents an old Saulide tradition that has been reworked by later Davidic tradents thereby negatively recasting Saul as מלך. This reworking brought the older tradition into comportment with newer, anti-Saul polemic involving Saul’s coronation in 1 Sam 11:14–15 and rejection at Gilgal in 1 Sam 13:7b–15. Understanding the text in this light forces us to reconsider the Marshaling the insights of more recent work in state formation theory—namely, dual processual models—I intend to show that 1 Sam 11:1–11* evinces a compositional and historical context characterized by corporate rather than exclusionary socio-political structuration. Such a context would, first, indicate an earlier compositional chronological horizon for the older core of the tale and, second, suggest that Saul’s socio-political role was originally more akin to judge than king. Thus, this reassessment of the composition history of the text has important implications both for our understanding of the traditions underlying the current Saul narratives and for our reconstruction of the emergence of the early Israelite state.

Challenges of Bible Translation: Rites of Complexity

Since its discovery, scholars have noted a discrepancy between the text and images of Katumuwa stela in regard to the meal elements set before the deceased: the text describes a hindlimb portion of a ram, whereas the meat portion portrayed on the table has been interpreted as a duck. This paper highlights problems with the identification of the meat portion as a duck based on portrayals of waterfowl in other offering scenes, especially from Egypt, and suggests alternatively that a deboned hindlimb is depicted. In addition to strength gained from the correspondence between the text and images, further support for the identification of a hindlimb portion is garnered from iconographic parallels in the Aegean world as well as from the immediate archaeological context of the courtyard in which the stela was discovered. The paper concludes with some implications for understandings of a Mediterranean “sacrificial koine” as it pertains to the cult of the dead and East-West interconnections in the Iron Age II. 

Literary papyri of the Hellenistic period sometimes show a high degree of textual instability: the classic example being the so-called "wild" papyri of the Iliad from the third to the second centuries BC. But Roman papyri by contrast tend to be highly stable. Literary texts from the first through the fourth centuries show a high degree of stichometric stability, and relatively little instability within the line. This paper places the the transmission problems of NT papyri within the broader context of Roman papyri in general; it will be mostly restricted to the evidence from Oxyrhynchus.

Zosimos of Panopolis, who flourished around 275 CE, is one of the best known writers in the Greco-Egyptian alchemical corpus. Many of his writings are addressed to his female colleague, Theosebia. Very little information about Theosebia and her relationship with Zosimos can be gleaned from the Greek literature. However, an early 13th century Arabic manuscript, the Mushaf as-suwar, or Book of Pictures, features numerous illustrations of Zosimos and Theosebia crowned with the sun and moon, representing various alchemical processes. From these illustrations, as well as other mentions of Zosimos and Theosebia in medieval Arabic alchemical texts, it is clear that legends had developed around their relationship. This paper traces the development from historical figure to legend and argues that the relationship between Zosimos and Theosebia becomes dramatized in Arabic literature as an erotics of pedagogy, rooted in Ancient Near Eastern wisdom traditions and Platonic understandings of eros as an anagogical spiritual force. Despite their popularity with Arabic alchemists, they are rarely mentioned by name in European alchemical works; yet the illustrations of them in the Mushaf as-suwar appear to have influenced European images of the alchemical marriage of the solar king and lunar queen. Therefore, the relationship of Zosimos and Theosebia provides an important window into the historical development of erotic themes in alchemical literature.

Two sets of interrelated passages have proved particularly vexing for feminist interpreters: the portrayals of Jerusalem and Samaria as sexually promiscuous women in Ezekiel 16 and 23, and the portrayal of Rome as a figurative prostitute identified with “Babylon” in Revelation 17–18. My aim in this paper is to read these two sets of texts together as responses to masculinity under distress. Because Revelation’s imagery frequently echoes the imagery in Ezekiel, connections between the two sets of passages should not be surprising. Both texts, for example, portray female bodies as metaphorical representations of cities. In both texts, the women so portrayed engage in excessive sexual activity that metaphorically represents the things the author wants readers to resist, whether non-Yhwh worship in Ezekiel or devotion to Rome in Revelation. And the traumas that ignite both texts can be understood as crises of masculinity. Revelation and Ezekiel sit in the shadow of recent military conquests that lead to the destruction of the central place of worship in Jerusalem. Ezekiel responds to the trauma of the first temple’s destruction and the subsequent exile; Revelation responds to a cluster of problems possibly related to Roman domination, whether John’s exile (1:9), the death of Antipas (2:13), or the destruction of the second temple. And the implied authors of these works, recoiling from the trauma of military defeat, also suffer strange invasions of their bodily boundaries; indeed, both John and Ezekiel must consume a divine scroll as part of their prophetic mission (Ezekiel 2:8–3:3, cf. Revelation 10). As illustrated by Raewyn Connell’s research on men’s life stories, crisis points in the construction of masculinity can lead to the production of alternative constructions. Where one ideal of masculinity breaks down, another emerges in its place. The woman-city passages, both coming from implied authors experiencing distressed or destabilized masculinity, can therefore be read within the project of constructing an alternative, compensatory masculinity. By depicting certain types of action as the offenses committed by shockingly unchaste women—whether non-Yhwh worship in Ezekiel or the confident boasting of “Babylon” in Revelation—the authors make weighty statements about what they, as men, are not. In doing so, they can defensively feminize their rhetorical opponents while providing their ideal male readers a via negativa by which to construct and perform their own masculinity. Taking this interpretive approach to these texts may provide otherwise unavailable avenues for appropriating them; the portrayal of Rome as the harlot of the nations in Revelation 17, for example, argues against the Roman ideological notion that colonial conquest was Rome’s prerogative as “alpha male” of the world. By portraying Rome as an unchaste female, the author of Revelation deconstructs elements of Roman masculinity. At the same time, this approach opens up new avenues for critiquing the objectionable imagery of these passages. These passages, with their apparent exultations in sexualized violence against women, demonstrate that masculinity in distress carries a particularly high risk for inciting misogyny.

In the founding issue of Dead Sea Discoveries, now celebrating 25 years of publication, the state of the field of Dead Sea Studies was clearly articulated. New publications had become a regular occurrence, and the status quo of the Qumran Essene Hypothesis was about to be shaken. Timothy Lim, in a book review in that first issue, notes that “to bring oneself up to date, the reader should also consider [alongside the Essene Hypothesis] the Groningen Hypothesis . . .. and the emphasis upon the Qumran community’s halakhic affinities with the Sadducees.” Golb’s “Jerusalem Hypothesis” is also noted in the review. Eileen Schuller, in that same review section, argues for a nuanced approach to the reading of sectarian rule texts, suggesting that “a more sociological and phenomenological approach” to such rules might provide insight into their contributions to the group’s self-identity and sense of the sacred. With a focus on questions of social formation and religious meaning, this paper will explore the many changes in Qumran studies over the last several decades, as well as some remarkable points of continuity. In light of past renderings of the “Monastery at Qumran,” how will a next generation of Qumran scholars understand and reimagine the social and religious experience of participants in the Dead Sea Scrolls movement?

The most common interpretation of Jesus’ aphorism that “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” understands the saying as a description of the hardships of Jesus’ own itinerant mission. Indeed, the narrative context of each telling (Matthew 8.19-21 and Luke 9.57-59) shows Jesus using the saying to warn a potential disciple about the perils of life on the road. However, stepping back from this narrative situation and examining the animals used in the saying (i.e. the fox and bird) leads to additional possibilities. This paper postulates that the juxtaposition of the bird as a celestial animal and the fox as a chthonic animal can be read as symbolically potent. To unpack this possibility, this study explores other meanings for these animals using comparative approaches, anthropology, and theories of space and place. Even a cursory glance of the use of the bird and the fox in symbols, myths, and rituals from the cultural contexts of Christianity and beyond shows each to be a potent carrier of meaning. Because each animal can be imagined to cross boundaries (biologically or behaviorally), each animal is readily identified with liminal states of being, social relationships, and religious practices. Upon unpacking the verdant array of meanings connected to each animal, the associations are reintroduced into the context of Jesus’ life and mission in the saying itself. I argue that this aphorism, and the use of the animal images within it, offers an opportunity for thought about Christology and cosmology for both ancient and modern readers of the text.

Even though there is a millennial gap between Biblical Hebrew and the Hebrew of Jehuda ha-Levi, there is a strict diachronic connection between the two languages. That phenomenon is owed especially to the growth of activity in the field of philological studies since the 10th century. The authors of the so called “Jewish golden age” considered the necessity of using the language which was the most faithful representation of the biblical ideal, to be of paramount. Ha-Levi is considered to be the most prominent of them all while his language is considered to have achieved the highest stage of perfection in the mimicry of classical prototype. His works are characterized by an exquisite formal grammatical integrity in the application of the phonological, morphological and syntactic norms specified by the original system. However, his language exhibits some fascinating innovative features in verb functioning, which I would like to discuss, (with a notable regular and consequent usage of the waw-preceded forms) on the broader level of discourse, pragmatics and poetics. This effect was achieved, since ha-Levi’s distribution of verbal forms was, on the one hand much more selective than in BH and subject to strict, pragmatic models imposed by poetic requirements, while on the other hand, still strongly inspired by the biblical poetics (corresponding usually to the characteristic archaic usages known from the biblical poetry). I will try to characterize the functioning of that coherent and original verbal system of ha-Levi’s Hebrew. Since it is represented exclusively in poetry, we are forced to take into account the substantial differences (visible already once the very purpose of communication is considered) between a neutral linguistic act and a poetic discourse. As a result of those observation, one is bound to acknowledge the specific relations between poetics and the language itself. This, in turn, requires the use of methodology different from the one employed in the standard language study. By using dedicated analytical tools, it is possible to determine the specific impact that poetics has on the functioning of a language system. Since the emotionally charged language of poetry naturally focuses on the person of the speaker a turn towards a pragmatic-discursive analysis seems the most appropriate. To analyze the ongoing processes constructively, it is necessary first to look at how the desired pragmatic and modal functions are carried out by specific verbal forms. I will use the tools offered by the grammar of discourse, which defines the functioning of grammatical elements within a given language environment, at the level of a full discursive unit – the whole text. The specific illocutionary functions of given grams are then possible to identify. In the case of ha-Levi’s language, thanks to that method it can be demonstrated how those grams – in this case verbal forms take on a specific, additional functions by assuming the role of a poetic devices, the functions of which I shall discuss.

This paper traces the contours of emotion and gender performance in the story of Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7:54–8:1. Primarily because Stephen’s death echoed that of Jesus, many early interpreters embraced him as a “perfect martyr,” but recent scholarship has offered several alternative readings of Stephen’s “perfect” death. Shelly Matthews, for example, argues that Stephen’s death reifies traditional Roman mores as normative values for the author’s own community. In this respect, one aspect of Stephen’s story has not been adequately addressed: Luke’s construction of Stephen’s masculinity. The investigation of bodies and manliness in Luke-Acts has been a popular topic among current scholars, yet all have bypassed an analysis of Stephen. On first glance, there seems to be an easy explanation for this. Unlike the conspicuously emasculated Ethiopian eunuch or the temporarily violable bodies of a blinded Paul and muted Zechariah, Stephen’s death, as an imitatio Christi, seems to be an exemplary display of self-mastery (enkrateia) and thus an obvious display of masculinity. But on closer inspection, there are some curious aspects in the narrative. In particular, Luke’s choice of the verb krazo—a term linked to animal utterances and uncontrolled or excessive emotional outbursts—to describe Stephen’s scream is puzzling. Stephen’s accusations against the mob (7:51-53) incite them into hysterics. The mob covers their ears, screams in a loud voice (kraxiantes phone megale), and charges Stephen, who maintains a stoic demeanor, calling on God to receive him as he is stoned to death (7:59). Shortly, he falls to his knees and, like the mob, screams in a loud voice (ekraxien phone megale), apparently overtaken by emotion. This paper argues that passions and gender performance are intimately linked in the story of Stephen’s martyrdom. While Stephen does evince some traditional masculine characteristics, Luke’s description of his final act connotes the exact opposite of self-mastery and manliness, thus producing gender ambiguity. Stephen’s screams represent an unmanning and a subversion of typical Greco-Roman notions of masculinity. Luke’s characterization of Stephen ultimately aligns with his penchant to “unman” his male characters in effort to produce a new understanding of masculinity based on a feminized (because persecuted) savior, who embodies, as Brittany Wilson has argued, a paradox of power in powerlessness.

This paper wrestles with the teaching found in Matthew 6:25-30 which urges poor not to worry about food and clothing and instead rely on God, who is a trustworthy provider for people’s most basic needs. I argue that today in the First World the key role of human factor (in the forms of for-profit food corporations and distribution networks) in the process of how the poor access food and clothing creates a tension with the gospel’s assurance of the reliable divine provision for people’s basic needs and instruction not to worry about these needs. After a brief review of the previous scholarship concerning this text, I build my argument the following way. First, I explore how interpreters in the early church, who lived in the agrarian society, made meanings of this text and I highlight how they engaged their socio-economic context of the agrarian society in their interpretations. Then I outline major differences between agrarian world of the first century CE and our post-industrial society, particularly focusing on the differences of how the poor could access food and clothing in these two contexts. I emphasize the roles of human intermediaries in the process of how food and clothes make their way to the hands of the poor in the developed world today. These human intermediaries are food production corporations and distribution networks, the majority of which are for-profit organizations. I conclude with my interpretation of Matthew 6:25-30, which takes into account the increased role of human for-profit agencies in the process of how the poor access food and clothing today, and therefore resists the gospel’s “do not worry” instruction based on the sole promise of God’s reliable provision.

Introducing the Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism

In the past half century, strides have been made in assessing numerous dynamics in Hebrews' intertextual tapestry, including attention to a wide variety of the author's appropriation and rhetorical techniques. The current paper proposes the addition of "intertextual layering," a particular form of "fat" reflection on the Scriptures, the author alluding to or echoing various texts, associated through verbal analogy, to draw out diverse implications of a single dimension of the Christ Event. As illustration of the phenomenon, the paper focuses on the language of high-priestly sacrifice at Heb. 5:3 and 9:7, suggesting that the verbal analogy in these verses should be read as alluding respectively to sacrifice at the ordination of the priests in Lev. 9 and that on the Day of Atonement in Lev. 16. The implication suggested is that Christ's sacrifice is read as having a "layered" theological effect, accomplishing both the Son's ordination as a superior High Priest and his Day of Atonement sacrifice on behalf of his new covenant people.

This paper offers the legacy of missionary activity in Korea, which on the one hand is celebrated, but on the other cast as a form of western imperialism. She reads select passages in the Books of Jeremiah (27:1–15) and (Second) Isaiah (44:24–45:13), examining references to the Babylonian and Persian empires as God’s agents, a conduit for a theology of retribution. American imperialism and the Korean church are also read as such agents.

Across their copious religious literature, Mandaeans most consistently designate themselves as Nāṣorāyi "Nazoraeans" (cf. Greek ναζωραῖος), a gentilic which is commonly derived from the toponym Nazareth (Hebrew nāṣrat, Syriac nāṣrat, Mandaic neṣrat, Arabic al-Nāṣirah), and which serves as a boundary object across several different religious communities (cf. Hebrew nôṣrîm, Syriac nāṣrāye, Arabic al-Naṣāra). Outside of Mandaic, however, this same term has either come to be deprecated as a self-designation (Christians) or employed primarily in pursuit of sectarian boundary maintenance (by Jews, normative Christians, and Muslims). According to the scholarly consensus, the one community denied its fair and legitimate use is the one that continues to employ it as part of its own self-representations, which scholarship frequently characterizes as late, derivative, and even dissimulating. How Mandaeans came to be the exclusive custodians of this term, even as their claims to it have been rejected by other religious and scholarly communities, is worthy of a study in itself. In this presentation, I shall employ a philological approach to examine the evidence for Mandaean claims against the evidence for the various religious and scholarly claims, in support of the hypothesis that Nāṣorāyi can only derive from Nazareth, but against the hypothesis of a dependence upon any of these other linguistic or religious communities. In doing so, I shall also present a new hypothesis on the origin and meaning of the name Nazareth.

This paper presents an example of tannaitic figurative language that employs feminine images as metaphoric source domain and has as target domain some central aspects of the rabbinic world. The parallel texts in mBer 9:5 and tBer 6:23 have been much analyzed and discussed. Nevertheless, so far no attention has been given to the gendered aspect they entail. This analysis discusses it for the first time, and aims to point out how gender is central, salient and deliberate here. In defining and defending the rabbinic movement with its choices in the aftermath of catastrophe, this tradition employs a metaphorical expression that compares the rabbis to a “mother one should not despise” (Prov 23:22). The mother of Proverbs is old (כי זקנה) and the Tosefta (most probably, the original version) has for protagonists “the elders” (זקנים), clearly marked as the rabbis, in that they engage in Torah study. Using motherhood, a burdensome and hard task with its elements of crisis, to represent leadership goes back to Moses’s complaint in Num 11:11-12, a comparison that was used by Paul (1 Thess 2:7-8) as well as by the Qumran leader (1QHa XV 23b-25a). Deborah’s statement “I arose a mother in Israel” (Judg 5:7) seems to represent an inescapable figurative concept for all groups aspiring for power in the Judaism of Late Antiquity. This is far from obvious (indeed, tempering tactics are employed alongside this construction), but even less obvious is the use of the mother’s image for rabbinic defensive strategies. A parallel text in Philo (SpecLeg 4.149-50), quite close to the rabbinic one, is indeed inflected in empowering ‘father’-terms. To challenge those despising them, the rabbis use the potent discourse against disrespect for elders, which should speak to Greco-Roman mores or whatever listener of Late Antiquity. However, they also compare themselves to the ‘mother’ of Proverbs, rather than to the ‘father’ appearing in the same verse (importantly, the rabbis did not lack verses in the Hebrew Bible concerning not despising the elders to choose from). The rabbis’ self-depiction as being subject to unjust disparagement, their protest for the unfairness of such devaluation, is thus accentuated by the use of a female figure: the mother who gave you life at high risk. In “Gendering (the) Competition” Kraemer has suggested that in Antiquity competition was “gendered as masculine,” as stressed particularly in its metaphors, which are about power, authority, prestige and domination. “[T]o inflict violence … was to exercise masculinity: to be subject to the violence of others entailed passivity, subordination, and femininity.” If so, what does the source domain of the “mother” do in this rabbinic defensive tirade? This analysis will attempt to address this question.

Capitalism and climate disruption are inherently interconnected through capitalism’s dependence on fossil fuels, and the impact of those fossil fuels on the environment. Multi-national corporations both in the United States and globally have caused tremendous environmental devastation in the name of profit for their shareholders. Yet, many US Americans welcome climate disruption as a sign of the apocalypse and the return of Jesus Christ. These beliefs are based in part on interpretations of Revelation, which has perhaps the most popular and controversial reception history of any book in the Bible. Instead of reading Revelation as a roadmap predicting future events, this paper understands John the Seer as thoroughly engaged with “unveiling” his own socio-historical context in the first century CE, a context deeply shaped by the Roman empire. This paper will historicize the ecological devastation that took place under Rome toward understanding parallels among these first century CE environment impacts and the destruction of Earth described in Revelation. It will develop resources for rereading the devastation Earth experiences in Revelation not as a welcome sign of the impending “end,” but as a dire warning and call to repentance in light of today’s climate crisis.

After Reynolds (The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext), Reeves (Bible and Qur’ān), Gobillot ("Apocryphes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament," "Le Coran, guide de lecture de la Bible et des textes apocryphes"), Sfar (Le Coran, la Bible et l’Orient ancien), I propose to investigate the so-called intertextuality between the Jewish Apocryphal texts and the Qur'an. With some examples from the Testament of Abraham, Apocalypse of Abraham, Testament of Moses, Book of Biblical Antiquities, 4 Baruch, Story of Ahiqar, presented as test-cases, I emphasize the necessity to analyse each Jewish Apocryphal passages in its own context before comparison with the Qur'an. Otherwise, the risk is to overinterpret or misunderstand the Jewish Apocryphal passages and finally to introduce bias in the comparison with the Qur'an.

The Ethiopian scribal tradition is cosmopolitan and creative. From late antiquity until today Ethiopian scribes have translated and incorporated non-Ethiopian texts either directly or indirectly from Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin sources. Once entering the Ge’ez scribal world, these texts and their related traditions have been subject to creative internal editing and interpretive processes as Ethiopians have made these texts their own. In addition to the translation and editing of non-Ethiopian texts, these scribes have generated their own, indigenous works, which have also been subject to creative editing. My contribution offers the Daniel tergwāmē, the Ge’ez commentary materials to the biblical book of Daniel, as a case study. There are at least three extant tergwāmē to Daniel, which exist in various recensions. The largest of these works is a translation from an unidentified Arabic source, which offers a completely fresh translation of Daniel ultimately based on the Peshitta, along with extensive section-by-section commentary. This work brings both Greek and Syriac interpretive traditions into Ge’ez literature, providing us with our only Ge’ez fragments of Hippolytus of Rome’s 204 CE commentary to Daniel, and incorporating understandings of Daniel’s four kingdoms that were popular in Syriac Christian circles. Once within the Ge’ez scribal tradition, this work underwent significant editorial activity. One recension replaces its Peshitta-based lemma with the traditional Theodotion-based Ge’ez translation of Daniel and reworks the commentary for style and clarity. Another recension dramatically abbreviates the commentary, conforming it to a style that is characteristic of the Ge’ez tergwāmē tradition. Two other tergwāmē exist in fragmentary form, both of which are likely indigenous compositions. The witnesses to these commentaries often vary considerably from each other, illustrating that Ethiopian scribes felt free to shape and reshape biblical commentary materials. In addition to translating, editing, and composing such texts, the scribes also incorporated them in creative ways into biblical and liturgical manuscripts. Thus we see the incorporation of tergwāmē to Daniel into Gebra Ḥemāmāt, the lectionary for Passion Week, and the incorporation of the tergwāmē’s Peshitta-based translation of Daniel chapter eleven into some Daniel manuscripts. I offer an overview of these materials and the scribal processes they have undergone, as well as reflections on what this can tell us about the cosmopolitanism and creativity in the Ge’ez scribal tradition more broadly.

In his book Torah in the Mouth, Martin Jaffee provides a compelling argument for the rise of Oral Torah as an ideology that emerged only in the Amoraic period. He ultimately argues that this ideology of oral revelation arose as a way of shoring up the rabbis own sense of authority within a competitive “religious” landscape. Be that as it may, it does little to explain the particularity of the Oral Torah as an ideological strategy; why among the rabbis, why then, and why there? Without answering these questions, the idea of Oral Torah remains problematically sui generis, which in turn reflects a failure of scholarly categories of analysis. I suggest in this presentation that when we consider Oral Torah through the category of revelation, rather than law, rhetoric, or pedagogy (pace Jaffee), we might get a better purchase on historicizing what seems to be this uniquely rabbinic ideology. It stands to reason, then, that we look at contemporary and proximate discursive formations of revelation outside of rabbinic sources if we are to better contextualize the Oral Torah. In this presentation, I highlight two other texts that also highlight the idea of oral revelation as such: the Manichaean anthology known as the Kephalaia of the Teacher and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. I will show how each text presents itself as the oral teaching of their prophet, and that this orality is in distinction to other media of revelation, especially visionary and written modes of prophecy.

The early Hellenistic era was a time of significant change throughout the Levant. The Ptolemaic administration of the southern Levant facilitated major intellectual developments among Jews and others through greater cultural interaction, increased bureaucracy, a monetized economy, and new forms of administrative oversight. Literary texts produced by Jews living within these conditions reflect not only new knowledge but also newfound degrees of speculative thought and new experiences of subjectivity. This paper considers the book of Ecclesiastes as a participant within this context alongside other contemporaneous literary productions. Previous considerations of Ecclesiastes in its historical context have tended to focus on potential influences from currents in Hellenistic philosophy or the social and political pressures of imperial power, but we argue that administrative and economic forces were the primary conditions for the emergence of new forms of thought in the Ptolemaic period.

It would seem that the two great pillars of Israelite monotheism are that God is 1) all-powerful, and 2) all-just. It is this immutable framework of biblical faith that has been called into question time and again, through the Shoah and beyond, in the suffering and, in the case of the recent Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, the murder of righteous Jews. How tragically ironic, that the parasha read in the synagogue that day (VaYera’ - Gen. 18-22) dealt with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham’s challenging question addressed to God: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Gen. 18:25). The synagogue massacre represents yet one more contemporary example of monotheism's most universal conundrum, namely, the presence of unspeakable evil in a world ordained and ordered by divine justice. In the Genesis narrative God, along with two angels, has appeared to Abraham while the patriarch is camped near Hebron by the oak of Mamre, and reveals that the two prototypical cities of evil are about to be destroyed. In all his audacity, Abraham intercedes on behalf of their inhabitants, asking if the cities might be spared for the presence of even ten righteous souls. In the end not even ten are worthy of being saved, but dare we assume that the minyan in the synagogue that day were likewise unrighteous? This of course evokes the larger issue of theodicy, it being suggested that the deity presented in this and other early biblical narratives is nothing short of capricious, sadistic and despotic. The divine will, in allowing the massacre, is indirectly culpable. God is arguably brutal and even murderous, passionately partisan and thoroughly lacking compassion for anyone, while occasionally championing his designated favorites. Abraham’s God is viewed as a tribal deity, who will in the Exodus narrative come to be known as the “God of Armies.” Yet, whatever the merits of such contemporary approaches, it is the Israelites themselves who will transform this “God of war” into an emblem of transcendent compassion. They will eventually address the troublesome theological issues revolving around divine justice with a powerfully “subversive” treatise of Israelite wisdom literature, the book of Job. Here we find two poetic and elegant answers to Abraham’s question and to the perennial problem of evil.

Throughout his oeuvre, Maximus the Confessor creatively appropriates and redeploys the classical expression “natural law” (ὁ κατὰ φύσιν νόμος) and variations thereof, a concept that traces its origin back to the early Stoics. Though making a rather prominent appearance in his Quaestiones ad Thalassium, the Confessor’s frequent of mention of natural law and its role in his exegesis has received minimal attention, a notable exception being Paul Blowers’s seminal work Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor: An Investigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium. In an effort to draw greater attention to this feature of Maximus’ method, this paper shall seek to highlight and explain his Christocentric purpose in using “natural law” in the interpretation of the Scriptural difficulties in the Ad Thalassium. The paper shall focus in particular upon the analogous relationship Maximus establishes between the sensible world of nature and the words of Scripture as well as their cooperative role in the revelation of the Incarnate Logos. In the Confessor’s view, this nomic junction discloses, among other things, a two-way hermeneutical connection between the natural law and what he terms the “written law.”

This paper proposes a fundamental reinterpretation of Paul’s Letter to Philemon and an argument for placing trauma studies at the forefront of historical-critical commentary on this letter. Paul declares himself as the new "father" of an enslaved Onesimus. Performing as an adopted son, Onesimus extends Paul’s very self (“my own heart”), being now useful as a beloved "brother" in the Pauline circle (Phlm 10–16). Previous commentary has read this affective kinship language as straightforward social description, obviously expressing a relationship of love and a new life Onesimus must have wanted to enter. Yet the personal wish of Onesimus is never a concern in the letter. I doubt such unexamined presuppositions about what Christian conversion brought to ancient household slaves such as Onesimus. I approach the text, instead, from the idea of emotional labor and its trauma that adopted enslaved persons suffered when forced to perform new roles as wives, sons, or daughters in an adoptive master’s family. The paper thus aims to expand the notion of labor exploitation beyond a common misconception that slavery must fit into a capitalist definition of labor, and into the hermeneutics of trauma.

The book of Ezra-Nehemiah appears to be working with an established legal tradition that makes use of Pentateuchal sources. In fact, the author refers several times to practices that are “according to the Torah” (Ezra 10:2) or “written in the Torah” (Ezra 3:2; Neh 8:15; 10:34-36; cf. Neh 13:1, the “Book of Moses”). However, these citations do not always reflect the extant Pentateuch. Hence, some scholars claim that it did not exist as an authoritative text in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah but represents a retrojection from Hellenistic and Hasmonean times. Nevertheless, in addition to explicit references to the Torah in Ezra-Nehemiah, the authors also reveal evidence of scribal techniques known from later sources, e.g. homogenization, which integrates divergent Torah traditions while also promoting the author’s own viewpoint, or the insertions of new data under the umbrella of “Torah.” These processes assume an inherited, authoritative text. While not as developed as the hermeneutics found in the Temple Scroll and others from Qumran, Ezra-Nehemiah gives evidence of the beginnings of this type of interpretation in both the redaction and the work’s earliest sources. In particular, the authors promote a notion of expansive holiness (e.g. the sanctum of Israel, the holiness of Jerusalem; impurity of Gentiles) by reworking material from various parts of the Pentateuch. Cultic and non-cultic texts are combined to create the notion of the sanctum of Israel. The fact that the authors must harmonize and homogenize these Torah traditions to establish their viewpoint indicates some sort of fixed text. Differences in textual traditions are easily documented in the Second Temple period, and agendas will often germinate in the ambiguity and gapped nature of the text. Still, a fluid scribal tradition can be authoritative, even as evidenced by rabbinic tradition and ecclesiastical history.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, Early Christian Judaism research group

The Qumran pesharim provide the earliest commentaries on the Jewish Scriptures known to date. As the pesharim read their Scriptures in light of the experiences of the Qumran movement (and vice versa), the interpretations in these early Jewish commentaries have long been classified as “atomistic,” “allegorical,” or “mantic.” On this view, exegesis in the pesharim may seem a far cry from both modern and ancient “philological” — or “literal” — readings of the Scriptures. But things are more complicated than may seem. In this paper I address the presence of literal exegesis in the pesharim. After briefly treating matters of definition, I discuss passages in the pesharim that uphold the plot, coherence, and co-textual meaning of their base texts. In this way I aim to challenge the common understanding of Pesher exegesis as violating the literal sense of their base texts so as to apply it to the experiences of the Qumran movement. Instead, I suggest that literal readings were an essential part of the exegetical toolbox of the Pesher commentators, which allowed them to develop a historical memory for the group to which they belonged by upholding the integrity of their base texts.

The narrative rhetoric of “Joseph and Aseneth” initially emphasizes the marked contrast between Egyptian outsiders and Hebrew insiders, as represented by the two protagonists and their families. The plot of the work’s first part (1-21), however, revolves around the portrayal of Aseneth’s transformation from a foreign Egyptian woman into an angelic Hebrew matriarch. Aseneth’s transformation involves many aspects of her identity—first and foremost, her ethnic and religious affiliation, but also her perception of womanhood. The depiction of Aseneth’s profound transformation thus indicates that identity markers are flexible categories. In this paper, intersectional analysis is employed to discern how such categories as ethnicity, religion, and gender intersect with and influence each other. The paper’s point of departure is my recent monograph, Aseneth’s Transformation. Insights from that book are further developed to explore the malleability of important identity markers in “Joseph and Aseneth”.

This paper analyzes the translation strategies of LXXB for the verbal root ṣḥq in the Pentateuch. First, this paper contends that the LXX translators consistently utilize the Greek verbs γελάω, “to laugh,” and παίζω, “to play” to translate the G and D stems of the Hebrew root ṣḥq respectively. However, where the Greek verbs deviate from this pattern, the LXX translators are consistent with the context of the passage rather than with a formal translation pattern. “Context,” which in this paper represents the semantic and syntactic environment of the Hebrew Bible passages, has often been overlooked in LXX and translation studies in favor of a "generally atomistic" style in the words of Van der Louw (2007). This paper, thus, seeks to rectify this shortcoming by incorporating the contextual environment into the analysis of translation style. Methodologically, this study operates in the theoretical framework of Descriptive Translation Theory first pioneered by Gideon Toury and subsequently utilized in Septuagint studies, most importantly, by Cameron Boyd-Taylor. The specific passages analyzed in this study, which follow the aforementioned translation pattern, are the following: Gen 17:17; 18:12, 13, 15 (2x); 21:9; 26:8; 39:14, 17; Exod 32:6; Judg 16:25. The two deviations from the pattern are within Gen 19:14; 21:6 wherein the following two verbs are used to translate the D and G stem respectively: γελοιάζω and συγχαίρω. Based upon an analysis of the semantic and syntactic environments of the two deviations, it is concluded that context in these two cases is the determining factor for the translator’s decision and consequently is an important factor for consideration when analyzing translation style.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR session for OT Emerging Scholars

Ezekiel’s inaugural vision contains bizarre images that fascinate and bewilder readers. Although Corrine Carvalho suggests that the vision focuses on the enthroned glory of YHWH instead of the cherubim, the cherubim’s import should not be overlooked. The vision not only begins with and allots the lengthiest description to the four creatures (vv. 5–14), but the creatures appear in each subsequent section that describes the wheels, the dome, and the throne. The four creatures, therefore, hold a central position within Ezekiel’s inaugural vision. Despite the determined effort by biblical scholars to explain the four creatures’ function and symbolisms, commentators struggle to understand the precise meaning conveyed by these mystical creatures. The majority of interpreters understand the creatures and wheels as primarily functioning as a type of a mobile “throne chariot” based on the biblical portrayal of YHWH traveling in the heavens on the cherubim (Hab 3; Ps 18; 68), and ancient Near Eastern iconographic tradition of winged disk and composite creatures carrying various deities. While the current study concurs that one aspect of the living creatures’ function lies in their mobility in relation with the glory of YHWH, this paper seeks to highlight an overlooked literary function of the living creatures and four wheels in Ezekiel’s inaugural vision. Namely, the creatures and wheels evoke imagery from the Jerusalem Temple’s inner most sanctum and outer courts. The numerous details that exclusively appear in Ezekiel’s visions and the First Temple corroborate this interpretation. Namely, four composite creatures only appear together in Ezekiel’s visions and in the Holy of Holies. The description of the wings of one creature touching another creature’s wing also appears only in Ezekiel’s vision and the cherubim in the inner most sanctum. Additionally, the appearance of cherubim along with other creatures (specifically a bull and lion) is unique to Ezekiel’s visions and the bronze stands placed outside the First Temple. Moreover, cherubim appear along with אפנים (wheels) only in Ezekiel’s visions and the bronze stands. These details that exclusively point to the Jerusalem Temple’s Holy of Holies and outer court suggest that the creatures and wheels in Ezekiel’s inaugural vision evoke the entirety of the temple complex. The re-interpretation of the creatures and wheels as evoking the Jerusalem Temple influences the interpretation of Ezekiel’s inaugural vision as well as the understanding of the overall book. The temple imagery evoked by the creatures and wheels anticipates the departure of divine presence from the Jerusalem Temple (Ezek 10) and God’s return in the new temple (Ezek 43–48). Hence, the presence and departure of God’s presence unifies the book. The temple imagery of ch. 1 together with chs. 40–48, furthermore, forms an inclusio to the entire book by beginning and concluding the book with temple imagery in conjunction with the approaching divine presence.

In spite of the demonstrable centrality of the image of the tower within the Shepherd, early patristic readers of the text—at least those who left behind their impressions and construals of Hermas's dream-sequence and its later recapitulation—are often silent about the metaphor and its implications. Origen imagined that the tower signified Christian unity that overrode its diverse construction "from many stones," while his predecessor Clement affirmed the Shepherd's seven virtues that supported the tower and thus bound the church together. Further afield from the academic environment of third-century Alexandria, the earliest stratum of the Neapolitan catacomb of San Gennaro prominently features perhaps the only ancient artistic representation from the Shepherd of Hermas: a fresco portraying the construction of the celestial tower into which saved and useful (euchrēstoi) believers will be preserved and enshrined (Herm. Vis. 3.5.1-3 [13.1-3]). Though this fresco has often treated as a curiosity, and even as an embarrassment that must be explained away given the Shepherd's noncanonical status, I accept it a bona fide example of the popular reception of Hermas's text. Specifically, the fresco's presence in the most ancient room of the catacomb, and the absence of other normative Christian iconography therein, belies the centrality of the Shepherd of Hermas to the community's Christian experience. Its preservation may even hold an advantage over the musings of Clement and Origen, for instead of an appearance in a contextually displaced theological treatise, the catacomb painting illustrates how some in a community of early Christians cherished, lived out, and took to heart precisely the heterotopian message that Hermas wished to convey: that is, the tower as a representation of salvation beyond the earthly city toward which believers must actively strive. More precisely, I argue that the San Gennaro fresco preserves a primitive aretological approach toward salvation, before the constrictive enforcement of a canon or even of a particular Christian soteriology, when a community living in the New City not far from Hermas’s Roman home could aspire to have earned their places "in the tower with the holy ones of God," expressing their collective identity in terms unique to the Shepherd (Herm. Vis. 3.8.8 [16.8]).

Was reading literary texts common during ancient symposia? What is the relationship between reading and other forms of dinner entertainment? Was the meal the common place for the so-called recitatio, the reading of unpublished literary works by its authors? Can we assume that biblical texts where read during early Christian meals? The proposed paper addresses these questions by giving an overview of the relevant Greco-Roman sources, which refer to reading practices during ancient meals. It will be shown that the symposium was not the primary social setting for reading longer literary texts. On the contrary, one can detect the convention to only read short portions of literary texts, serving as a stimulus for the table talk. These findings have significant impact for the question of the primary setting of reading longer New Testament texts as well as for the question of the development of the New Testament Canon.

The phrase ʾāmrâ qōheleṯ (“says Lady Qoheleth”) in Eccl 7:27 is commonly changed into ʾāmar haqqōheleṯ (“says the Qoheleth”), in line with the portrayal of Qoheleth as a king in 1:1 and 1:12 and the masculine verb forms in the expressions ʾāmar qōheleṯ in 1:2 and ʾāmar haqqōheleṯ in 12:7. By contrast, this paper will present three arguments in favor of the feminine verb form’s authenticity. First, I will show that the narrative fragment “says Lady Qoheleth” appears superfluous and unmotivated in the middle of a discourse which consists entirely of Qoheleth’s words. What is more, this identification of Qoheleth’s words as spoken in a female voice is framed by two misogynist comments in 7:26 and 7:28. The combination of these two circumstances suggests that the gender switch may be deliberate. Second, I will present evidence which suggests that the entire book of Ecclesiastes is the written record of a speech sequence which was originally composed for oral delivery. Consequently, the delivery of the misogynist comments in a female voice aims to be humorous. Third, I will demonstrate that 8:1 concludes the words spoken in a female voice by providing interpretive clues and hinting at the sequence’s humorous nature. This explains the function of the apparently isolated and until now unexplained word ʾᵃni (the first person singular personal pronoun “I”) at the beginning of 8:2. The word serves as a “stage instruction,” placed here to signal that the male speaker is returning to his own, masculine voice.

The practice of “thematic preaching,” or the proclamation of sermons addressing a particular topic over several Sundays, presents questions for practical theologians and biblical scholars who aim to support the work of clergy. How can biblical scholars and practical theologians work together to help preachers consider texts through the lens of thematic preaching, without overgeneralizing meaning or diluting the complexity of the biblical text? Two colleagues, one in Old Testament, and another in practical theology, are working together to develop a commentary on the theme of “family” for pastors who preach thematically. Discussing the challenges and significance of creating this type of resource, this paper examines ways in which to bridge the gap between academic training and the production of practical resources that are accessible to practitioners. This paper names the felt sense of disconnect between the academy and the church, and argues that academic training nevertheless prepares scholars to resource the church, cultivating skills of interpreting different contexts and to translating difficult languages into the vernacular. This paper will be co-presented by both scholars.

After the death of Josiah, Jeremiah composed a lament for the king which was sung by professional singers from that time on. The lament was “made a rule for Israel” and “written in the Laments” (II Chron. 36:25). The likely function of the lament is clarified by considering the lament of the suffering individual in the middle of Lamentations (ch. 3). The evocation of the suffering borne by the innocent man because of his identification with both Yahweh and Yahweh’s people, on whom he has poured out wrath, is designed to persuade Yahweh to turn from his wrath. Jeremiah 11-20, a dramatic narrative which evokes the anguish of the innocent prophet caught between the just wrath of Yahweh and the rebellious disobedience of his people, has a similar function. Jeremiah 2-10, another dramatic narrative, evokes the suffering of Yahweh’s bride because of his wrathful response to her unfaithfulness. Like the other laments in of the book of Lamentations (chs. 1, 2, 4, 5), it is designed to stir up Yahweh’s mercy for his people who have suffered because of his wrath and move him to redirect his wrath toward the nations who have inflicted the suffering. Functioning like laments, Jeremiah 2-10 and 11-20 can be said to have been written to provide the suffering exiles a tool for survival. Like more formal laments, they equip the people with a kind of “engine against the Almighty” powerfully portraying for Yahweh the suffering he has poured out on them with the hope that he will end their suffering and restore them. These compositions are written for the people based on the belief that their survival depends on possibility that the justly enraged Yahweh can be moved to remember mercy.

This paper will examine the spiritual battle imagery in Acts to evaluate the extent and manner in which the author of Acts utilized apocalyptic ekphrasis as a rhetorical tool. First the paper will define ekphrasis, or the ancient rhetoric of vivid description, with particular emphasis upon the elements that rhetoricians emphasized as necessary in order for ekphrasis to emotionally persuade an audience. The main ancient criteria for determining if ekphrasis was present and would be rhetorically effective were whether the imagery was vivid, familiar, and believable. In apocalyptic literature authors similarly used vivid descriptions of familiar objects and scenery to depict remote times and places. By bringing together these different familiar images, apocalyptic authors could use ekphrasis to create a novel image that was both strange and yet also emotionally persuasive. We will examine a few test cases where we might find apocalyptic ekphrasis in Acts, focusing specifically on narrative moments that combine potentially jarring eschatological imagery in order to elicit an emotional response from the ancient audience. These test cases could include but are not limited to the descent of the spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13); the judgment and sudden death scenes of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-16) and Herod (Acts 12:23); the repetition of the idea of spirit possession and demon possession, and the references to a spiritual battle that ensues when spirit filled apostles engage individuals who are “enemies of God” (Acts 5:39-40), filled by evil spirits, or Satan (Acts 5:3; 26:18).

One way of defining the core tenants of early Christian belief is by identifying the doctrines about which Christians most vehemently disagreed with one another (e.g., the nature of Jesus, the meaning of his death, or the mechanisms for accessing redemption). This is promoted by, and it further promotes, the use of a heresiological lens for analyzing the evolution of Christianity. In this paper, I will adopt the opposite approach by investigating one of the few beliefs Christians seem to have held in common: ideas about the insidious origins of the traditional Mediterranean gods, and the real-world implications of their deception. While such demonological beliefs have been abundantly documented in the case of traditionally mainstreamed Christian literature, the presence of these teachings in so-called gnostic texts has been less frequently studied. In this paper, I will show how some of the Nag Hammadi texts participated in a common apologetical discourse alongside more traditionally received Christian authors. In particular, I will investigate shared features between the Untitled Treatise on the Origin of the World and apologists like Tertullian and Justin Martyr. Like Justin, the Untitled Treatise rejects traditional Mediterranean piety as the work of bloodthirsty demons; the text’s complex demiurgical myths are deployed simply to reveal this larger truth to the reader. I will discuss the sources from which the Untitled Treatise seems to have received its traditions about the fallen angels, further highlighting some of the similarities between this text and more mainstream Christian apologists. Additionally, I will discuss how the anti-demonic invective employed by disparate authors (e.g., Irenaeus, the Testimony of Truth) against their fellow Christians can demonstrate shared beliefs about gods and demons upon which this form of rhetoric rests. In closing, I will consider some of the implications of seeing demonology as a probable sine qua non of early Christian belief.

As recent scholarship has increasingly recognized, the exilic and early post-exilic period has had a major impact on the theological- and literary-history of the Hebrew Bible, while shaping other central identity markers, such as the institution of the central temple and Torah. Additionally, there has been developed a certain sensibility towards the idea that the Pentateuch in its final shape of the Persian period was the result of a Judean and Samarian coproduction (see Th.Römer, Chr. Nihan, R.Pummer and B.Hensel). The main idea is that the Pentateuch (which Judeans and Samarian ns share as their central document) is mainly a reflection of what I call “binnen-israelitische Ausdifferenzierungsprozesse” (which can be roughly translated as: “negotiating processes within Israel”), which included also the Samaritans. The question of the paper: In this presentation I will re-examine the urging question of a possible Samarian involvement in the formation of the Pentateuch, uncovering thereby a debate that is revolving around the two important post-exilic institution of temple and Torah. Approach: Of major interest to all parties in the post-exilic period is the legitimation of the respective religious centre. How is this topic handle with in the different Pentateuchal traditions? The presentation will cover to exemplary, yet different cases: (1) the matter of cult centralization in the Book of Deuteronomy and especially Persian periods additions Deut 11:29f and Deut 27* (the building of an altar on Mt. Gerizim). (2) The Priestly Writings: the Priestly writings, the sanctuary, called the “tent of meeting” (מועד אהל), is portable, effectively promoting a significantly less centralized view of the Israelite cult than Deuteronomy. The possibility that both northern and southern groups might claim to be the rightful heirs of the centralized cult of the wilderness period is thus left open by P. This is what I call the concessive nature of P. Methods: redactional-criticism and religious-historical and historical approaches. Concluding main results: (1) The Pentateuchal promotes a pan-Israelite imagination of “Israel” (including Judah and Samaria), and is created as a normative account or a narrative presentation of the characteristics and criteria common to all groups of the "Israelite" cultural spectrum. (2) However, the recent discussion of a Samarian involvement in the formation of the Pentateuch needs to take more seriously the complex nature of the negotiation process involved. The distinctive point my thesis makes here, is that the emphasis on unity, concessions or collaboration does not mean that the scribes imagined total equality between Samaria and Judah. The two test-cases of this presentation show the differences: while P imagines an idealized “Israel” under the leadership of Juda, Deuteronomy’s redactional additions articulate specific Samarian interests (Deut 11.27), which Judeans had to or wanted to agree to – at least in the time of concordance (the Persian period).

THB 2 brings together for the first time all available information regarding the textual history of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. It covers the canonical histories of all deuterocanonical books and analyses all textual witnesses, the manuscript evidence, and the history of research.

In the context of religious undergraduate schools, capturing student attention for New Testament textual criticism is challenging due to the abstract way it is normally taught, the unfamiliarity of the Greek language, and the difficulty in showing its necessity to students. This presentation will show how mining digital images of New Testament manuscripts can solve these pedagogical stumbling blocks. Many of the most important New Testament manuscripts are now available for free digitally. For example, Codex Sinaiticus has its own website that displays high-resolution images (http://www.codexsinaiticus.org). In addition to the images, both the digital form of the Greek text and an English translation are arranged next to the images for easy comparison. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts website (http://www.csntm.org) also stores a large range of high-resolution images of important manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and a variety of papyri, all clearly labeled and dated. The reason I am advocating an interactive, digital, and visual approach to teaching textual criticism is that the majority of New Testament introductions speak mostly abstractly of the changes the New Testament underwent as it was copied through time. Students are left bored or confused, with a vague notion as to what textual criticism is, but no real knowledge of what it looks like or why it is needed. The initial challenge in using images to attract student interest is the language barrier – most students do not read Greek. As a solution, a passage can be chosen with Greek words that have English cognates. For example, the Lord’s Prayer has the Greek word πάτερ, which many students will recognize from words like ‘paternal” or “patriarchy.” By quickly teaching five Greek letters, students can come to recognize the word in the Greek manuscripts and become engaged with the exercise of examining the Greek text. In order to solve the problem of demonstrating textual criticism’s necessity, I show pictures of Luke 11:1-2 in Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Bezae. With the basic understanding of Greek letters referenced above, students can see from the images that Codex Alexandrinus is different from Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus in that Alexandrinus has ἡμῶν following πάτερ and abbreviates it. Furthermore, although the text of Codex Bezae is hard to read, which itself is a helpful teaching point, students can see it also has ἡμῶν following πάτερ in addition to it having a long string of text between it and the end of verse 1. Once I have demonstrated these differences in the Greek text itself, I then pass out a handout with my own translations of the different versions of Luke 11:2 from these codices. I also include more of the textual evidence beyond these four codices and give estimated dates for the various texts. In short, I am giving students a simplified critical apparatus. Students then use this to do their own textual criticism to identify the original text.

Reshaʻim in Job 3:17 is almost universally understood to refer to the “wicked.” This is indeed the usual and therefore default meaning of rashaʻ. However, in context, the “wicked” is inapt for several reasons. Firstly, there is no other allusion to the issue of the righteous and the wicked in Job 3. Secondly, the “wicked” do not have anything to do with the trembling that is suggested by the term rogez “turmoil/agitation” that serves as the direct object of the phrase in v. 17a. Thirdly, an examination of the root rashaʻ in a verbal form in Job 34:29 foils any expectations the reader might have of rashaʻ meaning “wicked” in 3:17. In order to solve this problem, many modern commentators resort to emending reshaʻim to roʻashim. However, Greenstein, following Abraham Ibn Ezra, observes that in the book of Job the verb rashaʻ in the hiphʻil is the antonym of shaqat “to be still.” This leads to a very different and contextually apt sense for reshaʻim in Job 3:17. Readers are thereby compelled to reread Job 3:17, adjust their translation, and reinterpret the passage. Hence, an additional meaning for rashaʻ should be added to the biblical lexica. In this paper, I will discuss the peculiar literary context in which rashaʻ appears in Job 3:17 and examine the inner-biblical evidence relating to the significance of the word. Additionally, I will present the semantic development of rashaʻ “to act wickedly” as a derivation from rashaʻ “to be disquieted” or “agitated” based upon the tendency of certain Semitic words depicting movement to eventually acquire a pejorative meaning (e.g., Hebrew rwd and bgd based upon Arabic and Akkadian cognates, respectively). This presentation will end with practical suggestions concerning how properly understanding rashaʻ in Job 3:17 relates to the conversation between Job and his friends about the fate of the wicked.

In their conclusion to Redescribing the Gospel of Mark (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), Barry S. Crawford and Merrill P. Miller commend the work of Stanley Stowers as a potentially fruitful basis for further research and discussion by members of the Seminar on Redescribing Christian Origins. Miller also raised this possibility at the 2018 meeting of the Seminar in Denver. This paper takes up the challenge of engaging with Stowers’s work, and is intended as a prolegomenon to future testing of Stowers’ proposals. I examine select works of Stowers, in order to propose features of his work which I regard as particularly provocative of further discussion. These include his theorization of ancient Mediterranean religion as a distinct historical entity, his critique of hallowed scholarly stereotypes as explanatory devices (particularly the notion of discrete Christian “communities”), and his call for re-ontologizing early Christian discourse. The paper also compares Stowers’s proposals with those of Burton L. Mack and Jonathan Z. Smith, in order to establish points of continuity and discontinuity with the previous work of Consultation and Seminar on Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins.

The Ethics of the Pastoral Epistles is often characterized by the label “good citizenship” (“bürgerliches Christentum”). According to 1 Tim 2:2, the ultimate goal of a good Christian life is to pray for the political class “so that we may live a quiet and peaceful life in all piety and decency.” Commentators usually explain this verse by referring to common ideas particularly developed in Hellenistic Judaism (Josephus or Philo). More significant, however, seems to be the discourse on the political dimension of the philosopher’s life. It is represented, for instance, in a particular reception of Epicurus’ idea of a “living in concealment” by Plutarch. The paper compares basic positions of this discourse with the reception and transformation of Pauline Ethics in 1 Tim which results in a concept of a socially accommodated Christianity.

This paper explores the competition between mystics associated with the rabbinic community regarding the act of teaching the secret knowledge of the Merkevah. While the content and social role of the mystical secrets has been studied, how rabbinic figures are perceived by the texts in terms of their authority in the community remains uncharted. This paper will examine the concatenation of several Merkevah episodes at the beginning of y.Hag 2:1 (77b). First, Eleazar ben Arakh is commended and then silenced as a link in the chain of transmission of the secrets. The Four who ascended to Pardes will be seen as rival mystical masters, for whom the rabbinic text has selected only one for praise. In particular, the extensive time taken to exclude Elisha ben Abuya in the section indicates that the goal is to explain why the three are “out” and not why Akiva is “in”. The dynamics of competition will first be examined as reflection through the lens of genre analysis, following Northrop Frye. Eleazar’s episode is a hopeful “romance” which quickly becomes a tragedy of exclusion. The Four who ascended to Pardes are tragic individuals seen also as a tragic group. The reasons for Elisha’s exclusion are distinctly depicted in satirical or tragic terms. Next, the element of competition will be examined as refraction through the lens of liminality theory, following Victor Turner. The liminal experience is characterised by four components: a departure of social norms, a spatial and temporal heterotopia, a delimitation of entry and exit accompanied by a state of isolation, and an implicit generation of social structures. It will be shown that these mystic episodes in y.Hag 2:1 fits all four parameters. Finally, this paper will focus on the compact unity of episodes found in the Yerushalmi version of Hagigah, with reference to other parallels. The later and more well-known Bavli version is intentionally kept at a distance since its materials are less coherent in terms of arrangement and ideology.

Is Paul an anomaly or apostate of his fellow Jewish community? Is Paul, after becoming Christ follower, still a member of Diaspora Jews within ancient Judaism, or a betrayer that has changed his faith allegiance? John M.G. Barclay has applied “interactionist” or “social reaction” perspective to evaluate the degree of deviance of Paul after Damascus from ancient Judaism. In this paper, I undertake a similar approach from another way around. Instead of the inquiring the extent that Paul was judged, I investigate how Paul treated deviant insiders before and after his encounter with Jesus in Damascus. By taking some insights from the Black Sheep Effect in Social Identity Theory, I argue that Paul’s extreme judgments and measures against unlikeable ingroup members are radically different before and after he encountered Christ in Damascus. Some Pauline texts will be examined about his attitudes and actions towards black sheep. I argue that there are radical changes of paradigms of Paul towards ‘black sheep.’ Paul’s understanding of “the zeal for the Law” is diametrically different from “zeal for the gospel.” The change is not a slight shift of perspective but the radical change of his own religious identity grounded in his understanding of the gospel Christ crucified.

The Wisdom of Solomon famously condemns people who are unable to recognize the “Artificer” from observing the beauty of the cosmos (13:1). Yet the relationship between beauty and truth is fraught in this book; the author is fond of pointing out that appearances can be deceiving and images seductive. The aesthetic dimension of human experience is powerful and ambivalent; the polemic against idolatry in Wisdom 13—15 is subtler than most interpreters recognize. In a mythical vignette, the author suggests that the power of art prevails even in the supernatural realm, over “the Destroyer” (18:24-25).

Archaeological remnants bear material witness to displays and discourses of Roman sexuality, sometimes confirming (elite) literary constructions and sometimes revealing their contestation. However, the material “matters” of sex and sexuality are frequently segmented out and treated as isolated issues. Sexual materials can be curated from disparate and distant spaces (e.g., the presentation of the “secret cabinet” of Greco-Roman “sex” objects in the Naples museum). Likewise, the brothel of Pompeii often becomes the preferred site for imagining and discussing Roman sexuality. As Joshel and Peterson (2014) have observed in the context of the materiality of Roman slavery, the brothel tends to capture both popular and scholarly attention more than other spaces on this site, in particular its less visited and preserved domestic spaces. Following Joshel and Peterson into Roman households—and attending to their emphasis on the non-elite and enslaved persons who moved through and inhabited them—this paper explores material evidence of ancient sexuality within Roman (particularly Pompeian) houses. Thus, while this exploration will highlight, when they appear, sexual materials that have been found in domestic spaces, it will also use material evidence of sexuality more broadly to orient the domus—i.e., explore where and how it is constructed to permit or prohibit sexuality, or at least certain expressions of it. By “orienting” the domus in terms of its sexuality, this paper takes a queer theoretical lens that is especially informed by Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (2006), which explores and theorizes the materiality of sexual orientations. Ahmed turns to different and less proximate objects that encapsulate the deviance of queer orientations; likewise, this turn to the domus simultaneously deviates from expected spaces of sexual deviance and finds queer deviance in a space deemed central to Roman “straightness”—i.e., patria potestas. Turning, then, to the material spaces of early Christianity: if we assume these rooms of Rome as the spaces where Christ-followers assembled, then how does that space orient experiences of sexuality in these ekklēsiai? How would these orientations affect their interaction with Paul’s letter to Roman Christ-assemblies, especially when it draws upon Rome’s language of the Roman household—the family—to talk about kinship in Romans 8? By exploring sexuality beyond the brothel (among the many spaces where it is most popularly imagined), less visible sexual spaces can emerge in material culture. The emergence of a sexually-oriented domus is especially important for the study of early Christ-assemblies since these ekklēsiai are generally accepted and reconstructed to have gathered within Roman houses. By engaging the sexual orientation of the domus, then, it is possible to reconstruct queer materials that affected these Christ-assemblies and their interactions with textual materials. Thus, the queer material of the ekklēsia and the domus might reveal ways to think sex into texts where it is less apparent—moving sex out of the brothel and into the household, out of Romans 1 and into Romans 8, where imagery connected to this sexual materiality of Roman households abounds.

Conventional definitions and taxonomies of docetism struggle to account for the complex and contradictory ways in which “docetic” Christian teachers and texts describe how Christ seemed to be human in his bodily presence and passion. Docetism, like Gnosticism, turns out to be largely rhetorical and functions more to demarcate lines of orthodoxy and heresy than identify consistent systems of beliefs and practices of individuals and groups. Moreover, modern conceptions of docetism have even led scholars to misconstrue the teachings of ancient Christian teachers and texts. Through a re-examination of early Christian texts and figures that typically appear to flesh-out docetism (e.g., 1, 2 John, Ignatius, Basilides, The Second Discourse of the Great Seth, the Coptic Revelation of Peter, Marcion, Valentinus, and the Gospel of Peter), this paper demonstrates how other categories (e.g., possessionist Christology, angelomorphology, polymorphy) can more precisely characterize the Christology of these texts and how such theological concerns connect with broader cultural conversations and problems of their day. And so this paper not only asks, "What is Docetism?," but also what new ways of asking questions about these texts and the problems they pose when we set aside the category.

While scholars have paid considerable attention to Rome's food supply, Roman diet and nutrition, as well as topics such as banquets, wine consumption, and lead poisoning, the question of food safety (the impact of cultivation, storage, and processing practices on the healthfulness of foodstuffs) remains under-explored. This paper will consider the ways in which Roman agricultural and culinary practices affected quality of life in late Republican and early Imperial Italy.

How do we become fit to see God? Matthew 5:8 supplies us with a crucial clue, namely, purity of heart. The pure in heart not only taste but also see. This is the very nerve centre of Christian existence. In this paper, I consider Matt 5:8 with a view to unfolding purity’s relationship to sight. The destiny of the Christian is to see, as do the angels, “the face” of Jesus’ “Father in heaven” (Matt 18:10). I explore this point in three ways. First, sight is the preeminent faculty, biblically speaking. “Faith is from hearing,” writes Paul in Rom 10:17, but sight is the faithful’s reward. When facilitated by purity of heart, sight, as Gregory of Nyssa notes, “penetrates from the visible to the invisible” (On the Soul and the Resurrection). We shall see the invisible God with the eyes of the heart in this life, “face to face” in the next (1 Cor 13:12). Second, Matt 5:8 has a profound christological density. Jesus is pure in heart. He sees the Father by virtue of his oneness with the Father. He beholds the Father, sees the Father, and in him we see too, by the grace of the Spirit. Jesus possesses the vision that he gives to us when he pours out his Spirit upon us. Sight is the fruit of Pentecost. Third, when we are pure, we only see what is good. We become god-like; we see what the Father sees. We see what is, by nature, good and beautiful. We see God. Here we note how intimate is the relationship between sight and love. The more we see, the more we love God and all that is in keeping with God. Matt 5:8 thus offers us a contemplative world in which to dwell. This is the life of blessedness. Purity of heart is how we participate in divinity. Accordingly, we see what we resemble. When we imitate God, following Paul’s counsel in Eph 5:2, we become like God. This is our highest eschatological goal. Matthew 5:8 reminds us, then, that our diligence in imitation of God’s purity and God’s vitalization of our efforts do not compete with one another. Matthew 5:8 also teaches us that the Father’s seeing in secret is the basis for our action. The Father blesses what he sees, and what he sees is of him. The centre of the Christian life is the Father’s sight. Seeing Jesus: that is the origin of love, the foundation of purity, the principle of Christian existence, and heavenly life itself.

Courtroom metaphors occupy a central metaphor of prayers throughout the ancient Near East. Prayers themselves, together with the discourse surrounding them, are conceived as arguing one's case in the court of law. For example, biblical psalms and their Akkadian counterparts address demands for judgment—"Judge my case!"—to their respective divine audiences. After briefly surveying some additional examples, this presentation will interrogate the courtroom metaphor's purpose. In doing so, the presentation will follow the methodology espoused by Joseph Lam, who, in his recent work on sin, considers not only the contours of particular metaphoric networks for sin, but also what is gained from the use of these metaphors. According to Lam, metaphors empowered their users by enabling them to give expression to otherwise ineffable emotions and by giving them perspective on otherwise powerfully unfamiliar forces. The presentation will argue that, in prayer, the courtroom metaphor exemplifies Lam's observations on metaphors' empowering capacity. Courtroom metaphors in prayer give humans, who might otherwise be dumbfounded even by the thought of such an encounter, the power to speak up, indeed to argue. By means of the courtroom metaphor in prayer, speakers acquired standing, in the legal sense of this term, before divine adjudicators. To illustrate this interpretation, the presentation will draw on close readings of two Mesopotamian prayers, the sixth incantation of the Babylonian anti-witchcraft ritual, Maqlû, and the prayer of Tukulti-Ninurta I, as well as biblical examples, such as Moses's intercessory prayer in the wake of the Golden Calf incident (Exodus 32) and the communal lament in Jeremiah 14.

This paper begins by recalling the terrible Sewol Ferry accident which claimed 476 lives on April 16, 2014. Hong moves to read the DtrH’s scapegoat theory on blaming Manasseh for the fall of Judah. He wrestles with the DrtH’s theodicy – a God who remains silent when tragedy strikes – and implements current research on memory to compare the works of the DtrH and the Chronicler’s account of Manasseh.

Can students and faculty benefit from using technology in biblical studies courses? Does technology, in particular personal mobile devices, enhance engagement and nurture student growth, or does it negatively affect the learning process? Does outside technology create or undo community in the classroom? In this presentation different examples are shared of both improving course delivery by allowing use of personal technology devices as part of the curriculum and of facing challenges as a result of students using personal technology devices as part of the classroom experience. Guided audience feedback will provide a platform for further considerations.

I am presenting a sketch of the reception and afterlives of the Late Antique text Physiologus as transmitted and transformed in the medieval North Sea. This text spawned a series of vernacular translations that eventually came to be called the Bestiary. In Old English, we have three poetic adaptations which present complex typological and allegorical considerations of The Panther, The Whale, and The Phoenix/Partridge. In Old Norse, these texts evolve differently and are even illustrated. My analysis highlights the ways in which different Christian communities (Old English, Middle Welsh, Old Norse) adapted these texts to carry out their own unique literary and theological experiments.

The discovery of the Priene inscription in 1899 provoked an intense discussion of Mark’s opening Stichwort, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, and the possibility of it being tailored to counter the emperor's claim of being good news for the world. Eventually, under the impression of World War I and the rise of kerygmatic theology, a “religious” explanation was favored describing Mark’s εὐαγγέλιον in the light of Second Isaiah’s kerygmatic promise of salvation. This discussion has in recent decades been revived on the basis of anti-imperial and postcolonial reading strategies. Several noteworthy studies from these perspectives build on a post-war Roman provenance, where the Markan community allegedly was pressed by Flavian propaganda and therefore cast the story of Jesus as a “gospel” designed to counter the emperor's ditto. However, a Roman provenance is far from agreed upon, as is well known, and the circularity involved in making the "where" of Mark the hermeneutical key to its “why” remains a problem. Another problem concerns the tendency to highlight only a select number of passages due to a narrow focus. In this paper, I will argue that Mark's “gospel” indeed is most exhaustedly read from the perspective of his opening quote of the Isaianic vision of a new exodus. However, this should not be understood antithetically as a choice between “religion” and “politics”. I will argue that the core idea of Second Isaiah’s new exodus is the reestablishment of the presence of God, which is envisioned to take place through an intertwined process of kingly victory and cultic renewal. This duality explains why Mark's Jesus is subverting and/or overthrowing a string of powers of old, while the death of Jesus as well as the temple are foreshadowed from the beginning and occupies the pivotal place of the narrative. This explains why the Roman Empire occupies a place in Mark’s narrative, albeit only as one example of powers of old that is subverted by the newness of the Kingdom of God. It also explains why there is no tension between Mark’s temple cultic focus with the rending of the veil in 15:38 and the confession of the centurion in 15:39. Finally, it avoids the trap of circularity by being independent of a certain provenance and date, since Mark’s “gospel” is to be understood as one of several competing Jewish interpretations of Scripture in the late Second Temple period competing for the identity as the true Israel having monopoly on the access to the presence of God.

As reflected in Tiberian Masoretic sources, the Book of the Twelve provides an interesting test case for the viability of a diachronic approach to Biblical Hebrew. On various grounds, traditional critical scholarship has held that the individual books that comprise the corpus of the Minor Prophets represent a range of historical periods, whereas some more recent research argues for the possible late composition of all or most of the material. Linguistically, the Twelve present a challenge. On the one hand, there is striking documentary evidence that the individual books were at an early stage transmitted as a unit. This led to a degree of scribal leveling of certain orthographic and linguistic features that would otherwise likely have displayed greater variety across a corpus of such presumed diachronic diversity. On the other hand, despite the reality of some anachronistic blurring, palpable typological linguistic differences of apparent diachronic import have been preserved. Strikingly, these often distinguish the certainly late books from the purportedly classical ones. A study demonstrating the feasibility of linguistic periodization in a corpus such as the Book of the Twelve, where historically meaningful linguistic detail has survived obvious retouching, promises to contribute to the ongoing debate as to the reliability of transmitted sources for tracing the history of Hebrew.

Composed in antiquity, the Greek New Testament was copied in each subsequent generation resulting in the extensive textual tradition of surviving documents. One of the most productive and important periods for its transmission was the Byzantine era, during which new forms and presentations of the text were developed. Among these transformations of the New Testament, the creation of catenae stands out as an important development. These combine the biblical text with a commentary extracted from early Christian writings, offering an “all-in-one” documentary approach to scripture and its transmission. To what extent was this an “official” development which also led to the establishment of a “Byzantine text”? And what are its implications for modern scholarly editing of the New Testament, such as the Editio Critica Maior? This paper will draw on Klaus Wachtel’s studies of the Gospels, Catholic Epistles and Acts as well as recent work on the Apocalypse, extending the analysis to the Pauline Epistles. The presentation is supported by the European Research Council-funded CATENA project.

In her essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Hélène Cixous draws a distinction between écriture féminine and male writing, claiming that the latter serves the masculine economy, exploiting sexual difference to the point of silencing women’s speaking bodies. The Bible is thick with this kind of silencing, both in its primarily (if not wholly) male authorship and in its persistent over-writing of women’s voices and bodies. Although any attempt to articulate a definition for écriture féminine has already missed its performative nature, écriture féminine is at its core an embodied act. A woman writing is a woman reveling in the pleasures and desires that well up within her, allowing them to erupt from within herself to outside herself. Cixous’ notion of écriture féminine does not require female authorship; plenty of women simply replicate male writing, and some writing by men exhibits écriture féminine. Écriture féminine does, however, require a disruption of normative, logocentric modes of writing that prioritize symbol and production over embodiment and pleasure. In this essay I will read the story of Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18 through the lens of Cixous’ discussions of laughter, pleasure, and women’s writing. I suggest that Sarah’s laughter is one of those rare, explosive moments in the biblical text when the codes of phallocentrism are temporarily broken and écriture féminine slips through. Whereas the anxiety within the text is usually centered on Sarah’s inability to become pregnant, Sarah’s laughter frames her desire as desire for pleasure, not production. Thus, the male economy momentarily gives way to Sarah’s subjectivity, and her laughter chips away at the text’s search for logos.

The author of 1 John makes extensive use of “children” language with the terms παιδια, τεκνια, and τεκνον being used over a dozen times in the epistle’s five short chapters. This paper argues that this form of address serves as a rhetorical device that functions to underscore the author’s own authority as a teacher vis-à-vis the audience. The paper supports this thesis by engaging in a rhetorical analysis of 1 John and by examining how the use of “children” language conforms to and diverges from ancient rhetorical expectations. A reading of 1 John alongside of ancient manuals on rhetoric suggests that the author of 1 John is adopting several ancient rhetorical strategies. First, by addressing the audience as “children,” the epistle’s author follows Quintilian’s instructions to teachers to assume a parental role vis-à-vis the instructed (Inst. 2.2.5). Second, by engaging in the rhetorical strategy of antiphrasis (cf. Quintilian, Inst. 9.2.47-48), the author subtly suggests his own pedagogical authority in 2:27-28 with the verbatim repetition of an instruction from an acknowledged teacher in the author’s own voice and prefaced with a vocative address to the τεκνια. Most of the author’s “children” language functions to undergird the author’s own pedagogical authority, thus conforming to what might be expected by ancient rhetorical standards. Nonetheless, this paper also suggests that at least a hint of divergence from these standards appears, especially in 3:1-2 as children are identified in relation to God. Here, the author exemplifies a certain humility in the pedagogical task. Although most “children” language appears in contexts of second person address (2:1, 12, 14, 18 28; 3:7; 4:4; 5:21), some “children” language occurs in conjunction with the first person plural, indicating the author’s willingness to be identified as a child, specifically when identified as a child of God (3:1-2). In sum, this paper argues that the rhetoric of children in 1 John functions as a device to support the author’s own authority to be teaching the audience. This conclusion suggests that a measure of social power could be derived from using children as a rhetorical device.

[Apologies if you received this twice. I initially received an error message] Précis: The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the intersection of material culture and exegesis through a reconstruction of the cityscape—the monuments, statuary, and inscriptions—of Roman Corinth. This revisualization will serve to embed the complaint of Paul’s poor physical appearance more tangibly in the agonistic ethos of first-century Corinth, one of the premier venues of athletic competition in the ancient world. More than this, I hope to show the relevance of archaeology to Paul’s theologizing, as his “strength in weakness” motif will be shown to be vitally illuminated through the exploration of material culture. In 2 Corinthians 10:10 Paul cites a criticism circulating in Corinth concerning his “weak” physical appearance. This complaint is generally interpreted as a reference to the apostle’s over-all deportment and personality. This paper will situate this criticism against the cultural backdrop of agonistic festivals in Roman Achaia, and the Isthmian Games in particular, in order to localize this complaint more plausibly in its first-century setting. This will lead to reinterpretation of this criticism as a disparaging reference to the apostle’s physical, bodily appearance. Part one, the bulk of the argument, will emphasize the importance of the biennial Isthmian games, hosted by Corinth, for understanding the ethos and values of Roman Corinth. Epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological data will be assembled in order to construct a cultural profile of Corinth and sketch the agonistic landscape of the first-century city. This portion of the paper will draw on the material remains of Roman Corinth as well as the archaeological record of other, better preserved, centers of athleticism in Roman antiquity. The result will be a reconstruction of the urban landscape of Roman Corinth, replete with statuary, inscriptions, reliefs, and other visual media depicting the muscular physique of the victorious athlete at the center of Corinth’s civic pride. Part two will support this reconstruction through literary representations of athletes and agonistic festivals in this period. Particular attention will be paid to Pausanias’ detailed description of Olympia and Dio Chrysostom’s Melancomas orations. These writers provide vivid portrayals of athletes and ancient centers of athletic competition, while also giving us a clear sense of how these visually impeccable physical specimens were adored by the populace. Part three will address the common interpretation of 2 Cor. 10:10 as a criticism of Paul’s “whole outward character and personality” (Thrall, 2 Corinthians) and demonstrate its improbability. Part four will take up Paul’s response to the criticism that “the presence of his body is weak.” Dio Chrysostom’s perspective represents the obvious truism embraced in Corinth: “God has everywhere appointed strength over weakness” (Or. 3). Paul, however, comes to a different conclusion. Paul’s strategy is to admit weakness and redefine it. Paul fully appropriates this disparagement and transforms it into a piercing ideological, social, and theological critique of his naysayers in Corinth and a penetrating exposition of his mission (2 Cor. 12:10) and Christology (2 Cor. 13:4).

The anti-Ba’al polemics of Hosea 2:16-18 have typically been interpreted as evidence for the existence of a cult of Ba’al in 8th century B.C.E. Israel. However, research on the semantic range of the term בעל indicates an alternate possibility: within certain sections of Israelite religious culture, בעל had come to be used as an appellative for YHWH. Theophoric and topynomic names from the 8th century B.C.E., both biblical and extra-biblical, point to the fact that בעל was regularly used as a category meaning ‘lord’ or ‘master’ rather than as a proper name referencing the Canaanite storm-god Ba’al-Hadad. Seen in this way, Hosea’s warnings against idolatry do not indicate Israelite worship of a deity believed to be ontologically distinct from YHWH. Rather, they reveal an intra-religious debate about the character of YHWHism itself regarding the extent to which religious language from other traditions ought to be appropriated for a YHWHistic context.

Artists discerned connections between Job and priestly themes centuries before biblical scholars. The prevalence of priestly iconography in the artistic reception history of Job led Samuel Terrien to categorize numerous sculptures as “Saint Job the Priest” (The Iconography of Job Through the Centuries, 149–51) and Samuel E. Balentine to observe that this topic is “worthy of an article in its own right” (“Job as Priest to the Priests,” Ex Auditu 18 (2002): 31). In this paper, I interpret priestly symbolism in Joban sculptures in Belgium and evaluate previous scholarship on these sculptures in light of my research in Wezemaal, Antwerp, and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) and my dissertation on the use and transformation of the Torah’s priestly terms, themes, and theologies in the book of Job. Through art historian Paolo Berdini’s concept of “visual exegesis,” I consider the reoccurring motif of a flame in the left hand of Job that unites a late fourteenth-century wooden statue of Job in Wezemaal visited by thousands of pilgrims for healing, a Job sculpture in Museum Mayer van der Bergh where the flame emerges from a chalice, and the juxtaposition of Job and the crucifixion of Jesus in the Retable de la Passion at Nordingra. The multivalence of this imagery and the juxtaposition not only of Job and Jesus in the Retable de la Passion at Nordingra but also of sculptures of Job the priest and Job the sufferer in St. Martin’s Church in Wezemaal resonate with the book of Job’s nuanced engagement with and transformation of the Torah’s priestly themes and theologies.

Hagiographic literature provides a breeding ground for the cross-cultural comparison of narrative ‎elements characterizing the Lives of the saints. The authors of hagiographic works indeed shape their ‎stories on the basis of models sometimes based on universal ideals of sanctity, and sometimes borrowed ‎from other hagiographic traditions. The paper aims at singling out a selected set of hagiographic tòpoi ‎transmitted in the Ethiopian hagiographic literature and analyzing them in a comparative perspective. ‎The tòpoi will be examined in comparison with their occurrence in non-Ethiopian hagiographic ‎traditions in order to identify specific features pointing at the circulation of hagiographic models in the ‎medieval Christian world.‎

The Ehud narrative in Judges 3:12-30 contains numerous historical and linguistic ambiguities that complexify interpretation and disallow a determinate reading. Recent interpreters have provided several competing—even contradictory—readings, yet most conclude with a positive assessment of the character of Ehud. This paper proposes that these ambiguities allow the story to be read otherwise: Ehud is a negative moral example. This negative reading of Ehud is reached by attending to what is surprising in the narrative, namely, that assassinations of this nature are unprecedented both in the ancient world and as a means of deliverance in Israel’s history. This is further supported by the lack of YHWH’s involvement in the narrative and an atypical conclusion. Ehud then can be seen as an idolatrous assassin who invokes his deity for manipulative and self-serving ends. He is no longer a positive moral agent, but another leader that ‘does what is right in his own eyes.’

This paper explores instructions to enslaved persons in 1 Timothy 6:1-2 and Titus 2:9-10 as test cases for interrogating the kyriarchalism in the texts. Traditional believers who read the Pastoral Epistles uncritically tend to assume that the biblical model of family entails submission of women and enslaved persons to free men. By contrast, critical interpreters who employ a hermeneutic of suspicion point out that descriptions of a well ordered household in the letters reflect Greco-Roman domestic social values. But such critics commonly argue that the Pastoral Epistles mark a retreat from the potentially liberative stances of Jesus and Paul and seek to inculcate Greco-Roman domestic values as normative for Christianity. Ironically, both sides agree that the text endorses kyriachalism. This approach is unlikely to persuade traditional believers to adopt liberationist views, nor is it likely to persuade secular critics to take the Bible seriously. In this paper, I shall apply James Scott’s theories of “infrapolitics” to argue that the Pastoral Epistles reflect a social and theological perspective of being in the world but not of the world. The letters represents a subaltern voice that works within the Greco-Roman social context but does not embrace it as normative. Instead, the author offers moral exhortation couched in deliberate ambiguity, along with a hidden transcript representing an agenda driven by Christology and apocalyptic eschatology as an alternative to Greco-Roman ideology.

No one can deny that Job’s body in the book of Job plays a significant role. Interestingly, however, readers tend not to notice that Job has different bodies in the prologue, the poems, and the epilogue. This project, which is submitted to the Project in Progress Workshop session, rereads Job’s bodies in the book of Job through the lens of Bakhtin’s dialogism and disability studies. Bakhtin’s dialogism with disability studies leads readers of the book to reread that Job’s able, injured, and disabled bodies are dialogic and are created by each of the unique and equally weighted voices and bodies of the other characters within the book of Job. In particular, the present project leads readers to read each genre—the prologue, the dialogue, and the epilogue—in defining Job’s bodies in its own unique way. In the prologue, the narrator’s voice and the voices of other characters voices—Job, God, hassatan, the four messengers, and Job’s wife—play their roles in inviting readers to define Job’s body as able, injured, or disabled. At the same time, the bodies of other characters—God’s hand, hassatan’s hands, and the bodies of the animals—join a dialogic relationship with Job in defining his body. In the dialogue, Job’s voice provides its own understanding of Job’s body as able, injured, or disabled by interacting dialogically with the voices in the prologue and the voices of his friends and God. Job’s voices clarify Job’s effort to redefine his body in his new and estranged time and space/place. Without doubt, Job’s new understanding of his body allows him to redefine a relationship with his body, with God, and with his three friends. Furthermore, in the dialogue, the voices of Job’s three friends try to finalize and provide their own understanding of Job’s body by interacting dialogically with Job’s voices. In the epilogue, readers read Job’s unfinalized body through the dialogic interaction between the voices of the narrator and the other characters. Finally, all the voices and bodies in the prologue, in the dialogue, and in the epilogue work together to offer readers a different way to read the book and to understand Job’s body in the book of Job.

This teaching tip arises out of an experience of teaching Wisdom Literature to a group of undergraduate students in a University College, Nairobi. It involved the use of an appealing proposal from Marc Roncace (Teaching the Bible, 2012, pp. 215–16), albeit with a couple of improvisations: (i) while Roncace’s model is envisaged as an individual activity (supplying an “appropriate” end to the book of Job), the Nairobi one had a combination of individual and group activities; (ii) as such, it was comprised of two phases, one at the beginning of the course and the other, at the end. As expected, the student irk at the unpalatable ending of the book was obvious at the first brainstorming session. At the end of the course, however and to the surprise of a good number of students as well as the teacher, five out of six groups chose to retain the canonical ending. And when inquired to explain the reasons, the responses had an overt and meaningful affinity to some of the African contextual issues.

In 1984, an incised Iron Age II storage jar was discovered during the excavation of Tel Gezer. Considering that the inscription remains unpublished, the goal of this paper is to examine the archaeological context, date, paleography, and linguistic aspects of the text-artifact. This discussion will be followed by a proposal concerning a dialectal element of the inscription and the larger implications of this feature and its find spot for our understanding of scribal practices at an Israelite border city near Judah.

This paper will examine the prohibition of burning children (Deuteronomy 18:10), as a developmental stage of legal reasoning in biblical law. In this case it will further be suggested that epigraphic sources from Neo-Assyrian cult dedications, rather than the Priestly condemnation of Molekh worship, may have provided the impetus for this prohibition.

After arriving as a new professor of Bible at Wittenberg in 1513, Luther's first lectures were on the psalms. Four years later, the first book that Luther ever prepared for publication was also on the psalms. This paper explores how Luther's deep engagement with the Psalms--as much as his engagement with Romans--sparked the Reformation and change the world.

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas (G.Thom) is one of the most important, and yet one of the most controversial, apocryphal writings from the first centuries of Christianity. The great interest in this text is reflected in the huge number of different approaches trying to get access to the text. Since these approaches are based on different assumptions about the methodology and the religious-historical position of G.Thom, the interpretations of this text are diverse. For a long time, research on G.Thom has concentrated on reconstructing earlier stages of the text, using the complete Coptic version and the Greek fragments to get new information on the historical Jesus and the early Jesus movement. Furthermore, due to the seemingly fragmental character of G.Thom, its sayings have been mainly interpreted by way of analogy from other texts. However, such an approach is insufficient, since each text is distinct both as to form and content and deserves individual treatment. Thus, it is necessary to analyse a text thoroughly before interpreting it, which means that the analysis of an individual section cannot remain independent of the overall context of the work. This is an important aspect of narrative criticism, which has become a valuable tool for analysing biblical texts and which—in contrast to historical criticism—is not concerned with the origins of a text, but its main focus is on the final form of the text. Even though, unlike the canonical gospels, G.Thom lacks an overarching narrative, some of the sayings contain narrative elements. Moreover, single sayings are linked by catchwords, leading themes and literary forms. The connections are at times scattered throughout G.Thom. In the course of reading, the readers gain knowledge to which they later return and which influences their understanding of the sayings. What has previously been read therefore forms the background for the understanding of what is to come. Due to these reasons, this paper will examine whether, and to what extent, it can be useful to apply narratological ideas to G.Thom. This paper will argue for a methodological approach, which goes beyond the individual sayings and takes into account the entire writing by asking for links between the sayings. In this way, an approach to the G.Thom is to be developed, which perceives the text in its peculiarity and wholeness and takes into account the multiplicity of the sayings. This may allow a new understanding of G.Thom as an independent witness to early Christianity. Moreover, G.Thom might be released from questions of a tradition-critical nature and its close connection with the canonical gospels. By going beyond the individual sayings, it can be examined whether G.Thom is a coherent whole, or indeed just a collection of isolated sayings that are not connected to each other. This paper will show possible results of such an approach by using the example of the sayings mentioning Mary (G.Thom 21 and 114).

This response will critically engage the four papers offered by the panelists in this session—Diana Edelman, Ehud Ben Zvi, Daniel Pioske, and Aubrey Buster—and the value of this discourse for cases of exile and forced migrations within the Hebrew Bible. In addition to highlighting the unique contributions of the research of each presenter, this paper offers clarification of some of the disparate approaches and terminology used within these papers and the field of memory studies more broadly. In line with the work presented, this response endeavors to examine the potential exilic and post-exilic catalysts for memory activity specific to this crucial period in the literary development of the Hebrew Bible.

One of the clearest and deepest undercurrents running throughout the Apocalypse (and one of the few unchallenged maxims in scholarship) is the notion that God and the Lamb require absolute loyalty allegiance in the face of any other claims to it. These calls for loyalty are often situated in specific socio-cultural-political-religious contexts, including especially Roman imperial contexts. While the language of loyalty and allegiance in Revelation is rightly understood as reflecting, in part, Roman imperial discourse and ideologies, this imperial discourse is part and parcel of wider patterns of kingship discourse on loyalty in the ancient Mediterranean world. In order to appreciate the nuance of imperial discourse on loyalty, one needs to situate it as part of these wider discourses. Likewise, in order to appreciate loyalty discourse in Revelation as a reflection of imperial discourse, one needs to situate it amongst these broader patterns of ancient Mediterranean kingship discourse. At the same time, Revelation deploys kingship discourse that was not specific to, nor appropriated in, Roman imperial contexts, including especially those associated with Davidic messianic expectations in Second Temple Jewish circles. In this paper, I will consider the various contexts in which interpreters typically situate Revelation’s loyalty discourse. I will then demonstrate how the author of Revelation blended loyalty discourses from various kingship settings (i.e., Hellenistic, Roman imperial, Davidic) in order to encourage absolute allegiance to the Lamb, God’s chosen Messiah. This research points towards a larger conclusion, namely, that the Lamb is variously presented throughout Revelation as a king, i.e., in terms resonant with patterns of kingship discourse. I will make clear these broader implications.

Although the Eucharist is attested four times (Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:15-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26) in the New Testament, only two (Luke and 1 Corinthians) out of the four instances bespeak of commemorating this event (“Do this in remembrance of me”). Limiting the discussion to Mark’s iteration of this event, Mark’s version does not command to remember; rather he focuses on the ontological (“This is my body/blood”). This paper follows Stephen D. Moore’s vegetal reading of the Johannine Jesus (Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans) that invites and acknowledges the animacy of the vegetal in affectively re-engaging the identity of the messiah. That is, (processed) plants/food are not there just to be symbolically equated with the body and blood of the messiah. They re-animate and re-define the nature of messiahship. This paper utilizes Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, Bruno Latour’s actants, and Michael Marder’s vegetality in arguing that Mark vegetally reconfigures the ontology of the messiah in the Eucharist/Last Supper scene (14:22-25). Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage will assist in elaborating how the vegetal could dismantle anthropocentric understanding of ontology. By doing so, this paper opens up the possibility to reimagine a messiah who finds his identity with the vegetal or those that are considered dispensable.

Scholars have long been perplexed by the purpose of 3 Maccabees, partly owing to its fictional character. Is it a defense of diaspora Judaism, an anti-Dionysian polemic, or an etiology of a Jewish festival? Most attempts to decipher the text’s purpose have looked for historical clues hidden behind its narrative frame. This paper argues that the purpose and message of 3 Maccabees is only revealed through the course of the story. As the Jewish protagonists of this fictional narrative are displaced from their homes and threatened by Ptolemy Philopator, they remain steadfast in refusing to accept his offer of citizenship during their time of exile (ἀποικία). Though the Jews eventually return home (ἐπὶ τὴν ἰδίαν οἰκείαν) at the end of the narrative, the author says they return both to their homes and to a state of sojourning (παροικία). The paradox created by this juxtaposition invites the ideal Jewish reader to reimagine their Jewish identity in deeper ways to make sense of the narrative. What does it mean for the Jewish protagonists to return home, where they are homeless, and to live as law-abiding non-citizens? This paper will explore the literary character of 3 Maccabees and the narrative strategy of “paradox” to show how 3 Maccabees functions as a parable of Jewish life in the diaspora.

This paper seeks to dis-inter a dominant, yet often overlooked refrain in the book of Jeremiah – the non-burial refrain introduced in Jeremiah 7:30-8:3. The refrain is composed of thirteen variations on the idea that God will slay the people of Judah, leaving their bodies out to be eaten by the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, disinterring and exposing their bones to the sun, moon, and stars, and filling the Valley of Ben Hinnom with their corpses until it overflows. I argue that the non-burial refrain is actually the dominant refrain of the book, more often repeated than the well-known verb pairs introduced in 1:10 – to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. This paper uses rhetorical criticism, archeological data, theological reflection, and a hermeneutics of trauma to keep vigil with Jeremiah’s horrific and hammering repetition of God as one who disinters the corpses of God’s people in order to understand how the repetition of this theme works to shape the theological movement of the book as a whole. First, I will explore what the non-burial refrain reveals about conditions on the ground in 6th c BCE Judah, including the reality of siege warfare and how the fall of Jerusalem correlates with a shift in Judahite burial practices (following Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Irit Yezerski). While encoding an enduring memory of the Babylonian conquest into the text of Jeremiah, the non-burial refrain also offers a mechanism by which the book can test out alternate theological truths. In the first seven repetitions of the non-burial refrain, God is the active agent threatening God’s people with disinterment (8:1-3), corpse abuse (9:22, 16:4, 22:19), and forced cannibalism of their own children (19:9). But the people of Judah respond to this message with horror; rejecting these claims about the character of God and rejecting the prophet who speaks them (26:7-11). The next three repetitions of the refrain revise the role of God in Judah’s non-burial. “The valley where the dead bodies and ashes are thrown” will be called “holy to the Lord” (31:40). Instead of being “not gathered and not buried,” God will gather the people (32:37) and plant them in the land (32:41). Instead of being glh –scattered, exposed, and exiled – God will glh – expose – the people to peace and security (33:6). When we pay attention to the non-burial refrain, we see how it is being used to chart a renegotiation of who Judah can know God to be in the face of the Babylonian conquest. The non-burial refrain makes certain claims about who God is in the scattering of Judah, narratively contests those claims in confronting the person of the prophet who speaks them, and then revises the claims theologically – God is the one who gathers the people after war and exile, though the threat of non-burial is kept on the table for those who enslave others (34:8-20) and destroy God’s word (36:30).

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, Early Historical Books research group

In this paper, I argue that biblical authors largely consider ethical preparation to be an essential feature of the rite’s epistemological efficacy. I premise this argument on two works. First, in my 2016 monograph—Knowledge by Ritual—I argue that the Pentateuch envisions good knowing as a process where one heeds authoritative teachers and embodies their ritual instructions in order to know. This ritual instruction, however, entails the ethical behaviors culminating in the rite, a complication that gets meted out variously in the prophetic material. Second, Catherine Bell’s critique of the thinking-acting dichotomy in ritual theory creates space for understanding the epistemic role of ritual often stated, “in order that you know.” Taken together, Israel’s prophets prescribe and recall rituals intent on fostering knowledge in tandem with a panoramic matrix of ethical behaviors in order to know. More striking, we do not find Israelites in the HB as thinkers who then act. Rather, we find the expectation of Hebrews practicing a nexus of ethically-induced intellectual formation. In light of this, I argue below that ethical preparation then becomes just as constitutive of Israel’s knowledge as does the rites she performs.

Ancient Near Eastern legal terminology draws from the stock of everyday vocabulary redeployed in highly formulaic contexts. The legal domain of inheritance is no exception to this general rule. In the context of Abraham’s first crisis of succession (Gen 15:1-6), a density of terms related to inheritance appears. Most of the terminology is recognizable, but the expression בן־משק (v. 2), a term applied to Abraham’s servant Eliezer, has long vexed interpreters and inspired the biblical authors to offer their own etymological and contextual interpretations. The current study offers a new reading of this enigmatic expression that begins by exploring the potential legal meaning of the term in its current context. To this end, it is essential to explore the similarities and differences between what may have constituted a בן־משק, compared with the better-known status of a בן־בית, which the author of v. 3 associates with Eliezer. The comparative legal approach enables scholars to understand the formal categories of certain legal concepts, but explains little in terms of their etymological and sociological origins. Thus, potential Semitic cognates of the term משק are identified in numerous texts that deal with the legal issue of inheritance. Based on these two lines of evidence, the term seems to represent a technical legal status that Eliezer holds within Abraham’s household. He was a “necessary heir,” who could inherit the property of the deceased but had no familial ties to him—real, legal, or fictive. This represented a kind of limited succession that offered little benefit to Abraham, inspiring his lament for his lack of children.

Biblical scholars have often debated the definition of φθείρω in 1 Cor 3:16–17, and asked what it means to “destroy” God’s temple or be “destroyed” by him in return. Some have studied this word in light of its use in the LXX as a translation of שחת, and have therefore interpreted this passage as a description of eschatological judgment on the evil deeds of human beings. Others have positioned this text against a Greco-Roman background, chiefly by examining 1 Cor 3:5–17 with reference to 4th century Greek temple construction contracts that use Pauline vocabulary like ζημιόω and φθείρω. Each of these approaches has offered valuable insights, illuminating previously obscure elements in the passage. However, both of them have failed to answer questions about Paul’s use of φθείρω in a context that highlights God’s possession of the temple, the presence of God’s spirit in that temple, and the holiness of that temple. In this paper, I aim to offer to a fuller picture of what φθείρω means in this particular context by expanding the conversation to include a wider range of Greco-Roman writings than is often consulted and asking whether Paul’s logic coheres with these Greco-Roman texts. I argue three points in particular. First, within the rhetorical context of 1 Cor 3:5–17, “destroying” the temple is problematic because God’s temple is God’s holy possession. So whatever φθείρω means, it seems that it must involve threatening the holiness of this temple. Second, in Greco-Roman texts written both before and after Paul, φθείρω is used to refer to the defiling or polluting of some person or object so that it is unfit for cultic use and incompatible with the presence of a deity. Third, in Greco-Roman texts the introduction of pollution and defilement into sacred spaces such as temples is almost always followed by punishment from the deity. In several cases, φθείρω is used to describe a god’s response to that defilement. I conclude that Paul’s use of φθείρω in 1 Cor 3:16–17 fits within the logic its first century context as well as its rhetorical context because it expresses 1) the act of defiling what is holy and God’s and 2) the just punishment that comes to those who defile God’s holy space.

The translation of Matt 28:1 is a notoriously difficult crux interpretum owing to Matthew’s nearly inscrutable Greek. A wooden translation might produce something like: “And late on the Sabbath, when it was dawning toward the first day of the week.” The problem with such a rendering is that the day following the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown, yet the participle ἐπιφωσκούσῃ (epiphoskouse) seems to imply sunrise (Gardner-Smith: 1926). Since these temporal clauses ostensibly contradict one another, numerous solutions have been proposed. This paper briefly maps out these solutions under two broad headings—dawn proposals (e.g., Allen: 1907; Driver: 1965; Schweizer: 1975; Chisholm: 2004) and night proposals (e.g., Maldonatus: 1597; Moore: 1905; Black: 1998; Boyarin: 2001). Various historiographical issues hamper the dawn proposals (many of which were already noted by Grotius: 1641), though the reading itself is still possible. As for night proposals, Boyarin in particular has made a robust case for the night reading by arguing that it is the result of the author thinking semitically but writing in Greek. Nevertheless, this paper goes in a different direction from Boyarin by asking how the Greek text would have been received by Matthew’s hellenophone readers. That is, whereas Boyarin focuses on authorial intent, I focus on the text’s earliest reception and audience. Having found aspects of the status quaestionis wanting, I then entertain some heretofore overlooked evidence that favors the women visiting the tomb at dawn. First, I examine calendar texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., 1QS 10:10-16) and their possible import for establishing a dawn-to-dawn day. Second, I explore intratextual evidence, namely, passages which could favor a day-night schema (Matt 4:2; 12:40). Third, and perhaps most decisively, I retrieve an intertextual reading carried out by Eusebius (and, to a lesser extent, Didymus of Alexandria, Jerome, and Theodoret) that may hold promise for solving the riddle. In an apparently forgotten proposal, Eusebius argues that the resurrection is connected with the “dawn” of Ps 21:1 LXX. This, I conclude, it quite sensible, given Matthew’s frequent appeals to this psalm in his Passion Narrative. Thus, this patristic solution is worth retrieving inasmuch as it may tip the balance toward regarding the women’s visit as taking place at dawn.

In his farming manual, de Agricultura, Roman author, Cato, outlines the importance of the proper execution of household rituals. These are to be carefully tended to by the vilica, or head female slave, but only as instructed by the head of the household. He warns that, “She must not engage in worship herself or get others to engage in it for her without the orders of the dominus or domina” (143.1). This passage implies that enslaved members of the household are expected to perform religious rituals as an act of obedience and simultaneously suggests the tantalizing possibility that the vilica might initiate her own worship, perhaps to a god not sanctioned by the head of the household. This paper will explore this tension in the context of Roman households and the emergence of Christianity. One thinks of archaeological evidence such as shrines in kitchens or other service areas, where, as some scholars have suggested, enslaved people might have worshiped either the gods of the household, or their own ancestral or natal gods, or perhaps both. There is enough flexibility in these spaces or in the types of ritual practices—prayers, gestures, offerings—such that enslaved people might have experienced some autonomy in honoring their gods. These are the spaces into which we can imagine enslaved Christians living, working, and worshiping. The evidence is not abundant or explicit, but a variety of early Christian texts address or refer to enslaved believers, including 1 Corinthians, 1 Peter, the Apocryphal Acts, as wells as church manuals and church councils. Mining the archaeological evidence of ancient households and the literary (and largely prescriptive) evidence from early Christian texts, I will suggest that Christian slaves may have had access to a kind of limited agency in their roles in ancient households. Furthermore, using theoretical work related to power and religious rituals, I will suggest that this agency likely involved the ability to hide or even blend practices, so that the Christian god is worshiped alongside the gods of the slave master. This consideration of the agency of slaves encourages us both to confront the complex power dynamics in the ancient household and also to rethink the categories we use in the process. The example of enslaved believers—who are typically advised by Christian authors to obey their masters—may not have been recognizable as “Christian” in the way we imagine it. The power structure of ancient households and the potential resourcefulness of those who are subject to it (like Cato’s vilica initiating her own rites) challenges the notion of “Christianity” as a well-bounded entity in these early centuries.

This paper compares two literary figures presented as great kings of the distant past: Nimrod in Gen. 10:8-12 and Sargon of Akkad in the literature of Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Omen texts, chronicles, and literary compositions produced in the Neo-Assyrian empire transformed the third millennium B.C. historical person of Sargon of Akkad into a heroic figure without equal who overcame adversity to become a powerful king, conquered distant lands, and ruled the entire world as the first king to establish a universal empire, which was seen as a precursor to Assyria’s own imperial ambitions. This idealized image of Sargon as the archetype of a great king was primarily transmitted through literary texts and historical omen apodoses dating back to the Old Babylonian period. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. these omens were expanded, compiled into specialized collections, and used as sources for historical chronicles. New literary texts were also composed, such as the Birth Legend which challenges future kings to match Sargon’s achievements, or the Sargon Geography, whose purported description of the extent of Sargon of Akkad’s empire more closely matches the borders of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the late eighth century. The figure of Sargon became a model for Assyrian rulers to emulate, as evidenced by the Birth Legend, the adoption of Sargon’s name as a throne name by an Assyrian monarch, the veneration of artifacts from the Akkad dynasty, and the re-founding of Akkad by Esarhaddon. The depiction of Nimrod in Gen. 10:8-12 is thematically similar to the legendary figure of Sargon: a powerful king of the distant past, a “mighty one on the earth,” and the first to rule an empire. Like Sargon, Nimrod is presented in both contemporary and antiquarian fashion. Nimrod’s Assyrian background, suggested to Karl Van Der Kooij (2012) by the link between hunting and kingship in Gen. 10:9, is made explicit in Gen. 10:11-12, and reinforced in Mic. 5:5-6. Yet Nimrod is described as originating from southern Mesopotamia rather than Assyria. He is anachronistically described in Gen. 10:10 as basing his kingdom in Akkad, Babylon, and Uruk, the latter two being important cities in the first millennium while the former was known primarily from antiquarian references until its re-founding by Esarhaddon in 670 B.C. While Van Der Kooij’s explanation cannot explain the southern Mesopotamian element, an attempt by Yigal Levin (2002) to identify Nimrod with the historical Sargon of Akkad fails to adequately explain the Assyrian element. I argue that the Sargon literature of the eighth and seventh centuries explains both elements and provides the background for the origins of the Nimrod pericope. Following in the tradition of the work of Peter Machinist and Hayim Tadmor on the interaction between Assyrian propaganda and Biblical texts, I argue that the Nimrod pericope should be understood as a response to the role of Sargon in Assyrian royal propaganda, and functions as a critique of Assyrian imperialism presaging the theological critique of Assyro-Babylonian religion in Gen. 11:1-9.

Nehemiah was a hero of the Hasmoneans in their attempt to create a distinctly Judean state within the context of foreign imperial domination. Ironically, the historical Nehemiah was almost certainly a loyal employee of Yehud's Persian imperial overlords, and his image as an ardent ethno-nationalist was a product of subsequent rehabilitation. Though many elements of the narratives in Ezra and Nehemiah have received skeptical attention in recent years, most scholars still argue that the Nehemiah Memoir, in its broad contours, reflects conditions in Achaemenid Yehud during the middle of the 5th century BCE . Nevertheless, its narrator is spectacularly unreliable, driven at every juncture by a desire to show that the titular character, Nehemiah, acted only with the best of intentions on behalf of his native countrymen, the Judeans. In its defense of Nehemiah, the Memoir conceals as much as it reveals about Nehemiah’s mission, his activities in Jerusalem, and the motives of his opponents. Nehemiah was, first and foremost, a loyal employee of the Achaemenid Empire, and as such his actions (as related within the Nehemiah Memoir) must be understood as acting within that capacity. A critical reading of the Nehemiah Memoir thus reveals two dimensions of his mission: first, that it was Achaemenid in origin and served Achaemenid interests, and second that at an early stage (either during Nehemiah’s lifetime or shortly thereafter) an attempt was made to recast that mission as something that also served Judean interests. Numerous attempts have been made to argue that Nehemiah's so-called "reforms" (debt remission, eliminating the governor's food allowance, ensuring apportionment of goods to cultic functionaries, prohibiting trade on the Sabbath, and forbidding marriage to foreigners) were motivated by Torah piety. However, that claim is both anachronistic and politically naïve: in Nehemiah's time, the Pentateuch had not yet emerged as a coherent body of normative law, and Nehemiah's position as governor had nothing to do with the imposition of distinctly Judean laws on the province of Yehud, let alone a coherent Judeo-Babylonian ideology. Nehemiah's reforms, rather, are best understood as ad hoc attempts to disenfranchise his local enemies within the network of patron-client relations in the Achaemenid-era Levant. Nehemiah’s reforms, in various ways, attempt to accomplish two things: first, they limit access to power and privilege in Jerusalem to Nehemiah, his loyalists, and those whom he approves, and second, they restructure power away from indigenous elites in favor of the governor and the Persian garrison stationed in the birta in Jerusalem. It is only later, after Torah had become a coherent body of legal material and a symbol of Judean identity, that Nehemiah was rehabilitated as a ruthless enforcer of the covenant.

This paper explores how vision and blindness operate in the Samson cycle, and uses sensory anthropology to question how theories of sight operate in the text. I advance that the Ancient perception of vision as an active, embodied process which not only acquires knowledge but is understood as cognition and desire itself. This sheds new light on Judges 13-16 and aids understandings of the text. I question why the Philistines, like so many contemporary works, link Samson's blindness to his weakness, ignoring the text's link between shaving and weakness. The complex interplay between ability-disability and strength-weakness makes the cycle a fascinating insight into Ancient conceptions of sensory disability and the reception of these ideas.

The prophetic story told in 1 Kgs 22 is a gripping read. Nevertheless, textual critical problems render its interpretation uncertain at several points. In dialogue with Steve McKenzie’s recent commentary a number of problems, most of them connected to 1 Kgs 22:30, will be discussed: is the verse really about disguises? Who disguised as whom? And what does the motif contribute to the story as a whole? Textual matters lead to questions of literary genre, history of religion, and intertextuality.

Dance is a compelling metaphor for any process that is at the same time traditional and spontaneous. In the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament, the liturgical community fosters stability in the transmission history, while also allowing new variants to dance onto the stage. This presentation traces those dance steps by examining the path of variants into and out of the manuscripts. Of interest is when and into what cluster a variant enters the tradition, and whether that variant is then taken up into later stages of the tradition. This study analyzes variants in several books of the Ethiopic Old Testament, including Obadiah, Ruth, Deuteronomy and Amos, and identifies various diachronic patterns of those variants. Stepping back from the focus on individual variants, can we identify larger trends in the tradition regarding the entrance and exits of variants within clusters and text types? Do the relative levels of variation change across time? Do the various Old Testament show distinct patterns and trends? For the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project, I have developed numerous computer scripts to create a database of variants, and to perform various analyses to help tell the story of the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament. For this diachronic analysis, I have developed computer scripts to identify the chronological distribution of each variant; to group the distribution by diachronic pattern; and to quantify the trends of these patterns across time. This study also explores recent trends in data presentation and data visualization, to help gain insight into the complexity of manuscript variation for the sake of telling the story of the textual history of the Ethiopic Old Testament.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, History of Biblical Interpretation research group

The letter of 1 Peter refers to its recipients as the “exiles of the diaspora” (1:1, 2:11). They are not simply exiles; they are chosen exiles (1:1). And like many diasporic communities, these elect outsiders are living in a hostile environment. Suffering, mentioned twelve times in the short letter, underscores their difficult circumstances.1 Yet, in the midst of suffering, there is hope. Hope is vital for an oppressed people who are negotiating their unique identity, it serves as a potentially transformative and creative force. Still, danger is ever-present for those who are situated as outsiders in a geo-political space. By exploring the various ways that the author names the audience, I will argue that this exilic identity is a tenuous ethno-spatial construct that establishes a seemingly stable peoplehood. Denise Buell’s notion of ethnic reasoning will be instructive for understanding how the author develops this peoplehood through kinship language and birthing imagery.2 Using a comparative cultural analysis and womanist hermeneutic, I will engage a contemporary example of exiles to further elucidate the material implications of such an identity formation. Survival is often the result of fluidity and flexibility; the ability to be accommodating and concomitantly resistant. Forged in the context of suffering, this “born again” identity informs us that claims of authority, particularly those that dictate an oppressed community’s behavior can endanger freedom and equality while appearing to promote liberation and restoration. πάσχων (suffering) is found twelve times in the short letter (2:19, 20, 21, 25; 3:14, 17, 18; 4:1 (2x), 4:15, 19; 5:10). 2 Denise Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3. Buell defines ethnic reasoning as various modes of persuasion that “offered Christians both a way to define themselves relative to ‘outsiders’ and to compete with other ‘insiders’ to assert the superiority of their varying visions of Christianness.”

Defining Religion: Another look at James 1:26–27

This paper interjects Michel Foucault’s panopticon as a hermeneutical lens to help Korean women discipline Korean Confucianism’s ideal wife. Naehun, to be supportive, obedient, and dutiful among other everyday images of the Korean wife and mother, are offered to reframe contemporary and ancient issues that signify a better understanding of the text and Korean social constructions of women’s identities.

A key component of the legislation for the jubilee in Leviticus 25 is its announcement every fifty years. In its original context, this period is not a chronographic schema for chronicling history but a tool for marking off a period of time in which to enact the legislation’s economic vision. Beginning in the third century BCE, Judean literature begins employing a number of chronographic schemata in order to account for the progress of long spans of time and highlight significant transitions between those periods. Paul J. Kosmin (Time and its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire [Harvard, 2018]) argues that the use of the four empires schema in Daniel (2:31–45; 7:1–28; 8:22) and the ten weeks sequence in the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:1–10; 91:11–17) were part of a broader revolution in the conceptualization of time in response to the advent of the Seleucid Era by populations subjected to Seleucid hegemony. In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Ancient Judaism, I argue that the writers of Daniel 9 and the book of Jubilees also adapt the Levitical jubilee into a temporal mode for conceptualizing long spans of history in imitation of and in response to the Seleucid Era. In this paper, I will examine works from early Judaism (11QMelchizedek, the Testament of Levi, and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C) that develop even further the use of the fifty-year jubilee cycle as a chronographic device. In contrast to Daniel 9, these other works do not betray clear signs of their contemporary circumstance. While these works follow the trajectory of adapting the jubilee as a chronographic schema (and cite or allude to Daniel 9 in doing so), I will argue that their use of the jubilee as a chronographic schema is not specifically in order to speak about a specific present but rather to reflect an ever-changing and imminent eschatological present. Taken together, these works exhibit a trajectory of adapting the jubilee from a chronographic schema that speaks to a specific present into a signifier of an ever-changing eschatological present, always on the cusp of the realization of the author’s utopian hopes.

In the Gospel of Luke, the social gathering of the meal is often used as the setting for the parables of Jesus. Unexpected characters and groups are invited to the table, thus negotiating conventions for social interaction. By help of theories of disability and masculinity, this paper examines the various meal scenes in Luke 14. We will focus on Jesus’ speech to the host about who to invite and who not to invite when hosting a meal (vv. 12-14). This saying constructs a complex and intersecting social web of potential guests. Those not to be invited because they can reciprocate, belong to the social world of the privileged man: his brother, friend, relative and rich neighbor. Representing different levels of his radius of trust, they will all have something to pay back. Protocols of masculinity govern the interaction among these social groups. We will look at each of the four categories mentioned, since each of them play very significant social roles in the ancient world. The preferred guests in Jesus’ parable, however, are those who lack the resources to give anything back, due to bodily disability and lack of property: The poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. But who are they? What else do these categories share, other than being ideal guests and lacking the ability for reciprocity? Moreover, what is revealed about these four groups of ideal guests when they are juxtaposed with the four not-ideal guest groups? The paper will show how ideas of health, economic ability, and gender intersect. Disability and masculinity will be employed to rethink ideal communities in the Gospel of Luke.

Under the direction of Steve Delamarter and Daniel Assefa, an Ethiopian team based in Addis Ababa has been preparing a version of the Ge’ez Bible for the Bible software Accordance. Given that a critical edition of the whole Ge’ez Bible is not yet available, the choice of one among available versions becomes a provisional and practical necessity. In other words, it is implied that more versions can be offered to Accordance on the basis of some criteria: the textus receptus? One of the best representatives of ancient manuscripts? One of the Best representatives of the standardized manuscripts? The options will be discussed while the paper will explain the steps undertaken by the team for the project, including the choice and transcription of the Ethiopic version as well as the works of versification equivalency with the King James version (the reference used by Accordance).

The Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-26 and Mt. 5:3-11) present one of the hardest parts of the Christian Bible to interpret theologically. This is connected to its historical context, namely, the inseparable historical link between the Beatitudes and first century Jewish apocalyptic hope. It is seldom explicitly stated that the Beatitudes primarily make historical sense only when set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic-eschatological “reversal of fortunes.” That is, the historical Jesus as well as the original audience to whom the Beatitudes were directed, were hoping for a dramatic intervention of God through the coming of God’s reign into their historical world. That would then create a new world order where, (using Luke’s Beatitudes) the (really) poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated-excluded-reviled-defamed ones will be the beneficiaries of a reversal of fortunes and will be truly (and not only spiritually) “blessed.” When this original context of first century apocalyptic hope is neglected, the Beatitudes can pose a daunting challenge for theological interpretation. Bereft of its original apocalyptic context, the declaration of “blessed” can become just a cruel and unrealistic paean to an impossible utopic dream. Of course, the apocalyptic eschaton, in the form in which many first century Jews (including most probably the historical Jesus) believed it would come, never came. Where does that leave us in terms of theologically interpreting the proclamation of the Beatitudes? Are we condemned to make the Beatitudes part of the “opium” of the people by explaining that the promised rewards would be in a deferred state called “heaven” (as has happened for most of Christian history)? Do we just ignore the elephant in the room that is actually screaming that the promised blessed state promised by the Beatitudes is ordinarily an impossible dream this side of heaven? Do we just turn the Beatitudes into profoundly spiritual-sounding platitudes that, again, are just not founded on the ordinary experiences of those they profess to reward? This paper will propose that the fact that the Beatitudes’ original context of apocalyptic-eschatological hope has not been realized should be made the foundation, first, of a theological way of interpreting the Beatitudes that avoids the above-mentioned unhelpful and irrelevant treatments of the topic. Taking hints from liberationist, postcolonial and minoritized (such as Asian/Asian-North American) biblical hermeneutical principles, this study will propose more positively that, in the wake of the original apocalyptic context of the Beatitudes gone, they should now be theologically interpreted through the lens of a realized, collaborative, and incarnational eschatology by which the promised rewards of the Beatitudes no longer depend on an apocalyptic intervention of God but on the followers of Jesus taking on a liberative praxis to realize a new “eschatological” order where the poor, hungry, weeping, and marginalized ones really come to experience now some measure of the blessedness that God’s reign necessarily brings with it.

While an electronic text for most of the apparatuses published in the series Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum (SVTG) by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences is commercially available, to our knowledge there is no electronic version with a full semantic tagging. A full semantic tagging on an apparatus should distinguish between lemmas, textual operators, variants, manuscript symbols with specifications, notes, and other elements. In addition, it should create links between the main text and the apparatus, allow for searches by the base form of lemmas and variants, and, ultimately, be able to parse the continuous text of any given witness on the basis of the reported variation. We will present an automated tagging system that will convert any well-written SVTG apparatus into a hierarchically ordered sequence of elements that can be presented as an XML document, following the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) standard, or converted into a database structure. The system requires an XML schema describing the rules governing the order and nesting of elements as well as a lexicon of the element markers, such as separators for lemmas and readings. In addition, the system attempts to isolate formatting (such as superscript) and metadata from textual information. Since the exact format of the SVTG apparatuses vary, the system will allow for modifying the XML schema and other input parameters.

The question of the reciprocal relationship between law and emotion is at its very core a question about the relationship between culture and nature, or to put it in another way, a question of the evolutionary underpinnings of human social interaction. The role of emotions for human interaction and morality has been emphasised in neuroscience (Antonio Damasio), primatology (Frans de Waal), and social psychology (Jonathan Haidt). Haidt is known for his social intuitionist model, followed by the moral foundations theory, which indicate that a number of emotions are involved in moral appraisal, moral infringement, and moral repair. The human species is a highly social one, dependent on advanced social interaction for survival and development. This creates numerous conflicts and instances of interpersonal infringement, in need of social and moral repair. Law is a cultural construct that attempts to regulate interaction, infringement, and repair, so as to ensure continued cooperation, and every law does this within a particular context, usually including a hierarchical social structure. The basis for such legal regulation, however, is our emotional capacity. Since emotions have evolved to enhance the fitness of the human species, they play on both sides as they are involved in both infringement and repair. In this paper I give special attention to certain behaviours, which originated as functional survival strategies or adaptations during the evolutionary process, but have become dysfunctional, out of context, and turned into social and moral infringements (“sins”), often within a hierarchical framework. I particularly discuss sexual infringements, property infringements and status infringements, how they can be conceptualised by the metaphorical frameworks of measure and of size/height, and appraised by emotions such as anger, jealousy, pleasure, pride, and shame. I trace the influence of these emotions in the shaping of biblical law texts, including law in a broad sense (moral instruction) and the interaction between various emotions in legal reasoning and moral exhortation. I also discuss the process through which law regulates moral emotions and balances them, effectively curbing excess and avoiding disproportionate revenge. Finally, I point to the rhetorical function of law to bend and direct emotions in the service of moral values and social cohesion.

Since Gerald Wilson published his groundbreaking dissertation in 1980, Psalms scholarship has focused much of its attention upon questions of the significance of the final shape of the Psalter, both for Second Temple readers and for contemporary readers. As work carrying Wilson’s thesis forward has refined our understanding of the Psalter’s message, more careful attention to intertextual connections and resonances within the book can help us further refine our understanding of its final form. Psalm 144 contains enticing echoes of other psalms which offer fertile ground for exploration. This paper considers the role that Psalm 144 plays as a quasi-catena towards the end of the Psalter by adapting and drawing upon material from several other psalms that precede it (Pss 8, 18, 33). By recasting imagery and motifs from the royal Psalm 18 in a new context while identifying David by name, Psalm 144 carries the Davidic hope for-ward to the end of the Psalter, yet it does so in a tempering fashion. Similarly Psalm 144 echoes the question of Psalm 8, “What is the human/child of humanity?” and the two psalms resonate with one another in ways that extend beyond the more direct verbal parallels. These points of overlap highlight parallels between the human ruler of Psalm 8 and the Davidic king of Pss 18 and 144. Finally, Psalm 144 recasts the call to “sing a new song” found in Psalm 33 in a way that paves the way for the chorus of praise to YHWH that follows in the rest of the Psalter. Taken together these allusions and echoes elucidate how the final form of the Psalter portrays the Davidic King. It will be argued that Psalm 144 concludes the body of the Psalter by setting forth a continuing, albeit tempered, Davidic hope. By under-emphasizing Psalm 144 and downplaying the role that the Davidic King plays in it, many psalms scholars have mistakenly concluded that the redactors of the Psalter sought to expunge any Davidic hope from the book. A proper appreciation of the intertextual resonances within Psalm 144 shows how the final form of the Psalter strategically brings the body of the book to a close by allowing the Davidic King to speak one last time, reminding the reader that the Davidic covenant is not defunct, despite apparent evidence to the contrary.

The author has taught MT and LXX Esther at third-year level to African students at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal from 2016-2018. The focus of the relevant course, BIST330, is to examine gender constructions in these books, and enable students to conduct their own African interpretations of aspects that they find the most interesting. In this paper, the author explores the many fascinating ways that students, both male and female, appropriate MT Esther to their personal and/or communal contexts. She does so by applying thematic analysis to the students’ written and marked assessment scripts, interweaving her analysis with insights from scholars who have sought to apply MT Esther to their various African contexts.

In 2 Clement, the interpretation of the verb μετανοέω is a crux for understanding the writing’s theology and admonitions. The analysis of μετανοέω in 2 Clement will interact with Arthur Darby Nock’s theories about choice, change and conversion, as well as with subsequent theoretical models. Oftentimes, the translation “repent” correlates with the notion that 2 Clement implores the hearers to do penance in order for their relationship to God to be restored. At several points, however, such an understanding of μετανοέω is ill-suited to the context and rhetorical strategy. A plausible alternative is the common meaning of μετανοέω in classical Greek literature to “change one’s perspective.” Inasmuch as ancient philosophical and ethical thinking was not purely abstract but, rather, intrinsically linked to one’s way of life, the latter definition of μετανοέω correlates with 2 Clement’s primary theme that believers must prepare themselves to face the final judgment through continually rendering praise, honor, and service to Christ, their divine patron. Consequently, a change in perspective would be commensurate with changes to orthopraxis. Further, those believers who heed 2 Clement’s admonitions and change their behavior could be seen as converting from one Christian way of life to another.

At the beginning of her important study of the late antique practice of pilgrimage to holy people, Georgia Frank states that “[t]he first step for any pilgrim lands not on the road, but somewhere in the imagination." Before one hits the road, one hits the books or hears the stories. Stories about holy people and holy places proliferated and were even written to invite – or entice – people to visit. This essay argues that the Acts of Timothy was written in the fifth century CE as part of an attempt not only to revitalize the waning ecclesiastical fortunes of Ephesus but to affix this once “great metropolis,” now in the shadow of Constantinople, firmly on both the literal and imaginative maps of potential religious travelers. By examining the details of this curious text, we can see how it establishes Ephesus as a critical place in the fabric of early Christian memory and even sketches out an itinerary for travelers who would visit the city.

Assuming a traditional reading of the so-called Christ-hymn of Philippians 2:6–11 (e.g. Fee, Philippians, 1995; Keown, Philippians, EEC, 2017), Paul poetically narrates the movement of Christ from one who is divine in form with all that that entails to the divine one who renounces exploitation of his divine status for his purposes, chooses the path of self-emptying, takes the form of a slave, becomes human, humbles himself, and in obedience to God goes to his death by crucifixion. His self-revelation is one of voluntary enslavement and obedience of the Son of God to his Father (Phil 2:11). His exaltation comes through God not the use of power for his own self-aggrandizement (Phil 2:9–10). This portrayal of Jesus stands in vivid contrast to the political patterns of the ancient world in which Jesus and Paul lived, a world of empires vying for power through its recent history up to the time of the Romans. Working with the assumption that 2 Thessalonians is Pauline, 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4 looks forward to the very converse of the Christ of Philippians 2. He emerges at the time of ἀποστασία, rebellion. He is revealed as a man of lawlessness, a man devoted to law-breaking and disobedience. He is ὁ υἱὸς τῆς ἀπωλείας, the son of destruction, not of God. This rich genitive speaks of one who is defined by destruction and wreaks havoc. Unlike the Christ of Phil 2 who will not use violent rapacious force in his mission but empties himself, this man exalts himself and opposes everything that is seen as divine and is worshiped. As such, while he is to be understood against the backdrop of the Roman Imperial Cult, he transcends it. Whereas the Roman Emperor tolerated and endorsed other religious expressions, this figure opposes all such claims. While Jesus dies on a cross, he seats himself in the temple of God and proclaims himself God. Contra-Jesus, he uses spiritual power expressed in false miracles to deceive humankind. His end is not exaltation to the name above all names, but destruction at the hands of the Theomorph, Jesus. In this paper, it will be argued that the Thessalonians would have been familiar with the material in the hymn at least conceptually, and perhaps even as a worship piece if it has its origin in early church worship. This paper will then explore the contrast of the two figures, arguing that they should be read intertextually. They present two visions of human life and power. 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4 presents the zenith of imperial domination. Philippians 2 tacitly envisions something completely different. Finally, this will be briefly applied to one of the trends in global geopolitics, the trend towards empire. Both letters summon the readers to live by the patterns of Christ and not destruction, lawlessness, and rapacious force. They also call us today to live by the Christ pattern and resist being drawn into the current trend towards empire as the solution to the many challenges of living in this world today.

How the Rabbis Queer Scripture: Non-Binary Gender in Early Midrash

The absence of a parallel to the story of Rebekah at the well (Genesis 24) in Jubilees is strange because the tale actually illustrates Abraham’s commitment to the covenant and God’s faithfulness to the promises God had made to the patriarch – issues that are at the core of Jubilees’ theology. In Genesis 24, Abraham orders his servant to find a suitable wife for Isaac, a woman who is not from Canaan but Mesopotamia. Abraham stresses also that Isaac not go on the journey. Genesis is unclear as to why Abraham did not want Isaac to leave the land, but the implication is that it is because Isaac is God’s chosen (Gen 17:19), and that his descendants will inherit the land (Gen 17:8; also 12:7; 15:7). When the servant arrives in Mesopotamia, he asks God for guidance, and soon meets Rebekah. Why did Jubilees’ author exclude the tale? John Endres argues that Jubilees’ author had “little time for this picturesque biblical narrative” [John C. Endres, S. J., Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees (CBQMS 18; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1987), 21]. Betsy Halpern-Amaru thinks that Jubilees’ author considered the story to be an account about a “chance meeting and delegated authority” and considered it “particularly troublesome” [Betsy Halpern-Amaru, The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees (JSJSup 60; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 38]. In my opinion, Genesis 24 posed a number of difficulties for Jubilees’ author, not least of which is Abraham’s disappearance from the tale after the servant’s departure to Mesopotamia. Notice that the narrator does not say that the patriarch was frail or ill. In the next chapter, we actually learn about Abraham’s marriage to Keturah and the births of six more of his sons before getting the announcement of his death (Gen 25:1-5). Thus, reading Genesis 24-25, one gets the sense that Abraham was more than able of travelling to Mesopotamia or at least meeting and approving of Rebekah, but for no clear reason, does neither. For his part, Jubilees’ author always made a point of explaining whenever a patriarch did not undertake a task. For example, in Jubilees 31, he has Jacob invite Isaac to come with him to Bethel to worship at the altar there. Isaac, however, declines, and explains his reason to Jacob: “I am unable to come with you because I am old and unable to put up with the trip […]. I am no longer able to travel” (Jub 31:27). For Jubilees, the absence of an explanation for why Abraham did not evern meet Rebekah was, at the very least, curious. If the patriarch had truly cared about keeping God’s covenant, surely he would have taken the time to meet with Rebekah and mentor her. In his narrative, Jubilees’ author had Abraham play a hands-on role in Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah. Moreover, he had the patriarch interact extensively with Rebekah, which would prove important later in Jubilees’ narrative.

The journey from logos to flesh is also a move from light to crucified Christ. As such, the Word that becomes flesh—who is also the Jesus who becomes Christ—can be read as a figural representation of trans* experience that expresses grace and truth and indicates the dangers of the material recognition of a trans* figured body. In this sense, if John Mbiti is taken to be correct when he suggests that Jesus can be understood as a proto-ancestor, then for Africana readers in alliance with transgender persons, it is imperative to consider Jesus as one among many trans* ancestors that have been fatally victimized by misrecognitions of the non-linear changes and consistencies that make up the grace and truth of movements toward trans* figuration. Foregrounding John 1:14, this paper takes on a reading of the Johannine Prologue using African and Queer theological perspectives to assert that transgenderism can be seen as a representation of the divine. Informed by the insights of Marcella Althaus Reid, this paper will argue that the trajectories of change and consistency in the incarnation of Christ can contribute toward the establishment of a critical empathy necessary for responsible ally relationships with trans* folk. All too often, those of us attempting to become cisgender allies possess a preoccupation with transition, passing, and general perspectives of trans* experience as a change; a change that is often turned into an event and a spectacle for cisgender voyeurs. Yet, it is our belief that cisgender allies can produce less violent forms of engaging trans* folk by abandoning linear perspectives of trans* figuration. Furthermore, we recognize that trans* persons of color are vulnerable not only to physical forms of violence that are racialized, commodified, and mis-gendering, but also to the danger of a single transgender story. Towards this end, we offer a reading of John 1 that posits non-linear approaches to the figure of Jesus Christ and by extension transgender studies. In which, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza’s theological work around the politics of radical difference, becoming, and resilience helps us to articulate an understanding of a trans* figured Jesus whose incarnation is not limited to the orientation of word to flesh, but a continuation of limitless divine possibility through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ.

The composition of the Ethiopian traditional Andəmta Commentary (AC) has been shown by Roger W. Cowleyto have three major components. (1) the ‎Ge’ez version of the biblical text (ዘር zar meaning “seed”); (2) the Amharic translation of the Ge’ez ‎biblical text (ነጠላ ትርጉም netela tergum meaning “direct translation”); and (3) the commentary proper ‎‎(ሀተታ hateta meaning “explanation”). The writer of this paper refers to the three parts as “Ge’ez text” ‎‎(the first component), “Amharic translation” (the second component), and “commentary proper” (the ‎third component). ‎Cowley hinted at a further element of complexity as he mentioned that the Amharic translation of the ‎Ge’ez text contains the “essential meaning of the Ge’ez,” thereby indicating that this part of AC may ‎not be a literal translation of the Ge’ez text. This paper, after analyzing the questions posed to God in the AC of the Psalms, shows that ‎the presentation of the Amharic translation and the commentary proper that follow the Ge’ez text is ‎more complex. In most cases, descriptions of AC by ‎various scholars tend to summarize or repeat Cowley’s stance. However, a close reading of the selected ‎texts of the AC of Psalms indicates that the commentators in multiple instances mix their presentation ‎of the Amharic translation of the Ge’ez text and the commentary proper or present them in a different ‎order. In some instances, it omits the Amharic translation of the Ge’ez text and includes only the ‎commentary proper or vice versa. ‎Moreover, in some instances, the commentators of AC of Psalms appear as people who share the ‎agony of the Psalter. This characteristic is evidenced by the fact that AC commentators expand on the ‎questions of the Psalter and endorse the questions as their own. In this way, the AC of Psalms loses the ‎expected distance between the Psalter and the commentators of the AC. In conclusion, on the basis of ‎an analysis of the questions posed to God in the AC of the Psalms, this study proposes that the strict ‎classification of the AC strands into three distinct parts does not do justice to the complexity of the AC ‎of Psalms.‎

Scholarship increasingly accepts as a principal interpretive lens that Jesus was not only Jewish, but also heavily indebted to the Jewish apocalypticism, specifically. This worldview, exemplified in literary works called apocalypses, sees God intervening directly in human affairs, whether through angelic and related intermediaries or human redeemer figures. While the role of a kingly messiah differs substantially from text to text, commonly the functions of universal judge and/or victorious warrior are assumed. Since a good case can be made that Jesus understood himself to be a royal messiah, why did he envisage a role imbued with suffering and even failure? Why such a pathetic vision? Visions of the universal judge and military conqueror are tied to aspirations of Jewish national independence and/or vengeance against Gentile opponents and oppressors. Though various eschatological scenarios are imagined in extant apocalyptic literature, typically the messiah attains ascendency unscathed. Occasionally, setbacks may be envisioned, just as the suffering of the righteous may well be foreseen. The varied career of the messianic ram in the Animal Apocalypse demonstrates such failure mixed with success. Alternatively, the vengeful sentiment and the invincibility of the messiah may reach extreme levels, as in the bloody, vindictive messiah of 2 Baruch. Jesus was bent on suffering. His program fomented non-violent reform, espousing an extreme view of love for one’s neighbour, including forgiveness of national enemies. He eschewed the aspirations of John the baptizer, his mentor in things apocalyptic, by failing to act as the eschatological judge. Further, Jesus’ modes of interaction (travel itinerary, social association, communication in veiled language, use of inflammatory speech) brought tension and suffering at family, community and larger levels. In public, he taught that allegiance to his leadership, paramount in the divine plan, would bring national division and, ultimately, rejection for his supporters. In private, Jesus revealed that his messianic role, specifically, was tied to suffering. With the demise of John likely leading Jesus to expect a similar, fatal form of resistance at a political level, Jesus evidently intuited the ultimate failure of his climactic trip to Jerusalem. Jesus’ self-perception as a suffering messiah requires explanation. I explore a probable key influence. One strand of apocalyptic thought allowed for a sub-divided eschatological timeframe, potentially with multiple key figures envisioned at different epochs, in which suffering and failure precede ultimate vindication. The defeated warrior ram and then, later, the indomitable eschatological white bull in the Animal Apocalypse exemplify this approach. A related example in Daniel, though without a messiah, involves the suffering “wise among the people” followed by the vindication offered by Michael. Coupling this particular apocalyptic take on eschatological scenarios and key figures with a peculiar interpretative approach to the Jewish Scriptures, Jesus takes this vision on as providing a quintessential feature of his role. Jesus participates in a known discourse within apocalypticism, albeit a minority opinion, while yet taking it to an extreme. For Jesus, the king in the first eschatological epoch enjoys no victories, only defeat.

The creational metaphor of YHWH “stretch[ing] out the heavens” (natah shamayim) appears in several prophetic and poetic texts, most frequently in Isaiah 40–55 (Isa 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 51:13; Jer 51:15; Zech 12:1; Job 9:8; Ps 104:2; cf. Isa 48:13). In a couple passages that Hebrew phrase is also used to describe YHWH “part[ing] the heavens” in order to come down and rescue his people (Ps 18:10 [9] // 2 Sam 22:10; Ps 144:5). In a 1972 essay Norman Habel offered the most extensive discussion of this phrase to date, focusing in particular on its association with Israel’s tabernacle traditions, for as Isa 40:22 specifies, YHWH “stretches out the heavens . . . like a tent to live in.” This essay will build on Habel’s work, exploring further associations with the tabernacle as well as how the metaphor bears on our understanding of the paired phrase roqa’ ha’arets, which is typically translated, “who spreads out the earth” (Isa 42:5; 44:24; cf. Ps 136:6). It will also consider the metaphor’s ANE background, noting especially its relationship to the similar phrase in Enuma Elish IV.138. And finally, it will examine how this metaphor functions rhetorically in its literary contexts.

Accepted paper for the 2019 IBR meeting, Early Historical Books research group

Ever since Scholem’s two major works resonated around the relationship between Jewish mysticism and New Testament studies, many have attempted to identify the relationship between Jewish mysticism and Paul’s heavenly experience in 2 Cor 12:1–10. Through a comparison of words and idea, Scholem maintains that in 2 Cor 12:1–10 Paul is voicing an idea similar to that which the anecdote of “the four men who entered pardes” in Hekhalot entails. However, a simple comparison of paralleled texts from different literature would be insufficient to identify intertextual relations for several reasons. First, scholars who champion the continuity of Paul’s account to Jewish literature seem to neglect the genre of those texts. The Jewish literatures that they investigate are labelled as different genres; Enoch, for example, as apocalypse, and hekhalot literature as exemplary of Jewish esoteric texts. Second, The semantic similarity is very important to argue intertextual relations. However, it is untenable to argue that the same word, phrase, or sentence always presents the same semantic regardless of how it is used in different contexts. Third, though the same source may be used in different texts, depending on the social, cultural and situational context of each text, the employed source would be seen as functioning differently. Therefore, more robust analyses, including semantic systems and contextual assessment, should be required to identify more comprehensively the intertextual relations between multiple texts. In this regard, this essay will utilize a linguistic theory, particularly the appraisal theory of systemic functional linguistics (henceforth, SFL), to examine the intertextual relation between Paul’s heavenly experience in 2 Cor 12:1–10 and its equivalents in Jewish literature. Appraisal theory is a system of semantic choice regarding the evaluation of social relations. This theory is mainly concerned with a writer/speaker’s style of evaluative language through which to construct characters’ stances, emotion, and value of other things, characters, phenomena, ideology, society and so on. Appraisal theory further enables analysts to identify the intertextual relation of multiple texts in terms of the semantic similarity. It is a cogent proposition when we take appraisal theory with us into the consideration of solidarity in the social context. If multiple people have the same point of view and evaluation of a particular substance or phenomenon, the case for a form of solidarity could be made among the people who share the same perspective. By contrast, if a person presents different standpoints or evaluations from others, there would be a discontinuation between that person and the rest of the group. Therefore, through the analysis of appraisal in 2 Cor 12:1–10, this study argues that although Paul’s account and Jewish literature have a similar structure, terms, and content, the analysis of Paul’s language stands out a significant difference from other texts. Especially, Paul’s appraisal language, generated from its situational context, exhibits a different stance to heavenly journey, albeit the structural similarity with Jewish literature.

This paper examines cultural setbacks and renegotiations of faith and customs based on Shinto shrines established by the Japanese in the 1920s and 1930s in Korea for the promulgation of its imperial ideology. Daniel and his three friends receive a cultural reinterpretation in light of one of the most celebrated and remembered resistance fighters during Korea’s colonized period, the Rev. Ki-chol Chu.

The practice of the Bible handwriting (성경필사 [seongkyungpilsa]) has been a widely popular devotional practice within the Korean American churches. In every Lenten season, many congregations launch a church-wide campaign to produce their own copies of the hand-written Old and New Testaments, which invites every member from children to adults participate in completing their copy by Easter Sunday. In many cases, while the first-generation adults write in Korean, the second-generation children write in English. What does it mean for these Korean diasporic communities to copy down the Bible with their own hands? How does the experience of immigration shape their understanding of this practice? How do biblical texts provide insights to enlighten its biblical rationales for this practice in diaspora? Seeking to answer these questions, we have first engaged in a small-scale ethnographic research at two Korean immigrant churches in Georgia and New Jersey to observe the practice and conduct interviews with several participants. Then, we turn to examine the phenomenon of postexilic hypertextuality in the Old Testament by looking at the books of Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel. These books, which share a post-exilic origin, exhibit a preoccupation with the authority of written texts, practice and ideology of writing. In a culture in which few were literate, writings themselves had a mysterious as well as an authoritative status. In the time of exile, for diasporic community, this written/writing authority further becomes a tool for cultural preservation. For instance, the literate (scribes or the maskil elite) in the book of Daniel, who mediate between meanings behind a text and the readers by writing, correspondingly receive some level of authority. In Dan 7:1, Daniel’s act of writing is figured as interpretation, which is the capital that foreign officials do not own. With repeated references to books and writing (7:1, 10; 9:2; 10:21; 12:1, 4), the self-identification of Daniel as a writing-self becomes explicit. This intentional focus on the ideology of writing reflects its contemporary diasporic context when Judean scribes on a foreign soil who were marginalized yet respected for their ability of shaping and preserving traditions of their shattered community. As the postexilic period was a formative period for the composition of the Hebrew scriptures, this meta-critical reflection on writing practice in the Old Testament helps us to understand the practical theological significance of writing practice within the contemporary diasporic faith community. The interdisciplinary (biblical and sociocultural) analysis of the writing practice in these two (ancient and modern) accounts demonstrate particular ways in which the post-exilic Judean and Korean diasporic communities engage in textuality and scribal activity as a form of cultural preservation through generations within diasporic faith communities.

Ezekiel 16 contains a lengthy description of Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife who is to be harshly condemned for her infidelity to God. The text is dominated by the vivid metaphor of Jerusalem as the adulterous wife of YHWH. Jerusalem was originally the daughter of an Amorite father and a Hittite mother, but she was soon abandoned by them. God rescued her and took good care of her, and when she became sexually mature and reached the age for love, God took Jerusalem as his wife (Ezekiel 16:1–8). The rest of the chapter is filled with descriptions of how Jerusalem betrayed her husband by sacrificing their children to idols and offering her sexual favors to strangers such as Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Though we acknowledge that this text is a metaphor designed to depict the severity of Jerusalem’s sin in the honor/shame society system, the misogynistic descriptions and judgments in the narrative are stark. It could be extremely dangerous if this text were wrongly and inappropriately situated among a people and a community. That is, the concept that God as a guardian grooms the child to be his lover and marries her after she becomes mature could be naturally embedded in both men and women as God’s word, and the possible consequences in real-life settings could be tragic. I would like to reflect it is possible that sexual harassment within the church has been encouraged by this misunderstood concept. In contemporary Korea, countless cases of sexual harassment in churches are being revealed. Most of the victims had been taken under the wings of male church leaders, especially pastors, for years, and some of them did not even realize they were being sexually abused when they were underage. Ominously, when these older males approach girls in their congregation, they often say, “I am doing this because you are like my daughter.” They assert their guardianship to relieve the girls’ anxiety, sometimes by improving their situation, such as when the minors are facing a financial crisis. The girls have no choice but to meet the older men’s sexual needs because their lives are in the church leaders’ hands—their acquiescence is directly linked to their survival. I would like to argue that this misogynistic and patriarchal concept of God’s relationship to Jerusalem changing from guardian to husband may have become deeply embedded in our society. This is especially critical to address because the Scripture, which is regarded as “God’s word,” implies this concept when describing the relationship between God and Jerusalem.

The Bible occupies a privileged position in the history of literature, secular or religious, as one of the most influential books of all time. As a result, countless readers over a span of two millennia have interacted with it by way of rewriting, citing, commenting, paraphrasing, proclaiming, and so forth. Attempting to take stock of those interactions presents the modern interpreter with a dizzying mass of data. As it stands today, there is no convenient way to determine or map the parts of the Bible that have gained the most attention from readers. “The Big Data of Intertextuality and the Bible” addresses this lacuna by creating a proof of concept of a central database for biblical citation data gathered from the earliest citations of Scripture up through pre-Late Antiquity (inclusive of Second Temple, Early Christian, and Tannaitic works). This proof of concept will include the testing of techniques (i.e. bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis) established in library and information science and the history of science to determine the best practices for counting and weighing biblical citations and of visualizing complex intertextuality through the use of network theory. By bringing together all available citations from the pre-Late Antique literary world into a central database and employing computational methods, new means of exploring the literary effect of a biblical book, in this case study the Book of Deuteronomy, emerge that can enable the biblical researcher interested in intertextuality to partake in the digital humanities slogan: “years of analysis for a day of synthesis.” The decades invested by readers in identifying Scriptural citations must not remain merely an index to be thumbed through or clicked on for a handful of citations for close reading; it should be placed into a digital environment that allows researchers to explore new relationships between a book of the Bible and its readers, among readers, across genres, around the Mediterranean, and over time through the framework of distant reading.

In this paper, I will queer Jesus’ body in the Gospel of John. I will show how queer theoretical perspective enables interpretations that highlight Jesus’ queer features and locate him outside the normative binary categories, such as “a man”. I will handle the question about Jesus’ queer body through the characters of Logos and Sophia by using the prologue (1:1-18) in the Gospel of John as my case study. In the prologue Logos, the Word, is met for the first (and last) time in the Gospel. Logos is connected straight to Jesus: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” (1:14). Looking at the concept of Logos closer, we find out that it is linked closely to Sophia, the Wisdom, who is met in the ancient Wisdom literature. Both Logos and Sophia are incarnations of divine, and Jesus is connected to both of them. The interesting part is, as has been often pointed out, that Sophia is represented as a female character and referred to in female pronouns in the Wisdom literature. I argue that Sophia is queering Jesus’ already ambiguous body and, along with Logos, affecting Jesus’ bodily representations. On a broader viewpoint, the Gospel of John treats the question of Jesus’ body in multiple different angles. Deity is so immanent in Jesus, that claiming Jesus to be unambiguously a male, in my opinion, is impossible. Arguments for Jesus’ manliness mostly rely on grammar; Jesus is said to be him, Son of God, or Son of man. Jesus is a human, but he is also a God, who is more or less genderless. So, how can a human/God hybrid be a male per se? In this paper I will demonstrate that Logos and Sophia are one more example of Jesus’ complex hybrid body. Moreover, I argue that Jesus’ relationship with God greatly affects how his body should be seen and understood. In summary, this paper examines Jesus’ body through the examples of Logos and Sophia. I will show how Logos and Sophia are queering Jesus’ character, bringing new material to the conversation about Jesus’ body, and ultimately making Jesus’ bodily representations ambiguous and queer.

The major Syriac lexica were all produced during the late nineteenth century with a number of derivative works from the early twentieth century. While all are 'gloss' based, a few provided citations from the literature that was available at the time. Since then, a large corpus of literature was published, especially in the CSCO and PO series. This talk will present experiments in the digital humanities around lexicography and corpora building. Three projects will be presented: SEDRA (lexicography), the Digital Syriac Corpus (General Editor: James E. Walters), and Gushmo (tagged corpus under development). The presentation will focus on how these corpora tools can be used in future lexicographical projects, especially the Brock-Kiraz dictionary series.

Israelite polytheism is not a popular topic in the study of the Hebrew Bible. In fact, it is so unpopular, that few if any scholars have ever examined it in depth. In order to initiate a discussion on the presence of ’ĕlohîm collectives, i.e. bands of anonymous deities, in the Hebrew Bible, this presentation will focus on but one of the many examples of such divine groupings, the hammašḥît ‘destroyer’ In Ex. 12:23 hammašḥît plays an important role in the execution of the last plague of Egypt as YHWH’s faithful escort when he travels through the land. Other related beings of the type are the šĕnê hamal’ākim ‘the two messengers’ who after entering Sodom and Gomorrah tell Lot that mašḥitîm ’ānaḥnû ’et-hammāqôm ‘we are about to destroy this place (Gen19:1, 13). Although hammašḥit does not appear, this divine duo certainly acquires hammašḥit status. The same may be said of the hammal’āk hammašḥit, ‘the messenger ready to destroy’ in 2 Sam. 24:16 and 2 Chr 21:15. In much the same way YHWH had a śar ‘commander’ over his army (Josh. 5:14) and David had Joab as a śar ‘commander’ of his army (1Kgs. 11:5) so there appears to be the same kind of correspondence between YHWH’s hammašḥît and the Philistine hammašḥît in 1Sam. 13:17. The one difficulty is, of course, the assumption that YHWH only had one hammašḥît while the Philistines had so many they could be split into ‘three companies.’ This perceived lack of correspondence is solved in two ways. First 1Sam. 14:15 clearly indicates that hammašḥît is a collective noun. Here the term is combined with a 3mp verb; hammašḥît ḥārdû, lit. ‘The destroyer they trembled.’ Second, it is likely that YHWH’s hammašḥît Ex. 12:23 is also a collective noun where it refers to a band of divine beings that will assist in the spread of the plague. Subsequently, when YHWH personally dispatches the hammal’āk hammašḥit, he does not send forth just one being, rather he issues a command to the leader of all of hammašḥit who are to split into separate companies in order to swiftly spread the plague throughout Jerusalem. There is no doubt that YHWH’s hammašḥît are divine beings, because only deities have the ability to cause disease. Therefore, in these instances, hammašḥît may be accurately identified as an ’ĕlohîm collective. There are many other such bands of ’ēls imbedded in the text of the Hebrew Bible, and each is a feature of Israel’s original polytheistic roots.

The paper deals with the prophecy about the coming end in Ez 7:1–12a. Starting from the observation that there are major differences between the Masoretic and the Greek text tradition, it will be demonstrated that the Greek version attests to a Hebrew Vorlage that represents an older redactional stage, while the proto-Masoretic version is the result of a final reworking. Reconstructing an original core in Ez 7:6ab.7–9 that draws on the vision about the coming end in Am 8:2, the paper traces the innerbiblical exegesis of this motif in the further literary development of Ez 7:1–12a. Links between the proto-masoretic redaction and motifs that in Dan 8–9 refer to the reign of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes show that the late redactor in the book of Ezekiel condenses Antiochus’ reign of terror in the prophecy of the coming disaster (Ez 7:5) that will descend upon Israel and the world in the final divine judgement. The textual history of Ezek 7:1-12a thus allows a material view into the discourse about the coming end that has become a major topic of prophecy in the Book of Ezekiel.

In a biblical corpus that contains a number of “texts of terror” for Christian queer readers, the promise of YHWH in Isaiah 56:4-5 to the eunuch (sarîs) has been read as a text of great hope, particularly by cisgender gay men and trans women, both of whom identify with Isaiah’s sarîsîm and the liminal gender space they occupy. These identifications compete, with both cis gay men and trans women claiming the genuine connection to the biblical sarîs, with the other only making a connection by analogy. In current debates within Christianity, particularly the Protestant Church, the stakes are high—arguments against full inclusion in life and leadership in the church make recourse to the biblical text, so counterarguments must also in order to be persuasive. If, for example, trans women have the stronger claim to identity with Isaiah’s sarîs, do cis gay men have shakier biblical ground to make their case for equality? This paper reexamines the problem through the lens of intersectionality while drawing on the insights of other scholarly approaches. For instance, recent work by Wright and Chan using archaeological and comparative textual analysis helps us to get a better glimpse of the relationship between a sarîs and his king in other ANE cultures, and why the “monument and a name” (56:5) offered by a king as a reward for faithful service is so important to a sarîs who has no offspring to carry on his legacy. Wright & Chan’s work points to several important differences between the typical sarîs and most contemporary cis gay men and trans women. The sarîs is in a position of proximity to significant political power, of material wealth, and of much of the cultural privilege associated with masculinity. The paper lifts up a critique by Namaste of Butler’s performativity theory of gender, which (Namaste argues) overlooks the violence experienced by trans women particularly over issues of class. Namaste’s example of economically-disadvantaged trans women in Montréal, often those of color, troubles these more classic feminist assumptions by drawing in questions of violence and of intersectionality around race and class. Is there a way in which contemporary cis gay men or trans women can identify with the sarîs of Isaiah 56, given the temporal and cultural distance, as well as the potential differences of gender, power, wealth, race, and class? This paper argues that a way in which both can genuinely make strong identifications with the sarîs is through empathy, and an examination of recent work by Keen on theoretical considerations of narrative empathy is brought to bear on the poem in Isaiah 56. Identification of present-day individuals or groups with figures in the Bible may never be complete, but identification needs not be a zero-sum game. With careful attention to issues of intersectionality and difference, this paper argues, cis gay men and trans women—as well as other historically marginalized peoples who empathize with the sarîs—have a genuine claim to the promises made by YHWH in Isaiah 56.

As we approach the centennial of the publication of Leonhard Rost’s landmark study of an independent Succession Narrative (SN) in 2 Sam 9-20; 1 Kgs 1-2, it is worthwhile to reexamine the hypothesis. It is well known that Rost’s theory was widely accepted for several decades, but that in the latter decades of the twentieth century scholars began to dispute nearly every aspect of the traditional position, so that by the turn of the millennium the consensus had dissolved. Nearly every publication touching on SN recounts this history of scholarship, beginning with Rost and traveling through SN skeptics and proponents such as Whybray, Carlson, Delekat, Würthwein, Langlamet, Veijola, Gunn, and others. While the history of scholarship on the topic as typically presented may lead one to assume that Rost’s SN is nothing more than an interesting but ultimately irrelevant theory that eventually came to be rejected, the last two decades have yielded a number of studies that reconsider aspects of the theory. In this paper I will discuss recent work on the subject, including many studies that have escaped the notice of those surveying the field. I will pay special attention to studies that have explored the boundaries of SN, its Tendenz, genre, date, historicity, and existence as a discrete document. After reviewing the state of the field regarding SN in 2019, I will offer my own suggestions for tackling these issues.

Ann Jeffers classifies biblical dreams into three categories: the "simple" message dreams, symbolic dreams and incubation dreams. In the "simple" message dream, the message is conveyed in ordinary language and does not need to be interpreted. Symbolic dreams consist of unusual scenes that can be deciphered by professional interpreters. This kind of dream implies or alludes to the upcoming event in the future. The symbolic dreams in the Joseph Novella are unique and deliberately arranged. The enigmatic dreams create conflict and tension, and at the same time become the key to averting a crisis. In this paper, I will analyze the three pairs of dreams in Gen 37:5-11; 40:9-19; 41:15-36 with conceptual blending theory presented by Fauconnier and Turner. I will show how Joseph practices the art of dream interpretation, using prior knowledge that he has obtained from his dreams as a stepping stone. Joseph applies his own dream manual to the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream. The dreams in the Joseph Novella function as a vehicle in driving the story, developing the main character, and revealing the theological perspective. Through the conceptual blending theory, I will conclude that Joseph is not a genius dream-interpreter, but a good learner to seek for the divine plan through dreams.

Paul, a Jew, was called to proclaim the gospel of Christ into the pagan world. This life changing event leads him to become “all things to all people” in order that he “might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22). My hypothesis is that, after his call, Paul eventually presented himself as bicultural person, and that he mobilized this self-presentation in service of his goal: to win over “the nations” to “his gospel.” My approach is informed by cultural transfer studies. Such an approach allows us to understand Paul’s identity as a mediator within the dynamics of a cultural transfer process. In order to reach his predominantly pagan audiences, Paul becomes like one of them, not least by borrowing concepts and ideas from their particular cultural backgrounds. This paper will focus on the climactic sentences of Paul as a mediator between cultures (1 Cor 9,19-23) and discuss the following verses (1 Cor 9,24-27) as a concrete manifestation thereof.

The debate about whether Judas is a hero or villain in the Gospel of Judas may not be as contentious as it was a decade ago, thanks especially to transcriptional corrections and robust scholarly debate, but the precise nature of Judas’s characterization and the value of his betrayal remain unsettled. In this paper, I argue that the Gospel of Judas can be read as modeled on the Genesis story of Joseph, especially Gen 37. Judas shares the name of Joseph’s fourth-oldest brother, the one who convinces the other brothers to sell Joseph into slavery; and as Louis Painchaud has observed, Judas’s question in Gos. Jud. 46.16 echoes that of Judah in Gen 37:26. Moreover, in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus interprets the visions/dreams of the Twelve and of Judas, and immediately prior to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, Jesus describes Judas’s star as ruling over the other stars, apparently those of the Twelve, and over the twelve realms. Readers with the appropriate cultural competence can interpret the rhetorical force of these parallels as communicating about the nature of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. Whatever Judas’s intention regarding his betrayal of Jesus, it played an instrumental role in a salvific process. Readers can thus imagine Jesus addressing Judas using Joseph’s words, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, [the one true] God intended it for good.”

The Acts of Thecla 4:9 (ATh) features a peculiar baptism in which Thecla jumps into a pool of water in an arena just as she's about to be martyred and proclaims that she is baptized. Thecla survives the ordeal. I argue that, despite her survival, the nearest ancient precedent for her baptism is baptism of blood - a tradition whereby a person's death for their faith was considered a form of baptism if they did not have a valid water baptism. Several features in ATh situate Thecla's baptism within the context of martyrdom traditions. The narrative arc employs persecution on the grounds of faith, a trial, and a death sentence involving public spectacle. The setting for her baptism is in the arena and in a pool of creatures which are intended to kill her. The occasion of her baptism is referred to as her last day and following the rite resurrection language is employed, suggesting that her baptism is to be read as an analogue for her death. While martyrdom motifs in ATh have not gone unnoticed, commentators tend to reject baptism of blood as a model to explain Thecla's baptism since she does not perish. Jeremy W. Barrier and Peter Wallace Dunn both seize on the lack of a baptizing agent and conclude that Thecla must have baptized herself or that she was miraculously baptized by God. Elisabeth Esch-Wermeling argues that, since terminology for martyrs is derived from vocabulary for witnesses, Thecla already received the equivalent of a martyr's baptism from her witness in her first trial and questions the need for a baptism in ATh 4:9. I account for the type and function of Thelca's baptism by attending to two features of baptism of blood traditions which have not been fully brought to bear upon Thecla's baptism: the baptizing element (water or blood) and agency. First, (contra Esch-Wermeling) by the end of the second century the act of witnessing cannot be equated with the title "martyr" or with baptism. Secondly, (contra Barrier and Dunn) there is no precedent in ancient Christian traditions for self-baptism and the middle voice with the verb "to baptize" is also rare. Yet, lack of an agent is typical of accounts of baptism of blood (historical or fictional). Here, James W. Dale's work highlighting the focus on baptizing elements (water or blood) and their interchangeability in Christian antiquity is instructive for recognizing baptism in Thecla's second trial but not in her first. In a baptism of blood, blood is substituted for water. If blood and water are interchangeable as baptizing elements, Thecla's baptism follows the pattern of a baptism of blood, albeit with water. The author underscores the martyrological nature of the baptism, with references to her "last day," death, and resurrection.

Mesopotamian texts are populated with supernatural figures, which can appear as either specifically identified and named creatures, or as more nebulously described threats. These figures belong in turn to the latter half of a well-established duality between the inhabited world of the city and the dangerous, uninhabited lands of the desert and mountains. Demons may thus intrude upon the civilized world of the city, actions that the ritual exorcist, or ashipu, used magical texts such as incantations to combat. Though the ability of incantations to cast out or dispel these threats was intrinsic to their structure and functionality, it was specifically articulated through particular verbs and actions that follow predictable, if not predetermined, patterns. The formulaic and prescribed nature of the language and rituals used to expel demons suggests a systematic approach to the practice of magic in Mesopotamia, and blur the categorical divisions between magic and science. Particularly as practiced by the ashipu, magic was a fully integrated and established facet of religious practice, with the exorcist deriving both his power and legitimacy from the gods themselves. This paper examines this focusing on one specific text, the bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian Udug Hul, or "Evil Demons," incantation series that was compiled in its standard form in the first millennium BCE. In particular, the study investigates the language and verbs used to express the critical, often final, actions that dispelled the demon or illness afflicting the patient. This was accomplished by various means, from the more active "tearing out" to more passive command that the evil "stand aside." Although the individual incantations aim for a similar result – the casting out of the malignant threat and thus the creation and enforcement of a protected space around the patient – the language utilized in them could differ significantly, even within one group of texts such as the Udug Hul series. Such differences reveal how even related incantations could be individually tailored to fit a particular threat or generalized to combat a host of many evils. In doing so, these texts reinforce the methodical approach to magic that can be observed in the work of the ashipu, and place magic, with the Mesopotamian social sphere, as belonging to the restricted realm of highly trained and trusted specialists. Magic is part of the civilized world, only acquired after long training and associated with great knowledge.

Ezekiel 47:22–23 relates to the future apportionment of the land, after Israel’s return from exile. As part of this apportionment, God orders to assign land shares not only to native Israelites but also to sojourners, gerim. This paper will try to explain the origins of Ezekiel’s unique expectation. Many have claimed that it reflects the influence of the Pentateuchal legal traditions on Ezekiel, especially the Holiness code’s regulations regarding sojourners (Lev 19:33–34). However, the first part of this presentation will claim that Ezekiel’s prediction is unparalleled in the Pentateuch. The Pentateuchal legal traditions acknowledge the existence of non-Israelites in Israel’s territory (and even order Israel to treat sojourners with compassion), but do not desire their presence among Israel from the outset. Moreover, these legal traditions relate to the sojourner’s weakness and dependence which derives from the very fact that he does not own land. However, none of them attempt to solve the problem inherently by allocating sojourners land. Ezekiel’s unique expectation is further intensified in light of his expectation that Israel’s land would become completely desolate. Therefore, Israel would be restored to an empty land which contains neither its former Israeli inhabitants, nor other populations of other origins. Why, then, does Ezekiel announce the restoration of a situation that at first glance seems to be a pre-exilic constraint and not a desirable situation from the outset? This paper will argue that the answer to this question lies in the ‘Land for Service’ arrangement which had an immense impact on the daily lives of the Judean exiles in Babylonia. This arrangement is evident, among others, in the Āl-Yāhūdu tablets and the presentation’s final section will show how these recently published texts may improve our understanding of the socio-economic background from which Ezekiel’s prophecy emerged. According to the Āl-Yāhūdu tablets, the Judean exiles in Babylonia were settled in remote areas of southern Babylonia, out of an imperial need to settle areas that had been desolate or destroyed after decades of war with Assyria. In their new dwelling places, the Judean exiles as well as other exiled minorities from places such as Tyre, Gaza and Ashkelon, were assigned land by the crown, and in return owed services as soldiers or corvée workers as well as taxes from their yield. It seems that this imperial policy in which non-Babylonians minorities were assigned land shares by the Babylonian administration influenced Ezekiel’s unique expectation in this case. Like other prophecies in the book, Ezekiel describes restored Israel as a generous empire which assigns land shares to the minorities under its dominion. But unlike the Babylonians, where imperial generosity derived from utilitarian-Babylonian motives and was not intended to benefit the exiled minorities, Ezekiel’s unique expectation was intended to benefit the minorities living within Israel and to express a recognition of their assimilation into the Israeli society.

Is there an early Hellenistic context for the “little horn” of Daniel 7 that allows for the alignment of this Aramaic chapter with the linguistic (Aramaic), thematic, and literary (concentric symmetry) unity of Dan 2:4b–6:28 (hereafter chs. 2–6)? The opinio communis is that Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) best fits an ex eventu reading of the “little horn” (7:8, 11, 20-21, 24-26; 8:9-12, 23-25). Such an historiographical context places the composition of Aramaic Daniel 7 into the late pre-Maccabean period, just prior to the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem (167 BCE). This date then ties the compositional history of Aramaic Daniel 7 to that of the Hebrew chapters (chaps. 1–2:4a, 8–12; ca. 164 B.C.E.), rather than to that of the rest of the Aramaic corpus (chs. 2–6; ca. 3rd cent. BCE). The purpose of this presentation is to build upon previous work and assess the historiographical implications of identifying the “little horn” in ch. 7 (but not in ch. 8) with Ptolemy I Soter (323–282 BCE). The key question that will be addressed is whether Daniel 7 can function as a symbolic history of Judean events in the early Hellenistic, rather than only in the late pre-Maccabean, period. Ptolemy I Soter can be said to accord with at least three essential historical criteria for the “little horn” of ch. 7: (1) he is of the lineage of the “ten horns” and reigned over Judea, the land of the “holy ones”; (2) he can be associated with a sufficient level of antagonism towards God and his “holy ones” to merit divine judgment; and (3) his rise to power over Judea is in tandem with the “demise” of three other kings (“three horns”) who had influence in the Land. At least two literary implications arise from this historiographical investigation. First, Albertz’s view that the Aramaic corpus (chs. 2–7) formally can be classified as an “apocalypse” gains reinforcement. Second, a simpler theory for the diachronic development of Daniel 1–12 becomes possible. The later Hebrew texts (chs. 8–12) can be said to function as inner biblical exegesis of Daniel 7. In this regard, Dan 8–12 (2nd cent BCE) would then be leveraging the eschatological hopes of Daniel 7 for a later generation facing a new threat to Jewish existence and religious identity (Temple defilement), this time in the form of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

In 2017 SBL adopted ASOR’s policy on stewardship of archaeological material and unprovenanced artefacts, acknowledging the many ethical issues concerning authenticity and provenance of ancient artefacts. Illegal trade, theft and fraud are but some of the concerns that are increasingly being raised in connection with research in our fields. Aramaic incantation bowls have been known to have unknown or problematic provenances, yet the impact of this fact on their study is not always evident. Forgeries are a concern, but the fundamental insecurity, concerning origins and authenticity, of dealing with an unprovenanced artifact is rarely recognized. Also in my own work. In 2016 I presented a paper in this unit on the use of biblical references in Syriac incantation bowls, and I developed this into an article for Biblische Notizen (2018) where I challenge the accepted opinion that biblical material permeate the incantation bowls. All, however, without making provenance a factor in my analysis. Here, I propose to revisit this study and see what I find if I remove all unprovenanced bowls from my investigation. First, as I expect, this significantly reduces my source material. A more unexpected challenge is assessing an item’s provenance, especially in older collections – the distinction between provenanced and unprovenanced is rarely clear-cut. However, the remaining, provenanced incantation bowls largely confirm my observations in the initial analysis, where I point out that there are biblical quotations in every fourth or fifth bowl and that these typically have one or two quotations, while a few cases stand out with several. Also, I do not find a pattern in the quotations used in this revised material, beyond a topical emphasis on protection. What does change, however, are a couple of outliers in the first analysis, which do have a higher frequency of biblical quotations and a larger number of quotations per bowl. Hence, even if the main tendency stands, factoring in provenance adds a notable criterion to the analysis that nuances at least my observations concerning biblical quotations in Aramaic incantation bowls.

The votive statue from Tell Fekheriye with its well-known bilingual Assyrian-Aramaic inscription is a prize example of a material image whose visual features and text complement each other. The statue represents the ruler Haddayis’i in a prayerful pose, while the inscription indicates that he set up the image before the god Hadad to secure prosperity for himself, his dynasty, and his people. The text also pronounces curses on anyone who would rob Haddayis’i of the benefits mediated by the statue. Instead of abundance, the offender and the inhabitants of his land will suffer food shortages. The themes of animals and people who eat without being sated have interesting counterparts in the description of disaster in Lamentations 4:3-10. The references in both artefacts to people who scrounge around for their next meal in garbage heaps are particularly striking. These passages are comparable to a curse in the treaty between the Assyrian king, Aššur-nerari V, and Mati’ilu, the ruler of Arpad. If Mati’ilu violates the stipulations of the treaty, the god Adad will put an end to his people through famine, want, and hunger, and they will eat their deceased children or feed themselves with the fare of the dead. The proposed paper focuses on these passages, especially the images of “junk food” in the Tell Fekheriye inscription and Lamentations 4:5, and argues that an investigation into the similarities and differences between the cultural products can enrich the interpretation of the contrast motif in the biblical text.

In his 2018 presentation to this seminar, “Power Made Perfect in Weakness: Theologia Crucis in 2 Corinthians 13:3-4,” Joshua Heavin argued that the ‘theology of the cross’ is better understood as when considered as “power made perfect in weakness” than “power dissolved into weakness” (p. 3). Our subsequent discussion revealed that which of the two paraphrases best captured Paul’s intentions could not be determined simply by grammatical-lexical arguments but required hermeneutical arguments for what 2 Corinthians 13:3-4 was. That is, should the “meaning” of the sentences found in those verses be determined by the fact that they are in 2 Corinthians or should we ask what the author Paul “had in mind” that he brought to this letter, or should the meaning be considered as something extrapolated beyond either what Paul expressly wrote or had in mind? In other words, the issue before us (ironically whether Heavin intended it to or not) became where does one look to determine the “theology of 2 Corinthians”? In, below, or beyond the letter one is reading? In some sense, Heavin’s paper did not raise this issue so much as underscore what has been at the heart of this seminar since its beginnings. Could we, as we analyzed 2 Corinthians, determine how and what Paul did when he “theologized”? In other words, can we presume that Paul’s letter has a Sache, and how should one determine this—by a strict adherence to the words he used or by interpreting those words in light of the thoughts he wished to convey? One sees here in another form, the debates between Bultmann and Barth, between those who see Paul’s apocalyptic terms referring primarily to summation of temporal existence or an incursion into it, or to put it more locally— between the Paul of Romans 1-4, the Paul of Romans 5-8, and the Paul of Romans 9-11. Or, to use the terms employed by Margaret Mitchell in her helpful distinction how shall we read, interpret, and perhaps, distinguish between the “historical-epistolary Paul” and the “Historical Paul” available primarily from the epistolary evidence itself. What applies to Romans, applies equally to 2 Corinthians, indeed to all of Paul’s extant epistles. Concluding his paper, Heavin referred to a 2015 exchange between John Caputo and John Barclay at concerning “Paul’s” “theology of the cross.” Caputo argued that an “uncompromised theology of the cross” required a radical recasting of “the weakness of God.” One that went “beyond Paul”. Not surprisingly, many demurred, suggesting that such a move takes us farther from rather than closer to what Paul meant by the weakness of the cross. In this paper, I examine Caputo’s arguments and those of his critics, in order to ask in another form, what the Sache (if there be one) of “Paul’s theology in 2 Corinthians” might be. While the answer to this question will surely remain debated, a discussion of this sort can help us sort out why.

“A story is told about Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai that he was walking along the road when Rabbi Joshua ran after him and said to him: Woe to us because the house of our life has been destroyed, the place which used to atone for our sins. He answered: Do not be afraid. We have another atonement instead of it. He asked: What is it? Johanan answered: “For I desire loving kindness and not sacrifice (Hos 6:6).” (A.J.Saldarini, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, Leiden: Brill, 1975, p.75). The question is now: how was this answer possible and on which principles could it be argued? R. Johanan quotes Hos 6:6. This paper will look at alternative biblical evidence for this statement, esp. in Sirach, and will seek to answer the following questions: how does Sirach think about atonement and forgiveness? How could it be possible to attain forgiveness outside of the cultic realm, that is without or beyond Aaron and his cultic team? Using several passages in Sirah, it will be argued that Sirach at least partially is in line with the opinion as offered by the rabbis after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.

There is a growing consensus amongst scholars who study the rule texts from Qumran that the Serekh (S) Tradition evinces a more diffuse movement, which was comprised of various communities throughout Judaea. These conclusions have been reached primarily through more rigorous comparative readings with the Damascus Rule, textual criticism with the various extant copies, and critical spatial theory. However, as we seek to clarify the community formation of the Yaḥad in this tradition, we must move beyond philological, manuscript, and philosophical studies, in order to apply rigorous social scientific theory to this group’s social and institutional matrices. Such theory must both explain the community’s identity as presented in this seminal text group and be defensible as a culturally proximate community formation model. In this paper, I will argue that the social geographic concept of ‘translocality’—a phenomenon that integrates “fluidity and discontinuity associated with mobilities, movements and flows on the one hand with notions of fixity, groundedness and situatedness in particular settings on the other” (Grenier and Sakdapolrak, 2013)—accounts for the evidence of profusion found in the S traditions texts from caves 1 and 4. This model of social diffusion and socio-spatial interconnectedness with no true center is evident in various Graeco-Roman associations (collegia and thiasoi), but more importantly in Second Temple synagogues, which were often understood as associations by Romans and Judaeans alike. Furthermore, several scholars have noted collegia traits in the texts from Qumran and in the various descriptions of the Essenes, who many still believe to be at least related to the Yaḥad. While synagogues in the Land were primarily public institutions in this period, we have proof from various texts, inscriptions, and sites that Jewish associations were somewhat common in Judaea; for example, the Theodotus Inscription (CIJ 2.1404) and the synagogue at Masada both paint a picture of semi-public or private synagogues as a relatively common phenomenon in the Land. The lack of normativity that we find in the assembly traditions of Second Temple Judaea should actually lead us to expect such diffusion in the Yaḥadic communities. Ultimately, I will contend that the diverse terminology for self-representation, divergent practices and proscriptions, and the relative lack of hierarchical leadership all point to translocality amongst the various communities that comprised the Yaḥad movement as it rejected and moved away from the hierarchical Jerusalem Temple cultus as center. This gives way to “a creative tension between place and placelessness” (Schofield 2012), which is consistent with translocal institutional patterns.

Shenoute (c.348-465), leader of the White Monastery in southern Egypt, wrote a series of texts to instruct his monks which he then collected into nine volumes called Canons. These works were read four times per year to the whole monastic community. While many of these monks lived together in a communal setting, the larger White Monastery “federation” contained several such communities as well as affiliated hermits living in the area. Acceptance of the authority of these Canons was the central criterion for membership in this group. The monastery therefore was a textual community where “reading” practices were the basis of identity. Monastic identity resulted from hearing these books read, creating a monastic literacy particular to this setting. Shenoute’s presence within the Canons—his self-presentation as a monastic leader, as a biblical interpreter, as a prophet, as a writer of words which sanctified the monastery—authorizes the monastic formation these texts performed. Even after his death the Canons remained central to this process of making monks and so his textual self remained. This paper argues that we must understand the role of Shenoute’s body to make sense of his version of monastic literacy. Canon 8 contains letters Shenoute wrote as explicit stand-ins for his bodily presence during a period he had become alienated from the community. In one letter Shenoute suggests that it is up to the monks whether they “will receive my words” and so accept his instruction which will correct their wrong doing that is polluting the monastic space. This pollution is evident in both Shenoute’s illness and his clothing, both of which are recurring themes in the Canon as a whole. These themes make this Canon particularly valuable for examining the connection between text and body. Shenoute begins the Canon with a description of the effect of his clothing on his ill body. He then uses references to the deterioration of monastic clothing as a metaphor for the illiteracy of the monks. It is the specific reading practices taught in these texts that would keep the monastery itself pure. Further Shenoute explicitly links his body, in its illness and its clothing, as the equivalent to teaching texts, such as Scripture and his own letters. Shenoute’s ill body, embedded in Canon 8, is the means through which monks learned how to live according to God’s commandments. By “reading” his body the monks learn how to achieve monastic purity, and the results of failure to do so. In terms of monastic literacy, monks listening to these texts would not just hear Shenoute’s voice but also visualize his actual body. This makes Shenoute’s body, like the biblical prophets, spiritually present in the community. In the regular communal readings of the Canons monks encountered Shenoute’s body as much as they interacted with books themselves.

The biblical tradition relates the text of Hosea to the end of the Northern Kingdom and the Assyrian conquest of wide parts of Palestine. Exegetical tradition just accepted this as the correct date for a long time, but has also found some arguments in favor of dating the first stage of Hosea at least to preexilic time, if not earlier. In the past few years this has been challenged by scholars like James Bos, who tried to argue for a much later date for the text of Hosea. This paper will argue in favor of an early date of the beginnings of the text of Hosea by referring to the history of the Hebrew language as well as to the development of a number of concepts in Hosea, which in some cases can be related to the Book of the Twelve as a developing corpus and ideological concepts in the Hebrew Bible. Since the text of Hosea shows signs of literary development and was obviously integrated in the Book of the Twelve in its various stages, the question needs to be asked, whether this literary history of both the Book of the Twelve and Hosea could fit in between the late Persian / early Hellenistic period and the time of the Septuagint and of the Qumran texts.

The founding fathers of Minjung Theology, the Korean brand of liberation theology, Systematic Theologian Suh Nam-Dong (1918-1984) who’s centennial we celebrated last year, and his alter ego, the New Testament scholar Ahn Byung-Mu (1922-1996), had an ongoing discussion about what comes first: Text or Context. “Theology as story telling” may well be the common denominator between the two. Since narrativity is en vogue again in critical Biblical scholarship, it may be time to revisit what probably is one of the most significant features of contextual theologies in Asia, namely “story telling”. The paper explores different ways of relating text and context, the stories of the people and the biblical stories. How do issues of class, race, gender, cultural and religious belonging etc. intersect in reading the Bible in Asian contexts?

Writing around the turn from the second to the third century, Clement of Alexandria is the first Christian writer to craft a fully fledged ethical concept of a Christian paideia that spans over nearly all aspects of daily life. Considering the importance of commensality in the ancient world, it is not surprising that the proper behavior at meals and banquets—particularly the appropriate handling of alcohol, i.e. wine—also plays a major role for him. The proposed paper outlines the “drinking ethics” that Clement encourages in his writings. This includes aspects like Clement’s attitudes to different ways of handling alcohol, the effects that he links to its consumption, his own “recom-mendations,” as well as the relation of alcohol and religious experience. The surveyed material will be set in relation to two interrelated questions that concern the development of the Christian meal: (1) What can Clement’s attitude to drinking alcohol tell us about the “Eucharist” of his community? (2) How does he relate to the New Testament Last Supper Narratives (Mt 26:17–30 par) and the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:22–59) in his ethics?

In my paper, I would like to offer a re-interpretation of the racially charged discourse surrounding the ethnic origin of the Antichrist as seen through the lens of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Gen 49:16-18. My approach will argue that diversity of ways, in which early Christians interpreted Jacob’s blessing of Dan, at some point collapsed into identifying Dan as the tribe from which the Antichrist was supposed to originate. As a response to this, Jewish interpreters, previously equally diverse in their readings of the passage, moved towards interpreting it with reference to Samson. My contribution comes 25 years after the very learned and important article by C.E. Hill, “Antichrist from the Tribe of Dan”. He concluded that the motif of the Danite, i.e. Jewish, origin of the Antichrist represented a Christian response to the continued Jewish messianic hope, displayed most fervently and violently during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135 CE). While agreeing that the Danite anti-Messiah was an element of the much larger landscape of the Jewish-Christian relations in the early centuries of the common era, I would like to adduce new evidence and problematise that brought up by Hill. Most importantly, I would like to argue that this issue cannot be simply understood as a function of historical events, but is a product of exegetical debates and innovations. The depiction of Dan fluctuates quite significantly across ancient Jewish and Christian literature. While blessed as courageous in Gen 49:16-17, Dan in Moses’ blessing in Deut 33:22 appears to be cast as frightful, whereas Judges 17 strongly insinuates his idolatrous tendencies. Philo reads Jacob’s blessing as an exhortation to self-control, whereas the Targumim and the early Midrashim link Dan to failed messianic hopes. On the other hand, while there is no single ‘Christian’ why of exegeting the Biblical passages relevant to Dan, the absence from this tribe from the list in Revelation 7 is taken up by a number of interpreters (who become more numerous over time) as the hint at the Antichrist’s ethnic origin. While this reading becomes popular or even dominant in Christianity, Jewish readers, especially the later Midrashic exegetes, seem to sense the dangerous potential of these texts and read them as referring to Samson who was also from Dan (Judg 13:2). My paper will show how Biblical exegesis feeds into and even drives the racialisation of the Jewish-Christian differences by casting the eschatological opponent as of specific ethnic origin. The idea of the Jewishness of the Antichrist, the history of which I would like to trace and clarify, shows that reading the Biblical texts in certain ways can generate prejudices with paramount social consequences.

A tension between pious submission and defiant protest pervades responses to suffering and oppression in the Hebrew Bible. Though both positions are frequently encountered in the same books, even embodied in the same character, interpreters tend to disassociate them from one another. They then ignore or marginalize one at the expense of the other, or—a more sophisticated approach with the same result—attribute each sentiment to a different author, tradition, time, or textual layer, and then privilege one over the other as a more authentic expression of the biblical tradition. The genius of the Israelites’ faith, however, is that they merged both these responses to suffering—faith and defiance—into one profound paradox, understanding themselves as those who “wrestle with God” (Gen 32:28). Similarly, according to James Cone (2011), “Black faith emerged out of black people’s wrestling with suffering” and demonstrates a related “dialectic of doubt and trust in the search for meaning.” The spirituals sung by enslaved African Americas are a powerful demonstration of this dialectic. Following the work of Powery and Sadler (2016) on narratives of the enslaved, and heeding Wimbush’s (1991) call for more “detailed exegetical treatments of the raw materials of the African experience of this period,” I will consider how these songs interpret the Hebrew Bible and then, in turn, how this intertextual relationship illuminates the interpretation of the biblical text. In contrast to their enslavers, who attempted to use the Bible to enforce submission, enslaved African Americans connected with the Israelites in their “common experience” as “an enslaved people pleading with God to provide a way out” (Callahan 2008). And these pleas express similar dynamics, as the enslaved “identified with the way biblical characters wrestled with faith’s contradictions and incongruities” (Cone 2011). The spirituals are “shot through with biblical allusions” (Callahan 2008). They wrestle with God like Jacob. Like the psalmists, they cry “How long?” and “Remember me” as they mournfully describe the sorrow they’ve seen: physical and psychological trauma, isolation, and impending death. Like Job, Jeremiah, and Jonah, they long for death and wish they had never been born. With Abraham, Moses, and Habakkuk, they question God’s justice. And yet, “through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things” (Du Bois 1903). The intertextual dialogue between wrestling with God in the Hebrew Bible and in the spirituals, which display, draw on, and even directly engage with that biblical tradition, therefore, challenges readers who have misunderstood the dynamics of defiant faith and divorced piety from protest because they have not faced the oppression that forges faith and defiance together.

This paper will track how the Samson stories were composed, edited, and expanded gradually by scribes in concert with the broader textual developments of the book of Judges and the so-called Deuteronomistic History. In so doing, it will be shown how the figure of Samson evolved from a border-crossing wild man in conflict with Israel’s enemies (Judg 14–15) to a tragic figure foreshadowing the downfall of Judah (Judg 16) to a demythologized Nazirite under the care and control of Yhwh (Judg 13). It will be argued that these supplemental developments in the Samson stories were a response, in part, to the shifting geopolitical and socioreligious landscapes affecting Judah during the 7th (Neo-Assyrian), 6th (Neo-Babylonian), and 5th (Persian) centuries BCE. However, rather than simply separate and read these (hypothetical) layers in isolation from one another, this study will demonstrate how each major supplement—principally the addition of an ending (Judg 16) and then a beginning (Judg 13) to the literary core of the stories (Judg 14–15)—reshapes the whole. The diachronic investigation will therefore be in service to a synchronic reading of the text in its canonical forms and draw upon early Jewish interpretations of Samson (e.g., Josephus, Pseudo-Philo) to bolster its claims. In other words, this paper will attempt to overcome some of the diachronic and synchronic issues that often divide biblical scholars working on the book of Judges by dialogically reading the different textual layers together, recognizing that it is a complex, multi-layered, polyphonic work of literature.

My paper aims to challenge the identities of the structure depicted in the procession of seven virgins fresco, located in the Exodus Chapel at El-Bagawat, Egypt (Kharga Oasis), by identifying the structure as both a temple and a tomb. The image of Thecla in proximity to the procession has divided scholars by questioning whether Thecla is connected to the procession of the seven virgins. My paper will address the following questions: In identifying the structure as both a Temple and a tomb, how does this impact the identity of the seven virgins? What purpose does Thecla serve for the group of Christians who created this fresco? What connection does Thecla have with heavenly ascent? Previous scholarship has aimed to locate this fresco within a single literary context; consequentially this fresco has been argued to depict a number of different events. Scholars have proposed that the fresco represents the procession of the Virgin Mary to the temple described in the Protoevangelium of James 7:2; Pseudo-Matthew 4; Nativity of Mary 6 (Cartlidge & Elliott 2001; Martin 2017) or the procession of the wise and foolish virgins in the Gospel of Matthew 25: 1-13 (de Bock 1901; Stern 1960; Thérel 1969). Other scholars have proposed the fresco represents a procession of virgins guiding a soul to the heavenly Jerusalem Temple and that this procession is connected to the cult of St. Thecla (Stern 1960; Thérel 1969; Davis 2001, 1999). Building on the work of Stern, Thérel, and Davis, I will investigate the connection between virginal processions and the ascent of the soul, as well as the prominence of the cult of saint Thecla in Late Antique Egypt, in order to identify Thecla’s connection to this particular ascent at El-Bagawat. My research will explore the use of funerary imagery in early Christian literature, focussing on heavenly ascent and the imagery of the structures representing the afterlife, specifically in: Pistis Sophia, Exegesis on the Soul, the Gospel of Philip, NCE 156, and Flavia Sophe. By situating the heavenly ascent of the soul within the context of early Christian discourse and practice, I aim to uncover why Thecla is depicted alongside this ascent. Works Cited Cartlidge, David R., and J. K. Elliott. Art and the Christian Apocrypha. Routledge, 2001. Davis, Stephen J. The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. “Namesakes of Saint Thecla in Late Antique Egypt.” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, Vol. 36, No. 1/4, 1999, pp.71-81 de Bock, W. Matériaux Pour Servir À L’archéologie de l’Égypte Chrétienne. Eugene Thiele, 1901. Martin, Michael. “Observations on the Paintings of the Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis, Kharga Oasis, Egypt.” Byzantine Narrative Papers in Honour of Roger Scott, edited by John Burke et al., vol. 16, Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2017. Stern, Henri. “Les Peintures Du Mausolée de L’exode À El-Bagawat.” Cahiers Archéologiques, vol. 11, 1960, pp. 93–119. Thérel, Marie-Louise. La Composition et Symbolisme de L’iconographie Du Mausolée de L’exode À El-Bagawat. Pontificio istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1969.

In the field of New Testament studies, the term “autograph” is frequently used in reference to the non-extant original manuscripts of the New Testament writings. It is commonly understood that the composition of each biblical text resulted in the production of a single autograph that at a subsequent period of time began to be copied in Christian communities throughout the Greco-Roman world. As this paper will conclude, however, recent advancements in our knowledge of literary conventions from the period of classical antiquity allow for a more nuanced and historically informed understanding of the nature of the New Testament autographs. It will be demonstrated that writers in classical and late antiquity commonly produced duplicate copies of their works, a practice that seems inconsistent with the perception that a single original autograph of each New Testament writing was produced. In addition to this practice, it will be seen that on some occasions the Apostle Paul subtlety or indirectly addressed matters of particular relevance to those in his vicinity at the time of composition. This observation suggests that Paul often wrote with multiple audiences in view and that several copies of his writings were therefore likely produced at the time of composition. Using Paul’s Epistle to the Romans as a test case, this paper will conclude that multiple copies of at least some of the New Testament writings were likely produced at the time of composition. Consequently, it will be suggested that with respect to some writings, it is appropriate to refer either to the original autographs (plural) of a single work or perhaps to an earliest edition of a given writing. Rather than a single manuscript which served as the archetype of all later copies of a given writing, this paper will consider the possibility that on some occasions, the composition of the New Testament writings culminated in the production of multiple copies of a single work, each of which were either disseminated among various Christian communities or retained by the author.

The turn of the millennium saw the publication of two works that offered each, in its own way, a summation of Ugaritic studies to that point: the Handbook of Ugaritic Studies (Brill 1999) edited by Wilfred G. E. Watson and Nicolas Wyatt, providing comprehensive overviews of different aspects of the texts and culture of Ugarit; and Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century (Hendrickson 2001) by Mark S. Smith, which traced the history of the field through its major phases from 1928 to 1999 along with descriptions of the prominent figures working in each phase. The last two decades, however, have witnessed significant changes to the landscape of Ugaritic studies, owing to the publication of new texts (particularly those of the “House of Urtenu” excavated from the mid-1980s onward), the appearance of a significant number of new grammars, as well as new efforts at synthesis and re-evaluation of earlier evidence. This paper will offer an assessment of the field of Ugaritic studies from 2000 to the present, with attention to these new developments as well as to the broader structural and institutional factors that will potentially shape the field in the coming decades.

There has been a universal desire throughout human history to describe what it means to live and die well—that is, to flourish. Such is the tertium comparationis (i.e., the third category of comparison) of this article, which compares/contrasts the conceptions of human flourishing found within the narratives of the New Testament (NT), the writings of J. H. Cone, and Marvel’s Black Panther. The comparative methodology in this study is a hybrid combination of J. Z. Smith’s (1990) and D. M. Freidenreich’s (2004) work. This hybrid, “thick,” multi-dimensional approach evaluates similarities and differences (synchronically and diachronically), attempts to understand why an author shaped his/her conception of human flourishing in the way s/he did, generates hypotheses, and recontextualizes/illuminates the objects of study considering new relational information gleaned from the comparative data. I contend that the narrative of Black Panther transcends the stereotypical portrait of the “black experience” in the West. This is true especially in consideration of contemporary liberation theologies, and portrayals of black heroes/heroines and “salvation figures.” The writers/artists of Black Panther accomplish this by not telling their story through the historical lenses of slavery, black oppression, or victimization of criminal social injustices—as important and necessary as these experiential lenses are—but (contra Cone) from the transcendental, reimagined perspective of African royalty, wealth, innovation, and overwhelming prosperity. Such a positive view of flourishing comports well with the Phoenix-like portrait of flourishing—temporarily (physically) and eternally (spiritually)—within the NT. Such an exploration fills at least three lacunae in theological/biblical studies. First, this author knows of no existing comparative analyses exploring contemporary views of flourishing between a Conian or African experience in relation to conceptions of flourishing within the NT. Second, in the eulogy for Cone delivered by Cornel West (07 May 2018), West claims that Cone has been “misunderstood and misconstrued,” by his “vanilla” brothers and sisters in academia due to Cone’s “charitable Christian hatred” toward social injustice. It is this author’s hope to represent Cone well from his primary sources—thus, revealing the helpful correctives Cone proffers to evangelical Christianity. Third, no studies known to this author explore (using a scholarly method) the power of media and pop culture to reshape/reimagine existing narratives of what flourishing could (and, perhaps, should) look like from a given cultural perspective. Despite the current division and political unrest in America, Black Panther serves as a helpful corrective in portraying Africans not as victims or criminals, but as innovators and leaders working together in shaping and helping the world around them. In the opinion of this author, this is one of the major reasons for the film’s widespread success. This essay consists of two main sections: (1) Section One will introduce the topic, briefly describe the comparative methodology employed, and outline the problem questions, scope, purpose, and thesis; and (2) the comparative methodology set forth in Section One will be worked out on the aforementioned narratives with a summary of the findings and areas for further research concluding Section Two.

Charles Taylor and others have helped map out how changing conceptions of the self have led to an increased focus on “inwardness” in the West. The conception of the human being as a creature with inner feelings and thoughts, on one hand, and outward behaviors, on the other, has taken hold and become a naturalized, inevitable, and near universal component of both religious and secular culture. Recent inquiry in the humanities and social sciences focusing on the importance of embodiment and performance have criticized this dualistic model, often associated with Descartes, but have hardly uprooted its discursive hold over the popular imagination. How does this model of human nature affect biblical interpretation? In this paper, I will explore its "hidden" effects within the context of our translation traditions, focusing on a range of Biblical Hebrew terms associated with the self, thought, and emotions. I will show how our assumptions, our presuppositions, about “inwardness” and its primacy in defining human experience inform our interpretations of these terms and the passages in which they appear. Not incidentally, they also feed into a long history of anti-Judaism, namely the image of Judaism as a religion of the flesh rather than the spirit.

The upcoming OpenText 2.0 analysis of the GNT is an open annotation derived from data released by the Global Bible Initiative 2016. In addition to various minor modifications to the GBI syntax model, OpenText 2.0 introduces a stratified model that includes explicit distinctions between graphological, morphological, lexico-grammatical, semantic, and discourse-level markup. It also introduces feature annotations beyond just morphological parsing, allowing other units to be queried for meaningful features that have been identified in advance (to give a simple example, the clausal analysis explicitly identifies intransitive and transitive clauses). All of this data, however, is encoded in a single XML document using in-line markup, so that it is intuitive to query using standard XQuery—and even easier with the custom query resources that we are developing. In this presentation, we will present a series of queries that demonstrate the richness of the stratified data, focusing specifically on investigating phenomena that cut across the different annotation layers. We will also show how this markup is useful for teaching Greek by demonstrating a simple web page that allows students to investigate the syntax and semantics of a specific Greek lexeme. For both examples, we will show how the feature annotations facilitate the display of meaningful quantitative information about the relevant search results.

Like all other works of classical rabbinic literature, the Mishnah at no point includes any discussion of its origins or authorship. However, the rabbis of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds all take for granted that the late 2nd and early 3rd century Galilean Rabbi Judah the Patriarch is responsible for creating the Mishnah. These rabbis never explicitly discuss the process through which Judah went about creating the Mishnah, but they frame many of the questions that they pose of the Mishnah’s character and formulation as questions of Judah’s editorial choices, thus betraying an assumption that he is the one who edited the Mishnah. The Mishnah also seems to be a product of Judah’s time, as it is comprised largely of the opinions of Palestinian rabbis who flourished during and in the decades prior to his floruit. Modern scholars, while for the most convinced that Judah re-worked significant amounts of earlier material that may already have gone through literary formulations, largely accept the claim that Judah is the one who edited and promulgated the Mishnah. And yet, as I will show in this paper, Palestinian Jewish texts from the 6th and 7th centuries paint a rather different biography of the Mishnah. A number of piyyutim—Jewish liturgical poems—authored by the 7th century Rabbi Elazar beRabbi Qalir express the belief that the Mishnah, seemingly as we have it now, was actually given to Moses at Mt. Sinai. I will argue that this understanding of the Mishnah’s origins stems from two interrelated factors: the use of the Mishnah in ritual during the Byzantine period in Palestine, and the place of the Mishnah in the Christian-Jewish polemic at the time. I garner evidence for these two factors by analyzing additional piyyutim by Elazar and other Jewish liturgical poets from Byzantine Palestine, as well as by looking closely at a midrashic text from a similar period and region. While the recitation of sections of the Mishnah in ritualized liturgical settings may not have originated from a belief that the Mishnah itself had Sinaitic or even divine origins, its use in these spaces, over time, acted to imbue the Mishnah with ritual potency and thus impacted the way in which the work’s origins may have been understood. This process, I argue, is related also to a Christian-Jewish polemic over the ownership of scripture that may have led some Jews in Byzantine Palestine to perceive the Mishnah as a “text of texts” (Bell 2008) that signifies the unique relationship that Jews had with God. Lastly, I will argue that a better understanding of these Byzantine-era shifts in approach to the Mishnah’s origins and an appreciation of the Mishnah’s use in ritualized liturgical settings shed further light on the post-Talmudic phenomenon of “rabbinization” (Lapin 2012) and the “late antique revival of Judaism” (Schwartz 2001), as they help us understand the ways in which Palestinian Jews approached rabbinic teaching.

Job is a gever, an adult patriarchal male, and thus uniquely invested in personhood in the ancient world. He is addressed by God as a gever, as a phallic rival, one however who has been stripped of all phallic symbols except the power of language, and who is apparently deprived even of that. I will approach the figure of Job using Lacan's theory of desire, together with Bion's insistence on knowledge as primary drive. What does Job want? Clearly, it is death. Gever rhymes with qever in proximate words (3.22-23). Death is the Real, the ultimate horizon, the ultimate revenge, too, on the pseudo-divine parent. But death cannot be inducted into language without becoming an object for the imagination, in other words a premonitory death which always precedes itself. The object of desire then shifts onto various fantasy objects, which become vehicles for poetic elaboration and the quest for knowledge. Job is invested too in part objects, notably the three friends, who agonizingly represent past selves, past clichés, and the Satan, the arch-questioner. But he is also the projection of the poet, as the inventor of all characters and figures. In that case the petit objet a is the poem. One thinks of the poet's desire for the poem, pleasure in its beauty, as preliminary to, a foreshadowing of, the maternal body. Everything is created in order to be destroyed, even Leviathan, who is both Job and not-Job, both immensely grand, like the ocean it swims, and a plaything, a transitional object. Did he smile his work to see? What laughter inhabits the text? To turn back to Bion for a moment, via Ogden, what transformations are worked by the text? How is Job at the end different from Job at the beginning, and the reader, perhaps YHWH as reader?

This paper will ask which textual version of the book of Jeremiah was employed in the quotations of and allusions to Jeremiah in biblical books from the Second Temple period. As these late biblical books often preserve the earliest uses of the book of Jeremiah, this study will have important implications for the dating of the proto-Masoretic Jeremiah-redaction and the dating of the textual version underlying the Septuagint translation of Jeremiah.

This paper presents the role of the different types of archaeobotanical remains in order to distinguish between wild vegetation cover and the vegetation shaped by humans. Fossil pollen grains are a good example. The grains are usually extracted from sediment cores from anaerobic environments such as lakes and ponds. From each sediment layer hundreds of grains are identified under the microscope in order to reveal the ancient vegetation and changes through time. By using this proxy it was possible to identify the wild flora of the southern Levant – before domestication, the beginning of fruit-tree cultivation and human influence such as tree clearing and over-grazing. Another way to address the question of wild vs. shaped vegetation and landscape is by collecting botanical remains from archaeological contexts. The remains include seeds, pollen and wood-charcoal remains. The different assemblages are used to shed light on past vegetation within the site's environ. The botanical remains are evaluated in relation to relevant archaeological structure, mainly those which are linked to agricultural activities such as olive and wine presses, ancient terraces etc.

In many ways, the study of iconography creates the illusion of certainty. Human figures are given names, labels, secure identities. “Symbols” can be interpreted clearly, the function of objects (even non-utilitarian, “ritual” functions) plainly elucidated. Such interpretive schema assume a one-to-one correspondence between art and word, as if the visual could be directly and securely translated into the textual. But art is not text. Attempting to “read” an object or image not only overlooks much of the information the artwork contains, it also fails to consider how things that seem like frustrating ambiguities in an artwork – information that is hard to categorize, label, or “translate” – might actually have been intentional and advantageous. In this paper, I will explore these ideas through the female figurines of Hellenistic Babylonia, particularly figurines depicting women holding or nursing infants. Rather than attempt to identify these figures by name or deduce a singular purpose for their imagery – questions that privilege text and a text-based understanding of history – I propose a more object-centered methodology. Starting from the figurines themselves, we can see how these images of women with children permeated Hellenistic Babylonian society with specific ideas about childhood, parenthood, nursing, public versus private life, acceptable clothing, and acceptable body types. I argue that the embodiment and transmission of this sort of social information was, in fact, a primary purpose of figurines. The ambiguity of these objects, which resist clear labeling and have nebulous practicality, was advantageous, as it allowed figurines to adapt to the needs of their users and be broadly appealing.

The apostle Paul alludes to drunkenness several times in his letters to the ekklēsiai, often in reproachful ways that seem arbitrary, such as the instances found in the vice lists (1 Cor 6:10, Gal 5:21). Although some scholars believe that Paul appears to tailor the list of vices according to each issue he addresses, little attention is given to show how or why the subject is significant in his writings. This paper provides a social-historical context that informs Paul’s writing and understanding of μέθυσος and drunkenness by focusing on Roman attitudes toward excessive drinking/intoxication through the analysis of material culture and literature of the early imperial period. I argue that early imperial Roman society viewed drunkenness, or the drunkard, as a danger to violating valued sociocultural boundaries and norms, and in turn, carried stigma in rhetorical attacks. Where the House of Dionysos in Sepphoris provides a mosaic that shows how iconography could have been used to reinforce proper drinking behavior when banqueters gathered together, the Roman literature reveals more clearly the deep social concerns surrounding drunkenness as a danger that threatens the blurring of sexual and social boundaries. The attitudes of shame and stigma attributed to μέθυσος then become a rhetorical tool for authors who sought to slander their opponents. An understanding of these Roman cultural aspects provides a historical context for the socio-cultural attitudes toward excessive alcohol consumption which specifically informed Paul’s discussion of drunkenness, as well as early “Christian” perceptions of alcohol consumption more broadly. Ultimately, I aim to contribute to New Testament studies by providing a background that can help us elaborate on understanding both Paul and the development of later Christian theology regarding drunkenness. [Note: Full paper sent to chairs of this SBL Unit]

One of the most remarkable indications that John knew the Gospel of Mark is the fact that John alludes to, quotes and rejects the Markan version of the temptation scene in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42; John 12:23, 27–28; 13:1; 14:31; 17:1; 18:11). Yet, also other temptation stories from the synoptic tradition are missing in John (the temptation in the desert, in Caesarea Philippi, and on the cross). Rather than understanding the apparent absence of temptation stories in John as an expression of high Christology, nascent Docetism, or a hypermasculine Jesus, this paper interprets John’s recasting of the Markan Jesus as influenced by ancient Greco-Roman ideals of the philosophical sage, who masters pathos by means of logos. As such, John stands in the same tradition as Luke, Philo, Josephus, and 4 Maccabees, who also rewrote characters from Jewish tradition in a philosophical key.

Traditional scholarly renderings have long grounded the history of early monastic dining norms in narrative sources characterized by hagiographical hyperbole. The most familiar depictions take signature abstinence, rather than indulgence, as a starting point. Frequently cited accounts feature radical ascetics who eat, at most, every other day, and drink water as occasionally. For example, Abba Arsenius is delivered “one basket of bread” each year by a group of brothers. The latter eat “some of [this same] bread” when they bring the subsequent year’s basket (AP/Alph Arsenius 17). A second Abba “sometimes longed to eat a cucumber” but instead “took one and hung it before him where he could see it,” taming himself, and so “repent[ing] that he had wanted it at all” (AP/Syst 4.60). Another hermit is reported to have “made a resolution not to drink anything.” Instead, when thirsty, he washed a vessel, filled it with water, and hung it before his eyes (AP/Syst 4.67). Within such a frame, the question of alcoholic consumption rarely surfaces. Instead, larger than life avowals that “wine is not for monks” (AP/Alph Poemen), vie with gustatory counterparts, for interpretive pride of place. Having sparked the imagination for well over a millennium, it is not surprising that such stories catch the reader’s eye. Rhetorically, this is the point. Close reading of both literary and material evidence, however, suggests that there is much to be gained from resisting their persuasive appeal. Reversing traditional emphases, this invites engaging a more complex continuum of practice, and breathing life into the larger than life.

This paper discusses 5th/6th century graffiti from prisoners held in a site of incarceration in late antique Corinth. The graffiti may be broadly categorized as “Christian” but also show a hybridity of Christian and more classical Greek religious practice and culture. The paper first discusses the history of the discovery and publication of the graffiti. It locates the type of inscriptions, especially vis-à-vis curse tablets, circus inscriptions, and magical papyri. It then considers their content and what they can tell us about the social and cultural history of Christians in late antique Corinth. Key issues are: What kind of a site of a carceral geography existed in late antique Corinth? Who were the people incarcerated there and what can be discovered about them? What was daily life like in such a carceral geography? How did they spend their time? And how did they find the technology and equipment to produce such graffiti? What can be said about issues of gender, ethnicity, and class of the incarcerated? It then discusses the carceral geography in which they were found. It explores the possibility and potential productivity of telling micro-histories of the incarcerated person who wrote the graffiti. It develops the ideas of incarceration as a form of intimate invisibility, in which the sense of sound (not sight, pace Foucault) is the primary carceral issue antiquity, as well of the carceral geography as a form of micro-public, as the graffiti create a monumentality only for (or at least primarily for) other persons incarcerated in the same place. Finally, it considers the issues of presence and absence, looking both at the presence of the carceral geography in a visible public place as well as the invisibility of the incarcerated persons and the sense of those within that it is a place imagined as particularly absent of god.

Many biblical texts present Yahweh as a deity who has a coherent, albeit complex, personality. He possesses a number of robust traits and experiences a variety of feelings. Can insights from psychology help to explain why Yahweh displays problematic emotions such as rage, vindictiveness, and envy? Can psychological approaches account for Yahweh’s perception that others hate, revile, spurn, and denigrate him? Elsewhere I have argued at length that Yahweh is depicted as narcissistic and that his manner of parenting his Israelite “children” is designed to prevent them from becoming mature, autonomous adults. In this essay I focus on the relationship between Yahweh’s self-proclaimed attribute of jealousy and his narcissism. When all Yahweh’s characteristics are taken into account, does this divine father, spouse and king qualify as a mature adult, as maturity is defined by Allport and more recent specialists on personality theory? Does the biblical God “evolve” from an initial “wild” stage to become a compassionate and dependable deity, as some theologians assert? Or is the untamed and unreliable element in Yahweh’s behavior a fundamental aspect of his character? The essay will address these questions by applying insights from the psychology of envy and related research on narcissism. In addition, the work of Freud and later thinkers will help to explain why a religious community would envision their divine father as a being who possesses such a difficult and dangerous personality.

Late antique Christian polemic against Roman traditional religions has been construed as shadow-boxing. Not so. Rather, late antique Christian authors repeated classical criticisms of the still vibrant cult of Magna Mater, for example, both to question the romanitas (“Roman-ness,” a term coined by Tertullian) of its aristocratic adherents and to claim that Roman-ness for themselves. From its arrival at Rome in the late third century BCE until the high empire, the Metroac cult was viewed with anxiety, if not always hostility, by Roman elite. In Late Antiquity, by contrast, aristocrats increasingly participated in and advertised their affiliations with the cult. Such participation was unsurprising—over the centuries the cult had achieved a prominent public position among the religions of Rome—but it did stand in tension with earlier classical literature, especially Martial, whose invective against the cult bordered on camp and the Poet, Vergil—a literary tradition which conferred elite cultural distinction. And so, Christian authors could pose as defenders of Roman-ness against “oriental” alterity by repeating the polemic of classical literature, a central pillar of elite Roman identity. That is, Christian invective exploited a gap between late antique religious practice and Roman tradition. “Parroting” classical literature was not antiquarian, but effective strategy. The aristocrats who participated in the rites of Magna Mater as a means to establish a traditional Roman identity were now, according to classicizing Christian rhetoric, no longer Roman. Participation had become an accusation. In short, Christian authors deployed classically defined romanitas in an effort to claim Roman-ness from the aristocracy of Rome, its ostensible standard bearers, and to stake their claim on the city itself.

In many Churches, the presence of biblical texts expressing social message and protest, prophetic and otherwise, is often limited to the Christological liturgical context, which eclipses their character. However, a number of contemporary visual artists offer fresh perspectives on relevant biblical texts. Their works are neither secular art, nor ‘sacred art’ suitable for worship, but they call for urgent attention in the context of the biblical prophetic tradition. In this paper, I offer two case studies of contemporary artworks referring to biblical texts in the context of environmental protection and argue that such art can in itself be described as prophetic. My argument is framed by the conversation about the nature of prophetic creativity between Mikhail Bakhtin’s phenomenology of artistic creativity, Michael Walzer’s theory of biblical prophecy as social criticism, and the Catholic understanding of prophecy and revelation. Bakhtin’s theory is focused on the conceptual phase of artistic work rather than on its material execution, and thus applicable to various creative processes. Following Walzer, I analyze similarities between the conditions and circumstances in which the prophetic social message and that of the discussed artworks can be perceived as intelligible, persuasive and authoritative, and compare the exegesis represented in the discussed images with the prophets’ engagement with older traditions. Finally, moving to the theological dimension of the analysis, I draw on the concept of the prophetic role of all the baptized, and the Catholic understanding of revelation, to argue that the discussed artworks participate in the process of interpretation of Scripture in the Church and in the task of proclaiming the transformative Word of God.

Within the broad landscape of ancient divinatory performances in the eastern Mediterranean Roman provinces (within which I include oracular consultation, mystery initiation, and the Revelation of John), texts function in a variety of ways. Texts sometimes serve as a written record of divinatory results (e.g., delivered oracles, oracle collections), sometimes as an object to be divined (e.g., sortes or the Roman Sibylline collection), sometimes as the narrative script for a divinatory performance (e.g., the hieroi logoi of a mystery initiation), and sometimes as a real or imagined literary depiction of a divinatory performance (e.g., Plutarch’s account of the descent of Timarchus at the Trophonion). This paper examines the Revelation of John within this broader spectrum, using the text’s own sparse indications of its social setting and method of performance to determine how ancient audiences might have identified what the text was doing. This paper argues that the Revelation of John was the orally performed textual center of a divinatory performance rather than a non-ritual “literary prophecy.” Throughout the oral performance the text evokes objects and actions integral to the ritual life of the community within the space in which the text is performed: actions like singing, eating, drinking, and praying, and objects like censures, cups, bowls, lamps, and instruments (much like the Delian Aretalogy of Serapis does). In some cases, the text not only evoke, but performs the action: not simply referencing prayer and singing, but the words of the prayers and songs themselves, orally performed. Using enactive theories of embodied participation in oral narration, this paper explores how the oral performance of the text blurs the lines between narrating and doing, for the reader, and between hearing and performing, for the audience. This paper argues that—much like the hieroi logoi of an Orphic mystery initiation—the oral performance of the text of Revelation draws participants (guided by the first person account of the seer) into an experience of the otherworldly journey narrated, not simply recounting to them the results of a revelation, but performatively initiating them into the revelation (so that the knowledge received is primarily of an experiential nature).

In 1 Cor 11:19, Paul talks about hoi dokimoi faneroi ("the distinctively approved ones") among the Christ group in Corinth. Paul mentions such people in the context where he criticizes factions and divisions in the group. The verse itself is not enough to understand what the group practiced in advance to have such approved members. Also, we are not aware of how the group processed the practice and what the prerequisites were. This paper attempts to answer those questions by looking at some of the association data regarding election procedures to understand 1 Cor 11:19 within its social context, and by and large, the Christ group in Corinth in general.

This paper will examine Basil of Caesarea’s well-known interpretation of Psalm 33.6 (32 LXX), in which he describes the Holy Spirit’s work in the divine act of creation as the sanctification or perfection “pure, intelligent, and supermundane powers” (Spir. 16.38). The aim of the paper is to bring to light the various influences shaping Basil’s unique reading of this text. The paper will begin with a brief overview of the historical and theological contexts informing Basil’s interpretation of this passage. This includes earlier interpreters like Origen of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, but also the views of his opponents in the interpretation of biblical passages concerning the Son and the Spirit, noted in passages like Spir. 2.4 and 17.41-43. The second section of the paper will be an analysis of Basil’s actual reading of Psalm 33.6. Two major points will be made: (1) while Basil to some degree maintains an Origenian and even Platonic taxis in his understanding of the individual roles of the divine persons in creation, his understanding of the divine work of creation is built on the assumption of a Trinitarian ontological unity and the idea that shared work assumes shared nature, based on passages like Mt 28.19-20, 1 Cor 12.3, and 2 Cor 4.4 among others. This vision is constructed in opposition to those who subordinate to the Spirit to the Son. (2) The unique and particular work Basil affords to the Holy Spirit in creation is shaped by his theological vision of salvation more than any particular biblical text (apart from Psalm 33.6), which is not the case for his treatment of the Son. It is also shaped by an already established ontological creator/created or sanctifier/sanctified distinction which has its roots in Origen.

1Enoch is known as part of the Ethiopic canon of scripture, but it's function as a sacred text is not well explored. This paper presents evidence from the Ethiopian commentary tradition that shed's some light on its reception, and theological function, with a particular focus on its use in the Psalms in explaining the fall.

In various Hellenistic philosophies, cosmic knowledge is important to wisdom. Unsurprisingly, cosmic knowledge also has a role to play in Wisdom of Solomon. A close examination of “cosmos” and cosmic knowledge in WisSol, however, shows a marked contrast between understandings of cosmos in WisSol and those found, for example, in Plato’s writings. The aim of this paper is to document this difference and explain the role of cosmos in WisSol as part of a larger creaturely array that, instead of being both superior to and independent of humanity as in Plato, remains subject to human rule. Intriguingly in WisSol, it is not the figure of the philosopher-king, the ruler with cosmic knowledge, who embodies wisdom. The philosopher-king merely plays host to wisdom. I suggest that it is rather the priest “on whose long robe the entire cosmos was depicted” (WisSol 18:24) who is able to embody and enact wisdom in the face of death, disorder, and destruction.

Earlier scholarship on the mashal in rabbinic texts concentrated on form-critical aspects (Noy, Goldberg) that delineated its narrative structure and on the discussion of its ideological or theological ‘message’, often comparing those texts with parables in the New Testament (Thoma, Lauer, Dschulnigg). More recently, David Stern, in his Parables in Midrash, has studied rabbinic meshalim in light of contemporary literary theory. Stern pointed out the different functions of the rabbinic parables that always combine different discursive goals (admonition, praise, polemic, comfort, warning etc.) and require and active reader or “implied interpreter” to decipher its meaning. Daniel Boyarin has interrogated the intertextual entanglements between biblical texts and parable narratives in exegetical midrashim. He highlighted the cultural contingency of the narrative patterns of rabbinic parables that are crucial for the interpretation and actualization of the ideas conveyed. Most recently, a group of scholars (www.parabelproject.nl) engages in a new comparative study of Christian parables and rabbinic meshalim. Still, most scholars focus on the parables in early (tannaitic) and later (amoraic) rabbinic traditions. Despite their up-to-date approaches, those studies (explicitly or implicitly) present the development of the mashal as a narrative of rise and decline. Accordingly, after the literary ‘peak’ of the ‘classical’ amoraic midrashim, parables in later traditions as a mere ‘afterglow” of those ‘golden days’ appear as eclectic and pale imitations with overtly ‘novelistic’ tendencies. Such clear-cut distinctions, however, conceal many subtle developments of new forms of discourse and different deployments of older rabbinic forms, such as parables, in post-Talmudic texts, usually called ‘late Midrash’. My paper will discuss some shifts and transformations of the mashal as a small form and its new functions within Seder Eliyahu Zuta (SEZ), as well as in its fellow-text called Seder Eliyahu Rabba (SER). These fascinating traditions (ca. 9th-10th c.) are of a unique, though hybrid, character oscillating between a moral guidebook for righteous conduct and learned exposition (i.e. Midrash). The texts exhibits many innovative and astonishing literary features such as framing structures (a kind of introduction and conclusion), first-person narratives with an author-persona (ranging between an anonymous preacher, teacher and the prophet Elijah), a guiding voice (“I”) that addresses the audience in many passages, and a complex mosaic of textual elements and discursive structures. I suggest that the mashal, despite or possibly because of its modification, plays an important role within Seder Eliyahu’s specific discourse. The paper will demonstrate how the authors skillfully adopted and re-appropriated the familiar and flexible genre of the mashal, while deploying its exegetical and hermeneutical dynamics for their own thematic agenda.

Studies in the last decades emphasized the existence of a common meal tradition shared by many ancient Greco-Roman cultures and societies. On the basis of ancient Jewish and especially Hellenistic-Jewish sources, my paper will examine ancient Jewish reading practices in the context of meals. Since it is increasingly acknowledged that regular and institutionalized Torah reading practices existed in the ancient synagogue only from the fifth century C.E. onwards with a wide distribution, studies on ancient Christian ritual and worship argue increasingly that Christian liturgical reading practices originated from the background of a broader ancient Greco-Roman culture rather than from ancient Judaism. However, my paper will argue that the development of ancient Jewish practices of liturgical reading has to be explained too against the background of the Greco-Roman culture. While the tradition of common and regular Torah readings as lectio continua in synagogues cannot be taken for granted in ancient Judaism, I will show that non-institutionalized and non-liturgical reading practices during meals should be regarded as a determining influencing factor for the later development of synagogues’ reading practices. Hence, my paper will trace and evaluate examples of how Torah was read and discussed during meals as witnessed by sources as Philo of Alexandria, Titus Flavius Josephus, the Third Book of Maccabees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and archeological evidence. More broadly, my presentation may furthermore deliver proof of shared reading practices in both ancient Jewish and early Christian communities. With its emphasis on Jewish-Hellenistic sources, my paper may be a useful complement to seminar papers on other traditions like the pagan Greco-Roman world, ancient Christian communities, and later Rabbinic ideology.

This paper explores the various kinds of signs in the Babylonian poem Ludlul Bel Nemeqi ("The Babylonian Job") and their significance within the composition. The signs in the poem are both negative/malevolent and positive. Negative signs refer to receiving an evil omen through divinely-sanctioned means such as divination, or to not receiving a sign when one has been requested. A malevolent sign is a sign from demonic or other supra-human forces that is manifested in (and thus intuited on the basis of) negative, often bodily, effects upon the receiver. These kinds of signs play a major role in depicting the sufferer’s plight in the first two tablets (i.e., majors sections) of the Babylonian poem. The remainder of the poem recounts the sufferer’s recovery, which includes several positive kinds of signs: mantic dreams indicating recovery, the effective expulsion of demonic illness, and the reception of favorable signs at a temple gate. Although this paper will follow the unfolding of these signs to understand their contribution to the poem’s narrative arc, it will also argue that the poem itself becomes a kind of sign. Since the sufferer (the implied author) narrates his poem retrospectively in the first person, the poem reads like an autobiography of religious experience. Given that the narrator relates and interprets his extraordinary experiences so confidently and with the intent to teach others about the merciful nature of Marduk, Babylon’s god, the poem as a whole may be considered a revelation or sign in a broad sense. In this way, the poem problematizes the distinction between sapiential observation of human experience and the reception/interpretation of supra-human revelation.

A long-steading assumption about the semantics of שָׁלוֹם as ‘peace’ has remained unchallenged. F. J. Stendebach summarizes the meaning of the noun thus: “šālōm is a profoundly positive concept associated with the notions of intactness, wholeness, and well-being, of the world and of humanity” (TDOT XV 2006: 13-49 [19]). However, the use of the noun in 2 Sm 11:7, in which Uriah asks about the שָׁלוֹם of the battle, clearly contradicts the aforesaid “profound positivity” of the noun. Granted the noun is in the pattern of the infinitive absolute of the verb שׁלם, a revisit to the semantics of the verb may shed light on the meaning of the noun. It has generally been accepted that the basic meaning of the שׁלם G stem is 'to be complete', 'to remain intact' (cf. esp. Eisenbeis 1969: 353). However, if one takes the D stem as the point of departure (e.g. Gerleman 1973), it turns out that the conceptualization of the verb concerns a balanced transaction between two (or more) parties rather than the state (of completeness) of one single entity. With the aid of distributional semantics and frame semantics, this study tries to describe the occurrences of the verb שׁלם D stem across different stems and discover the concept that holds its various senses together, i.e. (transactional) balance. We will look at an example from each semantic (sub-)frame and identify the three core concepts of the verb: completeness, balance, and alliance. From this perspective, the accepted meanings of the שׁלם G and H stems and the noun שָׁלוֹם have to be revised. After a study of their occurrences, this paper argues that they primarily describe a situation in which the weaker party takes the initiative to submit itself to servitude in order to remain intact when confronted by a stronger party. If it could be referred to as peace at all, it would only be a pax victoris.

From the ubiquitous Judean lmlk seals to royal monumental dedicatory inscriptions, many Northwest Semitic epigraphic texts exhibit two striking features: (1) they display a pragmatic, contextual connection between the content of the inscription, its material medium, and its physical context; and (2) their ambition is to have a tangible—what one might call a “performative”—effect on the real world. Drawing on linguistic anthropological and semiotic approaches, this paper investigates the relationship of pragmatics and performativity in Northwest Semitic inscriptions through a case study of the Karatepe Bilingual Phoenecian–Luwian inscription (KAI 26). This inscription, in the voice of Azatiwada, has three distinct instantiations. This paper first examines how the gate inscription creates a pragmatic connection with its context through indexical language. This language is intimately configured according to the unique physical context of the inscribed object. The paper then argues that the pragmatic connection between inscription, medium, and context is cultivated to help ensure the effectiveness of the text-object—in other words, to help it achieve its desired impact in the real world. Indexical language engages the imagined audience of the inscription in an attempt to compel a determined response. In this way the inscription’s diverse reading and viewing audience becomes the bridge between its content and the material contexts of the text-object. The interplay of pragmatics and performativity in the Karatepe Bilingual highlights the multidimensionality of the inscription in its physical and political landscapes and illuminates how these various dimensions of text shape the world in which it was placed.

‘The Gospel of Truth’ is called as such by modern scholars because of its incipit, which reads “The true message [or: Gospel of Truth] is joy for those who have received grace from the Father of truth.” By naming this text ‘The Gospel of Truth’, however, scholars have introduced a distortion into the conversation. The incipit of this text refers to “the Gospel of Truth,” and claims that it “is joy.” By calling this literary production “The Gospel of Truth” we have already suggested what the referent is of the clause “The Gospel of Truth is joy”: it is the text that we are reading. But what follows explicitly, repeatedly disavows the notion that truth could be found in a text whatsoever, or that truth is even discoverable by anyone other than those who have been chosen to receive such knowledge. By rejecting the idea that a text could offer access to Truth, or to secure knowledge of the divine, ‘The Gospel of Truth’ presents a conceptual counterpoint to Christian traditions that rely on textual interpretation as a central node of truth production. It witnesses to a conception of ancient Christianity wholly devoid of exegetical concerns, and reminds us that the decision to cite scripture is just that—a decision—and it already forecloses a wide variety of approaches to the creation of truth by groups equally as Christian as the Nicene community that wrested the reigns of imperial power in the late fourth century. The book, in Nicene circles, was a fetish object: invested with power and possessing an excess of vitality, beyond even the interpretive possibility of the words contained within its folia. The very strange attachment to text held by many late ancient Christians is clarified with reference to the ‘Gospel of Truth’: a literary production that uses bookish metaphors to dispense with the idea of authoritative text in the first place.

In the midst of the battle against the Philistines at Michmas, Saul discovers that his son Jonathan is missing. According to I Sam. 14:18, he commands Ahijah the priest to “bring the Ark of God”, and the text then explains that the Ark was with the Israelites on that day. Saul the abruptly orders Ahijah “withdraw your hands”, and the Ark is not mentioned again in the story. This episode is problematic for several reasons: in verse 3, Ahijah was said to be carrying an “ephod”, not an Ark; nowhere else in the Bible is the Ark said to have been used as an oracular device – this is the function of an ephod or of Urim and Thummim; and of course, according to the previous chapters, the Ark, having been captured by the Philistines and returned, was then at Kiriath-jearim, where it remained until later retrieved by David. Nowhere are we told that the Ark was in Saul’s possession. Different explanations have been offered. The Septuagint has “ephod” instead of “Ark”, and many have accepted this as the original. Some modern scholars accept the MT, and their solutions range from harmonistic to literary-critical. The Jerusalem Talmud actually cites an opinion that there were two Arks, both originally crafted by Moses! I wish to view this problem against the background of Iron Age I Israel, in which multiple cultic centers may have had different implements for various functions – the Ark of Shiloh may not have been the same as the Ark of Saul, and may have had different functions as well. In theory, there may have been an “Ark” at every shrine at which Yahweh was worshipped. The later Deuteronomistic editors attempted to harmonize and to unify the various accounts, a process which was continued by the LXX, the Talmud and later commentators as well.

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This presentation will draw attention to some frequently overlooked, older studies by Gary Knoppers that remain relevant to pentateuchal scholarship and merit renewed attention. The studies are worthy for the quality of their writing and the innovative way they frame questions and define approaches. In addition, the presentation shares memories and anecdotes of Gary as colleague and friend over many years.

Each year in the small Tuscan town of Bolsena, the townspeople gather to celebrate the memory of their patron saint, Cristina. Cristina was martyred in late antiquity, but not before having been tortured in a manner both grisly and spectacular: she was (among other things!) tortured with poisonous snakes, shot through with arrows, scourged, boiled, and drowned. Her breasts and tongue were severed. Remarkably, Cristina’s sufferings are not merely recounted through a reading of her martyrology at the church dedicated to her; instead, the entire town participates in a graphic and elaborate enactment of her torture and martyrdom – the sole “passion play” in Italy dedicated to the memory of a female saint. Furthermore, the manner in which the town enacts Cristina’s martyrdom is in itself remarkable, for the manner in which it “queers” religious spectacle, playing with contemporary understandings of place, identity, suffering, and the female body.

Most commentators took Nehemiah’s account of the imposition of Sabbath in 13:15-22 at face value and traced the basis of the prohibition in Torah and prophets. This amounts to a justification of Nehemiah’s action in religious terms without explaining the structural issues behind. They did not discuss the full mechanism that necessitated the commercial activities and the possible consequences of such prohibition. I rely mostly on Roland Boer’s The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel to examine the role of the Temple as an economic center for imperial taxation that depleted local resources. The local elites and merchants in this picture were collaborators of such exploitation. The trading activities in Jerusalem then were not for simply trading off agricultural surplus that benefited local farmers as in a market economy. The predominance of cash crop on the part of the farmers in the text suggests a pre-existing latifundialization that left the people of the land landless, debt-ridden and dependent upon the landed elites, including priests. The peasant farmers were there selling their produce for acquiring minted money, the only acceptable form of tax payment under Persian regime, from the merchants under the supervision of the Temple staff. The foreign merchants also benefited from trading with the local elites as ordinary people could not afford luxury goods such as fish. Nehemiah’s imposition of Sabbath could have disrupted the ongoing impoverishment of the peasant farmers with such market exchange, however, but for his short-termism. Lester Grabbe pointed out the increasing difficulty for the local farmers to gain financial relief after Nehemiah’s cancelling of debts at the expense of the elites without providing a long-term solution. In addition, I look at Nehemiah 8 and reconstruct the fast consumption of food at the expense of the elites during Sabbath. Feeding the poor people of the land in Jerusalem during Sabbath regularly might postpone the outbreak of social unrest and secure popular support for Nehemiah while leaving Persian structure of economic siphoning intact. The Sabbath in Nehemiah 13 would then further make the local economy unsustainable. The hasty reforms would instigate strong local resentments, which ultimately cost Nehemiah’s post and the chance to establish a regime where the accumulation of debt could have slowed down. If there is anything worthwhile in the Temple economy with Nehemiah’s reforms, it would be an independent monetary system that grew out of Nehemiah’s project of cultural independence and that filtered the imperial pressure to fully integrate Yehudite economy for the benefit of the empire.

Nine years ago, we presented a multidisciplinary review in the Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds Session at SBL that demonstrated that the de facto approach used to identify fragmentary texts of antiquity displayed substantial limitations. These limitations produce two kinds of systemic error; the failure to find actual matches (false negatives) and the failure to reject false candidates (false positives). An analysis of the causes that contribute to these errors yielded a reengineered approach to fragmentary textual identification. This reworked protocol resulted in the publication of a new identification for the controversial 7Q5 fragment from Qumran, namely, that 7Q5 is definitively not a NT fragment, but is, in fact, very likely B’ Esdras 15:19-20 (approximately Nehemiah 4:6-7 in modern English texts). That protocol initially consisted of four elements; a redesigned component-based approach to scoring textual readings, a redesigned approach to measuring alignment (stichometry), the development of a text-critical database of 205 Jewish and early Christian texts, and the development of specialized search software. We have now updated the METIS software system (an acronym for the Manuscript and Epigraphical Textual Identification System) and validated it against a larger suite of known identifications. We have, moreover, tested the original METIS identification of 7Q5 against other text critical variants of B’ Esdras. Of these, one of the variants still consistently ranked first both stichometrically and orthographically, even as assumptions were varied. While it may be argued that the line length of this match does not correspond to other 7Q fragments, marked textual differences between 7Q5 and the other 7Q fragments obviate the need for any such correspondence. Finally, the B’ Esdras match fits not only the traditional Essenic context of de Vaux, it also does no violence to more recent proposals that posit a non-Essenic Qumran. Overall, the evidence seems to suggest that the updated reengineered protocol has both increased the sensitivity of textual detection, as well as improved its ability to eliminate false candidates. We therefore now propose that METIS be expanded to operate upon the fragmentary textual archives at Duke, the fragmentary literary and documentary texts housed at the Sackler Library under the custodianship of the Egypt Exploration Society, as well as at other major archives of heavily damaged and fragmentary papyri.

Liturgical poems from Late Antiquity (whether Jewish, Christian, or Samaritan in origin) are often initially encountered as literary works, appreciated for their word-play, sound-play, rhythms, and other formal features; secondarily, they are regarded as important sources of popular exegesis, as their content frequently resonates with interpretive traditions familiar from various roughly contemporary prose works. When studied as liturgy, these poems have enriched and, in some cases, challenged regnant paradigms for the historical development of prayer practice and worship in Late Antiquity. In recent decades, however, the tools of ritual theory, performance studies, material religion, and visual studies—often entering religious studies through the disciplines of art history and anthropology—have helped foreground the experiential dynamism of liturgical poems. Such sophisticated theoretical and methodological work has encouraged readers of late antique hymns to imagine the performance of these works more fully in their multi-sensory environments and to take them seriously as works of both prayer and ritual, embedded in complex and sophisticated cultural and societal contexts. Many of the essays in Swartz’s Mechanics of Providence suggest the application of precisely this variety of approaches to liturgical poems. In this paper, I will highlight the range of ways that Swartz’s approaches to magic and mysticism in Late Antiquity have transformed, and will continue to shape, the study of hymnography.

References to books ascribed to figures known from the extended biblical narrative are abundant in Jewish, Christian, Manichean, Muslim, and other texts from the first millennium. One intriguing category of such references that remains largely unexplored is books known only by title. Books known only by title are postulated books, surviving neither as extant documents nor as excerpts or quotations of any substantial length; these books are claimed books. Often, we do not know whether these books were “real” (hence: “lost”) or “imagined,” but what we do know is that they have lived on as named entities through the medium of other writings. Books that fall into this category are found, for instance, in lists of apocryphal books; in annotations added by later hands in the margins of surviving manuscripts; as well as in literary accounts across the language traditions of the Middle East and the Mediterranean area. In a preliminary study of books known only by title, we discovered—much to our surprise—that several of these books are ascribed to female figures, such as Eve, the daughters of Adam, and the mysterious figure of Noriah. Until now, these postulated books ascribed to female figures of the biblical narrative have not attracted much attention. The practice of ascribing potentially fictitious books to female figures has been neither mapped nor analyzed nor systematically explored as a historical, literary and socio-rhetorical phenomenon. “Books Known Only by Title: Exploring the Gendered Structures of the First Millennium Imagined Library” is the 2020/2021 Humanities research project at the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. The project is co-chaired by Marianne B. Kartzow and Liv I. Lied. At the 2019 SBL Annual Meeting in San Diego, we wish to engage the analytical potentials of the concept “books known only by title” and reflect on the gendered dynamics of such postulated books—in dialogue with the SBL Book History unit. How may the category “books known only by title” and the (academic) biography of such books challenge and benefit current discussions about first millennium books—real and/or imagined?

Scholars have argued that there is a shift in the ways Muslims interact with the Qur’an, in that the Qur’an becomes central in defining the meaning of Islam to an extent unimaginable prior to the late 19th century (Ahmed 2015; Pink 2019). I argue that the shift also happens in the context of Sufi communities, in which the Qur’an has been mainly used performatively, instead of informatively, in rituals. This paper examines Emha Ainun Nadjib’s oral preaching in Maiyah gatherings from 2017-2018, focusing on how he conceptualizes the position of the Qur’an, the nature of Muslims’ relationship with the Qur’an, and how he reads the Qur’an in order to respond and make sense of the modern time. Maiyah is a popular and very well attended Sufi gathering in Indonesia. During his oral preaching, Nadjib, the main teacher in Maiyah, delivers his tafsīr, which actively addresses contemporary issues. In Maiyah, the centrality of the Qur’an is found in at least two aspects. First, Nadjib asserts that each Muslims have rights to approach the Qur’an directly without any intermediary. He highly criticizes that tafsīr becomes an enterprise of the elites, and popularizes tadabbur as an accessible approach to the Qur’an. Tadabbur is best summarized as learning from the Qur’an, not learning the Qur’an (tafsīr). Here following a strict rule of Qur’anic exegesis is less important than achieving the ultimate goal, namely to be closer to God and to be a good human being. As long as the end result of tadabbur is the latter, one’s tadabbur is valid. With such a concept, tadabbur is a platform for democratization of tafsīr. Second, never citing earlier authorities, Nadjib regards the Qur’an as the ultimate source of his teaching and the solution for what he deems as the current crisis of humanity. This paper will address his tafsīr or rather tadabbur of verses dealing with God and humanity (Q. 24:35; 2:156; 28:77; 51:56), and life management (Q. 114; 94; 17:1; 59:22-23), and how he appropriates the text to the current socio-political situation in Indonesia.

Philologists of the massive troves of Mesopotamian medical literature have pointed out the prominent role of the digestive system in body and disease concepts. Stomach health intersects with multiple conceptions of well being, broadly defined. The abdomen in general, but also the path through the body were material sites of cultural digestion, a place not only for gastro-intestinal illness, but for parsing out domains we would call selfhood, consciousness, soul, and psychology. In light of these important observations in cognate studies, this paper will examine the way the intestine figures in three Hebrew illness narratives using insights from cultural anthropology and the medical humanities.

Eroticism was a prominent device in Greco-Roman culture, and scholarship on Judaism in antiquity has posed questions regarding the relationship of Greek and Roman culture to eroticism in Jewish texts from the Second Temple. The present study contends that erotic representations in Josephus’ Esther (Ant. 11.184-296) ultimately intend to reinforce Jewish identity in the Roman Empire. As a Hellenistic novel designed to entertain the ancient audience, Jewish and non-Jewish, Josephus’ Esther is at times found to be more erotic than the Masoretic Text (MT), Septuagint (LXX), or Alpha Text (AT). Josephus portrays Esther as more sexually appealing, albeit in control of her own sexual desire, whereas the Persian king, Artaxerxes, is utterly subjugated to his sexual attraction to Esther. Taken together, Josephus represents Esther as more masculine, and in converse, Artaxerxes as more feminine in terms of their gendered emotional controls. These reversed representations of gender roles related to romance can become all the more lucid where ethnic reasoning is concerned. This reversal implies that Josephus emphasizes the priority of Jewish identity over Persian identity. Esther, as a symbol of the colonized Jews, is masculinized, while Artaxerxes, as a symbol of the colonizing Persians, is emasculated. At the same time, Haman and Mordecai are in no way eroticized, yet their characters are central, with their primary conflict reflecting a tension between two colonized groups (Mordecai the Benjaminite and Haman the Amalekite) for preferential treatment from the empire. As a Jewish story rewritten from a colonial perspective, Josephus’ Esther creates an ideological construction of Jewish identity against the Persians as a foil referred to as more than the Persians, who supposedly involve Greeks and Romans within the context of Josephus’ composition. As a result, it turns out that a version of Esther by Josephus—as a Romanized Jew—is not merely apologetic, as Josephan scholarship has frequently proposed, but rather subversive in the sense that it ultimately demonstrates the excellency of Jewish legacy. Utilizing a literary-ideological critical reading, with particular focus on characterization of the colonized and colonizers, this study will address the two questions of how Ant.11.184-296 served as a text of identity for Josephus and his first century readers, as well as how the text utilized eroticism and ethnic representation in intersectional ways to achieve this goal. Along the way, we will also address previous scholarship on redaction, textual, and literary criticism of the versions of Esther in order to understand how Josephus developed the story from extant versions in order to better understand his linguistic and literary choices. Fundamentally, his version of the story presents Jews (Esther and Mordecai) in both implicit and explicit ways as morally stronger and more powerful than the prominent non-Jews (Artaxerxes and Haman) in the story through the intermingling of eroticism and ethnic identities.

The Epistle of Barnabas is the earliest extant Christian text to take up and allegorize Levitical food laws pertaining to animals (Barn. 10), though it stands in a tradition from Hellenistic Judaism that includes the Letter of Aristeas and Philo of Alexandria. The Physiologus's animal allegories evince some notable points of similarity with Barnabas. This paper compares the allegorical strategies of the two texts and examines the distinctive concerns that shape each one's deployment of the figural strategies, and suggests that the Physiologus may know and modify Barnabas's earlier work.

The huge model of the biblical ark built by Answers in Genesis ministry in northern Kentucky is currently the largest young Earth creationist public attraction in the world. While designed to be an evangelical answer to secular theme parks, the ark building itself can be thought of as offering a kind of pilgrimage experience. It employs a progression of carefully designed spaces, full-sized dioramas, animatronics, audio, video, and computer displays, to produce an immersive, multifaceted journey of transformation from the flawed world to one of sharing in divine rest. A tour of the building follows a largely pre-set path from the cramped lower spaces with its rows of animal cages and audio track of storms, creaking wood, and braying animals, to quitter upper floors with spacious and comfortable accommodations for the ark’s crew. The top floor hosts the “Voyage of a Book” gallery that traces the Bible’s origins in ancient Israel to Christian missionary journeys around the world. The end point of the ark tour is a gallery based on graphic-novel style murals that tell a story of theodicy and salvation involving modern college students. The design of the ark with its multiple genres and technologies collapses multiple conversion/salvation narratives into an affective experience that supersedes any purely intellectual encounter with creationist arguments about the reality of the biblical flood story. This analysis of the Ark Encounter builds on previous studies of creationist attractions: John Lynch’s study of Answers in Genesis’ Creation Museum as a “spatial sermon”, Jeffery Steller’s views on that venue as a “postmodern pilgrimage”, and James Bielo’s studies on the Ark as combining religion and entertainment.

This paper, dedicated to the memory of a dear friend and colleague, Prof. Gary Knoppers, is based on a textual research, in which each geographical list in the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah is analyzed and the geographical data is collected. Moving from the textual data to the geographical and archaeological phase I will analyze the different regions in Judah and will define the characteristics of each region, and the place of each site mentioned in the texts. I will use the archaeological data in order to come back to the text, trying to differentiate between the sources of the different geographical lists, the reality behind them and the literary and ideological functions they had in the different stages of development of the book of Ezra - Nehemiah.

Ancient authors learned the art of letter writing in secondary school and from the earliest of times, ancient letters—with their standard opening and closing formulae—obtained a recognizable and nearly invariable form. This standardization of form meant that even without a knowledge of their contents, letters conferred certain basic meanings. They evoked a sense of genuineness and were known to bring persons or parties separated from each other by distance together. Other than standalone letters, ancient authors also deployed the letter genre to embed letters within their narratives. And because they remained as “letters,” they evoked a sense of the real, while they aroused interest in readers now placed in the role of “reading over the shoulder” of the addressee. Embedded letters also served in other strategic ways to advance the plot. The author of Revelation, itself in the form of a letter, addresses his narrative to seven churches (1:4). Yet the author, as though in a double-address, also includes seven embedded letters to these churches (2:1–3:22). I wish to explore more fully the rhetorical functions of the embedded letters in Revelation and in Acts. As such, I contribute to the development of ways in which ancient NT authors exploited the rhetorical potential of the letter genre in their fictional works.